The ‘obesity epidemic’ : an analysis of representations of obesity in mainstream South African newspapers post-1997

Malan, Chantelle Therese

Title: The ‘obesity epidemic’ : an analysis of representations of obesity in mainstream South African newspapers post-1997
Creator: Malan, Chantelle Therese
Subject: Obesity -- South Africa
Subject: Obesity -- Press coverage -- South Africa
Subject: Obesity -- Social aspects -- South Africa
Subject: Discrimination against overweight persons -- South Africa
Subject: Social medicine -- South Africa
Subject: Agent (Philosophy)
Subject: Social control -- South Africa
Date Issued: 2015
Date: 2015
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MA
Identifier: vital:2892
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019751
Description: This study of 449 newspaper articles from South Africa from 1997 provides an analysis of the representations of obesity evinced in the corpus. The research argues that obesity is overwhelmingly framed as being diseased and that there are four main refrains within this frame, namely, statistics on obesity, the naturalisation of negative assumptions about fat, the social dysfunction of fat and the use of crisis metaphors to describe fatness. This framing lends itself to representations of obesity which are raced, gendered and classed. Fat bodies are portrayed as being in deficit and fat people as lacking agency. The disproportional focus on black bodies in the corpus can be attributed to assumptions of ‘incivility’ which are premised on racial stereotypes which construct black people as being unintelligent, irrational, lacking agency and being largely dependent on others to survive. This disproportional focus on black bodies can also be understood in the context of emerging markets. This study argues that the medicalisation of obesity has contributed to many oversimplifications and contradictions in the representation of obesity in the corpus, which seem to go unquestioned, such as the conflation of weight and health, something I argue is one of the main contributors to the negative consequences of the dominant framing of obesity. Framing obesity as medicalised also promotes fat shaming and acts as a form of social control which maintains existing power relations through the use of discursive practices for the identification and control of deviants. These representations are problematic chiefly because they promote the dehumanisation of fat people, but also because that they do not promote good health as they claim to do.
Format: 140 leaves
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Political and International Studies
Language: English
Rights: Malan, Chantelle Therese

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