Neoliberal Bodies and the Gendered Fat Body

Description

In recent decades the rise of the so-called "global obesity epidemic" has led to fatness and fat bodies being debated incessantly in popular, professional, and academic arenas. Fatness and fat bodies are shamed and demonised, and the public monitoring, surveillance and outright policing by the media, health professionals, and the general public are pervasive and socially accepted. In Neoliberal Bodies and the Gendered Fat Body, Hannele Harjunen claims that neoliberal economic policy and rationale are enmeshed with conceptions of body, gender, and health in a profound way in contemporary western culture. She explores the relationships between fatness, health, and neoliberal discourse and the role of economic policy in the construction of the (gendered) fat body, and examines how neoliberal discourses join patriarchal and biomedical constructions of the fat female body. In neoliberal culture the fat body is not just the unhealthy body one finds in medical discourse, but also the body that is costly, unproductive and inefficient, failing in the crucial task of self-management. With an emphasis on how neoliberal governmentality, in its many forms, affects the fat body and contributes to its vilification, this book is essential reading for scholars of feminist thought, sociology, cultural studies and social theory with interests in the body, gender and the effects of neoliberal discourse on social attitudes. Neoliberal Bodies and the Gendered Fat Body- Front Cover......Page 1 Neoliberal Bodies and the Gendered Fat Body......Page 2 Title Page......Page 6 Copyright Page ......Page 7 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Chapter 1: Introduction and personal prologue......Page 12 Neoliberal society, neoliberal bodies?......Page 18 The fat body in neoliberal culture......Page 20 Healthy, acceptable, and moral bodies . . . and their opposites......Page 21 Feminist body studies, fatness, and feminist fat studies......Page 23 The fat body as the target of biopower......Page 25 Methodology and data......Page 28 Outline of the book......Page 30 Notes......Page 32 From neoliberalism to neoliberal governmentality......Page 34 Governmentality and neoliberal governmentality......Page 35 Consumer culture and the body as a “project”......Page 38 The disembodied social analysis of the neoliberal economy......Page 42 The body as an intersection of fat, class, and gender......Page 44 Notes......Page 46 The biopolitics of weight......Page 47 Biomedicine and normal body weight......Page 49 Body weight and health......Page 51 The “obesity epidemic discourse” . . . epidemic......Page 53 Moral panic and the metaphorical illness of obesity......Page 56 Notes......Page 59 Chapter 4: The economisation of health and the fat body......Page 60 Health and the public welfare state......Page 61 Neoliberal healthcare......Page 63 Health inequalities......Page 65 The obesity epidemic discourse as a form of neoliberal governmentality......Page 69 Deservingness, morals, costs and investment......Page 73 Notes......Page 76 The ubiquity of healthism and its moral implications......Page 77 Fatness as a self-inflicted problem......Page 83 Wellness and women: buying normative femininity?......Page 85 Notes......Page 88 The “Literacy in Fat” campaign......Page 89 Moralising prejudice in the campaign......Page 91 The commodification of fat......Page 94 Notes......Page 97 From sexual objects to empowered agents?......Page 98 How to build a neoliberal girl......Page 100 Neoliberal surveillance and control......Page 103 Femininity for sale......Page 105 Free choice and the thin privilege......Page 107 Chapter 8: Conclusion......Page 110 The preferred body of neoliberalism......Page 111 Some final words......Page 114 References......Page 116 Index......Page 126