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Abstract
Fat bodies are not, fait accompli, bad. Yet in our international research, we found overwhelmingly that fat functioned as a marker to indicate health or lack of health. A body with fat was simply and conclusively unhealthy. This article reports on how this unbalanced view of fat was tied to assessments of healthy bodies that were achieved by the act of looking. Despite the efforts of health education in each of the three countries in our study, children and young people cited the act of looking at bodies to assess health and when did they arrived at the conclusion that fat on bodies is unmistakably bad. The article uses a Foucauldian analysis of medical perception together with material from Conrad Gessner's sixteenth century Historia Animalium to outline how the children in our study placed great reliance on information about fat to make almost exclusively visual assessments of health. The article makes the case that, despite a great deal of health education in schools, these judgments reveal a tendency for children to make incorrect assessments of health.
Notes
1. All names and identifying information have been removed and replaced where necessary with pseudonyms or initials.
2. Therefore, important was Gessner's identification of this structure that contemporary scientific discussions of BAT reference the discovery (Cannon & Nedergaard, Citation2008; Enerbäck, Citation2010; Tews & Wabitsch, Citation2011). Now termed as ‘the good fat’, BAT it is reported as a preventive for obesity in scientific journals (Chao, Yang, Aja, Moran, & Bi, Citation2011), with international newsprint media reporting it as a scientific breakthrough in the battle with obesity (Gray, Citation2009; Paddock, Citation2011; Wang, Citation2010). BAT even has its own Facebook page.
3. Funded by ARC and ESRC Grants. ARC Linkage International Social Science Collaboration 2007–2010 The impact of attitudes and policies relating to obesity and related health issues on school policy and practices: J. Wright, V. Harwood, UOW, Australia; L. Burrows, University of Otago, New Zealand; E. Rich, & J. Evans, Loughborough University, England.
4. For reasons of space, social class, gender and ethnicity are not treated separately in this paper. In depth analysis of these subjectivities in terms of the ad vivum of students is the focus of a forthcoming essay. See Wright et al. (2012) in this special issue for discussion of class. For detail on fieldwork in England see Rich (Citation2011).
5. Surveys were with primary and secondary school students. Interviews were with teachers (including deputy principals, principals) and with primary and secondary school students. Number of interviews – Australia: 22 teacher interviews, 62 student interviews; England; New Zealand: 10 teacher interviews, 30 student interviews.
6. These were questions 21, 22, 23 on the survey instrument developed for the English cohort. A different format of the survey instrument was used in Australia and New Zealand.
7. This number is higher than the number of participants (1176) because subcategories allowed respondents to select more than one answer within each category. Numbers are indicative of frequency of response and allow comparison of the numbers of responses across possible answers.
8. This creature inhabits alpine areas in Europe, including the mountainous areas in Switzerland in proximity to where Gessner lived and worked (Fischer, Citation1966).
9. While reference to Gessner's discovery can be found in contemporary publications discussing BAT the marmot illustration in Historia Animalium has to my knowledge remained unpublished.
10. One hundred years later the famous Histoire des animaux (Perrault, Citation1671) was based solely on direct observation and dissection (Guerrini, Citation2006). This book can be accessed online at http://www.archive.org/details/mmoirespourserv00bzgoog.
11. The fifth was published posthumously, with the volumes.
12. Volume V was published posthumously.
13. An edited translation with additions was made into English by Edward Topsell in 1658, titled The history of four-footed beasts and serpents: describing at large their true and lively figure, their several names, conditions, kinds, virtues... countries of their breed, their love and hatred to mankind, and the wonderful work, London: Printed by E. Cotes for G. Sawbridge, T. Williams, and T. Johnson.
14. It is the case that illustrations were made of interior of humans and creatures prior to the eighteenth century, however, these differ in many ways from latter scientific drawings, including style, naturalism and representation of object and subject (Hall, Citation1996).
15. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer who pointed to the connections with lay epidemiology.