{"id":253,"date":"2011-11-17T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2007\/10\/18\/defining-fat\/"},"modified":"2017-09-17T14:18:11","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T19:18:11","slug":"defining-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/11\/17\/defining-fat\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining “Fat”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/a> to see a flickr slide show of dozens of people, starting with those below,\u00a0with their BMI label (“underweight,” “normal,” “overweight,” “obese,” and “morbidly obese”). There’s something about seeing all these nice looking people with these judgmental labels applied to them that reveals that the BMI is a social construction. Also it’s a good illustration of the Foucauldian idea that knowledge (discourse, or even “science”) is used to label and control people, especially when it is internalized.<\/p>\n

Erin Nieto’s project, How Much Do You Weigh<\/a><\/em>, also puts the body front-and-center, challenging us re-think what numbers mean. \u00a0She counterposes photographs of volunteers with the number on the scale. \u00a0These women model a refusal to be\u00a0embarrassed\u00a0by their weight and show us the imprecision of the number itself.<\/p>\n

See more images at Nieto’s tumblr<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to see a flickr slide show of dozens of people, starting with those below,\u00a0with their BMI label (“underweight,” “normal,” “overweight,” “obese,” and “morbidly obese”). There’s something about seeing all these nice looking people with these judgmental labels applied to them that reveals that the BMI is a social construction. Also it’s a good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,252,2104,293],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-healthmedicine","tag-knowledgeintelligence","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71495,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/71495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}