Fat body, failed body: The woman’s body and fatphobia in Isabela Figueiredo’s A gorda
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/diacritica.5104Keywords:
Female body, Fatphobia, Failure-body, Isabela Figueiredo, Contemporary Portuguese literatureAbstract
This article analyzes the work A Gorda (2016), by the Portuguese writer Isabela Figueiredo. I propose that Figueiredo’s novel questions – and ultimately subverts – the idea of the female body as an object of consumption decreed by a society in which physical appearance constitutes one of the fundamental identity markers of the subject. I also argue that A Gorda exposes a western society that, by being predominantly fatphobic, sentences the woman’s fat body to what I call failure-body. Finally, I claim that the analyzed novel proves to be a landmark of contemporary Portuguese literature, insofar as it alerts the reader to an appreciation of the indiviidual beyond the prevailing (castrating) beauty stereotypes, thus contributing to a disruption of the patriarchal hegemonic order, particularly its (violent) narratives about the female fat body.
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