April 15, 2022
Feminism, Fatness and Fame
Kelly Mullan, associate director of general education, Dignitas director and lecturer in the Communication and Media Studies department, will present at this month鈥檚 School of Arts and Letters colloquium on Friday, April 22.
Mullan鈥檚 presentation 鈥淔eminism, Fatness and Fame鈥� interrogates musician Lizzo鈥檚 message of body positivity and contrasts it with the realities that exist for fat women as a social identity group in the United States today.
鈥淚n media courses we spend lots of time talking about representation, and that conversation also includes the impact of absence,鈥� said Mullan. 鈥淲ho don’t we see? Whose stories are not being told? When I saw the attention Lizzo was receiving, not just for her talent, but for deliberately claiming space as a fat woman in the mainstream and on social media, I questioned why many people were using words like “brave” and “bold” to describe her existing so publicly in the body she has.鈥�
Those questions have had a transformative impact. 鈥淲hat started out as a curiosity about Lizzo shaped itself into a research question for my PhD dissertation #emBODYgram, in which I am studying the impacts of intentionally exposing young women to images of a wider variety of body types on an Instagram feed.鈥�
Mullan has also found inspiration from her teenage children, their friends and her students as she鈥檚 watched them navigate their human experience through social media. 鈥淚 wonder about how all the images they see, and the types of images they don’t see, impact their feelings of self-esteem and belonging,鈥� she said.
She hopes to conclude her research and writing within the year.
鈥淔eminism, Fatness and Fame鈥� will be held from 3:40-5:10 p.m. in the Library North Reading Room and is free and open to the public.
