Is fat that bad after all?

Exercise is the route to a healthy body weight, so we are told. Yet many of us crank up our activity levels and the weight stays on. So what’s going on? It turns out our bodies might have evolved to hold on to our precious fat stores, to protect us against food scarcity in the future. So when we hit the gym or join the running club to prepare for our summer holiday on the beach in just a few months time, our body responds, but not quite how we hope. A calorie burned on the treadmill does not always result in calorie lost round our middle.

We are repeatedly told that obesity kills and that being overweight puts us at risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Moreover, obesity is increasingly being framed as a disease in its own right. However, these assumptions about fatness are far from universal. As I will discuss in this talk, because the prevailing discourse about fat is a medical one, this disguises its connection with underlying cultural values and beliefs. Through a focus on the widespread cultural variation regarding the point at which a ‘normal’ body becomes a ‘fat’ body and the different meanings attached to fatness.