TITLE:
Thou shalt not get fat: Medical representations and self-images of obesity in a Mediterranean society
AUTHORS:
Mabel Gracia-Arnaiz
KEYWORDS:
Obesity; Medicalization; Lipophobia; Stigmatization; Young People
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.5 No.7,
July
24,
2013
ABSTRACT:
This paper examines the link between lipophobia and representations and
experiences of obesity in Catalonia (Spain) from two points of view: that of
the physicians and other health professionals who diagnose and treat obesity as
an illness, and that of their patients,
especially those between adolescence and early adulthood. The
qualitative data demonstrate that the increasing social rejection of fat people
can be traced not only to moralizing discourses on “excessive” food consumption
or the commodification of slenderness and health, but also to the recent
definition of obesity as a disease. The medicalization of fatness, far from
helping to destigmatize obesity, is becoming a way of resignifying it in moral terms. While doctors’ and patients’ perspectives
diverge in some ways, they converge in others. In this text, I focus on the
points of convergence arguing that biomedical understandings of obesity and
overweight are characterized by a profound ambivalence. Young patients are
regarded both as innocent victims of a permissive consumer society, and guilty
of not following doctors’ orders. Although the family is held accountable for
overweight or obesity in children, as young people become more independent,
guilt is individualized and environmental causes are limited to inappropriate diet
and insufficient exercise. Most narratives of young people with weight problems
reflect similar ideas about the causes and the responsibility for obesity.
Their acceptance of the basic premise that deviating from weight standards and
rules for healthy eating are voluntary actions leads them to lose faith in themselves.
The stigmatization of obesity thus becomes a vicious circle: the obese acceptance—even
consider normal—the incriminations leveled at them, and blame themselves for their situation and their inability to
prevent it.