The modern world is faced with a terrifying new
‘disease’, that of ‘obesity’. As people get
fatter, we have come to see excess weight as unhealthy, morally
repugnant and socially damaging. Fat it seems has long been a
national problem and each age, culture and tradition have all
defined a point beyond which excess weight is unacceptable, ugly or
corrupting.
This fascinating new book by Sander Gilman looks at the
interweaving of fact and fiction about obesity, tracing public
concern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. He looks
critically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as
childhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the
subject and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a
cultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the
cultural meanings that have been attached to obesity over time and
to explore the implications of these meanings for wider society.
The history of these debates is the history of fat in culture, from
nineteenth-century opera to our global dieting obsession. Fat, A
Cultural History of Obesity is a vivid and absorbing cultural
guide to one of the most important topics in modern society.
Table des matières
Introduction: Some Weighty Thoughts on Dieting and Epidemics.
1) Epidemic Obesity.
2) Childhood Obesity.
3) The Stigma of Obesity.
4) Obesity as an Ethnic Problem.
5) Regions of Fat.
6) Chinese Obesity.
Conclusion: ‘Globesity’ and Its Odd History.
Supplemental Readings.
A propos de l’auteur
Sander L. Gilman is Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Medicine at Emory University.
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