Materializing trans/fat bodies: Lessons from an arts-informed project

Rinaldi, J., Friedman, M., & Pendleton Jiménez, K. (2023). Materializing trans/fat bodies: Lessons from an arts-informed project. Excessive Bodies: A Journal of Artistic and Critical Fat Praxis and Worldmaking, 1(1): 25-50. https://doi.org/10.32920/eb.v1i1.1871

Abstract

This paper engages in a new materialist analysis of arts-informed research to demonstrate that fatness and transness materialize in an intra-active relationship. Baradian intra-action explains how each attribute of embodiment carries agential force to create and shape the other. The data analyzed in this paper comes from a research project wherein sixteen people participated in semi-structured interviews to share how they navigate body policing in relation to their non-normative gender identity and body weight/shape/size. Among this group, ten participants worked with artists to generate digital stories, or short videos that pair autobiographical script with curated visuals. The project’s methodology fuses artistic expression with qualitative approaches to explore and express embodied difference, in order to disrupt dominant narratives about under-served communities. A range of themes emerged from participant interviews and art that illustrate the agential properties of the trans/fat intersection. First, participants shared when fat felt like or was framed as a hindrance to their gender transition. This happens because, as many participants reflected, thinness codes culturally valued gender presentations. Second, then, participants considered how they reconstitute fat in their enactments of gender, some using fat to signify masculine strength, others feminine softness, others still playing with the non-binary in-between. Finally, participants described what they do with their bodies, and how their acts remake the meanings of fat and gender.