Authors
George Parker, Cat Pausé, Jade Le Grice
Publication date
2019/9/19
Journal
Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice
Pages
8
Publisher
Routledge
Description
Tracing a line from popular eugenicist and racist reproductive control policies of the past century, this paper argues that contemporary Western discourses of pregnancy fatness perpetuate and amplify reproductive injustices endured by minority women, particularly socio-economically disadvantaged women of color and Indigenous women. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand with 12 self-identified fat, cis-gendered, Indigenous Māori women and women from the Pacific, we demonstrate how contemporary discourses about pregnancy fatness are racialized, constituting oppressive meanings about fat Māori and Pacific women’s unsuitability to reproduce and to mother. We demonstrate how such oppressive meanings perpetuate the harmful relations of colonization and reproduce legacies of reproductive injustice by disrupting Indigenous and other cultural …
Total citations
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