Abstract:
The article offers an analysis of living with a fat body and ways of experiencing it in everyday
life in the context of stigmatization of this type of corporality. Biographical interviews with
fat people of varying socio-demographic profiles were conducted. The analyses show that having
a fat body/being fat is generally a stigma that discredits the individual in the eyes of the so-called
normals based on both physical characteristics and character traits allegedly associated with fatness.
The participants mainly medicalize and internalize the stigma of fatness and manage it specifically
by passing, covering, and coming out. In transgender people, fatness may never take on the characteristics
of a stigma, but instead allows the individual to obscure another stigma or conform to
social expectations of appearance in line with the gender identity.