"He's not heavy, he's an anchor baby": Fat children, failed futures, and the threat of Latina/o excess. Issue 2 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dame-Griff, E. Cassandra
• Is Part Of: Fat studies. Volume 5:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 156
• Page End: 171
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: Belonging -- citizenship -- contingent citizenship -- fat -- children -- childhood "obesity;" Hispanic -- Latinas -- Latinos -- "obesity;" war on "obesity;" "obesity;" epidemic -- immigration -- first lady rhetoric -- Michelle Obama -- Let's Move! -- ethnic food; Obesity -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Obesity -- Psychological aspects -- Periodicals; Overweight persons -- Periodicals; Body weight -- Psychological aspects -- Periodicals; 362.196398
• DOI: 10.1080/21604851.2016.1144233
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2160-4851

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article examines how First Lady Michelle Obama's Latina/o-focused speeches, as part of the Let's Move! campaign, intersect with anti-immigrant rhetoric and reproduce discourses characterizing Latinas as "bad" mothers. This discourse renders Latina/o children contingent citizens whose potential place in the nation-state depends on their "achievement" of an acceptably sized body as well as their future utility to the nation-state in the form of military service. Latina/o children's failure in this state-backed/mandated weight-loss project shifts the discourse of future citizenship to one of threat to the nation-state. In applying conceptual frames from fat studies to discourse regarding Latinas/os, this article connects anti-fat and anti-Latina/o immigrant discourse, exploring how discursive constructions of excess shape idea(l)s of belonging and citizenship.