Carleton University
The Fat Fashion Tax and the Cost of Being Fa(t)shionable: Desire, Rejection, and Fashion Regressivity
Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis thesis introduces the Fat Fashion Tax, a framework for theorizing costs fat women face when accessing fashion within structural rejection and fatphobia. I examine how fast fashion grants fat women conditional acceptance in exchange for emotional, ethical, financial, and resource-based levies. This thesis identifies fast fashion brands like SHEIN as one of the only spaces where fat women can access their desires and needs. It also examines the affective costs attached to attaining these desires and needs through fast fashion. This thesis positions fat women’s nuanced loyalty to fast fashion as negotiation within systemic constraint, examining how fat women navigate exclusion and how fashion operates as a microcosm through which broader social views of fatness are enacted. The Fat Fashion Tax is proposed as a framework for understanding fat taxation beyond established monetary terms, offering a foundation for conceptualizing non-monetary forms of regressive fat taxation.
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Arts (M.A.)
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Master's
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Women's and Gender Studies
- Grantor dc:publisher
- Carleton University
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2025
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Bacon-Traplin, Mercedes Chai
Rights
dc:rights- Statement dc:rights
-
- Copyright © 2025 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, distribution to students, research and scholarship. Theses may only be shared by linking to the Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be copied without proper attribution to the author; no part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.
- Language dc:language.iso
- en
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:carleton.scholaris.ca:20.500.14718/44871