What's Wrong With Fat? (35 page)

21. World Health Organziation, “Obesity: Preventing and Managing the Global
Epidemic,”
WHO Techincal Report Series No.
894 (2000), 241, http://libdoc.who
.int/trs/WHO_TRS_894.pdf.

22. National Institutes of Health, “Health Implications of Obesity,”
Annals of Internal
Medicine
103 (1985): 1073–77.

23. Sally Squires, “Optimal Weight Threshold Lowered: Millions More to Be Termed
Overweight,”
Washington Post
, June 4, 1998; World Health Organization, “Physical
Status”
;
National Institutes of Health and Lung National Heart, and Blood
Institute,
Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of
Overweight and Obesity in Adults
, NIH publication No. 98-4083 (September 1998).
The current definition of overweight is having a BMI of 25 or more, but less than
30, according to U.S. public agencies and of 25 or more according to the World
Health Organization (WHO). For clarity, I use “overweight and obese” or “over
weight/obesity” when referring to both categories.

24. Squires, “Optimal Weight Threshold Lowered.”

25. Denis Winterman, “Who Are You Calling Fat?”
BBC news
, October 12, 2006;
Wikepedia,“Arnold Schwarzenegger,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_
Schwarzenegger.

26. Katherine M. Flegal, Carolyn J. Tabak, and Cynthia L. Ogden, “Overweight in Children:
Definitions and Interpretation,”
Health Education Research
21, no. 6 (2006): 755–60.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Snow et al., “Frame Alignment Processes, Microbilization, and Movement
Participation” ; Gamson,
Talking Politics
.

31. Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, “Household Food Security in the
United States, 2003” (Washington, DC: Economic Research Service and U.S. Department
of Agriculture, 2004), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=631912;
Sam Dolnick, “The Obesity-Hunger Paradox,”
New York Times
, March 12, 2010;
Alexander B. Adams, “John James Audubon: A Biography” (New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1966) ; Marilyn S. Townsend et al., “Food Insecurity Is Positively Related to
Overweight in Women,”
Journal of Nutrition
131 (2001): 1738–45.

32. P. E. Wilde and C. K. Ranney, “The Monthly Food Stamp Cycle: Shopping Frequency
and Food Intake Decisions in an Endogenous Switching Regression Framework,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
82, no. 1 (2000): 200–13. William H.
Dietz, “Does Hunger Cause Oesity?”
Pediatrics
95 (1995): 766–67.

33. Adam Drewnowski and Anne Barratt-Fornell, “Do Healthier Diets Cost More?”
Nutrition Today
39, no. 4 (2004): 161–68.

34. David Strang and John Meyer, “Institutional Conditions for Diff usion,”
Th
eory
and Society
22 (1993): 487–511.

35. Connie L. Bish et al., “Diet and Physical Activity Behaviors among Americans
Trying to Lose Weight: 2000 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System,”
Obesity
Research
13 (2005): 596–607 ; Heena P. Santry, Daniel L. Gillen, and Diane S.
Lauderdale, “Trends in Bariatric Surgical Procedures,”
Journal of the American
Medical Association
(
JAMA
) 294, no. 15 (2005): 1909– 17 ; Laura Fraser,
Losing It:
False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry
(New York: Penguin Putnam Inc.,
1998) ; Susie Orbach,
Fat Is a Feminist Issue
(New York: Berkeley Books, 1978).

36. Faustine Regnier and Ana Masullo, “Obésité, Goûts et Consommation: Intégration
des Normes d’Alimentation et Appartenance Sociale,”
Revue Française de Sociologie
50, no. 4 (2009): 747 –73 ; Faustine Regnier, “Obésité, Corpulence et Souci de
Minceur: Inégalités Sociales en France et aux Etats-Unis”
Cahiers de Nutrition et de
Diététique
41, no. 2 (2006): 97–103 ; Shamu Rahman Khan,
Privilege: Th
e Making of
an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

37. Pierre Bourdieu,
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
(Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

38. Ibid.

39. Norimitsu Onishi, “Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions,”
New York
Times
, June 13, 2008.

40. Abigail C. Saguy, Kjerstin Gruys, and Shanna Gong, “Social Problem Construction
and National Context: News Reporting on ‘Overweight’ and ‘Obesity’ in the U.S.
and France,”
Social Problems
57, no. 4 (2010): 586–610. Mireille Guiliano,
French
Women Don’t Get Fat: Th
e Secret of Eating for Pleasure
(New York: Knopf, 2004).

41. Gibbs, “Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic?”

42. Jay S. Olshansky et al., “Aging in America in the Twenty-first Century: Demographic
Forecasts from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging
Society,”
Millbank Quarterly
87, no. 4 (2009): 842–62.

43. Ali H. Mokdad et al., “Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000,”
JAMA
291, no. 10 (2004): 1238–45 ; K. M. Flegal et al., “Excess Deaths Associated with
Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity,”
JAMA
293, no. 15 (2005): 1861–67.

44. Bonnie Choy et al., “Relation of Body Mass Index to Sudden Cardiac Death and the
Benefit of Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator in Patients with Left Ventricular
Dysfunction after Healing of Myocardial Infarction,”
American Journal of Cardiology
105, no. 5 (2010): 581–86 ; Jeptha P. Curtis et al., “The Obesity Paradox,”
Archives of
Internal Medicine
165, no. 1 (2005): 55–61 ; Paul McAuley et al., “Fitness and Fatness
as Mortality Predictors in Healthy Older Men: The Veterans Exercise Testing Study,”
Journal of Gerontology: MEDICAL SCIENCES
64A, no. 6 (2009): 695–99.

45. Wann,
FAT!SO?
; Cooper,
Fat and Proud
; Kathleen LeBesco,
Revolting Bodies: The
Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
2004) ; Anna Kirkland,
Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood
(New
York: New York University Press, 2008).

46. Steven Epstein,
Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) ; Steven Epstein,
Inclusion: Th
e
Politics of Difference in Medical Research
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007) ; Edward J. Hackett et al., eds.,
Th
e Handbook of Science and Technology
Studies
, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).

47. Michael Gard and Jan Wright,
Th
e Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality, and Ideology
(New York: Routledge, 2005) ; Paul Campos et al., “The Epidemiology of Overweight
and Obesity: Public Health Crisis or Moral Panic?”
International Journal of
Epidemiology
35, no. 1 (2006): 55–60.

48. Malcolm Spector and John I. Kitsuse,
Constructing Social Problems
(Menlo Park, CA:
Cummings Publishing Company, Inc., 1977), 75. Joseph R. Gusfield,
Th
e Culture of
Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order
(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981). Joel Best,
Social Problems
(New York: Norton, 2008).

49. See Ulrich Beck,
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
(London: Sage Publications,
1992) ; Joan B. Wolf,
Is Breast Best? Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New
High Stakes of Motherhood
(New York: New York University Press, 2010).

50. Epstein,
Inclusion
; Dorothy Roberts, “The Social Immorality of Health in the Gene
Age: Race, Disability, and Inequality,” in
Against Health: How Health Became the
New Morality
, ed. Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland (New York: New York
University Press, 2010).

51. Thomas Kirkwood, “Why Women Live Longer: Stress Alone Does Not Explain the
Longevity Gap,”
Scientific American,
October 21, 2010.

52. At least this is true for white men. African American men have been castrated at
moments in history, not to increase their lifespans, but as part of official or mob-
inflicted punishment for accusations of rape of white women. Racism and specifi
cally white fear of Black male sexuality made this possible. Dorothy Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
(New York: Vintage, 1998).

53. Katherine M. Flegal et al., “Cause-specific Excess Deaths Associated with
Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity,”
JAMA
298, no. 17 (2008): 2028–37.

54. McAuley et al., “Fitness and Fatness as Mortality Predictors in Healthy Older
Men”; Curtis et al., “The Obesity Paradox”; Choy et al., “Relation of Body Mass
Index to Sudden Cardiac Death.”

55. Mark Clemons and Paul Goss, “Estrogen and the Risk of Breast Cancer,”
New
England Journal of Medicine
344, no. 4 (2001): 276–85.

56. Geraldine M. Budd et al., “Health Care Professionals’ Attitudes about Obesity: An
Integrative Review,”
Applied Nursing Research
24 (2011): 127–37 ; Christina C. Wee
et al., “Screening for Cervical and Breast Cancer: Is Obesity an Unrecognized Barrier
to Preventive Care?”
Annals of Internal Medicine
132, no. 9 (2000): 697–704.

57. N. K. Amy et al., “Barriers to Routine Gynecological Cancer Screening for White
and African-American Obese Women,”
International Journal of Obesity
30 (2006):
147–55.

58. For work that does aim to do this, see Paul Ernsberger and Paul Haskew,
Rethinking
Obesity: An Alternative View of Its Health Implications
(New York: Human Sciences
Press, 1987) ; Glenn Gaesser,
Big Fat Lies: Th
e Truth about Your Weight & Your Health
(Carlsbad, CA: Gurze Books, 2002) ; Paul Campos,
Th
e Obesity Myth: Why America’s
Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health
(New York: Gotham Books,
2004) ; Gard and Wright,
Th
e Obesity Epidemic
; J. Eric Oliver,
Fat Politics: The Real
Story behind America’s Obesity Epidemic
(New York: Oxford University Press,
2005) ; Campos et al., “The Epidemiology of Overweight and Obesity.”

59. Spector and Kitsuse,
Constructing Social Problems
, 75. See also Gusfield,
Th
e Culture
of Public Problems
; Best,
Social Problems
; Stephen Hilgarten and Charles L. Bosk,
“The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model,”
American Journal of
Sociology
94, no. 1 (1988).

60. Spector and Kitsuse,
Constructing Social Problems
, 76.

61. Wendy Griswold,
Cultures and Societies in a Changing World
(Thousand Oaks, CA:
Pine Forge Press, 1994) ; Joshua Gamson,
Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and
Sexual Nonconformity
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998).

62. Esther D. Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, eds.,
Th
e Fat Studies Reader
(New York:
New York University Press, 2009), 2.

63. Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
;
Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination
Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Policies,”
University of Chicago Legal
Forum
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989): 139 –67 ; Patricia Hill Collins,
Black Feminist Th
ought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
(Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990).

64. Michel Foucault,
History of Sexuality, vol.
1
, An Introduction
(New York: Vintage Books, 1980) ; James Morone,
Hellfire Nation: Th
e Politics of Sin in American History
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

65. Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
; Doris Witt,
Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of
U.S. Identity
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

66. Robert Aronowitz, “Framing Disease: An Underappreciated Mechanism for the
Social Patterning of Health,”
Social Science & Medicine
67, no. 2008 (2008): 7.

67. Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
; Martin Gilens,
Why Americans Hate Welfare
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).