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? This book 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, it asks, has the view of “fat” as a problem—a symptom of immorality, a medical patholo ... More

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? This book 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, it 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? This book 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. The book 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, it reveals that public discussions of the “obesity crisis” do more harm than good, leading to bullying, weight-based discrimination, and misdiagnoses.