Читать книгу Extreme Weight Loss - Amber Wutich - Страница 11

If, as we argue, fear of fat is a globalizing phenomenon, the United States has been ground zero for the contradictory, swirling waves of the “obesity epidemic,” the massive transnational diet industry, thin-promoting and body-acceptance movements in social and traditional media, and bariatric surgery. We hope our work with bariatric patients will bring attention to some very challenging questions about what bodies mean in our society and what this signals about being “normal.” We ask, Why do we struggle so hard to be “normal,” when our ideas about normal are so far from the statistical average? What are the repercussions of these struggles? Why does fat stigma remain so entrenched, and why are body norms so very powerful and resistant to change? We will revisit these questions in the conclusion and discuss the implications of our work for broader social issues and concerns. In the meantime, we will use the following four chapters to delve into the experiences of the bariatric patients, as articulated to us across the years of our study.