Working While Fat in the Age of the Internet

This chapter examines how media users who are fat women have used the ability to post pictures of themselves to both challenge societal conceptions of fatness, as well as work through personal perception they and their family have concerning anti-fat bias. It examines how some of these women have turned their online personas into both artistic and business ventures, and the frequent harassment they face for being fat women online. The participants argued that despite the threats to losing other jobs for posting revealing photos, receiving unwanted advances and comments from men, and the problems that came from family seeing their photos, they—as fat women using social media—are willing to endure this to develop healthier relationships with their own bodies, advocate for fat liberation, and possibly make money as models, performers, and artists.