IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v65y2007i8p1561-1571.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"How could you let yourself get like that?": Stories of the origins of obesity in accounts of weight loss surgery

Author

Listed:
  • Throsby, Karen

Abstract

In the context of the contemporary rhetoric of the "obesity epidemic", the fat body is easily labelled as lazy, self-indulgent and lacking in discipline. Those who become fat often find themselves needing to account for their size in order to refute the suggestion of moral failure that attaches itself easily to the fat body. Drawing on a series of interviews with 35 weight loss surgery patients in England and Scotland, this paper explores the discursive resources and strategies available to those who are, or who have been, very overweight in accounting for their size. The paper argues that the participants drew on three core discourses in order to resist the construction of their fatness as an individual moral failure: (1) the fat-prone body; (2) childhood weight gain; and (3) life events disrupting weight management efforts.

Suggested Citation

  • Throsby, Karen, 2007. ""How could you let yourself get like that?": Stories of the origins of obesity in accounts of weight loss surgery," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(8), pages 1561-1571, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:65:y:2007:i:8:p:1561-1571
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(07)00368-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anne Lhuissier, 2010. "Introduction - Maigrir : de la terminologie aux prariques," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 91(2), pages 117-125.
    2. Danielle Couch & Samantha L. Thomas & Sophie Lewis & R. Warwick Blood & Paul Komesaroff, 2015. "Obese Adults’ Perceptions of News Reporting on Obesity," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(4), pages 21582440156, October.
    3. Lhuissier, Anne, 2010. "Introduction - Maigrir : de la terminologie aux prariques," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement (RAEStud), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 91(2).
    4. Bissell, Paul & Peacock, Marian & Blackburn, Joanna & Smith, Christine, 2016. "The discordant pleasures of everyday eating: Reflections on the social gradient in obesity under neo-liberalism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 14-21.
    5. Barlösius, Eva & Philipps, Axel, 2015. "Felt stigma and obesity: Introducing the generalized other," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 9-15.
    6. Blackburn, Maxine & Stathi, Afroditi, 2019. "Moral discourse in general practitioners’ accounts of obesity communication," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 166-173.
    7. Owen-Smith, Amanda & Coast, Joanna & Donovan, Jenny, 2009. ""I can see where they're coming from, but when you're on the end of it ... you just want to get the money and the drug.": Explaining reactions to explicit healthcare rationing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 1935-1942, June.
    8. Drew, Patricia, 2011. "“But Then I Learned…”: Weight loss surgery patients negotiate surgery discourses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(8), pages 1230-1237.
    9. van Amsterdam, Noortje & van Eck, Dide, 2019. "“I have to go the extra mile”. How fat female employees manage their stigmatized identity at work," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 46-55.
    10. Silver, Joanna & Reavey, Paula, 2010. ""He's a good-looking chap aint he?": Narrative and visualisations of self in body dysmorphic disorder," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(10), pages 1641-1647, May.
    11. Greener, Joe & Douglas, Flora & van Teijlingen, Edwin, 2010. "More of the same? Conflicting perspectives of obesity causation and intervention amongst overweight people, health professionals and policy makers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(7), pages 1042-1049, April.
    12. Borovoy, Amy & Roberto, Christina A., 2015. "Japanese and American public health approaches to preventing population weight gain: A role for paternalism?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 62-70.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:65:y:2007:i:8:p:1561-1571. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.