Content area
Full Text
Jason Whitesel, Fat Gay Men: Girth, Mirth, and the Politics of Stigma. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 192 pp.
In Fat Gay Men, Jason Whitesel explores Girth & Mirth, a social club for big gay men with chapters in many US cities. Drawing on fat studies, disability studies, research on performance, and the sociology of stigma, the author examines the club in order to understand how members of a doubly marginalized group reconstruct their identities in the face of discrimination.
Chapter 1 outlines the history and purpose of Girth & Mirth. Originating in the 1970s, the organization serves multiple functions: as a social group for members to find friends, a dining club, and a "normalizing group" (21) whose presence and activities challenge the stigmatization its members experience on an everyday basis. Whitesel refines Erving Goffman's (1963) concept of stigma through consideration of the performative strategies of carnival and camp that "Girth & Mirthers" employ to reinterpret their lives and transform the wounds they receive from a world that fails to accept them as they are.
In Chapter 2, Whitesel argues that big gay men experience a double form of stigma: first, from heteronormative society, which rejects them for being gay; and, second, from mainstream gay culture, which rejects them for being fat. In addition, they also experience shaming from mainstream heteronormative society simply because of their body size, such as when seeking health care or shopping for clothes. Furthermore, within gay culture, such stigmatization encompasses the fraught power relations of "chub/chaser" relationships, wherein big men enjoy the attentions of slimmer men, but also risk poor treatment as a result of their own admirers' shame for desiring fat men. Whitesel also addresses the stigmatization from other "niche" groups within gay culture, including "bears" (hirsute and often stereotypically masculine men), who allow the Girth & Mirthers to hold functions in their spaces, but who nevertheless continue to marginalize the big men. Chapters 3 and 4 form the heart of the book, as they describe the performances that big gay men use to creatively disrupt the forms of stigmatization enumerated earlier. For example, Chapter 3...