From The Biggest Loser to Mike and Molly, globally televised representations of fatness are multiplying in reflection of heightened governmental and medical concern that the size of our bodies constitutes a problem of epidemic proportions. This project demonstrates how television acts as a forum for not only the politics of fat visibility and world health policies, but also for debating issues of fatness in connection to weight-loss and self-discipline, self-love and size acceptance, and even disability and discrimination. Ultimately, this project traces public health, medical, and fat acceptance discourses throughout culture, from media industry documents and regulatory hearings to newspaper reports and television texts, in order to understand television's role in enabling and constraining the ways in which we understand bodies, fatness, and health.
Weight watching: television, fatness, and the obesity epidemic
Abstract
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Weight watching: television, fatness, and the obesity epidemic
- Creators
- Melissa Mae Zimdars - University of Iowa
- Contributors
- Timothy Havens (Advisor)Rita Zajacz (Committee Member)Elana Levine (Committee Member)M. Gigi Durham (Committee Member)Joy Hayes (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Communication Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2015
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.y7l64iyx
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- vi, 259 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2015 Melissa Zimdars
- Language
- English
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-259).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
From The Biggest Loser to Mike and Molly, globally televised representations of fatness are multiplying in reflection of heightened governmental and medical concern that the size of our bodies constitutes a problem of epidemic proportions. This project demonstrates how television acts as a forum for not only the politics of fat visibility and world health policies, but also for debating issues of fatness in connection to weight-loss and self-discipline, self-love and size acceptance, and even disability and discrimination. Ultimately, this project traces public health, medical, and fat acceptance discourses throughout culture, from media industry documents and regulatory hearings to newspaper reports and television texts, in order to understand television’s role in enabling and constraining the ways in which we understand bodies, fatness, and health as well as television as a medium of surveillance and discipline.
- Academic Unit
- Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9983777199902771