Sandra Lee Bartky’s appropriation of Foucault’s theory of biopower, in which she focuses on the artifice of femininity in the insidious production of docile bodies, is useful in analyzing these greeting cards. Among the many ways the female is encouraged to scrupulously mind her body and its movements in order to conform to patriarchal standards of bodily acceptability is through the management of body size and weight (Bartky, 145). While there may be no formal sanctions against or punishments for women who defy bodily acceptability, the lack of specific institutions for exacting discipline upon women for not meeting feminine expectations does not mean that there are not insidious ways in which women are indoctrinated in “proper” femininity and punished for non-compliance. The overweight “strippers” in figure 2 defy femininity in both their largeness and the apparent looseness of their sexuality that their captions ascribe to them. Bartky notes that: “Today, massiveness, power, or abundance in a woman’s body is met with disgust” (Bartky, 132). While the expectation of thinness may not always be associated with femininity, as the specific body types expected of women may differ throughout time and between cultures, the association of size with power may make it especially problematic for large female bodies to exist acceptably in the public sphere if patriarchal domination is to be maintained (Bartky, 32). Additionally, the perceived “looseness” of a woman’s physical movements or morals would be a violation of the standards of femininity, as “Woman’s space is not a field in which her bodily intentionality can be freely realized but an enclosure in which she feels herself positioned and by which she is confined” (Bartky, 134). The women in figure 2 are therefore doubly in violation of traditional standards of femininity, and their construction as deviant and grotesque spectacles may serve as a warning for women who dare to exist in such an unrestricted manner.

“Foucault, Femininity, And The Modernization of Patriarchal Power” is the article I am all over in this paragraph. I think it’s relevant to your interest in self-policing of fat bodies! Obviously I’m applying her theory kind of strangely to a specific type of greeting card and her topic is much more potent than that… But it’s a good read on the insidious forms of control in our society, which VERY MUCH includes self-policing, that disproportionately affect female bodies.

” couldn’t help but think this crying girl on television was faking. What if she was just a boring person? What if, instead of accepting or trying to change her personality, she blamed her problems on being fat?”

good question.