Politics of Weight Eating

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

In this class we will examine the cultural politics of fat, body shape, and eating. We will draw on anti-oppressive lenses such as feminism, disability theory, and critical race theory to think about the ethical and social issues surrounding fatness, gendered body ideals, food policy, eating practices, and disordered eating. In order to ensure that our discussions remain empirically informed, we will also look at some recent scientific work on the relationships between health, fat, and eating, and on how media messaging and health communication affect behavior. Key questions will include but not be limited to: What kind of a value is 'health,' and is being and eating 'healthy' automatically a value that everyone should prioritize? What role does food play in our lives? Is the so-called 'obesity epidemic' a moral panic or a public health crisis - or both or neither - and how should we think and talk about population-level upward trends in body size? How does our material and social world accommodate, or fail to accommodate, different kinds of bodies? How do our size and shape (along with other dimensions of our embodiment) form our personal and social identity? What are the ethical and practical effects of body shaming? Are aesthetic body norms changing, and how are these changes promising and/or problematic? How is disordered eating entangled with larger social and political norms and with personal identity?