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Full-Text Articles in Gender and Sexuality
Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.
Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a …
Containing Fatness: Bodies, Motherhood, And Civic Identity In Contemporary U.S. Culture, Ruth J. Beerman
Containing Fatness: Bodies, Motherhood, And Civic Identity In Contemporary U.S. Culture, Ruth J. Beerman
Theses and Dissertations
The body, and visualizations of the body, serve as a way read appropriate consumption and citizenship: Weight operates as a key way to see literal consumption. U.S. citizenship is now commonly understood as consumptive bodily citizenship, where one's body, or one's child's body, communicates their civic standing. Drawing on three case studies concerning childhood obesity, this dissertation demonstrates how rhetorics of and about the fat body construct the public identity of good citizen and good mother.