Fatness, Gender & Forced Adornment

Societal Pressures for Femme Presenting Fatties

Hey Friends!

It’s Kayla your Fat Positive Therapist here! I hope you have noticed by now that a great deal of what I write is a form of processing my own personal experiences and/or connected shared community experiences. Writing has been a game changing tool to help me better understand the Inns and out’s of my own brain and practice conceptualizing those thoughts beyond myself.

That being said, lets walk down my learning journey together as we explore Fatness, Gender and Forced Adornment. I’ll be honest, my connection with gender feels distant at best. Yes I have asked my friends if they feel like “a woman or a man”, to better understand this pull towards certain types of expression. I have always viewed gender as a mask that we wear to conform to social expectations. Basically a tool to get needs met. A language to speak that helped me understand social expectations.

This might be due to my Autism or some foreshadowing on where my own gender expression might lead down the line. OOHHHH! I don’t have answers for that one quite yet.

Through my own gender exploration, I have been feeling this resistance or pressure to maintain a femme presentation. Reflecting deeper, I noticed a set of stern social rules in my brain about the pressures on a fat socialized femme person to present with Eurocentric beauty standards. The intersectionality of my gender expression and fatness shifted the rules on what felt like a safe option for my personal adornment.

This begs the question, how does fatness impact gender expression?

Fatness and Femme

Fat woman or socialized femme humans receive heightened pressure to present feminine. What exactly does that mean? Being fat in a world that is very anti-fat places extra pressure on the individual to present in a way that might not feel congruent with their self expression. This presentation may feel forced given the unforgiving expectations placed on someone in a fat body. I know I have personally felt unable to wear my hair up or baggy pants due to the fears of being perceived negatively. With those fun intrusive thoughts of “You’re already fat, better look as pretty (read femme) as possible”.

Adding more strategically targeted identities such as Blackness, Queerness, Disability and class heightens the pressure on adornment for survival and safety. These social rules run the spectrum of wanting social approval to have access to survival resources like housing or employment.

“You’re already fat, better look as pretty as possible”

Growing up fat and in a femme presenting body, I was made very aware of how I had to adorn myself in order to be accepted. While this is true for most existing in our aesthetic fixated culture, I reason that there is a heightened pressure to challenge the stereotypes and assumptions placed on the fat body. “I might be fat but I dress cute” being a popular protective action. I know I actively fall into this category. There is nothing wrong with wanting to present in a way that keeps you safe.

Society has fed all of us the stereotypes connecting fatness with being lazy, undesirable, gluttonous and outcasted. These messages may force the femme presenting fat person to push past personal preferences to ensure adherence to social expectations. Not doing so could very well mean desolation and being consigned to a lifetime of loneliness. The rules are different for fat people in society. The rules are harsher and more unforgiving.

“You must be presentable at all times as not to offend anyone with your fatness.”

This truth presents itself through popular trends that elevated the “oversized” looks in fashion. Only thin people are granted access to wear oversized clothing and being considered “in fashion”. Fat people in oversized clothing, no matter how on trend, would be connected directly to character judgements. Their outfit becoming a representation of societal values connecting fatness and being “unkempt”.

What does this mean for a femme socialized individual? How do we explore identity and adornment without the pressures to present femme in order to survive?

While fashion trends hold everyone hostage, there is a special expectation for those with more intersections of identity. The pressure to show up as close to social norms as possible impacts their safety, employment, access and opportunities. Fatness impacts your ability to be employed, secure housing and be taken seriously by peers. With the stakes so high, how do we navigate showing up authentically in this world? How much do we have to play the game to survive?

As much as we like to downplay the power of adornment we need to recognize how our world uses appearance to categorize and place us on social hierarchies. Again, this being more severe and dangerous for Black and Indigenous bodies. We use adornment to convey capability, confidence and superiority.

I DON’T HAVE ANY ANSWERS

This piece has zero answers but simply a struggling conversation to understand how to balance showing up authentically and personal safety. What masks must we keep in place in order to feel safe?

When exploring gender identity, I find myself more focused on how to keep the world around me at bay more than how I want to present based on mood, energy or vibes. My fatness places an incredible amount of pressure on how I present in this world. That overwhelming need to control the narrative someone will create when they look at my body.

In our current political climate the concept of safe adornment feels ever more critical. What is the balance of self expression and survival? Are we acting on privilege in choosing safe adornment when others do not have the same access? Does complying with the rules of adornment add to the problem at hand?

The great thing about not having answers is that we are open to learning. Open to understanding gender, fatness and adornment through a variety of lenses.

*This piece was written prior to the executive orders that are targeting our trans and non binary loved ones. My thought process still holds true however, I wonder how we protect one another during our personal adornment journeys. Noting that some of us have more access to safety via privilege than others. Trans rights directly impacts my young family. Under this scary terrain lets make sure we don’t abandon one another.