Description
Book SynopsisIn recent decades, America has been waging a veritable war on fat in which not just public health authorities, but every sector of society is engaged in constant fat talk aimed at educating, badgering, and ridiculing heavy people into shedding pounds. We hear a great deal about the dangers of fatness to the nation, but little about the dangers of today's epidemic of fat talk to individuals and society at large. The human trauma caused by the war on fat is disturbingand it is virtually unknown. How do those who do not fit the ideal body type feel being the object of abuse, discrimination, and even revulsion? How do people feel being told they are a burden on the healthcare system for having a BMI outside what is deemedwith little solid scientific evidencehealthy? How do young people, already prone to self-doubt about their bodies, withstand the daily assault on their body type and sense of self-worth? In Fat-Talk Nation, Susan Greenhalgh tells the story of today's fight agains
Trade Review
As Greenhalgh asks in the final pages, 'if one comment can destroy a child's life, what should we do now?' (p. 284) She offers some concrete and worthy initiatives that include dispelling biomyths, discouraging fat-talk, and banning fat-bullying (pp. 286–287). These are important suggestions that have the potential to change behaviours.
* biosocieties *
Her [Greenhalgh's] argument against the fat industry, presented in a Foucauldian manner, is extremely strong, particularly in the context of existing patriarchal hegemony.
* Choice *
In Fat-Talk Nation, Greenhalgh argues that the war on obesity is harmful to people of all sizes. Effectively appealing to logos, pathos, and ethos, she presents a range of negative effects (i.e. the human costs) the war is having on young people in the United States through weaving empirical evidence with autoethnographic essays.
* Sociology of Health & Illness *
Greenhalgh focuses her keen ethnographic eye on the personal narratives and the local moral worlds her students shared with her about their bodies and their struggles with fat. In a down-to-earth, accessible style, this book systematically details the many costs and unintended consequences of America's 'War on Obesity.'... Greenhalgh's smart, accessible text can be read by multiple audiences. Her formulation of fat talk, biobullying, and biomyths, etc. gives us an easy, clear vocabulary that can be used dynamically to problematize the war on fat in the public sphere and in public health.
* Anthropological Quarterly *
Fat-Talk Nation clearly underscores the ways in which America's war on obesity has really become a war on fat people.... Greenhalgh provides a vivid account of the intense physical and emotional suffering experienced by young people raised in an aggressively fat-phobic society, making her book a noteworthy contribution to the literature.
* American Ethnologist journal *
Table of ContentsPreface
1. A Biocitizenship Society to Fight Fat
2. Creating Thin, Fit Bodies
3. Obese
4. Overweight
5. Underweight
6. Normal
7. Physical and Mental Health at Risk
8. Families and Relationships Unhinged
9. Does Biocitizenship Help the Very Fat?
10. Social Justice and the End of the War on Fat
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
