Fatness and the Maternal Body

<p> Obesity is a rising global health problem. On the one hand a clearly defined medical condition it is at the same time a corporeal state embedded in the social and cultural perception of fatness body shape and size. Focusing specifically on the maternal body contributors to the volume examine how the language and notions of obesity connect with or stand apart from wider societal values and moralities to do with the body fatness reproduction and what is considered 'natural'. A focus on fatness in the context of human reproduction and motherhood offers instructive insights into the global circulation and authority of biomedical facts on fatness (as 'risky' anti-fit for example). As with other social and cultural studies critical of health policy discourse this volume challenges the spontaneous connection being made in scientific and popular understanding between fatness and ill health.</p>