UC San Diego

In the US, fatness is systematically devalued, and prejudice and discrimination against fat people is prevalent. Weight stigma researchers and advocates argue that defining and treating fatness as a disease reduces stigma against fat people, while fat-positive scholars argue it exacerbates stigma. In this dissertation, I propose a new theoretical concept: the anti-obesity assemblage, defined as the network of human and non-human actors, technologies, practices, and discourses that enable and enact the elimination of obesity. I argue that the anti-obesity assemblage structures the oppression of fat people. I use this concept to investigate two main questions. First, how is the anti-obesity assemblage intertwined with weight stigma research and advocacy? Second, how does that entanglement restrict the capacity of weight stigma research and advocacy to meaningfully combat anti-fatness? To answer these questions, I use a variety of methods, including content analysis, discourse analysis, praxiography, and assemblage theory, to analyze what weight stigma researchers and advocates do and say in their stigma reduction efforts. Based on a random sample of 400 academic articles, I find that most (64%) weight stigma research prioritizes fighting obesity over investigating or reducing stigma. In my praxiography of weight stigma interventions with health professionals, I find that these interventions exercise what I call “afflictive power,” defining fatness as a source of suffering and incompatible with a good life. Anti-obesity weight stigma interventions are stigmatizing in part because they depend on the exercise of afflictive power. Finally, my analysis of Novo Nordisk’s weight stigma-focused media campaign shows that this campaign prioritizes obesity education and treatment and narrowly defines stigma in terms of shame and blame, yielding the overarching message that weight loss is the solution to fat oppression. Taken together, my findings demonstrate that anti-obesity efforts, including treating fatness as a disease, can never combat anti-fatness because they inevitably uphold the devaluation of fatness and direct attention and resources toward eliminating obesity, rather than toward social and political change that would improve the status of fat people. Fat studies scholars and activists must turn their focus to the role of the anti-obesity assemblage in upholding fat oppression.