Fattening up Health: Embracing a Sociology of Health in Fat Studies Research

The medical field’s obsession with the ‘obesity epidemic’ reinforces one of the most powerful discourses that influence the way in which health and bodies are conceptualized (Wright 2009). The field of fat studies has emerged to combat medical discourses of health and bodies, specifically around fatness. This paper looks at the use of a sociology of health in fat studies research. Studying health sociologically involves complicating our understandings of health knowledge and allows us to examine health by understanding how medical beliefs are constructed, the money behind health care, de-centering biomedical knowledge, and allows us to look at the social mechanisms that influence health, while reframing the dominant perspectives of health.

Critical scholars argue that obesity and fatness are not biological conditions, but socially constructed categories (Ellison, McPhail, & Mitchinson, 2016). The stigma associated with obesity has resulted in a process of othering fat people, which Ellison and colleagues (2016) call ‘fatphobia’. Rooted in the concept of healthism, fat people are seen as bad and as failures, as they have failed to take responsibility for their health.

As Paradis (2016) notes, we have come to adopt medical language in discussing fatness, such as ‘obesity’, ‘morbid obesity’, and other related terms. As such, it is necessary to frame these concepts in an understanding of how the social construction of fatness is framed more broadly in the discussion of medicalization, and the social, historical, and political processes that frame obesity as a moral panic.

This paper explores the value of embracing a sociology of health approach in doing fat studies research. I conclude this paper by highlighting some of the research I have been conducting using a sociology of health perspective, looking at the way fatness may pose a barrier to accessing health care services for fat Canadian women.