Unforgivable Fatness: On Post-Modern Epidemiology and the Developing Fitness Industry
by Bryan Bracey, University of Massachusetts – Amherst 

As Fraser (2009) notes, “Thinness is, at its heart, a peculiarly American preoccupation (p.14).” There is something culturally specific to the desire to obtain a certain physical aesthetic that easily can exist on a different plain than health.  Health researchers are still debating the possibility of being both “fat and fit.”  Conversely, and reinforced frequently in sport, an aesthetically pleasing or attractive body is not necessarily a healthy one, either.  By conflating the two, casual consumers are free to assess one’s cultural capital and biological capital simultaneously.  The realm of health and wellness has become a costly pursuit in which one can now conspicuously consume, as Marketdata Enterprises estimated that the weight loss industry alone has reached $60 billion in the United States.  This presentation seeks to address the contextual emergence of obesity as, what Boero (2007) terms, a post-modern epidemic marking a shift of “health away from the public and onto the individual,” and the subsequent growth of an often ineffectual fitness industry.