Samantha Kwan
Biographic Data
| ID | 204568 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Samantha Kwan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Samantha |
| FAMILY NAME | Kwan |
| SIGNATURE | KWAN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Houston |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0898-3748 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Adorning the Female Body: Feminist Identification, Embodied Resistance, and Esthetic Body Modification Practices
Using survey data collected from college women at three large public U.S. universities, we examine the relationship between feminist identification and the likelihood of engaging in various esthetic body modification practices. Specifically, we test a feminist embodied resistance hypothesis that asserts that compared to women who do not identify as feminist, feminist-identified women are less likely to engage in mainstream practices (e.g., body h…
Mixed Methods in Body and Embodiment Research
This chapter outlines the foundations of mixed methods research and discusses several examples of mixed methods research in the sociology of the body and embodiment. It begins with a brief history of mixed methods and conceptualizations of this term. To illustrate mixed methods in practice, including its benefits, drawbacks, and relevance to intersectionality research, the authors discuss the first author’s research on body weight, as well as a s…
Masculinity, Competence, and Health: The Influence of Weight and Race on Social Perceptions of Men
Like other visible characteristics such as skin color, gender, or age, body size is a diffuse status characteristic that impacts perceptions, interactions, and social outcomes. Studies demonstrate that individuals hold preconceived notions about what it means to be fat and document a long list of negative stereotypes associated with fat individuals, including laziness, unintelligence, and incompetence. Such perceptions have consequences for emplo…
Is There Really “More to Love”: Gender, Body, and Relationship Scripts in Romance-Based Reality Television
More to Love, a romance-themed reality television program featuring an all-plus-sized cast, touts itself as a progressive portrayal of “real” women bordering on fat activism. A qualitative content analysis of the program, however, reveals a contradictory and more complex story about gender, body, and relationships. On the one hand, More to Love acknowledges the reality of size and works to debunk several myths about fat women and men. On the othe…
The Everyday Resistance of Vegetarianism
Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules
Lay perspectives on the biomedical paradigm on ‘obesity’: Theorizing weight, health and happiness
Judging Books by Their Covers: Teaching about Physical Attractiveness Biases
Sociologists have developed a wide range of pedagogical strategies to facilitate student learning about racial/ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. Despite the growing subdiscipline of the sociology of the body and evidence pointing to the prevalence of inequalities based on physical attractiveness, the pedagogical literature has yet to develop strategies for teaching students about biases based on physical attractiveness. In this article, the…
Competing Motivational Discourses for Weight Loss: Means to Ends and the Nexus of Beauty and Health
Western cultural discourses generally deem fat unhealthy and unattractive, providing strong motivation for body nonconformists to lose weight. Semistructured interviews with 42 overweight and obese participants illuminate how individuals understand health and beauty weight-loss motivations and the relationship between the two. Interviews indicate that health and beauty motivate because they are seen as means to various ends. Specifically, partici…
Teaching and Learning Guide for ‘Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency’
Authors' Introduction Similar to race, class, and gender, the body is an important signifier that shapes identity, social processes, and life outcomes. In our article, we examine the individual and institutional rewards conferred upon physically attractive individuals and the social stigma and discrimination experienced by the less physically attractive. This body hierarchy is tied in part to the performance of beauty work, including attempts to …
Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency
Physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages, and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others, and higher self-esteem. As a result, individuals perform various forms of beauty work, thus reproducing and strengthening a social system that privileges youth and attractiveness. In this article, w…
Framing the Fat Body: Contested Meanings between Government, Activists, and Industry
Sociologists have long recognized that social problems do not derive solely from objective conditions but from a process of collective definition. At the core of some social issues are framing competitions, struggles over the production of ideas and meanings. This article examines competing cultural meanings about the fat body. Through frame analysis of organizational materials, I map the contested field of obesity and document three cultural fra…
Why the US Can't Have Its (Layered) Cake and Eat It Too: Global cycles, cake F orms and the D ecline of american hegemony
The layered cake debuted in the 1870s and reached its height of popularity between 1900 and 1930. Its popularity declined in the 1960s and by the 1990s it was transformed into the génoise (Clark 1999). While changes in cake form may reflect culinary trends or social structural factors, Bergesen's (1996) theory of cultural forms and global cycles suggests that these changes correspond with hegemony-rivalry cycles in the international arena. Analys…
Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency
Physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages, and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others, and higher self-esteem. As a result, individuals perform various forms of beauty work, thus reproducing and strengthening a social system that privileges youth and attractiveness. In this article, w…
Framing the Fat Body: Contested Meanings between Government, Activists, and Industry
Sociologists have long recognized that social problems do not derive solely from objective conditions but from a process of collective definition. At the core of some social issues are framing competitions, struggles over the production of ideas and meanings. This article examines competing cultural meanings about the fat body. Through frame analysis of organizational materials, I map the contested field of obesity and document three cultural fra…
Lay perspectives on the biomedical paradigm on ‘obesity’: Theorizing weight, health and happiness
Teaching and Learning Guide for ‘Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency’
Authors' Introduction Similar to race, class, and gender, the body is an important signifier that shapes identity, social processes, and life outcomes. In our article, we examine the individual and institutional rewards conferred upon physically attractive individuals and the social stigma and discrimination experienced by the less physically attractive. This body hierarchy is tied in part to the performance of beauty work, including attempts to …
Judging Books by Their Covers: Teaching about Physical Attractiveness Biases
Sociologists have developed a wide range of pedagogical strategies to facilitate student learning about racial/ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. Despite the growing subdiscipline of the sociology of the body and evidence pointing to the prevalence of inequalities based on physical attractiveness, the pedagogical literature has yet to develop strategies for teaching students about biases based on physical attractiveness. In this article, the…
Masculinity, Competence, and Health: The Influence of Weight and Race on Social Perceptions of Men
Like other visible characteristics such as skin color, gender, or age, body size is a diffuse status characteristic that impacts perceptions, interactions, and social outcomes. Studies demonstrate that individuals hold preconceived notions about what it means to be fat and document a long list of negative stereotypes associated with fat individuals, including laziness, unintelligence, and incompetence. Such perceptions have consequences for emplo…
Why the US Can't Have Its (Layered) Cake and Eat It Too: Global cycles, cake F orms and the D ecline of american hegemony
The layered cake debuted in the 1870s and reached its height of popularity between 1900 and 1930. Its popularity declined in the 1960s and by the 1990s it was transformed into the génoise (Clark 1999). While changes in cake form may reflect culinary trends or social structural factors, Bergesen's (1996) theory of cultural forms and global cycles suggests that these changes correspond with hegemony-rivalry cycles in the international arena. Analys…
Competing Motivational Discourses for Weight Loss: Means to Ends and the Nexus of Beauty and Health
Western cultural discourses generally deem fat unhealthy and unattractive, providing strong motivation for body nonconformists to lose weight. Semistructured interviews with 42 overweight and obese participants illuminate how individuals understand health and beauty weight-loss motivations and the relationship between the two. Interviews indicate that health and beauty motivate because they are seen as means to various ends. Specifically, partici…
Teaching and Learning Guide for ‘Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency’
Authors' Introduction Similar to race, class, and gender, the body is an important signifier that shapes identity, social processes, and life outcomes. In our article, we examine the individual and institutional rewards conferred upon physically attractive individuals and the social stigma and discrimination experienced by the less physically attractive. This body hierarchy is tied in part to the performance of beauty work, including attempts to …
Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency
Physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages, and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others, and higher self-esteem. As a result, individuals perform various forms of beauty work, thus reproducing and strengthening a social system that privileges youth and attractiveness. In this article, w…
Framing the Fat Body: Contested Meanings between Government, Activists, and Industry
Sociologists have long recognized that social problems do not derive solely from objective conditions but from a process of collective definition. At the core of some social issues are framing competitions, struggles over the production of ideas and meanings. This article examines competing cultural meanings about the fat body. Through frame analysis of organizational materials, I map the contested field of obesity and document three cultural fra…
The Everyday Resistance of Vegetarianism
Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules
Lay perspectives on the biomedical paradigm on ‘obesity’: Theorizing weight, health and happiness
Judging Books by Their Covers: Teaching about Physical Attractiveness Biases
Sociologists have developed a wide range of pedagogical strategies to facilitate student learning about racial/ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. Despite the growing subdiscipline of the sociology of the body and evidence pointing to the prevalence of inequalities based on physical attractiveness, the pedagogical literature has yet to develop strategies for teaching students about biases based on physical attractiveness. In this article, the…
Is There Really “More to Love”: Gender, Body, and Relationship Scripts in Romance-Based Reality Television
More to Love, a romance-themed reality television program featuring an all-plus-sized cast, touts itself as a progressive portrayal of “real” women bordering on fat activism. A qualitative content analysis of the program, however, reveals a contradictory and more complex story about gender, body, and relationships. On the one hand, More to Love acknowledges the reality of size and works to debunk several myths about fat women and men. On the othe…
Masculinity, Competence, and Health: The Influence of Weight and Race on Social Perceptions of Men
Like other visible characteristics such as skin color, gender, or age, body size is a diffuse status characteristic that impacts perceptions, interactions, and social outcomes. Studies demonstrate that individuals hold preconceived notions about what it means to be fat and document a long list of negative stereotypes associated with fat individuals, including laziness, unintelligence, and incompetence. Such perceptions have consequences for emplo…
Mixed Methods in Body and Embodiment Research
This chapter outlines the foundations of mixed methods research and discusses several examples of mixed methods research in the sociology of the body and embodiment. It begins with a brief history of mixed methods and conceptualizations of this term. To illustrate mixed methods in practice, including its benefits, drawbacks, and relevance to intersectionality research, the authors discuss the first author’s research on body weight, as well as a s…
Adorning the Female Body: Feminist Identification, Embodied Resistance, and Esthetic Body Modification Practices
Using survey data collected from college women at three large public U.S. universities, we examine the relationship between feminist identification and the likelihood of engaging in various esthetic body modification practices. Specifically, we test a feminist embodied resistance hypothesis that asserts that compared to women who do not identify as feminist, feminist-identified women are less likely to engage in mainstream practices (e.g., body h…
Sociology (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Art (5 works) · Beauty (4 works) · Obesity and Health Practices (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Social science (4 works)