Making menudo, feeding the soul: towards a fat Chicana epistemology

People today have inherited historically rigid guidelines of what constitutes beauty and bodily acceptance, with multiple institutions normalizing a particular body type while simultaneously making the "other" out of those bodies that do not adhere to the norm. This thesis presents the ways fatness is constructed as an imposed "othered" identity, which is used as a tool of continued western hegemonic control over the Latina/o demographic. It exposes the continued invisibility of fat Latina women within dominant discourses as well as in seemingly "progressive" ones like the fat positive movement. Utilizing Cindy Cruz' (2001) "Toward an Epistemology of a Brown Body" as well as Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa's (1981) "Theory of the Flesh" as a theoretical framework, fat Chicana consciousness is located as a powerful identity, one that centers the body as agent and advocate of healing, resistance, and autonomy. Using testimonio as methodological tool, the researcher's personal narratives are woven with Chicana feminist literature, de-colonial literature, and queer of color literature to construct what Gloria Anzaldúa (2002) terms, an "autohistoria-teoría" that challenges destructive dominant belief systems and promotes individual and collective change through caring and understanding.