Karen Hammer (Assistant Director and Senior Lecturer, WGS), “Relinquishing the Sacred Quest for Thin: The Historical Reverberations of Roxane Gay’s Hunger,” Monday, October 30, 2017, 12pm, Kisaam Multipurpose Room
Using Gay’s recent memoir Hunger as a starting point, you will be invited to explore with Hammer the deeply troubled relationship that Western cultures have had to fatness, which has resulted in a fat phobia so blatant and yet so insidious that it often goes unnoticed. The repulsion toward fat women in particular, across the media landscape, makes clear the parallel between the de facto laws of gender performance and the laws of the body: for women, fatness is often read as a heretical betrayal of gender norms, a relinquishment of the sacred quest for thin. Her talk will take a brief journey back in time to look at clips and stills of the minor character actor of ’50s postwar American film, Hope Emerson. Emerson’s girth, what I call her butch body out of control, represents an historical challenge to body shaming aimed specifically at women and queers, and to the mandate that women take up less space than men. You will be encouraged to share your thoughts on the “sacred quest for thin,” and the fraught relationship between gender, sexuality, and fat, as well as examples of resistance to the worship of thinness in U.S. culture and society.
“Relinquishing the Sacred Quest for Thin: The Historical Reverberations of Roxane Gay’s Hunger,“ recently published in The Lifted Brow.