bigfatfeminist:

Abigail Saguy, author of What’s Wrong with Fat?, talks about how obesity came to be understood as a public health crisis.

I can’t even decide which parts of this to quote because it’s all so goddamn good.

It’s important to see this happening within a context. Before obesity became a public health crisis, it became a medical problem, and before it became a medical problem, it became a social problem. So before doctors started talking about obesity as medical problem, middle-class white women began begging doctors to help them lose weight. And they were doing so not because of health but because of fashion.

And vested interests such as the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) were working hard to make obesity a public health priority. The IOTF is lobbying group whose mission is to make obesity a public health priority. Its funding sources include pharmaceutical companies who have an interest in convincing the public that obesity is a major problem. The greater the perceived risks associated with obesity, the greater the need for weight loss drugs and the greater the tolerance for potential negative side effects. It is important to remember that all of this is happening within a context, in the contemporary United States, in which it is already taken for granted that fat is bad.