The United States, we are told, is facing an obesity epidemic-a
"battle of the bulge" of not just national, but global
proportions-that requires drastic and immediate action. Experts in
the media, medical science, and government alike are scrambling to
find answers. What or who is responsible for this fat crisis, and
what can we do to stop it? Abigail Saguy argues that these fraught
and frantic debates obscure a more important question: How has
fatness come to be understood as a public health crisis at all?
Why, she asks, has the view of "fat" as a problem-a symptom of
immorality, a medical pathology, a public health epidemic-come to
dominate more positive framings of weight- as consistent with
health, beauty, or a legitimate rights claim-in public discourse?
Why are heavy individuals singled out for blame? And what are the
consequences of understanding weight in these ways? What's Wrong
with Fat? presents each of the various ways in which fat is
understood in America today, examining the implications of
understanding fatness as a health risk, disease, and epidemic, and
revealing why we've come to understand the issue in these terms,
despite considerable scientific uncertainty and debate. Saguy shows
how debates over the relationship between body size and health risk
take place within a larger, though often invisible, contest over
whether we should understand fatness as obesity at all. Moreover,
she reveals that public discussions of the "obesity crisis" do more
harm than good, leading to bullying, weight-based discrimination,
and misdiagnoses. Showing that the medical framing of fat is
literally making us sick, What's Wrong with Fat? provides a crucial
corrective to our society's misplaced obsession with weight.
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