Foucault, ugly ducklings, and technoswans

Analyzing fat hatred, weight-loss surgery, and compulsory biomedicalized aesthetics in America

Bibliographic Data

ID17814409
AuthorsKathryn Morgan (corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume4
Issue1
Pages188-220
Publication date2011-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1937-4577 • E-ISSN: 1937-4585
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/ijfab.4.1.188
OpenAlexW2055895902
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited42

Using a densely constructed ethnographic subject, Josephine, the “ugly duckling,” I use Foucault’s complex notion of an Apparatus to examine how Josephine’s decision to have weight-loss surgery is understandable even though it permanently destroys her normally functioning digestive system. I try to illuminate how the decision is deeply embedded in extraordinarily complex neoliberal biopolitical structures and dynamics of fat hatred camouflaged by liberatory discourses that promise “empowerment,” becoming “normal,” and discovery of her “real self.” I argue that in contemporary America, Fat Hatred must be understood as a powerful systemic structure of racialized gendered oppression, that one tactic to normalize weight-loss surgery involves assimilating it to “normal” cosmetic surgery, and that Josephine must be seen, simultaneously, as legitimizing dominant obesity discourses and practices, enacting genuinely liberating personal choices, demonstrating her status as a “good American bio-citizen,” and contributing to the collective physical health and mental health of the nation since “obesity” is soon to be included in the fifth edition of the canonical Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a mental disorder

Aesthetics · Empowerment · Ethnography · Hatred · Mental health · Obesity · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Weight loss · Weight Loss Surgery · Anthropology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Empathy and Medical Education · Gender Studies · Law · Medicine · Obesity and Health Practices · Philosophy · Psychology

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