Speaking Through ‘Lard-Slicked Lips’ – Fatness, Racism, and Narratives of Self-Control Encircling the Paula Deen Scandal

Abstract

This article represents the efforts of a disciplinarily diverse group of scholars (a pop culture critic, a feminist scholar who works on body image, and a historian who works on issues of race and ethnicity) to decode the multiple nasty turns we saw taken in conversations around Paula Deen scandal. The authors are invested in creating dialogues between our various disciplines in order to determine how and why Deen’s own body came to be used to rebuke her for her remarks, how sizeism came to stand in for a condemnation of racism.