Dichotomies of Cure and Care in the Medicalization of Fat Bodies

Abstract

Though Fat bodies have not been absent from historical knowledges collected and known
around the globe, the West’s preoccupation with declaring Fatness as a looming moral and
medical danger drives multidisciplinary discourses centering Fat people as the epicentre of the
“Fatpocalypse” (Pausé 135), undesirable proprietors of excess body mass who threaten the
(enforced) collective agreement on embodiments and categorizations of “health”. These body
knowledges, whose basis for so-called-empirical truths are born from cultural western notions
and regulatory striving, are continually held to a higher regard than the (Fat) bodies and
inhabitants of these bodies who navigate the clinical setting. Fatphobia, an imperfect term that
encapsulates the fat hatred, “weight bias, weight discrimination, and weight stigma” (Kost et al.
03) experienced by larger bodies particularly from healthcare practitioners, is woven so tightly
into the clinical gaze that it can easily be disguised by authoritative medical knowledges, an
excuse that permits and excuses malpractice of Fat individuals. As a result, care and cure become
fractured, a dichotomous arrangement that shifts responsibility of health solely onto the Fat
patient.