This paper analyses former sideshow performer Celesta Geyer’s autobiography Diet or Die (1968). Despite her unusual employment in a freak show, Geyer’s autobiography fits the standard popular narrative of the disciplining of the fat body in order to achieve an idealized thin body. On the surface, the text reads as an absolute rejection of fat identity — a word that Geyer often associates with freakery. Yet, Geyer’s autobiography also shows how she became a subject through enfreakment, and it subtly reveals deep ambivalences regarding weight, sexuality and freakery. Part autobiography, part self-help manual, and part dieting advice manual, the text is a remarkably complex reflection of aspects of American culture and society in the early to mid twentieth century that has deep resonances in today’s fat phobic, dieting obsessed culture. Geyer’s autobiography also highlights the difficulties of reading and interpreting autobiographies as self-evident presentations of personal history and raises questions of how individuals tell their own stories.
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机译:本文分析了前杂耍表演演员Celesta Geyer的自传Diet or Die(1968)。尽管盖尔(Geyer)在一场怪胎秀中有不同寻常的工作,但他的自传符合胖子纪律的标准通俗叙事,以实现理想的瘦身。从表面上看,该文本被视为对肥胖身份的绝对排斥-盖尔经常将这个词与“疯狂”联系在一起。然而,盖耶尔的自传还展示了她如何通过狂热成为主题,并且巧妙地揭示了在体重,性行为和疯狂行为方面的深刻矛盾。该文本既有自传,有自助手册,又有节食建议手册,它是对二十世纪初至二十世纪中叶美国文化和社会各个方面的非常复杂的反映,在当今的肥胖恐惧症,节食的饮食文化中产生了深刻的共鸣。盖尔的自传还突出显示了将自传作为个人历史的不言而喻的阅读和解释的困难,并提出了个人如何讲述自己的故事的问题。
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