In this book, I will use the concept of framing to shed new light on contemporary debates over corpulence. Once you put down this book, you will never hear the word obesity in the same way again. This book will show that the term obesity implies a medical frame and examines the material consequences of this frame. A medical frame implies that fat bodies are pathological. It has become so pervasive and so taken-for-granted in the contemporary United States and elsewhere that most people do not even realize that it is a frame and that there are alternative ways of understanding fatness, as, for instance, beautiful, sexy, healthy, or a positive form of human diversity.
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Reliance on particular frames can make it difficult or impossible to perceive contradictory information. Here is an example from another context: when scientists viewed the process of fertilization ofa human egg by a human sperm in terms of a gendered romance of a strong, active male (sperm) and a weak, passive female (egg), they were unable to perceive the ways in which eggs actively selected and joined with sperm. Today, scientists often portray fat cells like they portray fat people: bloated, greasy, and flabby. This is despite research showing that fat cells play an important role in the regulation of appetite and metabolism. Framing bigger bodies as obese (i.e., diseased and risky) bodies makes it difficult, if not impossible, to see these bodies as healthy or good bodies.
In addition to problem frames - different ways of framing corpulence as a problem or not - there are competing blame frames. Thus, some people blame obesity on bad personal lifestyles (a personal responsibility blame frame), while other blame the food industry, urban planning, or poverty (a sociocultural blame frame), others see it as primarily determined by genetics or other biological factors (a biological blame frame). There are heated debates over what is to blame for rising rates of obesity, and yet collectively, these debates serve to reinforce the problem frame of fatness as a medical issue and public health crisis.
There have been a lot of books written about the causes of obesity or of the "obesity epidemic." This book t urns that question on its head by asking what obesity, as a frame, causes. In other words, this book examines the social implications of understanding fatness as a medical health risk, disease, and public health crisis. To do this, it is necessary to understand where these frames come from, what their internal logic is, and how and why they have come to dominate our understanding of fatness. The medical and publich health crisis frames make it diffitul to think of fatness in other terms, such as, for instance, an ascribed characteristic and a form of human diversity that should be valued. To demonstrate this, this book also examines the origins, internal logic, supporters, and very different social implications of other kinds of fat frames, including those that cast fat as beautiful, healthy, and as a basis for rights claims.