The Rhetoricity of Fat Stigma: Mental Disability, Pain, and Anorexia Nervosa

Rhetoric Society Quarterly Oct 2021

The Rhetoricity of Fat Stigma: Mental Disability, Pain, and Anorexia Nervosa

Stephanie R. Larson Schlumberger (Ireland)

Abstract

Scholars in disability studies have recently sought to account for fatness, claiming an inseparable link between disability and fat scholarship. Interrogating the stigmas of fatness as a sign of bad character or lack of discipline, rhetoricians have advanced this thinking, illustrating how to be fat is to be rhetorically disabled. Contributing to these efforts, this essay argues that eating disorders, too, are often framed through deficit thinking, positioned as antithetical to mental fitness—a disparaging view echoed prominently by Hilde Bruch. Challenging normative perspectives of rhetoric centered in her theories, I analyze Bruch’s The Golden Cage, tracing descriptions of anorexia and pain through a feminist materialist lens, ultimately revealing how the rhetoricity of fat stigma can be read not only as a product of cultural, patriarchal norms but also as a complex, lived, felt experience of mental disability, expanding theories of rhetoric to the material intersection of gender and embodiment.

Journal: Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published: 2021-10-20
DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2021.1972131
Open Access: Closed
Topics: disability studies

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

Buisker (2024)

Articulating Hierarchical Victimhood: Rhetorical Mirroring in Anti-Fat and Rape…

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Kidder (2024)

On the Subversion of Legal Recognition: A Story of Multiracialities’ Flesh and Blood

College English

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Rhetoric Society Quarterly
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Rhetoric Society Quarterly
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Written Communication

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