ABSTRACT
In 1980, Robert Crawford identified healthism as a form of medicalization and a perspective prevalent in advanced capitalist societies that site the problems of and solutions to health and disease at the level of the individual. As obesity has increasingly captured the public imagination, a number of scholars across disciplines have taken up the matter from various perspectives and with various aims. The identified news stories engaged the issue of obesity across a range of topics, including, for instance, newly discovered linkages to various diseases; escalating rates of obesity; childhood obesity; drugs to treat obesity; and policies for the treatment of obesity. News stories that identify contemporary lifestyles as explanatory of obesity levels in the US tend overwhelmingly to focus on the issue of childhood obesity, and this is especially true as relevant to technology. The fatalistic framing of obesity identified in this study elides pat attributions to either the individual or the environment.
