Conference

Not an Epidemic: How Our Fear of Fatness is Rooted in Colonialism

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Abstract

We are perpetually bombarded with messages that fat equals unhealthy and thin equals healthy. These messages are everywhere: from the media, to the doctor’s office, to the dinner table, to the classrooms of future health professionals. Fatness has become synonymous with “unhealthy” as well as with words like “lazy,” “gluttonous,” and even “immoral.” In reality, the pathology of fatness is nothing more than a means to blame the results of systemic oppression on the oppressed. The fabrication of the so-called “obesity epidemic” merely functions to uphold the hierarchy of bodies that colonialism established. This presentation will dissect the historical construction of the thin ideal, how it stemmed from colonialism, and how the pursuit of whiteness became a pursuit of thinness masked as a pursuit of “health.”