ABSTRACT
The anthropologist Megan McCullough gives a first-person account of what it was like to be fat and pregnant in North America: she speaks of attitudes of disgust and blame among healthcare providers who saw her/her body as shameful, a problem and caused by lack of will-power. The sense of being judged, surveilled and viewed as an inconvenience, or worse, as less deserving of their care and respect, permeated her experience with the health system:
What happens in these small acts is that the fat maternal body is made more visible – as out of the ‘normal’ range and this is performed and emphasized at each weigh-in. I have on occasion gotten on the scale and turned my back to the numbers. I wanted to embody my pregnancy and feel where I was and not deal with the numbers. This choice on my part usually invited scorn and scolding or if not scolding, then biting comments. For example, ‘So we are not dealing with things today are we?’
