the sociology of fat

THE SOCIOLOGY OF FATDeborah Lupton, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney

Model of human fat: ‘a shocking but strongly motivating attention getter’

Body fat as ‘thing’ that must be ‘burnt off your body’

Fat body vest: feel what it is like to be fat!

‘Obesity is suicide’: dietary fat as dynamite

Soft drink as fat

The ‘Measure Up’ campaign: ‘Do you measure up?’

Toxic fat, toxic bodies: the LiveLighter campaign

Fatty food turning into body fat

The headless fatty

The fat body as unsightly and repellent

Nigella Lawson: “I’m a great believer in fat”

Dietary fat as gourmet delicacy

Fat activism

The Adipositivity Project

‘Freedom from shame’: Health At Every Size movement

Orthodox anti-obesity position

• obesity is a disease and leads to other diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer, and as a result, early death• fat bodies are pathological• there is an ‘obesity epidemic’ that must be contained• fat bodies are an economic burden on society• fat people should therefore attempt to lose weight to conform to the ‘normal’ BMI

My study of number of obesity articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and the British Medical Journal, 1995--2011

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

SMHBMJ

Academic challenges to the anti-obesity position

• Fat studies• Critical obesity studies/critical weight studies• Drawing on sociology, anthropology, critical psychology, cultural geography, literary studies, media and cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, critical disability studies

Political economic approach

• fatness as linked to sociocultural disadvantage, obesogenic environment, consumerist culture• anti-obesity discourse and medical power• drug companies, diet product producers, bariatric surgeons profiting • fat discrimination issues• fat as a feminist issue

Obesity map of the USA: evidence of social determinants of body weight

Sociocultural meanings of fat

• textual analysis (of media representations, public health campaigns, medical journals, interview data etc)• historical perspectives• cross-cultural perspectives

Sociocultural meanings of fat as a dietary substance

• once a luxury, sought-after foodstuff• now reviled in many contexts• represented as a health risk, toxic to the body: ‘fat makes you fat’• portrayed as disgusting• some (expensive) fat privileged as part of gourmet cooking

Sociocultural meanings of body fat

• fat bodies as ugly and repulsive• fat people as lacking self-discipline, lazy, ignorant• fat bodies encroaching into others’ space• the fat body as grotesque• the fat body as diseased• fat bodies as inferior• body fat as toxic

Fat bodies/selves

• fatness as spoilt identity/stigma: Goffman• phenomenology of fat embodiment: Merleau-Ponty• the civilized body: Elias• fat bodies as assemblages: socio-technical/Deleuzian perspective

Foucauldian perspectives

• the government of fat bodies• biopolitics and biopower• practices of the self

Feminist philosophy

• fluidities, femininities, leaky uncontained bodies: Grosz, Shildrick• the abject body: Kristeva

Queer theory: queering fatness

• cultural construction of embodiment/identity• embodiment and identity as unstable and performative• the challenging of normativity

Fat activism

fat activi

sm

feminism

queer politics

disability

politics

Health At

Every Size

fat studies