Representações de mulheres gordas em quadrinhos de autoria feminina da/na Amazônia

Abstract

characters. It seeks to understand which are the representations of fat female characters on webcomics made by women authorship from Amazon, if there are those representations and which are the readings of those artists about fat bodies, as artists, drawers, and women, and if there are comic artists who identify as fat women. The relevance of the discussions involving the studies of the fat body in Brazil is highlighted, as research are still under development in the Social and Communication Sciences. It is considered that social representations in hegemonic media products play a fundamental role in the conception and maintenance of social models constitutive of the imaginary, ordering what will be accepted or repressed in society. Thus, it is important to emphasize that comics, as media, are vectors of speeches and stereotyped representations (BOFF, 2014; EISNER, 2005; THENSUAN, 2020), creating and strengthening social stigmas as in the case of fatphobia (ARRUDA, 2021, JIMENEZ, 2020). Therefore, this study aligns the idea that the media bios (SODRÉ, 2002) develops fatphobia, which highlights the importance of an approach from the perspective of communication science (ARRUDA, 2021). We intend to contribute to the research and debate on communication as a vector for maintenance or transformation of models, stereotypes and social stigmas; reflecting on fatphobia and the field of studies on gender and comics. In order to analyze the representation of characters and the production of meanings about fat corporality in webcomics produced by female comics authors from Amazon, we seek to identify fat characters in webcomics and illustrations of female artists from Brazilian Amazon region; dialogue with comics authors through semi-structured interviews (DUARTE, 2005; GASKELL, 2002) about the representation of fat women in webcomics; to analyze the meanings apprehended about fat corporality in the data collected from the analysis of the images (JOLY, 2007) of the illustrations and webcomics; and to discuss the representations of the female fat body and the senses produced and apprehended by these representations. We conclude that the senses seized in the representations present convergences with the discourses of acceptance and self-love diffused by the hegemonic media based on the body positive movement in line with the biosociabilities of consumption of the plus size industry (AIRES, 2019), generating resignifications in the regimes of visibility of the fat body, creating positive stereotypes, with invisibilities of larger fat bodies.