Drawing on burlesque: Excessive display and fat desire in the work of Cristina vela

Often viewed as asexual, the fat female subject has been discursively excluded from traditional expressions of fantasy, a cultural failing that has led to a paucity of empowering representations of fat sexuality. Contemporary performances of burlesque provide the stage for redefining the fat performer as a desiring subject. Fat burlesque also finds two-dimensional representation in the drawings of Cristina Vela, small-scale illustrations of fat bodies engaged in erotic and playful striptease known as Las Gordas, a translation that critically engages the politics of imaging fat burlesque as a means of imagining fat agency through a discourse of excess.