De gorda à pluz size: a produção biopolítica do corpo nas culturas do consumo - entre Brasil e EUA. 2019

• Ano de defesa: 2019
• Autor(a) principal: Aires, Aliana Barbosa
• Orientador(a): Hoff, Tânia Márcia Cézar
• Banca de defesa: Carrascoza, João Luís Anzanello, Castro , Gisela Grangeiro da Silva, Martinelli, Fernanda, Greiner, Cristine
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Doutorado em Comunicação e Práticas de Consumo
• Departamento: ESPM::Pós-Graduação Stricto Sensu
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: comunicação e consumo; moda plus size; biopolítica; biossociabilidade, biopotência
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: communication and consumption; plus size fashion; biopolitics; biossociability, biopotency
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::COMUNICACAO
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.espm.br/handle/tede/381

Fat women have been excluded from the fashion experience for a long time. However, in recent years, the plus size fashion market has been created and intensified globally, driven by movements of appreciation of diversity that emerge in the sphere of contemporary consumer cultures. Thus, the fat woman gains visibility no longer under the condition of illness, but as a consumer. The theme of this research is the transformation of the fat female body into plus size, considering the engendering of biopolitics and biosociabilities in the media and consumer order, promoted in the context of plus size fashion communication in Brazil and the USA. Research in two countries shows the comparative nature of the research. Understanding the plus size woman as a product of the neoliberal conception that characterizes the current capitalist society, we reflect on the relation between the discourses regarding the fat body and the discourses of plus size fashion. How is the transformation of the fat female body into plus size accomplished? To examine this phenomenon, we cross four axes in the theoretical framework: Fat Studies, Body Studies, Fashion Studies, and Media Studies. They function as theoretical methodological keys and will dialogue with the notions of biopolitics and biosociability, in the context of communication and consumption studies. A documentary survey was conducted to collect advertising pieces from fashion brands, and an observation of plus size fashion stores in Brazil and the USA was undertaken, inspired by ethnographic methods. Through the thesis, we have discovered some biopolitical strategies used to produce the fat female body in plus size fashion: 1. Fat women´s alterity is resignified only as a difference. 2. The advertising campaigns of plus size fashion brands reveal a tension between police and politics (RANCIÈRE, 2006). 3. The plus size woman comes under the logic of the performance society (HAN, 2017) and as a consumer, exists in and through consumption. 4. The formation of the plus size lifestyle, although it seems a counterpoint to the healthy and fit lifestyle, follows its same model as well. Thus, although plus size is only a marketing term to designate "big size" in English, becoming a plus size woman means taking on a new identity because it affects the body, behavior, mind, and way of life. The plus size lifestyle promotes the reordering of the fat woman's life, which enters in the fit consumer circuit, and thus must be healthy and light: it knits, feeds properly and incorporates cosmetic and aesthetic practices. The communicational sphere of plus size fashion operates biopolitical transformations in the production of meanings of the fat and lean body, promoting the conditions for the formation of a new identity of the fat woman. Thus, media and consumer policies promoted by plus size fashion communication in Brazil and the USA are built in two poles: on the one hand, adherence to the consumption practices of the thin women, and on the other hand, reivindicating the rights of the fat woman and the displacement of the senses attributed to this body.