Celebrated musician and entertainer Lizzo wowed audiences and left many “feeling good as hell.” Notwithstanding her collective—fat, Black female— identity she catapulted into mainstream success while redefining the social script for body size, race, and gender. This book explores a tale of two narratives: Lizzo’s self-curated, fat-positive identity and the media’s reaction to an unabashedly proud fat, Black woman. This critical analysis examines how Lizzo challenges fatphobia and reconstitutes fat stigmatization into self-empowerment through her strategic use of hyper-embodiment via social media, and the rhetorical distinctions between Lizzo’s self-curated narrative via social media and those offered about her in print media. In part, Lizzo’s bodily flaunting is argued as a significant rhetorical act that emancipates her identity of fatness and reframes the negative tropes of (fat) Black women typically curated in American culture.
"What does it mean to flaunt a body which refuses to be shamed? This timely and important study explores the singer-songwriter and musician, Lizzo's 'flaunting' as an emancipatory act. A central concern of the book is how Lizzo energises an intersectional space of Black, Fat, and Female through her hyper-embodiment: it addresses a serious shortfall of meaningful and sustained intersectional analysis without which any understanding of social justice and embodiment is dangerously lacking. A good read for scholars of weight, race, celebrity culture and those interested in new configurations of stigma." - Jayne Raisborough, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Leeds Beckett University, UK, and author of Fat Bodies, Health and the Media (2016) Celebrated musician and entertainer Lizzo wowed audiences and left many "feeling good as hell." Notwithstanding her collective-fat, Black female- identity she catapulted into mainstream success while redefining the social script for body size, race, and gender. This book explores a tale of two narratives: Lizzo's self-curated, fat-positive identity and the media's reaction to an unabashedly proud fat, Black woman. This critical analysis examines how Lizzo challenges fatphobia and reconstitutes fat stigmatization into self-empowerment through her strategic use of hyper-embodiment via social media, and the rhetorical distinctions between Lizzo's self-curated narrative via social media and those offered about her in print media. In part, Lizzo's bodily flaunting is argued as a significant rhetorical act that emancipates her identity of fatness and reframes the negative tropes of (fat) Black women typically curated in American culture. Niya Pickett Miller, Ph.D., is a public speaker and post-doctoral Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the Department of Communication and Media at Samford University, USA. Her forthcoming edited book (2021) titled, #Verzuz and Club Quarantine: Sustaining Black Music and Black Culture During COVID-19 features curated studies of Black cultural expression and communication through live streamed music on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her 2020 book, Deconstructing Albinism as the Other, explores the visual tropes of people with albinism in American popular culture. Gheni N. Platenburg, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University, USA, where she teaches multimedia journalism courses. Her research interests primarily fall at the intersection of race and media. Her co-authored research has been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Black Studies. Currently, she works as a freelance journalist for The Washington Post Talent Network.
Sustaining Black Music and Culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine argues that Instagram is a premier digital leisure space to celebrate and promote Black American culture and identity, particularly evidenced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the United States grappled with mandated shelter-in-place orders. Club Quarantine (CQ) and Verzuz emerged as highly successful Black music-listening events streamed on Instagram Live, collectively ushering Black (techno)culture through a once-in-a-generation pandemic and beyond. Contributors to this collection explore the communicative and cultural significance of these events as respite from social isolation and as a rearticulated space for Black cultural engagement in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased racial tensions in the United States.
“Sesali Bowen is poised to give Black feminism the rejuvenation it needs. Her trendsetting writing and commentary reaches across experiences and beyond respectability. I and so many Black girls still figuring out who they are in this world will gain so much from whatever she has to say.”—Charlene A. Carruthers, activist and author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements “Sesali perfectly vocalizes the inner dialogue, and daily mantras needed to be a Bad Bitch.”—Gabourey Sidibe, actor, director, and author of This is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare “A powerful call for a more inclusive and 'real' feminism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Bowen writes from an authentic space for Black women who are often left out of feminist conversations due to respectability politics, but who are just as deserving of the same voice and liberation.”—Booklist (starred review) From funny and fearless entertainment journalist Sesali Bowen, Bad Fat Black Girl combines rule-breaking feminist theory, witty and insightful personal memoir, and cutting cultural analysis for an unforgettable, genre-defining debut. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love. Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism meets today's hip-hop. Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience. Bad bitches: this one’s for you.
Since her late-1990s debut as a member of the R&B trio Destiny's Child, Beyonce Knowles has garnered both praise and criticism. While some consider her an icon of female empowerment, others see her as detrimental to feminism and representing a negative image of women of color. Her music has a decidedly pop aesthetic, yet her power-house vocals and lyrics focused on issues like feminine independence, healthy sexuality and post-partum depression give her songs dimension and substance beyond typical pop fare. This collection of new essays presents a detailed study of the music and persona of Beyonce--arguably the world's biggest pop star. Topics include the body politics of respectability; feminism, empowerment and gender in Beyonce's lyrics; black female pleasure; and the changing face of celebrity motherhood. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
The essential account of R. Kelly’s actions and their consequences, a reckoning two decades in the making In November 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls.” Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking story, publishing allegations that the R&B superstar and local hero had groomed girls, sexually abused them, and paid them off. DeRogatis thought his work would have an impact. Instead, Kelly’s career flourished. No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous other young girls. But for more than eighteen years, DeRogatis stayed on the story. He was the one who was given the disturbing videotape that led to Kelly’s 2008 child pornography trial, the one whose window was shot out, and the one whom women trusted to tell their stories—of a meeting with the superstar at a classroom, a mall, a concert, or a McDonald’s that forever warped the course of their lives. Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly is DeRogatis’s masterpiece, a work of tenacious journalism and powerful cultural criticism. It tells the story of Kelly’s career, DeRogatis’s investigations, and the world in which the two crossed paths, and brings the story up to the moment when things finally seem to have changed. Decades in the making, this is an outrageous, darkly riveting account of the life and actions of R. Kelly, and their horrible impact on dozens of girls, by the only person to tell it.
The Harvard-educated physician and New York Times bestselling author of The Hormone Cure shows you how to grow new receptors for your seven metabolic hormones, making you lose weight and feel great fast! When it comes to weight loss, most people don’t think about hormones. But when you develop resistance to your seven major metabolic hormones—cortisol, thyroid, testosterone, growth hormone, leptin, insulin, and estrogen—your body adjusts by increasingly raising your hormone levels and ultimately slowing down your metabolism. And a slower metabolism leads to weight gain and difficulty losing weight. The solution, Dr. Sara Gottfried contends, is to reset the efficiency of your hormones by repairing and growing new hormone receptors. Based on leading scientific research, The Hormone Reset Diet is her proven weight loss and energy program to reverse hormone resistance in just three weeks. It will help you: Boost your metabolism and calorie burning by growing new and fresh thyroid receptors; Increase your weight loss by re-balancing estrogen and progesterone receptors; Reverse your aging by resetting glucocorticoid receptors (for better processing cortisol). For the last twenty years, this Harvard-MIT educated physician has helped thousands of women address the root hormonal causes of what bothers them most: excess weight, lack of energy, aging, and illness. Going beyond her bestselling The Hormone Cure, this program is the next generation of her deep understanding of hormonal optimization for rapid weight loss.
In Confidence Culture, Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather than entrenched social injustices hold women back. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.
