Fat Gay Men: Girth, Mirth, and the Politics of Stigma by Jason Whitesel (review)

In Fat Gay Men, Jason Whitesel explores Girth & Mirth, a social club for big gay men with chapters in many US cities. Drawing on fat studies, disability studies, research on performance, and the sociology of stigma, the author examines the club in order to understand how members of a doubly marginalized group reconstruct their identities in the face of discrimination.

Chapter 1 outlines the history and purpose of Girth & Mirth. Originating in the 1970s, the organization serves multiple functions: as a social group for members to find friends, a dining club, and a “normalizing group” (21) whose presence and activities challenge the stigmatization its members experience on an everyday basis. Whitesel refines Erving Goffman’s (1963) concept of stigma through consideration of the performative strategies of carnival and camp that “Girth & Mirthers” employ to reinterpret their lives and transform the wounds they receive from a world that fails to accept them as they are.

In Chapter 2, Whitesel argues that big gay men experience a double form of stigma: first, from heteronormative society, which rejects them for being gay; and, second, from mainstream gay culture, which rejects them for being fat. In addition, they also experience shaming from mainstream heteronormative society simply because of their body size, such as when seeking health care or shopping for clothes. Furthermore, within gay culture, such stigmatization encompasses the fraught power relations of “chub/chaser” relationships, wherein big men enjoy the attentions of slimmer men, but also risk poor treatment as a result of their own admirers’ shame for desiring fat men. Whitesel also addresses the stigmatization from other “niche” groups within gay culture, including “bears” (hirsute and often stereotypically masculine men), who allow the Girth & Mirthers to hold functions in their spaces, but who nevertheless continue to marginalize the big men. Chapters 3 and 4 form the heart of the book, as they describe the performances that big gay men use to creatively disrupt the forms of stigmatization enumerated earlier. For example, Chapter 3 explores Super Weekend, an annual pan-Girth & Mirth meeting whose events center on sexual play, parties, and bawdy stage performances and contests. Here, the author offers a number of compelling examples of the event’s carnivalesque character, including a creative method for selling raffle tickets in a long strip like a measuring tape, drawn suggestively around the buyer’s body, effectively rewarding him for his girth with a larger number of tickets (65–66). likewise, Whitesel offers examples of carnivalesque performance at Girth & Mirth events. First, he discusses the “Doorknob Award” given to the attendee who slept with the greatest number of people during the weekend (74). Second, he recounts the story of a past stage performance in which an attendee rubbed his bare belly with barbeque sauce as a comment on mainstream society’s disgust at “piggy” fat bodies (83). These two examples demonstrate how the Girth & Mirthers use performance to “flip the script” on society’s assumptions about the value and desirability of large men.

In Chapter 4, Whitesel contrasts the overtly transgressive sexual nature of Super Weekend with Convergence, another annual pan-Girth & Mirth event with more conservative and mainstream components, including fashion shows and a high school-style prom. Such events, he argues, help repair the social injuries big men suffer by allowing them to partake in normalizing activities aimed at the development of upwardly mobile social class identities. Here, he also effectively argues for a more refined view of the chub/chaser dynamic, suggesting contexts in which it is, in fact, the chub who pursues the slim chaser since chasers are fewer in number and, therefore, in high demand.

In Chapter 5, the most rewarding in the book, Whitesel successfully weaves together careful theoretical considerations with more fine-grained analysis, providing the reader with all the tools necessary to evaluate his claims. He uses rich ethnographic detail to ground his argument that big men’s body acceptance is a second “coming out” and...