Food, Fatness and Fitness

A year ago, I first came across the term “Ozempic Face” in various social media posts and celebrity reporting. The Ozempic Face is, so the complaint, recognizable by sagging facial skin and other signs of ageing – effects of the weight loss caused by the intake of the drug. Semaglutide, sold under the brand name Ozempic, is a drug that lowers blood sugar levels and was initially meant to treat type 2 diabetes, but is now also used for weight loss. Ozempic particularly gained prominence in 2023, when more and more celebrities were rumored to have lost a conspicuous amount of weight in a short period of time – with resulting shortages in supply left people with diabetes struggling to get access. The Ozempic Face is a…

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Note of the editors: This is the 100th entry in our blog. We are grateful to all of our contributors for making this possible and hope to have hundreds more entries to come. If you’d like to contribute, don’t hesitate to get in touch via proposals@nullfoodfatfitness.com. We appreciate your contribution! Save the planet by eating? In recent years, a new diet has been making the rounds among nutrition experts and the popular media, one that promises to do just that: simultaneously save the planet and human life on it by eating a diet based largely on whole grains, vegetables, dairy, fruits, legumes, and nuts, while avoiding added sugars, processed fats, red meat, and refined grains (not too many surprises here!).…

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Hey I keep seeing that most of the gays in the gay community are well-toned. Are you not accepted as a fat person in the community or do they just not find that attractive? In spring 2020, an anonymous user turned to the collective intelligence of the German Q&A platform gutefrage.net expressing his personal concerns: “I’m overweight myself and afraid of not being accepted.” Responses from the online community depicted mixed sentiments: While some users affirmed the societal rejection of fat bodies, others countered by asserting that within the gay community, specifically for so-called “bears,” there is a designated place for fat male bodies. The “gay community” comprises social networks and places where homosexual men interact with each other and manifest shared…

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Within the sphere of television, especially weight-loss makeover shows portray the fat body as inappropriate, inacceptable, and in need of change. Makeover shows are popular all over the world; the arguably most well-known one regarding weight loss is The Biggest Loser, which has been airing in the US since 2004 and has been reproduced in close to 40 countries, highlighting its appeal to the general population. Makeover shows transmit the imperative of improvement: improving one’s body, in the logic of the makeover, directly translates to an improvement of one’s life; if one works hard enough, anything is possible. The makeover narrative thus reflects a neoliberal notion of personal responsibility, which used to be prominent especially in the US but has…

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Blitzing, blasting, shredding, and, of course, pumping. For bodybuilders of the 1980s, these verbs were not just descriptors, but a way of life. In 1977, Pumping Iron, a docudrama featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, helped American men fall in love with bodybuilding. Where Jane Fonda encouraged a boom of aerobics exercises for women, Arnold and his rag-tag group of muscular merry-men became the face of a new public interest in musculature. Bodybuilding grew as a sport, but just as importantly, as a hobby. This was a time when fitness became ‘serious leisure’ and, as multiple historians have affirmed, a time when individual health and fitness became a priority and a means of claiming social status. Muscular and lean bodies came to become…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

Ozempic and Fat Futurity

Save the Planet by Eating? The Politics of Food in the Planetary Health Diet

“No Fats No Fems”: Fat-Shaming in the Gay Community

Control through Compassion – Hidden Power Relations in Finnish Makeover Shows

Eat More to Lift More? Purposeful Weight Gain and Weight Loss in 1980s American Bodybuilding