While fat gay men and female ex-prisoners are vastly different groups, they both deal with social stigma, but even more specifically both Leverentz and Whitesel witnessed how these women and men long for “normality”.
She describes how the women she interviewed are labeled as “bad women and bad mothers” and how they struggle to redefine themselves, despite the many barriers to employment and stable housing. In her book, She describes what she learned through her interviews with women who had recently been released from prison. On the other hand, Leverentz, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Criminal Justice Program at University of Massachusetts: Boston, studied a vastly different population in her book, The Ex-Prisoner's Dilemma.
