Fat Fetishism and Feederism on Film

Abstract

The development of queer theory has motivated a growing number of cinematic offerings to move beyond conservative, outdated representational strategies of the past by expanding the range of sexual orientations, sexual practices, and preferred ways of being that historically have remained largely concealed from viewers. Although various forms of 'kinky‘ sexual practices have increasingly been incorporated into films in recent years, the topic of fat fetishism has only incredibly rarely been explicitly represented and remains one of ignorance to many audience members. Accordingly, this article provides a representational analysis of intriguing twenty-first-century portrayals of fat fetishism in relation to the phenomenon of feederism as contained in the films Feed (Leonard, 2005) and City Island (De Felitta, 2009). In doing so, it incorporates a queer theoretical perspective in order to provide insight into real-world sexual phenomena that lie dramatically outside the mainstream status quo.