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The mere sight of Disney villains have struck fear into the hearts of many a child. From the Evil Queen, to Maleficent, to Ursula. From the black flowing capes to the ashen skin and pointy horns, the aesthetic of these villains alone is often enough to evoke a sense of dread in the audience. Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989) may not be officially a queen in the Disney universe, but she is a notorious villain amongst fans. Although The Little Mermaid was released in 1989, the film, and thus Ursula, have a fanbase that has evolved and grown up to now, despite the film not being remade into a live-action version as yet. This chapter will analyse the comments of three fan-made YouTube videos regarding Ursula, and will examine the fan comments, with specific focus on the comments regarding Ursula's physicality or any positive comments about her. This will show fan positivity towards a villainous character, despite what may be depicted as a negative body image. Ursula, an octopus, looks quite different from other villains. The primary research methodology will include participatory culture and discourse analysis in order to understand why fans adore her, and how they do not necessarily accept her as a villain, but that there is an outpouring of positivity towards her body image.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

Race and ethnicity, BMI and other factors can affect ratings of one’s experiences in school, work and other settings. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of BMI, race and ethnicity and body satisfaction on the experiences of victimization in a work or academic setting. Additionally, experiences of weight/appearance-based perpetration were explored within the context of prior victimization, perpetration, BMI, race and ethnicity and body satisfaction.

A diverse sample of 1,161 female undergraduates completed a series of questionnaires online. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the association between body satisfaction, BMI and race and ethnicity and weight/appearance-based teasing perpetration and victimization.

Results indicated that lower body satisfaction was significantly related to an increase in weight/appearance-based victimization. Additional analyses examining the perpetration of weight/appearance-based teasing were conducted. Participants who reported experiencing victimization were also more likely to perpetrate weight/appearance-based teasing, although BMI was not associated with perpetration.

Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed. In particular, academic settings provide a landscape for reducing and preventing victimization because of the resources available for students in addition to policies and procedures that can be implemented.

The findings of this study provide evidence that various identities and beliefs, such as race and ethnicity, BMI and body satisfaction, play a role in victimization and perpetration. This study used a novel, emerging adulthood population.

Body positivity movement empowered plus-size women globally to speak up boldly about their clothing needs. Retailers cannot satisfy this group with some classic style offerings anymore. By taking clue from existing literature, this study aims to identify clothing preferences and problems related to ready-made plus-size clothing in India. Although many past literature pointed out about poorly fitted and size unavailability issues worldwide, very few of them addressed about clothing style preferences.

A self-administered close-ended questionnaire was used to answer a set of objectives. A pilot study with 40 plus-size women was carried out to check the reliability and validity of the instrument. Four hundred subject's data were gathered from six Indian cities with a purpose of varied geographical importance. Statistical tests like binomial distribution was used to analyze fit-related problems of 12 bodily sites such as shoulder, upper arm, lower arm, bust, waist, stomach, abdomen, hip, thigh, lower leg, armhole and elbow, and frequency charts were used to examine Likert scale data of sizing problems. The choices of 12 clothing styles were mapped through four factors which affect the purchasing decision of a plus-size woman.

Poor-fitted clothes at 10 body sites out of the 12 reflected about the fit aspect of plus-size clothing in India. Findings associated to sizing issues like unavailability of trendy clothes in appropriate sizes, which also adorn Indian curvy figure, shows synonymy to the worldwide researcher's findings related to sizing chaos. Classic silhouettes like Straight Indian kurti, A-line dresses and regular-fit trousers were majorly preferred by women. Hiding body bulges was mostly preferred while purchasing loose-fitted garments, and fitted garments were preferred only if these suits to the curvy body proportion. Appropriate fit and size availability are always a prime requisite for this class of women.

The outcomes of research will help Indian retailers/manufacturers to update their patterns in order to provide desired fit. In this lacuna of standard size chart, the study will add value in the development of Indian plus-size women's size chart. The factor mapping with clothing preferences will be useful to reduce rejections and inventories.

Plus size clothing is becoming a fashion trend worldwide due to the body positivity movement sparked off by the growing obesity rates and fat shaming incidents reported around the world. Although the problems relating to plus size clothing in the global context have been addressed, thereby establishing certain norms in the market, none of this work has proved helpful in assessing the level of customer satisfaction in the Sri Lankan plus size market. In view of this lacuna, this paper aims to probe customer preferences and identify the problems currently prevailing in the plus size women’s wear fashion market in Sri Lanka.

Data were gathered through both qualitative and quantitative methods. For this purpose, visits were made to several fashion outlets in the Colombo area offering plus size clothing to observe the available product categories, size ranges, fabrics, finishing methods and designs at each outlet. A closed-ended questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the perception of the customers on the current plus size fashion market. Semi-structured interviews with designers working at selected Sri Lankan fashion brands that catered to the plus size market were carried out to acquire an understanding of the current plus size fashion industry from the garment manufacturer’s perspective and to learn about the current construction techniques in the industry.

The results indicated that 55.6% of the plus size women who participated in the survey were either dissatisfied or only moderately satisfied with the current products available in the Sri Lankan market. The major cause for the dissatisfaction was the inability to find well-fitting clothes to suit their body proportions and the unavailability of trendy, fashionable clothes. Ideally, they preferred fashionable, comfortable, well-fitting and good quality garments. Unavailability of standardized sizing methods and lack of up-to-date information on the female body were identified as the main issues in the Sri Lankan plus size women’s wear market. Therefore, the necessity for a standardized size chart for plus size women based on Sri Lankan anthropometric data was emphasized by designers.

The findings will be useful for the Sri Lankan apparel producers as well as retailers as they will have a better understanding of not only the fit and aesthetic preferences but also the overall shopping preferences of plus size women. This will help them to develop marketing strategies to cater to this Sri Lankan niche market segment, as currently there is no documented information on plus size Sri Lankan women’s clothing preferences.

In keeping with recent body image social trends, consumer demand for the adoption of plus-size models is increasing, although the use of thin models remains prevalent. The current study explores how consumers process information about fashion products displayed on different sizes of models in advertisements, focusing on model and consumer body sizes and both genders. As an underlying mechanism explaining how the relationship between model and consumer body sizes shapes consumer purchase intention, this study explores the role of guilt, shame and mental imagery.

The current study uses a text analytics technique to identify female consumers' general opinions of thin models in advertising. Employing a 3 (consumer body size: normal, overweight, obese) × 2 (model body size: thin, plus-size) × 2 (gender: male, female) between-subjects online experiment (n = 718), the main study comparatively analyzes the influences of plus-size and thin models on consumer responses.

The results reveal that, despite body positivity movements, thin models still generate negative emotions among female consumers. For obese female consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models produce fewer negative emotions but not more mental imagery than advertisements featuring thin models. Conversely, for obese male consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models generate more mental imagery but not more negative emotions than advertisements featuring thin models. The results also reveal that the relationship between consumer body size and guilt is moderated by perceived model size, which is also moderated by gender in generating mental imagery. While guilt plays a mediating role in enhancing mental imagery, resulting in purchase intention, shame does not take on this role.

This study is the first to present an integrated model that elucidates how consumers with varying body sizes respond to different sizes of models in advertising and how these responses impact purchase intentions.

Our findings only apply to contexts where consumers purchase fashion clothing in response to advertisements featuring thin versus plus-size models.

Exposing normal-size consumers to plus-size models generates less mental imagery, and thus, practitioners should seek to match the body sizes of the models featured in advertising to the body sizes of their target audience or ad campaigns that include both plus-size and thin models may help improve message persuasiveness in fashion advertising. Moreover, guilt-appeal advertising campaigns using thin models would appeal more to thin consumers of both genders than shame-appeal advertising.

Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Generation Z's physical expectations of being pregnant and their outlook for maternity wear shopping.

Females in this cohort (n = 207) participated in an online survey that included questions about perceptions of pregnancy, physical self-concept and forecasted shopping behaviors.

Results indicated that this group is concerned with physical changes of pregnancy and expect to treat each area of the body in a different way. Women's expected physical concerns of pregnancy predict how much they anticipate accentuating their pregnant body. Gen Z anticipates wearing loose maternity garments and they envision a thoughtful, in-store shopping experience for styles that are equally fashionable and comfortable, such as dresses.

This study should be extended to future generational cohorts like Generation Alpha, along with Gen Z outside of the United States and women in the United States who are non-white. Further studies should take a longitudinal approach to gauge changes in this cohort's expectations as they progress through pregnancy.

This paper provides maternity wear retail brands and designers a foundation for product development and marketing geared toward this large cohort.

The study is the first to inquire about Gen Z's outlook on pregnancy, specifically their envisioned changes to each body area and the role of maternity garments to fulfill needs and concerns.