Out of Shape: The pathologization of the fat bodies and the emergence of Fat Studies as a new approach in the academic field

• Grant number: 24/09083-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: April 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Cynthia Andersen Sarti
• Grantee: Afonso de Arruda Falcão Sanches Machado
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

As centuries developed, fat bodies were subject to different interpretations and associated with distinct symbologies. Although, from the 19th century onwards, with the rise of a social and hygienic medicine, the fat bodies, which in other times represented wealth and status, started being seen as ill. After decades of statistic efforts - from the social medicine allied to the lobby of the insurance market - to create a conception of "ideal weight" (from which derives the idea of "overweight"), the fat body (now "obese") had been formally pathologized by the end of the 1940s. This pathologization, though, was followed by a rise of dissident voices which opposed the differentiation and hierarchy of the bodies based on the ideals of health. So, by the transitions to the 21st century, new actors started to occupy the academic field, presenting new approaches and reverberating discourses that opposed the pathologic logic towards the fat body - emerging, then, the Fat Studies. With a theoretical support on Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, this research seeks to analyze works published at the scientific journal "Fat Studies: An interdisciplinary journal of body weight and society", first journal referring to the topic, as evidence if this dissident discourse, with the objective of comprehending the emergence of these new approaches in this new field of study.