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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
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The Metamorphoses of Fat - A History of Obesity (Hardcover)
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The Metamorphoses of Fat - A History of Obesity (Hardcover)
Series: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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One of the world's top historians of the body, Georges Vigarello
maps the evolution of Western ideas about fat and fat people from
the Middle Ages to today, paying particular attention to the role
of science, fashion, fitness crazes, and public health campaigns in
shaping these views. While hefty bodies were once a sign of power,
today those who struggle to lose weight are considered poor in
character and weak in mind. Vigarello traces the eventual equation
of fatness with infirmity and the way we have come to define
ourselves and others in terms of body type. Vigarello begins with
the medieval artists and intellectuals who treated heavy bodies as
symbols of force and prosperity. He then follows the shift during
the Renaissance and early modern period to courtly, medical, and
religious codes that increasingly favored moderation and
discouraged excess. Scientific advances in the eighteenth century
also brought greater knowledge of food and the body's processes,
recasting fatness as the relaxed antithesis of health.The
body-as-mechanism metaphor intensified in the early-nineteenth
century, with the chemistry revolution and heightened attention to
food-as-fuel, which turned the body into a kind of furnace or
engine. During this period, social attitudes toward fat became
conflicted, with the bourgeois male belly operating as a sign of
prestige but also as a symbol of greed and exploitation, while the
overweight female was admired only if she was working class.
Vigarello concludes with the fitness and body conscious movements
of the twentieth century and the proliferation of personal
confessions about obesity, which cemented the social implications
of personal behavior and tied fat more closely to notions of
personality, politics, taste, and class.
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