When Black Fat Does Not Signify Mammy: Disparagement Humour and Sexualization

Abstract

In her insightful work on the agency as well as sexual and economic power of Black fat women in literature, Andrea Shaw (2006) speaks about the cultural and aesthetic authority of ‘the West’ and its successful imposition of these values on subaltern populations. She critiques this imposition by speaking about whiteness as the epitome of a beauty that devalues the ‘race’, gender and, indeed, body shape, size and colour of the subaltern. From her vantage point of the fat Black woman’s body she sees this devaluation as ensuring that fatness and Blackness are not attributes that have been considered beautiful. However, the fat Black woman’s body is re-read by Shaw as a site of beauty, sexuality and resistance to this devaluation.