This project investigates the ways that the Black female body has been constructed using corpulence as a central narrative that reflects anxieties about race, gender, class, sexuality, and national identity. It identifies how the performance of corpulence through the Black female body has particular ideological meanings that have been articulated through visual and narrative cultures. Corpulence is operative in defining rigid boundaries in regards to identity, which are built on constructed notions of whiteness and Blackness. Moreover, this study identifies corpulence as a facet of identity and illuminates how it intersects with race, gender, and class to relegate Black women to the bottom of American society. Through an analysis of several popular texts, this study illuminates the varied ways that the discourse involving corpulence reflects narratives that deploy race, gender, and class as signifiers of “authentic” American identity and restrict the social, economic, and political mobility of the Black female body.
The analysis begins with a historical examination of how pertinent size has been to the construction of the Black female body in visual and narrative cultures and how this particular construction has worked to establish ideals regarding difference. It assesses the historical ‘Mammy’ construction of the Black female body in an effort to identify how the physical attributes of this particular construction serve to nurture whiteness in general. The primary interest is to identify the function of corpulence in the construction of this caricature and analyze how it was composed as a signifier of ‘Blackness’ that was used to establish, promote and sustain white supremacy through visual culture.
Also, corpulence has been appropriated and used in Black folklore as a means to comical effect. This study illuminates the ways in which corpulence is performed in Black folklore as a means to denigrate the Black female body. Moreover, it traces this assault through analyses of practices and rituals like ‘Yo Mama’ jokes (playing the Dozens/snapping) and the use of the gendered ’fat suit.’ Such practices and internalizations perpetuate the myth of an overindulgent, cantankerous, and ‘lazy’ Black female body that prevents itself from acquiring the ‘American Dream’. These practices continue to relegate Black women to the bottom of the racial hierarchy and marginalize them from constructions of nationality and ‘American’ identity.
Conversely, this study also analyzes how Black women artists have engaged in corpulence politics. It analyzes various forms of visual and narrative cultures in order to identify how Black women perform corpulence. Black women have used literature, film, television and music as mediums to articulate ideals about their own bodies and identities. Consequently, cultural and identity theorists such as Toni Morrison and contemporary celebrity figures such as Queen Latifah and Mo’Nique have been invested, whether indirectly or proactively, in corpulence politics. This study analyzes the corpulence politics of these artists, while noting the tension between their own self-constructed bodily performances and external appropriations.
Through an analysis of corporeality, this study identifies how the body is still used as a central location for the inscription and dissemination of ideology.