Meus braços de tacacazeiras :formações identitárias das corporalidades gordas de mulheres da cidade de Manaus

Abstract

From a very early age, we Amazonian women learned to handle the paddle of our canoes. Still, it is noticeable that colonial processes continue to be constantly updated, it is no wonder that Southeastern and Southern people in the Brazilian context vehemently believe in talking about our immensity, our experiences and our pains, without at least taking the trouble to realize the diversity existing in the northern region, believing that we are all “flour from the same bag” (Northern regional saying). In this sense, among the oppressions that permeate the Amazonian women-bodies, we take as a central point of discussion in this work Gordophobia, which is permeated and strengthened by other prejudices. That said, the general objective of this dissertation was to analyze how fat women in Manaus have subjectively perceived the experiences of fatphobia and the territorial and ethnic identification of their bodies in their identity processes. For this feat, we had as specific objectives: To understand the territorial formation that fat Amazonian women are inserted, starting from the intersectional look of decolonial feminism; To investigate how the modern/colonial gender system has hindered the identity construction of Amazonian women the process of (re)knowledge of their fat bodies; To explain how the colonial tensions of fatphobia have been present in the trajectory of fat Manauara women. The narratives were carried out in 6 meetings, 1 meeting with each interlocutor, all participants declared themselves fat women. Of the 6 women, 5 were born in the State of Amazonas and 1 was born in São Paulo, but arrived in Manaus as a child. To identify the participants we used fictitious names, they are: Marta, Alvina, Maya, Fátima, Graça and Neia, the choice of names is a tribute to the tacacazeiras women of the Amazon (women who specialize in cooking tacacá, a northern Brazilian dish). Concerning methods, we used decolonial feminism as an epistemological and methodological basis, betting on an analysis of the experiences of both the interlocutors and the researcher. A fortiori, we conclude that the daily life of fat Amazonian women is permeated by fatphobic experiences, either through speeches, or even in the difficulties encountered to enter and remain in environments such as the labor market. In addition, the imagetic representations that are socially created about fat people, in the cradle of colonization, do not match the reality that these Amazonian women live and not even in past experiences, which are reported by their memories. Finally, Amazonian fat women provoke us to perceive the low representation of the north with regard to the valuation of fat bodies, where diversity has been used in a shallow way, thus, fat bodies from the North end up not gaining the same notoriety as fat bodies from other regions of Brazil, making the representation of fat corporealities in sectors such as social media are mostly composed of white, southeastern and/or southern fat women.