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Author(s): Harju, A.; Huovinen, A.

Title: Fashionably Voluptuous: Normative Femininity and Resistant
Performative Tactics in Fatshion Blogs
Year: 2015
Version: Author accepted / Post print version
Please cite the original version:
Harju, A., Huovinen, A. (2015) Fashionably Voluptuous: Normative Femininity and
Resistant Performative Tactics in Fatshion Blogs. Journal of Marketing Management.
Volume 31, Issue 15-16, 1602-1625. DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2015.1066837
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available online DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2015.1066837

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Harju, Anu. On 'being' online - Insights on contemporary articulations of the relational self.
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 Fashionably Voluptuous: Normative
femininity and resistant performative
tactics in fatshion blogs

1Anu A. Harju and 2Annamari Huovinen

Aalto University School of Business

Department of Management Studies
Unit of Organizational Communication
Helsinki, Finland

                                                                                                               
1  Corresponding author: Anu Harju, email: [email protected], tel. +358 40 7418759  
2  Annamari
Huovinen, email: [email protected], tel. +358 50 5897097
Aalto University School of Business, Department of Management Studies. P.O. Box 21210 FI-00076
AALTO, Finland.

This work was supported by the HSE Foundation. The writers have no financial interest or benefit
from the direct applications of this research.  
  
 
Abstract

While research on consumer identity projects has begun to include

marginalized consumers, we nevertheless lack insight of the ways in which
socio-historical understandings of gendered identity are (re)constructed in
the context of consumer resistance and in relation to the market. Using
Critical Discourse Analysis, we draw on Butler’s notion of performative
identity formation and combine this with Bourdieu’s notion of capital as
identity resource, first to explore performative identity construction of
fatshion bloggers embedded in the normative understandings of gendered
identity, of adopting and negotiating the dominant cultural discourses of
fashion, and second, to consider the subversion of such discourses and
resistant acts as these are enabled by normativity. We establish two
performative identity tactics that highlight normativity as a resource for
resistance.

Keywords
Butler; identity; gender; cultural capital; consumer resistance; normativity;
fatshionista blog

‘I am a plus-size woman. I know what it’s like to feel ignored by the fashion
industry. I know what it’s like to compromise style and fit for what you can
find in your size. I know how it feels to be told fashion isn’t for you.’ 3

Introduction
In her theorization of gender and identity, Judith Butler (1988, 2006/1990)
makes the point of how a person may become marginalized when certain
norms of the dominant culture are not manifested in and by a person, and
indeed in and by the body. Butler’s extensive work on gender and identity has
changed our understanding of the construction of gender, and guided
researchers to question the limits and limitations of gender and its many
manifestations. Butler’s insights on the complex relationship between
normativity and cultural intelligibility reveal the constructed nature of many
of the categorizations that limit identity expression.
                                                                                                               
3  http://heartifb.com/2013/04/08/15-­‐plus-­‐size-­‐fashion-­‐bloggers-­‐redefining-­‐fashion/  

 
1  
 
 
 
  
 
While the gendered norm for cultural intelligibility is heterosexual,
many more norms dictate cultural intelligibility and acceptable personhood in
the everyday lives of consumers, one being body size. In this article, we set out
to study how plus-sized women, as marginalized fashion consumers, cope
with the hegemonic cultural norms governing female identity positions and
how they engage in subversive identity work. We take a Butlerian approach to
resistance and see it as a series of subversively repeated performative acts (see
also Eräranta, Moisander & Pesonen, 2009).
Fashion blogs have become centre stage where representations of
normative femininity and beauty ideals are negotiated and challenged (e.g.
Gurrieri and Cherrier, 2013; Salo, 2007; Sandikci & Ger, 2010; Connell,
2013). Creative adoption of fashion discourses in consumer identity work and
in consumer resistance is well documented (Thompson and Tian, 2008;
Thompson and Haytko, 1997; Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013; Sandikci & Ger,
2010; Connell, 2013). Fatshion blogging, a neologism comprising the words
‘fat’ and ‘fashion’ (Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013), is a relatively new
phenomenon: these blogs have sprung up as an active statement for fat-
acceptance, and as such, serve as instantiations of consumer resistance of
marginalized groups. The blogs illuminate marginalized consumers' identity
work at the intersection of commercial culture and the counter-
representations of traditional femininity. While it has been argued that
consumer resistance is nevertheless guided by cultural norms and
understandings (e.g. Thompson and Tian, 2008), Scaraboto and Fischer
(2012) showed some of the strategies frustrated, marginal consumers in the
field of fatshion use to seek a higher position in fashion markets by resisting
norms on that field.
Fatshion blogs are a critical as well as a constitutive part of ‘the
fatosphere’, an ambient space of peer support and active identity work where
being fat is not vilified. Gurrieri & Cherrier (2013) describe the fatosphere as a
network of resources that provide “a safe space where individuals can counter
fat prejudice, resist misconceptions of fat, engage in communal experiences
and promote positive understandings of fat” (p. 279). While the blogs feature
practices of dressing up, at the same time they display new modes of self-
portrait (Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013). Fashion, including fatshion, can also be
viewed as a site of political action and contestation (Connell, 2013). Thus,
fatshion blogs, in addition to being fashion blogs, constitute networked,
collective and active consumer resistance.
We combine Butler’s performative perspective on identity and gender
with Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural and social capital. Consumption
2  
 
 
 
  
 
practices have been established as resources for the negotiation of consumer
identity, and Bourdieu’s theories have been widely applied in consumer
research (Arsel & Bean, 2013; Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013; Coskuner-Balli &
Thompson, 2012; McQuarrie et al., 2012; Üstüner & Thompson, 2012;
McAlexander et al., 2014; Thompson & Üstüner, 2015). However, research on
consumers with subordinate forms of cultural capital has remained scarce
(Coskuner-Balli & Thompson, 2012). In addition, Toril Moi (1991) notes that
“one of the advantages of Bourdieu’s theory is that it not only insists on the
social construction of gender, but that it permits us to grasp the immense
variability of gender as a social factor” (p. 1035).
In building our theoretical perspective, we view fashion not only as a site
of constant negotiation and an avenue for consumer resistance but also as an
arena where identity is performed through a ‘series of performances’ (Butler
2004, 2007/1990). From this perspective, we empirically explore the ways in
which the fatshionista bloggers’ identity work is constrained and/or enabled
by normative frameworks, and the role of resistance, seen as a repetition of
subversive performative acts, in marginalized consumers’ identity work (see
also Eräranta et al., 2009). Based on a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough,
1995a, 1995b, 2003) of 12 Western fatshion blogs, we examine both the
textual content on the blogs (the posts, bio information) and the visual
images, for example, the poses, the positioning of the subjects, gaze, and the
composition of the images (e.g. Salo, 2007).
In this article, we explore fatshion blogging as a postfeminist identity
project. As Gill (2007a, 2007b) reminds us to focus on postfeminist media
culture as the critical object of study, fatshion blogs provide a window to
contemporary gendered practices of identity construction. We focus on the
discursive practices with which fatshion bloggers construct their
intersectional identities as plus-sized consumers. This study contributes to
the literature on marginalized consumers’ identity work and gendered
consumption practices, while it also sheds light on the nature of consumer
resistance and the role of normativity in resistant practices.
Body size is but one of the social, intersectional categories defining an
individual. The use of ‘fat’ throughout the paper is a conscious choice,
following the practices of the fatshion bloggers themselves. There is an
element of ‘coming out as a fat person’ on the blogs (see Gurrieri & Cherrier,
2013), which we see as an act of reappropriation of a stigmatized word, an act
of owning it so as to de-stigmatize it (cf. Galinsky, Hugenberg, Groom, &
Bodenhausen, 2003). Therefore, the word ‘fat’ is not in this article seen or
intended as offensive.
3  
 
 
 
  
 
Literature background and theoretical framework

Gendered identity as a performative, complex and fluid construct

For Butler, there is no gender identity that is not performed, no essentialist
gender behind the acts; rather, gender identity is performatively constructed
in ‘the “expressions” that are said to be its results” (Butler, 2006/1990, p. 34).
Inspired by Butler’s ideas of performativity and identity, we approach
fatshion bloggers’ identity project from a performative perspective, viewing
the acts of identity construction as discursive repetitions guided by normative
beauty ideals.
As Butler talks about the performative, constructed nature of gender
identity, gender being a ‘stylized repetition of acts through time’ (Butler,
1988: p. 529), she also points out how the actor (as well as audience) comes to
believe in the performative accomplishment and start to perform gender ‘in
the mode of belief’ (ibid.). Thus, any gender transformation must arise from
these acts, by way of ‘different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive
repetition of that style’. (Butler, 1988, p. 529). The capacity of fatshion
blogging to constitute resistant action lies in different kind of repeating.
In many popular representations fat is represented as if it was a social
and physical disability, a negative attribute of the body. Thus, such a negative
attitude toward a fat body is not seen as arising from situated cultural
expectations, resulting from a failure to comply with the norms that dictate
what bodies ought to be like, but rather the fault is placed with the individual.
Therefore, ‘[f]at people, in their excessive refusal to be disciplined into
culturally “acceptable” body shapes and sizes, are then as corporeally deviant
as those others [who are] considered [..] to be disabled’ (LeBesco, 2004, p.
74). This ‘corporeal deviance’ may, by some, be interpreted as defiance to
comply with the normative order and thus, as a choice that emphasises self-
control (and by some, the lack of it). LeBesco’s bodily acceptability and
deviance as indicators of cultural discipline resonates with Butler’s notion of
cultural intelligibility as access to personhood (2006/1990). Echoing de
Beauvoir, Butler (1988) says that ‘to be a woman is to have become a woman,
to compel the body to conform to an historical idea of “woman”, to induce the
body to become a cultural sign’ (p. 522). Gurrieri & Cherrier (2013) found that
fatshionistas (re)negotiate cultural notions of beauty through different
performative acts, and identified three different acts: coming out as fat,
mobilising fat citizenship, and flaunting fat. While the main purpose of
fashion images as commercial images is to display fashion, the other function
4  
 
 
 
  
 
is to present the ideal body as well as ideal behaviour, gestures, and facial
expressions (Salo, 2007).
Butler (1988) also discusses gender as a ‘corporeal project’ tied to
cultural survival and states that ‘those who fail to do their gender right are
regularly punished’ (p. 522). What follows is that individuals who fall outside
the normative framework are often inflicted with mistreatment and abuse
that originate from the norms; that is, by normative violence (e.g. Butler,
2006; Chambers, 2007; see also Boesten, 2010). Because in our social and
cultural climate being fat is commonly viewed as a (bad) choice, it is readily
vilified and fat individuals subjected to punishment, or ‘cultural discipline’
(cf. LeBesco, 2004). Thus, underneath the fatshionista project may lie the
fundamental bodily experience of exclusion and marginalization.
Feminist scholars have long paid attention to the link between
gendered experiences and other social categories, such as class, race, age or
sexuality (Gill, 2007b), that is, intersectionality. Different social categories as
sources of inequality have been explored from a gender perspective at least
since the 1970s (Yuval-Davis, 2007), but since the 1990s, intersectionality has
secured a significant position in feminist theory as a theoretical,
methodological and conceptual perspective (Gunnarsson, 2011).
Intersectionality is considered to be one of the most significant contributions
to the theoretical development of understanding gender in feminist research
(Shields, 2008).
The basic tenet of intersectionality is that an individual is never merely
a woman, white, or working class; she is all of those all at the same time, in
addition to belonging to numerous other social categories (Crenshaw, 1991;
McCall, 2005; Gunnarsson, 2011; Yuval-Davis, 1993; 2006; 2007.)
Intersectional theory allows us to examine the multiple ways in which the
different social categories that form our identity take part in the identity
forming processes. These processes can be examined by way of analysing
discourses (Ferree, 2009). With the help of intersectional theory it is easier to
understand why fatshionistas experience being defined solely due to their
body size, even though it is but one of many features that are all intertwined,
influencing each other as well as having a strong impact on the contemporary
understandings of gender as a social category.

Cultural and social capital as consumer identity resources

In building our theoretical framework, we combine Butler’s (2004;
2006/1990) notion of gender performativity with Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural

5  
 
 
 
  
 
and social capital: we see cultural capital as a resource for negotiating
consumer identity. Bourdieu (1986) argues that capital falls into three
different categories: economic, cultural, and social capital. Cultural and social
capital can be used as a form of symbolic power to distinguish oneself from
groups deemed below oneself and to identify with a group above oneself.
Social capital can be used to produce or gain other capital, for example,
cultural.
Taking up networked action in the fatosphere is a way of accruing
capital. As Fuchs (2014) remarks about the nature and function of social
media, ‘[u]sers employ social media because they strive for a certain degree to
achieve [...] social capital (the accumulation of social relations), cultural
capital (the accumulation of qualification, education, knowledge) and
symbolic capital (the accumulation of reputation)’ (p.115). Bourdieu
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) explains that ‘[s]ocial capital is the sum of the
resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of
possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of
mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (p. 119). Thus, by blogging,
fatshionistas become producers of new forms of cultural capital, thereby
creating a stronger collective position for themselves.
Bourdieu’s cultural capital has been used to explain consumers’
aesthetic taste and consumption choices (Arsel & Bean 2013; McQuarrie et al.,
2012). Coskuner-Balli and Thompson (2012), for example, show how cultural
capital, gained by making particular consumption choices, has been used to
legitimate a subordinate position. However, due to limitations in capital,
access to fashion often proves more challenging to marginalized groups
(Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013; LeBesco, 2004).
Arsel & Bean (2013) define a taste regime ‘as a discursively constructed
normative system that orchestrates the aesthetics of practice in a culture of
consumption’ (p. 900), usually articulated by institutional authority. Fatshion
bloggers can be seen as searching for a place in a taste regime by way of
different discursive practices. As consumption is generally influenced by
individuals’ socioeconomic history (Allen 2002; Askegaard, Arnould, &
Kjeldgaard 2005), marginalized consumers are positioned as disadvantaged
not only relative to available material resources due to limited market
offering, but also regarding cultural and social resources. Therefore, seeking a
place in the taste regime purported by the mainstream fashion market may
prove difficult to consumers in a marginalized position. To change consumer
positioning, one would need the knowledge of how to acquire or produce

6  
 
 
 
  
 
relevant forms of capital (and to recognize these in the first place), but also
how to employ them as resources for new identity position.
This is not to say that marginalized groups are disadvantaged in all the
ways: rather, occupying a marginalized position also provides the othered
subject a broader cultural perspective (Rollock, 2012). This position may
benefit the consumer subject by offering access to divergent discourses and
practices to draw from. However, in order to gain acceptance, marginalized
groups still need to show affiliation with privileged groups (e.g. Huovinen,
2013, p. 200); here, ‘repeating differently’ offers an opportunity for resistance
by way of affiliation. Viewing identity as a series of performances will help us
conceptualise the identity construction of marginalized consumers more
comprehensibly when we see cultural capital as serving as a resource for
identity performances. Performative practices are also acts of doing. Arsel and
Bean (2013) emphasise the aspect of doing when it comes to taste;
fatshionistas, in the repetition of different performative acts of identity, are
also doing taste, as taste is converted to practice.
Displays of good taste and cultural knowledge of fashion are vital in the
identity construction of a group usually marginalized in the realm of fashion
(see also McQuarrie et al., 2012). Fashion blogs generally have been seen as a
new way to reach a mass audience and to gain and share both cultural and
symbolic capital (McQuarrie et al., 2012) but more importantly, online spaces
provide an opportunity for ‘former fashion “outsiders” to participate in the
production of fashion discourse’ (Connell, 2013) and offer a way out of
marginal consumer position. The fatshionista community in the fatosphere
shares a strong sense of collective identity that they build also via photo
sharing (e.g. Tiidenberg, 2014).
Fashion can be ‘both a key medium and a marker of a new habitus’
(Sandikci and Ger, 2010, p. 32). The view that consumers construct their
identities through consumption (e.g. Firat & Venkatesh, 1995) is prevalent in
consumer research, yet this has also been questioned (Halton & Rumbo,
2007; Schouten, 1991; Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013). Halton and Rumbo (2007)
claim that although consumption affords a myriad of expression for the
construction of identity, these are nothing more than ‘permutations of […] the
consumer-incorporated self, a self compromised by marketing ideology’ (p.
298).
Fashion becomes a site of struggle (see also Connell, 2013) as opposing
representations meet: the fatshionista bloggers ‘opt in’ by entering an arena
that culturally already operates in the feminine space, yet which also
traditionally purports very limited female ideals. As Gurrieri & Cherrier
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(2013) observe, the ‘categorical distinctions between beautiful and ugly bodies
are normativities constructed and maintained by the marketisation of beauty’
(p. 292). Taking height as an example of the categories relating to the body
and identity, Valtonen (2013) reminds us of the significance of body and
gender in the formation of consumer identity and agency. Indeed, Halton and
Rumbo (2007) claim that ‘[e]ach consumer, as a self, represents a site of
contestation over the very definition of his/her selfhood’ (p. 297). In this light,
fatshion blogging presents as a form of embodied resistance, where the body
mediates the juxtaposition of traditional and alternative fashion discourses
and practices of self-presentation when resisting outside the market is no real
alternative.
Thompson and Tian (2008) note that consumers often fall victim to
the hegemonic cultural representations that continue to shape the
oppositional representations produced by marginalized consumer groups.
This view shares with Halton and Rumbo (2007) the understanding that
consumption choices, also purposefully adopted consumption practices
(including countercultural or resistant practices), are ultimately embedded in
a larger web of market-dictated ideologies. These ideological underpinnings
together with cultural and social understandings that guide much of
consumption nevertheless enable transformative identity work and, indeed,
resistance. While hegemonic representations have been said to shape
resistance (e.g. Thompson and Tian, 2008), we contend that when adopted by
marginalized consumers they not only guide resistant practices but have the
potential to come to constitute resistance, particularly in identity projects.
Thus, utilizing hegemonic representations in performative acts in subversive
ways may in itself be a form of resistance. As sites of resistance, fatshion blogs
provide a forum for counter representations of gender and femininity.

Fatshion blogging as a postfeminist identity project

Fashion has always been part and parcel of what it means to belong to the
social elite (Almond, 2013). With their critical stance, however, fatshion blogs
represent the contemporary postfeminist media culture. Rather than an
analytical perspective, Gill defines postfeminism as a postfeminist sensibility
(Gill, 2007a; 2007b). Informed by constructionist and postmodernist
approaches, postfeminism aims to ‘examine what is distinctive about
contemporary articulations of gender in the media’ (Gill, 2007b, p. 148). An
obsession with the body is one of the characteristics of the postfeminist media
culture where femininity is seen as a property of the body (Gill, 2007b).

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Fatshion bloggers’ identity construction is very much a project of the
body and the reasons for this are twofold: first, the site of their identity work
is the body, the object its size and acceptance of these on both a personal as
well as societal level; second, representations of fashion traditionally are
corporeal and convey representations of the ideal body (e.g. Salo, 2007).
Gurrieri and Cherrier (2013) see the fatshionista identity as one that ‘has
emerged from the worldwide fat activism movement as a challenge to the
stereotype that fat cannot be fashionable or attractive’ (p. 279). Thus, fat
fashion images, and more importantly the courage to display one’s body in the
fatshion blogs, are important aspects of the performative identity
construction of the fatshionistas. Fatshionistas turn the focus on the self and
body around: the object is not to change the fat body, but to flaunt it (see also
Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013).
Traditionally, feminism criticizes placing woman as an object of gaze;
postfeminism, on the other hand, sees the woman as a willing object, thereby
transforming into a subject who uses her corporeality as an instrument of
power. However, McRobbie (2009) points out how consumer culture
‘produces a specific kind of female subject within the realm of its address’ (p.
62) and how this serves to encourage bodily dissatisfaction. Indeed, criticism
against postfeminism maintains that these changes have not, in fact, granted
women more space, but rather have led to an exaggerated notion of individual
responsibility and self-control familiar from the neoliberal economic theory
(Gill, 2007b; 2009).
In the following sections we first present the empirical study, and then
proceed to the analysis and findings to present and discuss the resistant
practices fatshionista bloggers use to negotiate their consumer identity.

Empirical study

Materials
The empirical materials of the study consist of 12 fatshion blogs. These blogs
form a representative selection of active blogs belonging to what has been
called the fatosphere (Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013). By representative, we mean
that the contents (images as per poses and settings, textual information
regarding the purpose of as well as motivation for the blogs) are very similar
across the board in the genre of fatshion blogs. All the blogs are kept by
female bloggers who describe themselves as plus-sized and interested in
fashion. In all the blogs, the bloggers write about fashion and their
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experiences as plus-sized fashion consumers.
The authors also consulted Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest using the
#fatshionista hashtag to further establish the self-representations of the
fatshionistas in the social media sphere, but these were not included in the
analysis. The fatshion blogs are very similar in their layout and general
outlook to traditional fashion blogs: the bloggers present their fashionable
attires and accessories while commenting on fashion and participating in
consumer discourses around fashion and the market offering. In addition to
images and texts, some blogs contain videos as well.
Readers are able to comment on the blog posts and thus participate in
the creation of the blog and the space fatshion blogs inhabit in the wider
blogosphere (see Herring, Scheidt, Wright, & Bonus, 2005; Herring et al.,
2004). The research design of our study is data-driven: the process of
analysis, which helped refine the research questions as findings began
emerging from the analysis, guided the research. This kind of a research
design allowed a flexible and reflective process to fully capture the richness of
qualitative data.
All the blogs in the dataset were followed for 6-12 months ranging from
2013 to 2014. The blog posts, including comments, were read and analysed
over this time period, amount of posts depending on each blogger’s activity. It
became evident this was enough to reach the saturation point, and we were
able to see common themes emerge across the blogs, but also within
individual blogs. The themes that rose from the data were categorised and
later formulated into findings. When relevant, sections of text as well as some
visuals were printed out for a more detailed analysis. In addition to the blogs
chosen for analysis, dozens of other fatshion (and also some mainstream
fashion) blogs were followed to get a good overall view of the entire fashion
(we include fatshion here) blogosphere and to guide the final selection of the
blogs.
The 12 blogs chosen for this study represent seven Western countries -
UK, US, Australia, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and Finland - and cover five
different languages (English, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and Finnish). The
authors are well-versed in the languages used in the blogs, and translation
help has been sought when needed: also, the examples in the analysis section
have been translated when necessary. If the original language of the blog is
not English, it has been mentioned under the extract. The blogs have been
coded numerically (for example, Extract 1. Blog_01) to maintain the bloggers’
anonymity.

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Methods
The methods used to analyse both the visual and textual meanings in the
blogs are based on the critical discourse analytical framework (Lazar, 2007,
2008; Fairclough, 2003, 1995a, 1995b). CDA allows examining culturally
diverse material critically and helps uncover underlying power positions and
struggles as these are expressed at the level of language, mediating social
practices and naturalized ideological positionings. We use CDA to analyse the
texts (see, for example, Fairclough’s (1995a, p. 106 - 109) discussion on
presupposition) and examine the ideologies affecting the female ideal(s). On
naturalization in and by discourses, Fairclough (1995b) states that it ‘gives to
particular ideological representations the status of common sense, and
thereby makes them opaque, i.e. no longer visible as ideologies’ (p. 42). Thin
as normal is one such naturalized discourse whereby female subject position
is (re)produced in discourses, against which fat is seen as an anomaly, as
deviant.
Fairclough (1995b) also posits that discourse and discursive practices
are seen, at the same time, as ‘(i) language text, spoken or written, (ii)
discourse practice (text production and text interpretation), (iii) sociocultural
practice’ (p. 97) and that ‘the link between sociocultural practice and text is
mediated by discourse practice’ (p. 97). Thus, using a critical discourse
analytical approach to examine discourse(s) we are able to critically examine
sociocultural practices. We analyse both visual and textual communication in
the blogs. We adopt the position that these modes of communication act
together as semiotic, communicative resources, constructing one’s identity as
an intertwined semiotic process.
The images on the blogs are analysed to examine what kinds of
gendered representations arise. As for visual elements, the central elements of
a fashion photograph include ‘garment, model, pose and décor’ (Rosenblom,
1984, p. 495, quoted in Salo, 2007, p. 111). For Salo (2007), posing – which
includes pose, gestures and expression - closely relates to the representation
of an ideal woman and ‘manifests the notions of beauty’ (p. 111). Indeed,
gender representations mediated by and circulated in the media have a strong
normative effect as advertising images have the capacity to shape gender
identity (Schroeder & Borgerson, 1998, p. 162). Salo, however, also brings up
the issue of violating this ideal representation by breaking the practices of
fashion images.
Focussing on the features that fall under ‘posing’ above (Salo, 2007),
we examine what kind of gender representations are constructed. As for the

11  
 
 
 
  
 
location of the photo-shoot, Salo (2007) says the ‘setting puts fashion in its
place: where it belongs, where it definitely does not belong, where you can get
by wearing it’ (p. 111). We have systematically examined the blogs and in our
analysis concentrated especially on the following features:

1. On visual communication, and how the images construct the

identities of the bloggers: the poses and positioning, facial
expressions, gaze, composition of the photos and various other
elements in the fatshion images (e.g. location of photo-shoot,
quality, focus).

2. On textual communication, and how the fatshion bloggers’

biographical info describes them, and how in the texts the bloggers
bring up size, plus-sized fatshion, evaluations relating to these and
how the bloggers describe and evaluate the fashion market.

3. On identity representation as these representations emerge as a

combination of the two modes of communication, the visual and
the textual, and the tensions between different tactics of identity
management.

Materials were analysed to investigate how fatshionistas see themselves, their

identity and the wider ‘fatshion cause’ in relation to the surrounding societal
values and norms regarding gender and size.

Analysis and findings: Engaging in resistance

through normative practices

Below we will present the analysis and main findings. Of the themes that
emerge from the material we have distinguished four discursive practices the
fatshionistas draw on in negotiating and enacting their performative identity.
We will elaborate on each of these practices in turn, as well as discuss the
functions of the practices and the motivations for fatshion blogging more
generally. We will first present the two practices that underscore difference
and diversity in relation to normative conceptions of beauty, femininity and
the female gender, namely destigmatization of fat, and reappropriation of
older fashion styles and social space by demanding cultural and social

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visibility. We will then proceed to presenting the two practices of
communality and mimicry that revolve around emphasising similarity and
affiliation with the hegemonic representations. These resistant practices form
two wider, superordinate categories of identity management tactics that
underlie the bloggers’ performative acts of identity, categorised as they relate
to normative understandings of femininity as either mobilising diversity or
similarity. We will next explore the resistant aspect of each practice.

Destigmatization - proud of being fat

Stigma is mediated by negative social categorizations, and the term ‘fat’ is
loaded with negative connotations. What emerged as the main motivator for
the fatshion blogs was rejection of stigma and promotion of acceptance of
diversity. The very term, fatshionista, signals certain pride and an
uncompromising attitude. In Butler’s (2011) words, ‘[w]hen one freely
exercises the right to be who one already is, and one asserts a social category
for the purposes of describing that mode of being, then one is, in fact,
making freedom part of that very social category, discursively changing the
very ontology in question’ (emphasis added). By ‘freely’, Butler means without
the threat of violence, without cultural discipline. In this light, the term
‘fatshionista’ seems fitting: fat fashionistas, consumers who love fashion. This
relabelling prioritizes body size and makes a point of it rather than hiding or
obscuring it. Galinsky et al. (2003) highlight the importance of examining
labels used ‘both by self and by others, because it helps to shed light on the
construction, maintenance, and alteration of social identity’ (p. 222).
Intersectional theory sees identity as being constructed at the intersection of
different social categories. As one of the most salient social categories
defining fatshionistas is body size, the reappropriation of the initially
derogatory term is one step toward empowerment:

‘A fatshionista is a fashionable stylish, and well put together plus size woman. She is
me, she is my readers.’
(Extract 1. Blog_12)

Reappropriation of stigmatizing labels is possible ‘because stigma is malleable

and the meaning of labels is contextually sensitive’ (Galinsky et al. 2003, p.
223); furthermore, the process of reappropriation ‘can both be a cause and
marker of elevated group status’ (p. 223; see also Cook & Hasmath, 2014).
Thus, by coining the new term ‘fatshionista’, the bloggers come to occupy a
social category they have created, and as observed by Butler, thereby claim
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legitimacy for their existence and make freedom part of this social category
(2011). By explicitly reappropriating the term ‘fat’, fatshionistas distinguish
themselves and reject demands for bodily changes. In doing so, they
constitute themselves as active, empowered subjects.

Reappropriation of space for visibility - because I’m fat

As evidence of a growing concern regarding what ‘fat shaming’ is doing to
girls and women, the blogs are a shout-out to those inflicted to resist body-
related oppression and a sign that the post-feminist freedom of one's body is
indeed a problematic claim. Plus-sized consumer faces restrictions absent in
the lives of the ‘normal’ sized consumers: the notion of trauma pertains to
plus-sized women due to the gendered representations of women as slim and
sexy, but also due to a larger societal issue of fat being vilified in our culture
(LeBesco, 2004). The biographical information reveals the more explicit
motivation for blogging: arising from experiences of exclusion and otherness,
fatshion blogging is an attempt to both accept oneself and to become
included:

I started this blog because I exist and because you exist. Because there are hundreds
of thousands of girls in the world who actually look more or less like I do, or who in
any case have a body that is not like the current ideal the media shows us.

I want to high five all invisible plus-size girls out there, because for sure we exist!
(Extract 2. Blog_05, translated from Swedish, emphasis in original)

Indicative of the deeper desire for acceptance on a more general level is the
acceptance of the body; the blogger in the next example urges others to find
tenderness toward oneself instead of constant shame and embarrassment:

My size is 50/52. Yep, I’m one of those chubby ones who post full-body photos of
themselves. By doing this I hope to inspire other girls to feel proud of, or at least be
neutral towards, their bodies regardless of size.
(Extract 3. Blog_06, translated from Swedish, emphasis added)

The message of ‘being neutral toward one’s body’ shows how the transition
from self loathe to self love may be a difficult journey. Loving the bigger body
is somewhat absent in our culture; it is usually something to be altered,
implying inherent fault, or deviance (LeBesco, 2004). Fatshion blogging is a
personal journey from body hate to feeling comfortable in one’s skin:

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If you follow this blog you’ll know that I am not the sort of fat blogger who presents
for you the latest looks from Evans or Simply Be or tells you where all the clothes I
am wearing were bought from, or which generous clothes making companies sent
them to me for free. I don’t give you this info, partly because this blog is about me not
you – here are some pictures of me in my clothes, you, meanwhile, can do what you
like [.]
(Extract 4. Blog_10, emphasis added)

Fatshionistas evaluate and criticize the existing market logics and their
exclusion from the fashion market. They also take stock of how they have
been treated:

If you are fat with restricted choices, living your life in a constant hailstorm of advice
about what is fucking flattering, it is all too easy to [be] stuck in a fashion rut.
(Extract 5. Blog_10, emphasis added)

Fat bodies are subjected to discursive and patriarchal control in and by the
media, of which Giovanelli and Ostertag (2009) note that media
representations serve to symbolically annihilate fat women (p. 291) by
prioritizing certain representations and concealing others. As the fat body has
become the object of public negotiation and scrutiny, fatshion blogging is an
ostensive effort to claim ownership of one’s body. One of the blogs includes a
Q&A section, and the very first sets of the Q&A set the tone and show a
determined subject who draws boundaries between the self and the other:

Q: You're not healthy, shouldn't you lose some weight?

A: My weight & health is none of your concern, thank you.

Q: But don't you promote obesity?

A: No, I do not promote obesity, just acceptance of both yourself & others.
(Extract 6. Blog_08, emphasis added)

By explicitly setting the limits of what is personal, fatshionistas discursively

construct a subjectivity that has control over their own existence.
The desire to have an impact on the market by increasing the selection
of plus-sized clothes is one of the motivations for blogging (see also Scaraboto
& Fischer, 2013) and when successful, interpreted as an indication of
inclusion, illustrated in the example below:

A step in the right direction.

Just have to write a blog post about an email I received yesterday from Lindex. It's
really crazy that I get happy to get this email. It should not be a big deal. But I
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actually think it is the first time that a company sends out an email with a discount
code that ONLY applies to their plus-size department. And the email actually
contains pictures and tips on clothes in bigger sizes. This does not happen often!
(Extract 7. Blog_06, translated from Swedish, emphasis in original)

The market dictates what counts as a bigger size: usually ‘bigger sizes’ are
seen as starting from size 44 (European size). The power to define and
construct categories tells of the imbalanced power relationship that holds
between consumers and the market.
Of all the retail segments the plus-sized market4 is the one growing
most rapidly lately, and the increased market offering is good news to
fatshionistas:

I think it will be interesting to see how Sweden’s plus-sized selection will change in
the future, because it will change or disappear, that is one thing that is for sure, as
other interest groups in the market have woken up and seen the plus-size market
really IS the market which has increased the most lately, including money.
(Extract 8. Blog_5, translated from Swedish, emphasis in original)

The desire to be acknowledged by the market actors adds to the complexity of

identity construction. Fatshionistas engage with the platform and their
respective networks because they aim to achieve social, cultural and symbolic
capital (Bourdieu, 1986). While this notion of capitalist reign and market
driven economy may exclude the human subject, it is a precarious
relationship and a problematic symbiosis exists between the two: consumers
utilize the market for self-expression, yet even in their resistance they depend
on it. The market, necessarily, needs the consumers, yet what the consumers
want is still largely dictated by the market.

Communality against exclusion

Many fatshionistas report feelings of exclusion in and by the market. Fatshion
blogging is a way of narrating oneself into the public fashion discourse. It is a
way of making oneself visible (see also Connell, 2013) as much as it is a form
of social action:

                                                                                                               
4  http://buxtonco.com/news/news-­‐detail/retailers-­‐wake-­‐up-­‐to-­‐a-­‐plus-­‐size-­‐industry-­‐revolution  

 
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[This fatshion blog] has now evolved into a fashion blog in which I aim to break down
the barriers on society’s definition of what is beautiful, sexy, and fashionable in every
post.
(Extract 9. Blog_12)

Occupying a marginal consumer position, fatshionistas feel excluded on two

accounts, by the market (see Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013) as well as on a more
personal level. The two realms interact; the market intrudes the personal.

[t]rying stuff on in charity shops is not like trying stuff on in other shops. I do try
stuff on. I find it easier because they haven’t made the clothes, so they’re not judging
or excluding me if I don’t fit into them. I do sometimes find it hard going looking at
my puffy flesh under bad lighting as I fail to fit that flesh into a variety of clothes I
thought were my size, but I don’t feel like a non-person because of it – just an
unlucky one.
(Extract 10. Blog_10, emphasis added)

That one would feel like a ‘non-person’ because of a body that defies the
normative expectations is testament to embodied, gendered inequality. Butler
(2004) extends justice to concern consequential decisions arising from ‘what
social norms must be honoured and expressed for "personhood" to become
allocated [...] depending on whether or not we recognize a certain norm
manifested in and by the body of that other’ (p. 58). To regain personhood,
fatshionistas enter the contested realm of fashion and adopt the dominant
fashion discourses, thereby testing and stretching the boundaries of
traditional conceptions of feminine beauty and of the female gender. In the
blogger community, they find empowerment as well as validation of their
personhood - as Moi (1991) observes, the Bourdieusian perspective ‘assumes
that gender is always a socially variable entity, one which carries different
amounts of symbolic capital in different contexts’ (p. 1036). The fatshionista
community provides such a context where working on the preconceived ideas
of gender is possible, one that facilitates resistant acts of subversion.

I decided to start this blog after being a regular poster on the Fatshionista
LiveJournal community. Finding that community changed my whole outlook on life,
I was fat (still am) & unhappy with myself (not so much now). I was amazed to find a
place where fat people celebrated their bodies, instead of being ashamed.

My confidence grew & grew, until I decided to start a blog so I could have my own
space showcasing outfits.
(Extract 11. Blog_08, emphasis added)

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The example above also illustrates how fat bodies, in the eyes of others, are
often seen as physically deviant (e.g. LeBesco, 2004) and as already noted,
constructing a gender that does not comply with the norms leads to repeated
instances of being punished (cf. Butler 1988), illustrated by the example
below:

What get’s shouted at me isn’t ‘you please me’, it’s ‘you displease me’. It’s ‘fat bitch’.
I get people in the street telling me I am fat.
(Extract 12. Blog_10, emphasis in italics added, emphasis in capitals in original)

Coming together in community acts as a source of peer support. Fatshionista

bloggers often urge other plus-sized consumers to stop hiding their bodies:

Plussize women can (and are allowed to!) do just as much as their thinner sisters.
Toss away the rules of society, and wear whatever makes you happy. We only have
this one life, why waste it by hiding ourselves and our bodies away?
(Extract 13. Blog_11, emphasis added)

The fatshionistas take an active stance against such prejudices and body
normativity, urging others to ‘toss away the rules of society’. In this cause they
find unity in the network whereby social capital is increased, acting as identity
resource. Collective effort and a shared social identity help fight stigma, and
the very idea of being explicitly visible has a therapeutic effect:

My confidence has grown tenfold over the past few years, just by posting photos of
myself & showing off my outfits.
(Extract 14. Blog_08)

Rendering cultural capital into social capital in the form of a networked,

socially shared existence, blogging achieves a healing effect. Accruing social
capital in communality also helps gaining new forms of cultural capital as the
collective together reworks and challenges the normative order constraining
them. Of the intersectional identity categories, those pertaining to the body
are also potentially the most stigmatizing; blogging provides a forum for a
bodily display and a communal performance, which has a particularly
empowering effect for the fatshionista community.

Mimicking trends: this is our world, too!

Visually, we find great parallelism between fatshion and traditional fashion
blogs; for example, the images mimic the lowered gaze familiar from fashion
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shoots, signalling submission to the gaze of others. On the whole, positioning
presents a passive subject, inactive against a carefully selected backdrop.
Seeking similarity and aspiring to normativity is a way of accessing the realm
of normalcy (e.g. Berlant, 2007) and social sanction. Fatshion blogs feature
twisted feet, crossed legs and other advertising imagery. The contrapposto,
weight on one foot, causing dangling of the arm and shoulder, is a common
pose found across the blogs, also commonly found in underwear fashion shots
(Salo, 2007). The gendered identity fatshionistas enact resembles fashion
imagery: stereotypical, often submissive, transmitting embodied femininity.
In emphasising similarity, fatshionistas position themselves closer to the
marketplace ideals (see also Berlant, 2007): this strategy has the capacity to
mediate resistance, but also convey and reconstruct normative ideals, thus
having a double function. In the empirical materials, some blog texts feature
DIY sections, for example about sewing clothes if the market does not offer
the desired fashion or size. Thus, do-it-yourself can also offer a mode of
resistance.
Common is also the 50s style appreciation of the voluptuous woman,
with enhanced curves and ultra feminine style from high-heeled shoes to
flowing skirts. This represents the images dating back to the times when the
curvy female body was celebrated. Drawing parallels of this type is a way for
the marginalised to approach the position of acceptability, by adopting
common discursive practices. The voluptuous bodies of the 50s are also
something we are accustomed to seeing: a fuller body within the parametres
of the 50s ideal does not look out of place; rather, this way the fat body
manifests norms of the past, and becomes recognizable and socially
sanctioned.
Orthodox conventions referring to body size can be challenged in
subcultures that draw their aesthetics from history, like from the Victorian
times when voluptuous bodies were celebrated (Goulding & Saren, 2013).
Reappropriation of styles is indicative of using affiliation for the purposes of
inclusion. By dressing, adorning and displaying the bigger body in the context
of fashion discourses, by mimicking existing practices, the fatshionistas while
asserting diversity turn their difference and stigma into a positive force of
affiliation. Thereby the bloggers include themselves in the fashion narrative
and find empowerment as legitimate subjects.
Practices such as playing with styles also shows creativity and can be
seen as subversion. These practices illustrate resistance by affiliation and
seeking similarity: as De Certeau (1984, p. 25) wrote about “perruques”, the
everyday tactics of this kind can be seen as clever ways of turning conditions
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favourable to oneself. Additionally, as taking photos of oneself (or self-
shooting) has been conceptualized as ‘a significant late-modern self-, and
community construction practice’ (Tiidenberg, 2014), combining the
subversion of fashion discourses in the images of the self works to build one’s
identity as the series of performed acts unfolds on the blogs.
Poses and trends popular on social media are also reproduced on the
fatshion blogs. These include the classical contrapposto pose, the so-called
pigeon-toed stance, and positions such as crossing of the legs and lowering of
gaze. These poses also refer to a childish, shy attitude, thus underlining the
model's innocent and surrendering attitude in front of the camera's gaze.
Setting shows where fashion does, and does not, belong to (Salo,
2007). Usually, the subject is located outdoors, with carefully selected
backdrops. The bloggers also display images of themselves wearing just
underwear, and hence the fatshion repertoire is not limited to items that
provide more cover. No extravagant posing was found, but there are playful
poses that convey lightness of being and fashion as fun, a statement also
repeated textually in blog posts:

It's [the blogger’s] mission to bring even more fashion and on-trend design to the
curvy danish women, and she hopes that her blog inspires others to be more playful
and adventurous with their style. Fashion should be fun, and it isn't limited to sizes
below a EU 42/UK14.
(Extract 15. Blog_11, emphasis added)

Collective action on fatshion blogs creates a community, Connell (2013)

observes, ‘through both the co-optation and the countering of predominant
understandings of fashion and fashionability [...] achieved through the
discursive disruptions with respect to the politics of size, gender, and
consumerism’ (p. 216).
The following image is an example of a pose typical of all fashion blogs.

Figure 1 Fatshion blogger, Plusmimmi, posing on her blog - permission for

use of photo granted. © Plusmimmi. Permission to reuse must be obtained
from the rightsholder.

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Individuals express their identities “by participating in communal
photographic exchanges that mark their identity as interactive producers and
consumers of culture” (Van Dijck, 2008, p. 63). The acts of subversion of
visual imagery represent appropriation of cultural capital in the form of
manipulated discursive practices in new contexts, and thus form an important
part of the repetitive repertoire of marginalized consumers. Sharing photos is
also a form of bonding (Van Dijck, 2008), and sharing photos of the self
together with peer interaction can have an empowering effect (Tiidenberg,
2014).
Fatshionistas are incorporating into their resistance that which they
seek, visibility and recognition. Berlant (2007) sees aspirations to
normativity, and thereby to normalcy, as a route to social recognition, and
thus as something marginalized individuals might strive for in order to
improve their existence. To break away from a marginal position,
fatshionistas are actively seeking to include the fat body in the landscape of
normative female representations by mimicking the gendered and culturally
acceptable discursive practices.
As motivations for fatshion blogging and the fatshionista identity
project we have identified feelings of social exclusion and otherness,
experiences of market exclusion, and marginalization as (fashion) consumer,
but also the desire for diversification of available female subjectivities. While
some of the practices used to answer these deep-seated issues are explicitly
resistant, the more implicit practices of similarity embedded in the normative
framework nevertheless serve to resist the categorical exclusion of the fat
subject by mobilizing the very discourses used to marginalize the plus-sized
consumer. In the table below we have presented the findings and explicated
the different practices and how these relate to the tactics of diversity asserting
and similarity seeking.

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Table 1 The resistant practices used in negotiating the fatshionista identity.

Name of Name of Social function Example

tactic, relative resistant
to normativity practice

destigmatization diversification of “I took a 1,5 hour promenade in

DIVERSITY female subjectivities, my new shorts from Monki! They
ASSERTING building self-esteem, are so short, so short that my
rejecting demands thighs are visible. My thighs that
for bodily change rub together. Did it take courage
to go out and show my fat thighs
that touch each other? Nope. Not
really. Why should it be difficult?
I just tied my shoes and went out.
It's called freedom and
happiness!”
Extract 16. Blog_06 (translated
from Swedish)

reappropriation against fat shaming, “My confidence has grown

fighting trauma and tenfold over the past few years,
otherness, occupying just by posting photos of myself
visibility & showing off my outfits.”
Extract 17. Blog_08

communality sociality, communal “If [tv-presenter] thinks that

SIMILARITY empowerment, peer "they" don't deserve fashion, well
SEEKING support, social action "they" will damn well show her
against fat we do. And so was born
oppression #WeAreTheThey - 1000s of
women, standing up not just to
[the presenter], but to every
person who has told us no, who
has made us feel any thing [sic]
less than worthy of everything in
life.”
Extract 18. Blog_07

mimicry resistance by I've been obsessed with winter

affiliation, whites lately, so a strapless
mobilizing peplum dress from [label] was
normative perfect. I asbolutely [sic] loved
discourses, inclusion the fit of this peplum dress and
as a fat female how it gives the allusion of curves
subject and hides the tummy. Peplums
are still in ladies! I threw on my
faux fur for a little drama and a
deep wine lip. I've never been a
fan of reds, but everytime I wore
red it was a night to remember.
Extract 19. Blog_012

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Discussion
In this paper, we have investigated the performative construction of gendered
identities of marginalized consumers online using fatshion blogs as the forum
for negotiating hegemonic fashion and gender discourses, and examined
which factors are contributing to the process, either as enabling or as
constraining. Based on our analysis, we have presented four performative
practices through which fatshionistas resist and widen the norms of
femininity too narrow for them: these are destigmatization, reappropriation,
communality, and mimicry. All the practices display skilful appropriation,
manipulation and negotiation of existing cultural discourses surrounding
gender, fashion and the market.
In addition, we categorised these four practices into two wider,
superordinate categories of identity management tactics that underlie the
bloggers’ performative acts of identity, defined and categorised as they relate
to normative understandings of femininity. These were broadly defined as
similarity-seeking and diversity-asserting tactics. Interestingly, both types of
tactics of identity management show complex tendencies for constituting
contra-market resistance, some more overt than others. We see the practices
of destigmatization and reappropriation being used to highlight an identity
anchored in diversity, employed to embrace the difference and to become
visible while rejecting the societal demands for bodily change: together these
form the tactic of diversity asserting, as both practices revolve around the
difference against the normative backdrop. On the other hand, we have the
practice of communality, whereby fatshionistas blog for visibility together,
and the practice of mimicry, which underlines similarity with culturally
acceptable representations by mobilising normative discourses (and not least
by visual means), yet subverting these in resistant ways.
While diversity asserting can be seen mainly as a challenging activity
(both in terms of the market and gender and body normativity), similarity-
seeking tactics proved to have the potential to act both as challenging and as
sustaining. This is because by seeking similarity with the female ideal, and by
mimicking the discursive practices that constitute the ideal, the fatshionistas
effectively seek normalcy by blogging themselves into inclusion and into
visibility within normativity, yet by way of subverting the normative
discourses where they can. Having experienced social exclusion, the
fatshionistas use the similarity-seeking tactic to underline the shared, also
visually expressed, commonalities that link them to the mainstream fashion
consumer and the idealised representation(s). However, the performative acts
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are repeated slightly differently and by way of this contra-market tactic of
inclusion the fatshionista bloggers come to reject the market exclusion and
construct themselves as included, acceptable subjects. Both tactics, diversity
asserting and similarity seeking, operate on the basis of a Butlerian subversive
repetition.
Drawing on Butler’s (1990) notion of resistance as ‘subversive
repetition’, Eräranta et al. (2009) explored the subtlety of consumer
resistance, showing how resisting the normalized forms of subjectivity may be
subtle instead of direct opposition against the wider social order of society.
Our findings support this; in particular by showing how aspirations to
similarity can function as resistance, which feminist critique might at first
glance interpret as mere conformity to societal pressures. Such active
(re)construction of alternative cultural and historical perspectives is a form of
resistance to hegemonic representations (e.g. Thompson & Tian, 2008) that
fatshionistas also engage in: in constructing their own perspective fatshion
bloggers become empowered members of the society as they aim to break
away from a marginalized consumer position.
The study shows that the fat female body forms a complex site of
resistance where not necessarily all the forms of oppression are contested.
This relates not only to the acquisition and production of new forms of capital
(Bourdieu, 1986), but also to creative negotiation of existing discourses.
Adopting a performative perspective to the construction of identity and
viewing identity as a series of repeated acts that draw on different capital
allows us to examine the various ways in which fatshionistas repeat
differently. Focusing on the different practices that constitute these
performative acts we are better able to see how identities are constructed by
these acts in a complex process of conformity and resistance. With this study,
we extend the discussion of cultural capital within consumer studies by
showing how a marginalized consumer group, by skilfully mobilising
normative discourses for the purposes of resistance in the form of fatshion
blogging, offers new perspectives on what the ideal body is like by presenting
alternatives to the traditional fashion images. Normativity can thus also be
enabling (see also Berlant, 2007), not only constraining. Our findings
resonate with those of Connell (2013) who found ‘inclusion and subversion’
(p. 216) to operate in a queer fatshion community blog which demands
inclusion in the fashion space, yet ‘subverts the very space it seeks access to by
critiquing the discourses that sustain it—exclusivity, consumerism, and
conformity to hegemonic gender performance’ (p. 217).

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For Berlant (2007), normativity presents as ‘an evolving and
incoherent cluster of hegemonic promises about the present and future
experience of social belonging that can be entered into in a number of ways,
and that can best be tracked in terms of affective transactions’ (p. 279,
emphasis added). For Coleman & Figueroa (2010), beauty as an embodied
affective process presents at the same time as promising and depressing:
focusing on beauty, the fatshionista project positions displays of fashion as
the gateway to normalcy (see Berlant, 2007, for aspirational normalcy). The
tension between seeking approval, on the one hand, and resisting the
hegemonic understandings, on the other, highlights the complex nature of the
fatshionista subjectivity and shows how these two desires are entangled,
affecting identity work in different measures depending on the individual. We
may assume that the difficulty of this dichotomy - as well as the opportunity it
presents for resistance - applies to female consumers more generally when
women are culturally and socially sanctioned, if not ‘punished’, into
embodying certain norms and, using Butler’s (1988) words, to become the
cultural sign that is intelligible to others. In this study this tension was most
noticeable as a disconnect between the visual and the textual expressions of
identity; we may speculate whether this is due to the fact that as children we
are encouraged to argue and present our point, to state our difference,
verbally rather than visually or bodily. One’s body is indeed such a visible,
temporally and spatially continuous sign that to make any statement with and
by it would resonate with much larger audience than a verbal expression ever
could.
Relying on corporeal empowerment, fatshion blogging can be viewed
as an expression of postfeminist sensibility (Gill, 2007a, 2007b; McRobbie,
2009). By presenting their body in social media, fatshion bloggers seek
legitimation for their body and their femininity (see e.g. Tiidenberg, 2014),
but also for personhood (Butler, 2006/1990). On the other hand, their
experiences underline the very object of postfeminist criticism: the constant
work on one’s appearance and the incessant self-control that come to define
the ‘right’ kind of femininity as well as the ‘right’ kind of fashion
consciousness. The blogosphere forms an affective hub of identity
performances, where cultural capital is acquired and distributed. Fuchs
(2014) urges us to critically assess the relationship of social, cultural, and
symbolic capital with economic value production by such media, stating that
‘[t]he time that users spend on commercial social media platforms for
generating social, cultural and symbolic capital is in the process of prosumer
commodification transformed into economic capital’ (p. 116). The exploitation
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of consumer efforts and of networked sociality is another indication of the
intricate and problematic relationship between consumer subjects and the
market.
Our analysis shows that normativity plays a crucial role in
marginalized consumers’ negotiation of identity by enabling resistance.
Furthermore, we show that while resistance enables marginalized consumers’
identity projects, it may also masquerade as normativity and apparent
conformity. The study finds that resistance and conformity are intertwined in
complicated ways. Resistance is in itself a fluid concept. In resisting the
market ideology, fatshionistas mimic the hegemonic discursive practices
adopted from the fashion and retail industry, and we see the same tactic (i.e.
similarity seeking) working in two ways: on the one hand as resisting
categorization, and on the other hand as sustaining normativity. These
tensions highlight the complexities inherent in consumer resistance. We have
also explicated how tackling normative violence experienced by marginalized
groups may have market-level effects in today’s socially connected world,
where social media offers therapeutic means for self expression.
As managerial implications, this study suggests how both actors (the
fashion market and the plus-sized consumer) would benefit if more choice
was offered, and moreover, if this was done without discriminating labels that
underline marginal consumer position, such as ‘Big Girls’. Not only is plus-
sized market the most rapidly growing one, but more importantly, and seeing
how the transformative qualities of fashion in terms of identity have been
documented (e.g. Connell, 2013), there is no reason why fashion industry
could not be party to a larger consumer equality project, exemplified by the
fatshionista project. Rather than exercise the power to determine and restrict,
fashion market would be wise to embark on enabling and nurturing different
taste regimes.

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