Corpulent Body

The corpulent body—reclaimed within contemporary fat studies as the “fat body,” a neutral descriptor rather than a pejorative—has historically occupied an ambivalent position within visual and material culture. Simultaneously venerated and stigmatized, associated with fecundity yet burdened by moral suspicion, monumentalized yet rendered abject, corpulence has served as a symbolic surface upon which societies inscribe anxieties concerning sexuality and reproduction as well as class, race, gender, and power.

Ancient figurines attest to the long-standing role of exaggerated female forms as mediatory figures between the human and the sacred. Such objects position corporeal abundance as signifiers of fertility, protection, and divine presence. While contemporary designers appropriate these morphological conventions, they frequently redirect their meanings toward autonomy, pleasure, irony, and protest.  

Across the pairings in this section, the corpulent body emerges not as a biological given but as a historically contingent cultural construction. As fat studies scholars have argued, the issue has never resided in flesh itself, but in the regulatory regimes that surveil, discipline, and normalize it. Through nylon quilting, silicone casting, elastic mesh, chrome hardware, satin corsetry, and molded plastic, designers refashion the corpulent body as a self-determining subject.