ABSTRACT
One of the more remarkable features of contemporary popular culture may turn out to be how moral virtue became entangled with corporeal ideals. In the process countless numbers of ostensibly ‘fit’, sentient human beings of all shapes and sizes, who three to four decades ago would have gone about their daily business thinking that there was nothing very much wrong with their general well-being and health, give or take a few ailments, some nagging aches and pains, ageing and a bit of excess fat, have been discursively shifted into regarding themselves as being ‘irresponsibly’ unwell. This has occurred neither through any fault of their own nor through any ‘real’ experiential change in corporeal condition for, indeed, in terms of increasing longevity, they are doing rather well, but because global agencies, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), national central government bodies and countless ‘expert’ spokespeople have redefined their health status as such. Specifically, many are deemed either to have already succumbed to or to be in danger of becoming victims of the purported, virulent, global ‘diseases’ of ‘overweight’ or ‘obesity’ in a world where both popular and uncritical, academic presses warn them of an ‘obesity time bomb’ ticking away, especially in relation to young people’s health (see Chapter 3). Rarely can so many people have been made to feel so bad about their bodies or their routine maintenance through eating, moving, exercising and so forth, with so little concern or sensitivity as to the potentially damaging effects of this discourse. Yet research evidence suggests that, although populations have become on average marginally heavier over recent years, outside of the extremes of ‘underweight’ and ‘obese’, neither of these ‘conditions’ alone constitutes much of a risk either to the well-being or to the health of populations or persons (see Campos et al., 2006). Indeed, ‘several large studies show improved survival in heart patients with a body mass index of between 30-35
– classed as clinically obese’ and one leading consultant criticised doctors for simply ‘extrapolating the advice from the young and the fit to the old and the ill’ (Smith, 2007: 10). Others have highlighted the dangers of applying ‘adult’ conceptions of ‘healthy eating’ to children and young people without regard for their maturational needs (Evans, 2007).
