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Article published In: Journal of Language and Pop Culture
Vol. 1:2 (2025) ► pp.153–176

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“I am a fat ass but I’m also a bad ass”

Reconciling fat and fabulous on the neoliberal screen

ORCiD logo with link | University of Vermont
Published online: 6 February 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlpop.24020.ebe
Abstract
In this article, I analyze language on the reality television show My Big Fat Fabulous Life, asking how the show reconciles a positive framing of the fat female body within makeover/intervention media. Using critical discourse analysis, I focus on the presence of external “enforcers” representing cultural norms of health and weight. I argue that these normative discourses temper the show’s celebration of fatness, thus making the larger display legible to the audience as fitting within reality TV, self-transformations, and the neoliberal order. Despite explicit talk of body positivity and acceptance, the show overall reinscribes the hegemonic narrative in which the only acceptable fat female body is one whose ultimate destination is thinness, and who is actively working to get there.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Discourse and the body
    • 1.2Fatness in the cultural imagination
    • 1.3Neoliberal media
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Coercing discipline
    • 3.2Surveilling food and consumption
    • 3.3Medicalizing fatness
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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