Food, Fatness and Fitness

It is a contradiction to work for social justice and perpetuate fatphobia at the same time. This should be obvious, and yet many people with strong commitments to social justice often use rhetoric that entrenches the oppression of fat people. A popular, but pernicious, set of fatphobic assertions takes the form of what some scholars refer to as the “foodscape argument.” On its surface, the foodscape argument (which is also known as the “obesogenic environment” thesis, or the “environmental” theory of fatness) seems progressive. The theory postulates that western industrial societies are experiencing an “epidemic” of “obesity,” which is driven in large part by economic inequality. According to the foodscape argument, low-income people lack access to nutritious foods and are…

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“We have done it – This city has gone on a diet. Together we have reached our goal of losing 1,000,000 pounds! (…) Hopefully, we are a healthier, more vibrant, and progressive community. I would like to thank each and every person and organization who has contributed to the OKC Million program, and I encourage all to stay active, stay healthy, and stay involved. This is the beginning of a brighter future.” The “OKC Million-pound-program,” which was initiated by Mayor Mick Cornett in Oklahoma City in 2007, was a massive campaign aimed at the city’s population and the weight of their bodies. Mayor Cornett boasted in 2013 that his successful effort to bring the state’s capital into shape through restraining and disciplining…

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In the era of the “obesity epidemic,” fat has become a politically charged topic. It thus often provokes an overtly politicized response from writers of fiction. One such novelist is Sarai Walker, whose 2015 book Dietland links cultural attitudes toward women’s eating and body size to other feminist political concerns ranging from rape culture to domestic violence to gender gaps in employment. In Dietland, the restrictions on the amount of space that women take up become a metonymy for all of the restrictions placed on women’s lives in a patriarchal culture. When the main character, Alicia (nicknamed Plum), begins to understand the connection between diet culture and other forms of patriarchal oppression, she is able to let go of her…

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Charlotte Biltekoff in a recent blog entry notes, “The foodworld is abuzz with the promise of transparency.” The premise is that new trends in food marketing better inform consumers about where and how their food is produced. And as Biltekoff considers, transparency creates further complexity. Certainly, “eating local” similarly supports the notion of transparency in the food system. My objective here is to examine how urban branding around “eating local” shapes the urban landscape. I focus on the city of Sacramento, California to illustrate the ways in which the city council and restaurateurs tacitly employ the notion of food transparency to upgrade the urban landscape to accrue capital. In 2013, Mayor Kevin Johnson declared Sacramento “America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.” The marketing…

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Two of the most memorable moments in When Harry Met Sally (USA 1989) are about food. Well, they are not exactly about food, but they try to get at something through food. Of course, the first one is the legendary fake-orgasm-and-“I’ll-have-what-she’s-having”-scene in Katz’s Delicatessen in NYC. Yet when it comes to thinking about choice, the other restaurant scene is of greater interest, when they stop for lunch in a roadside diner while traveling home from college in Chicago to New York. Whereas Harry barely looks at the menu and goes for one of its default options (“I’ll have the number 3”), Sally orders à la carte, and she adds a long and complex list of individual choices and special requests…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

The Foodscape Argument: When Fatphobia Poses as Radical Social Critique

Born Again Fit? One of the Nation’s Fattest Cities on a Diet

The Subversive Potential of Fat in Sarai Walker’s Dietland

Constructing a Farm-to-Fable

On Choice