Fat Masculinity and the Quiet Governance of Bodies at Work

Abstract

This article examines how weight-based exclusion operates in contemporary workplaces by analyzing fat masculinity in a context where body weight rarely circulates as an explicit category of discrimination. Drawing on three focus groups with self-identified fat men conducted in different urban settings, the study conceptualizes weight stigma as a cultural and organizational regime that links body size to moral worth, professionalism, and employability. Rather than relying on overt rules or explicit sanctions, workplaces govern fat bodies through aesthetic expectations, health rationales, informal surveillance, and anticipatory self-regulation. Men describe adjusting clothing, eating practices, visibility, and social comportment in response to environments where weight remains highly legible but essentially unspeakable. Inclusion discourse further reorganizes this governance by rendering explicit commentary on bodies reputationally risky while allowing embodied sorting to persist in deniable forms. Focusing on masculinity reveals how weight stigma operates through idioms compatible with male respectability—discipline, productivity, health, and competence—while discouraging claims of discrimination that might threaten masculine legitimacy. By examining weight stigma in a depoliticized setting, the article shifts attention from individual prejudice to the conditions that make exclusion appear ordinary, reasonable, and institutionally defensible. The findings contribute to scholarship on aesthetic labor, stigma, and masculinity by showing how power operates most effectively when it remains normalized, individualized, and difficult to name.