Special Issue: ‘Fatness, Fashion and Profession in India’

Guest Editors

Kishan Kumar Mishra, Galgotias University, Greater Noida, India (kishan_m@hs.iitr.ac.in)

Neha Kumari, Sri Balaji University, Pune, India (nk0007788@gmail.com)

Call for Papers

This Special Issue of Fashion, Style & Popular Culture (FSPC)examines the challenges faced by fat bodies in the Indian fashion industry and professional workplace. In India, a large section of society wears XL and onwards-sized clothes. However, when it comes to designing clothes for fat consumers, surprisingly, they often encounter problems in the fashion industry because of size unavailability, fitting issues in plus-size clothing, a lack of proper designs and limited options. Similarly, fat individuals in the workplace and in their profession experience several complexities as they do not conform to the norms of ideal beauty, and they lack the so-called presentable body. In India, where a considerable population either falls in the category of ‘overweight’ or ‘obese,’ it becomes imperative to critically evaluate how corpulent bodies are represented and perceived in the fashion industry and the professional workplace. This CFP invites original articles from interested scholars in fat studies. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Tokenistic inclusion of fat bodies in Indian fashion campaigns versus structural size justice
• Medicalization of fatness and dress expectations
• Erasure and marginalization of queer, trans and non-binary fat bodies within professional fashion norms
• Gendered regulation of fat bodies at work, including respectability politics for fat women and authority negotiations for fat men
• Intersectionality of fat oppression in India, including its entanglements with caste, class, gender, region, sexuality and ability
• Fashion as a disciplinary technology that polices fat bodies through dress codes, grooming norms, uniforms and corporate aesthetics
• Indian fashion industry, Indian beauty pageants and fat bodies
• Fashion as a source of self-expression and emancipation
• Fatness, media and costume designing
• Fatness, fashion and workplace stigma in regional Indian cinema and culture
• Fashion industry, workplace discrimination and mental health issues among fat individuals
• Fat positivity and fashion activism in India

Submission Process

Deadline for submissions: 1 August 2028

To be considered for inclusion in this Special Issue, please upload a full-length manuscript via the FSPC webpage: https://www.intellectbooks.com/fashion-style-popular-culture. 

Format your papers while following the journal’s guidelines, available at: https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/103961/1/FSPC_NFC_Apr_26.pdf.

The manuscript should not exceed 7000 words, including notes and references. Manuscripts are accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed as they arrive. All manuscripts are double-anonymized peer reviewed. For questions regarding submissions or enquiries regarding the journal please contact Joseph Hancock: joseph.hancockii@gmail.com.