Authors
Amy Farrell
Publication date
2009/11/4
Journal
The fat studies reader
Pages
256
Publisher
NYU Press
Description
While doing research at the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection at Penn State, Harrisburg, I came across an entry reading “FAT WOMEN.” Hoping to find information on dieting products and schemes, I had not expected such an explicit reference to my research on fat stigma. What I found were two huge notebooks that Marshall had meticulously filled with tourist postcards of fat women, dated from the 1910s through the 1940s, sent from beach destinations or national parks. Pictured on the cards are cartoon images of fat working women, of fat homemakers doing the laundry or getting dressed, of fat middle-class women traveling on trains and ships, and many, many of fat women sunbathing at the ocean. These postcards reveal an important irony in the history of US women. They mark the growth of tourism in the United States and of an increasingly mobile population, one that travels not only to follow work …
Total citations
2009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024111233224331
Scholar articles
A Farrell - The fat studies reader, 2009