Jason Whitesel is the rare ethnographer who has clearly mastered both." -Peter Hennen, author of Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine Ethnographers typically exhibit skill either in thick description or in theoretical interpretation. "Fat Gay Men: Girth, Mirth, and the Politics of Stigma captures the immediacy of the joyful and affirming performances that larger gay men use to challenge various aspects of fat stigma and the sometimes traumatizing life events that animate the resistance of ‘big men,’ while at the same time making all the necessary connections with the evolving theoretical literature. "In his lively (and fabulously titled) Fat Gay Men, Jason Whitesel, a gender studies professor at Pace University, attempts to rescue these guys from the bottom of the homosexual heap." -Slate An original, impressive contribution to LGBTQ, gender, body, and performance studies." -Kathleen Blee, author of Democracy in the Making: How Activist Groups Form It captures the courage and humor by which they confront fat-phobia in gay culture as well as in larger society. "Fat Gay Men is fascinating look at the world of men who are doubly stigmatized by body size and sexuality. I recommend it highly." -Esther Rothblum, co-editor of The Fat Studies Reader
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For this book, Jason spent two years conducting an ethnographic study of the Girth & Mirth gay male social movement, attending over one hundred events. There is surprisingly little research on weight-related stigma and weight preoccupation among gay men. "Jason Whitesel is a leading star in the new academic discipline of fat studies, a field of scholarship that critically examines societal attitudes about body weight and appearance, and that advocates equality for all people with respect to body size. A compelling and rich narrative, Fat Gay Men provides a rare glimpse into an unexplored dimension of weight and body image in American culture.
#JASON WHITESEL FAT GAY MEN MOVIE#
Based on ethnographic interviews and in-depth field notes from more than 100 events at bar nights, café klatches, restaurants, potlucks, holiday bashes, pool parties, movie nights, and weekend retreats, the book explores the woundedness that comes from being relegated to an inferior position in gay hierarchies, and yet celebrates how some gay men can reposition the shame of fat stigma through carnival, camp, and play.
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This book documents performances at club events and examines how participants use allusion and campy-queer behavior to reconfigure and reclaim their sullied body images, focusing on the numerous tensions of marginalization and dignity that big gay men experience and how they negotiate these tensions via their membership to a size-positive group.
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Both a partial insider as a gay man and an outsider to Girth & Mirth, Whitesel offers an insider’s critique of the gay movement, questioning whether the social consequences of the failure to be height-weight proportionate should be so extreme in the gay community. In existence for over forty years, the club has long been a refuge and ‘safe space’ for such men. In Fat Gay Men, Jason Whitesel delves into the world of Girth & Mirth, a nationally known social club dedicated to big gay men, illuminating the ways in which these men form identities and community in the face of adversity.
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Despite affectionate in-group monikers for big gay men–chubs, bears, cubs–the anti-fat stigma that persists in American culture at large still haunts these individuals who often exist at the margins of gay communities. To be fat in a thin-obsessed gay culture can be difficult.