Feminism and Resistance: A Case Study on Gendered Social Policing and The Most Massive Woman Wins

The Most Massive Woman Wins details the story of four women who have been influenced over again throughout their lives by gendered social policing surrounding their body weight. Each woman experiences variations of similar community regulating that shames them for their body, and implies laziness or ‘brokenness’ in connection to their fuller figures. For the women in this piece, social policing has urged them to a peak moment in their lives where they feel the need to physically change their bodies to meet impossible standards. The Most Massive Woman Wins is a wonderful theatrical representation of social policing, gender performance, and weight among women. In this article I establish what gender and sex are and how gender qualifies as a performance. I discuss the expectations that surround genders and how individuals are policed to meet these expectations. I demonstrate social policing as a gendered practice, before examining the particularly gendered social policing of weight and fat shaming in America. Finally, I use The Most Massive Woman Wins as a theatrical representation of how social policing around weight appears in women’s every day lives.