Heavy: the obesity crisis in cultural context

The current 'obesity epidemic ' has been at the top of the national and, increasingly, global public agenda for the last decade, the subject of extensive and intensive concern, scrutiny and corrective efforts from various quarters.

In this book, Helene Shugart places obesity in cultural, political and economic context, arguing that current anxieties regarding obesity reflect the contemporary crisis in neoliberalism and that the failure of the official discourse of obesity mirrors the failure of neoliberalism more broadly: specifically, to account for authenticity, a powerfully resonant cultural concept today.