Fatness, press and power: discursive representations in the press about women in a state of fatness

Abstract

This article presents an approach to the linguistic and discursive study of the op-ed “The 7 advantages of being fat”, written by the Colombian comedian and columnist Alejandra Azcárate, and published in Aló Magazine on June 29th, 2012. The main purpose of this study is to describe and explain several linguistic and discursive strategies constructed and employed by the author in order to discriminate overweight women through the use of humor, irony and sarcasm. An analytical journey through the superstructure of the text (title, introduction, development and closure) from a critical and discursive perspective, reveals the linguistic strategies and resources that contribute to the construction of the dominating and excluding meanings and senses in the text. These meanings anchor obesity to stereotypes or crystallized hegemonic representations associated with the media and patriarchal models of beauty.