ABSTRACT
Since the declaration of the “war on obesity,” there have been many attempts to curb the so-called “obesity epidemic.” Indeed, anti-obesity campaigns communicating a “fat-as-fatal” message have become a regular and accepted public health strategy in most economically developed countries. Despite their ubiquity, a growing number of researchers have critiqued the ways these campaigns frame obesity as a health issue and promote problematic weight-loss methods. Nevertheless, such critiques have had little impact on the most highly funded, government-sanctioned interventions on people’s bodies. In this chapter, we consider why critical perspectives on obesity have not been more influential in public health practice. To this end, we focus on the Australian anti-obesity campaign, Healthier. Happier. – which sought to deliver positive, supportive, health promotion messages about body weight – and ask how, if at all, this campaign was different from its “fat-as-fatal” predecessors. We begin this task by reviewing existing critiques of mainstream anti-obesity campaigns.
