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Stigma Resistance through Body-in-Practice: Embodying Pride through Creative Mastery

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-05-02, 05:47 authored by Rohan Venkatraman, Julie L Ozanne, Erica Coslor
Abstract Stigma, as a process of shame, fosters social exclusion and diminishes bodily competences. Thus, stigmatized consumers often turn to the marketplace for respite. Based on an ethnographic study of drag artists, this study proposes a new understanding of the body that emerges from the mastery of creative consumption practices to combat shame. We theorize a novel “body-in-practice” framework to examine how consumers transform from an imagined persona to an accomplished body to embody pride. Six novel stigma resistance strategies emerged—experimenting, guarding, risk-taking, spatial reconfiguring, self-affirming, and integrating. Body-in-practice thus explains how shame weakens, pride strengthens, emotions stabilize, and self-confidence grows. This research contributes by explaining the hard work of identity repair, exploring stigma resistance across safe and hostile social spaces, and highlighting the emancipatory potential of embodied mastery.

History

Journal

Journal of Consumer Research

Volume

51

Article number

ucae015

Pagination

797-819

Location

Oxford, Eng.

Open access

  • Yes

ISSN

0093-5301

eISSN

1537-5277

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Editor/Contributor(s)

Giesler M, Cayla J

Issue

4

Publisher

Oxford University Press