Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2009
Department
Women's and Gender Studies
Language
English
Publication Title
The Fat Studies Reader
Abstract
While was 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.
Recommended Citation
Farrell, Amy. '"The White Man's Burden": Female Sexuality, Tourist Postcards, and the Place of the Fat Woman in Early 20th-Century U.S. Culture." In The Fat Studies Reader, edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, 256-262. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, United States History Commons, Women's Health Commons, Women's History Commons
Comments
This published version is made available on Dickinson Scholar with the permission of the publisher. For more information on the published version, visit New York University Press's Website.