Despite recent and growing media attention surrounding obesity in the United States, the so-called obesity epidemic remains a highly contested scientific and social fact. This article examines the contemporary obesity debate through systematic examination of the claims and claimants involved in the controversy. We argue that four primary groups-antiobesity researchers, antiobesity activists, fat acceptance researchers, and fat acceptance activists-are at the forefront of this controversy and that these groups are fundamentally engaged in framing contests over the nature and consequences of excess body weight. While members of the fat acceptance groups embrace a body diversity frame, presenting fatness as a natural and largely inevitable form of diversity, members of the antiobesity camp frame higher weights as risky behavior akin to smoking, implying that body weight is under personal control and that people have a moral and medical responsibility to manage their weight. Both groups sometimes frame obesity as an illness, which limits blame by suggesting that weight is biologically or genetically determined but simultaneously stigmatizes fat bodies as diseased. While the antiobesity camp frames obesity as an epidemic to increase public attention, fat acceptance activists argue that concern over obesity is distracting attention from a host of more important health issues for fat Americans. We examine the strategies claimants use to establish their own credibility or discredit their opponents, and explain how the fat acceptance movement has exploited structural opportunities and cultural resources created by AIDS activism and feminism to wield some influence over U.S. public health approaches. We conclude that notions of morality play a central role in the controversy over obesity, as in many medical disputes, and illustrate how medical arguments about body weight can be used to stymie rights claims and justify morality-based fears.
In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This article examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem. Drawing on a sample of scientific publications on weight and health, and press releases and news reporting on these publications, we compare and contrast social problem frames in medical science and news reporting. We find substantial overlap in science and news reporting, but the news media do dramatize more than the studies on which they are reporting and are more likely than the original science to highlight individual blame for weight. This is partly due to the news media’s tendency to report more heavily on the most alarmist and individual‐blaming scientific studies. We find some evidence that press releases also shape which articles receive media coverage and how they are framed.
In 2005, in the wealthy suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Emily and Mark Krudys' ten-yearold daughter, Katherine, was diagnosed with anorexia, and her parents were desperate for a cure. "Emily and Mark tried everything. They were firm. Then they begged their daughter to eat. Then they bribed her. We'll buy you a pony, they told her. But nothing worked" (Tyre 2005). Finally, Katherine was admitted for inpatient treatment at a children's hospital in another town. During the two months of her daughter's treatment, Emily stayed nearby so that she could attend family-therapy sessions. After Katherine was released, Emily homeschooled her while Katherine regained strength. Considered a success story, Newsweek reported that Katherine entered sixth grade in fall of 2005: "She's got the pony, and she's become an avid Only a short drive away, in Washington, DC, Leslie Abbott, a black single mother, was dealing with a very different food battle. She had lost custody of her son Terrell after months of fighting neglect charges related to his body weight. Known to his friends as "Heavy-T," Terrell had recently been released from an inpatient weight-loss program, but-once at homehad gained weight. Leslie explained to a reporter why it was unfair for public authorities to blame her for Terrell's backslide: "This boy is 15, going to be 16 years old. I can't watch him 24 hours a day. They want me to hold his hand, take him to the Y, make him eat salad" (Eaton 2007). Leslie said she would have had to quit her minimum-wage job in order to follow the health regimen suggested by Terrell's doctors. But, as noted by the journalist, "How could she afford that? To her thinking, the healthy food Terrell needed meant she needed more money, not less" (Eaton 2007).These two news articles discuss topics-anorexia and obesity-in which body size (too thin or too heavy) and eating (too little or too much) are treated as medical risks and/or diseases. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) defines anorexia as the refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally "normal weight" for age and height, fear of gaining weight or becoming "fat," and denial of the gravity of one's low body weight. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines "obesity" among adults as having a body mass index (BMI) (weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) equal to or greater than 30, and "overweight" as having a BMI equal or greater than 25 but less than 30.1 Different measures are used for children and teenagers under 18-years old, which adjust for age.While anorexia and overweight/obesity are both medical categories related to body weight and eating, they have strikingly different social and moral connotations. In the contemporary United States, being heavy is seen as the embodiment of gluttony, sloth, and/or stupidity (Crandall and Eshleman 2003;Latner and Stunkard 2003), while slenderness is taken as the embodiment of virtue (Bordo 1993). A deep-seated cultural belief in self-reliance makes body size-like wealth-especially likely ...
Despite growing academic interest in political and cultural globalization, sociologists have failed to systematically account for the factors that favor cross-national convergence or divergence in the form or content of public political debates in news media. This article uses two original data sets on American and French news reporting on immigration and sexual harassment to test the effects of four factors potentially relevant to such convergence or divergence: 1) cultural repertoires, 2) legal constraints, 3) journalistic field relations to the state and market and competition among journalistic outlets, and 4) global position of nation-states. Differences in dominant national cultural repertoires correlate with persistent cross-national variations in media frames. Legal reform related to the two issues offers a strong explanation of shifts in framing over time. Lesser news media autonomy vis-à-vis the state is associated with fewer journalistic enterprise stories on immigration and less reporting on sexual harassment scandals, while greater competition may make sensationalized reporting on immigration more likely. America's dominant position in the global political economy correlates with substantially greater visibility of U.S. policies and personalities in France, than vice versa. There is some evidence for greater cross-national divergence in issue frames over time, as U.S. global visibility and influence have increased.
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