The Stigma of Obesity

OBESITY is a complex phenomenon having a variety of causes and consequences, and accordingly, it is very insufficiently understood. In the vast medical and nutritional literature on the topic, obesity is usually treated as a clinical problem residing in the physical make-up and the behavior pattern of the individual, and it has been only recently that social causations and their consequences, amounting to stigmatization, have received increased attention. However, obesity is hardly ever mentioned in the writings of sociologists, and not at all in the literature on social deviance. This omission is amazing because it ought not to escape any one scanning the articles and advertisements in popular journals or listening to radio and television commercials that obesity is a social phenomenon. Clearly, in our kind of society, with its stress on affluence and upward mobility, being overweight is considered to be detrimental to health, a blemish to appearance, and a social disgrace. What is much less obvious is that it is held to be morally reprehensible. In the deliberations that follow I intend to review some pertinent findings in recent research with regard to these factors, but with emphasis on the moral factor which I believe to be of decisive importance, both diagnostically and therapeutically. I shall attempt to construct an ideal-typical model of the stigma of obesity, not so much as a hypothesis to be verified or modified, but as a conceptual guidepost with which the varieties of actual occurrences may be compared.' Speaking of obesity, I am going to disregard the internal difference between overweight and obesity in a narrower sense. It is possible to think of overweight as minimal obesity and of obesity as maximal overweight. Generally, among medical practitioners, something like 30 to 40 per cent beyond a presumed normal weight-whatever that may