rely on sources from the United States and the United Kingdom. Being
Dutch I will also use some references to the Netherlands. This also serves
the purpose of illustrating that the “objective size” of obesity as a public
health concern is not very relevant. Of the adult Dutch population almost
12% is obese, while that number in the United Kingdom is 25 and that in
the United States is 35 (seehttp://www.iaso.org/iotf/obesity).
Recently obesity has been discussed by Goode and Vail inExtreme
Deviance(2008 ,pp. 68100). They show that already in the 1960s sociolo-
gists wrote about the stigmatization of obese people in the United States
(Cahnman, 1968; Goffman, 1963; Louderback, 1970). They write:
“Although, strictly speaking, obesity falls into the type of stigmaGoffman
(1963)refers to as ‘abominations of the body,’...in fact, it is regarded by
the average-sized majority as amoralfailing as much as a physical defect.
Being fat indicates a blemish of individual character, more specifically,
possessing a ‘weak will’ and an ‘unnatural passion’” (Goode & Vail, 2008,
p. 69; original italics).
Goode and Vail stress it is “important to emphasize that deviance is
onlyone way of looking at obesity. Many health experts also regard
obesity as an unhealthy medical condition”(2008, p. 70).Similar to Best as
quoted above, they add that “sociologically, deviance is conceptually,
definitionally, and empirically separate from and independent of illness.”
Furthermore, they state that “[p]erhaps the most important theoretical
development in the sociology of deviance has been to sever deviance from
the illness or pathology concept.” Citing Lemert they want to “abandon
once and for all the archaic and medicinal idea that human beings can be
divided into normal or pathological.” This last term should also be
“divested of its ‘moralistic’ overtones.”
The authors conclude: “The fact is, the stigma of obesity is a moral, not
amedical, issue; the compassion felt for the cancer patient, the blind, and
the paralyzed is not, for the most part, extended to the hugely overweight”
(Goode & Vail, 2008,p. 71). From the point of view that people suffering
from welfare diseases are less likely seen as innocent and vulnerable, this
statement needs some close reading. First, the blind and the paralyzed
probably refer to classic diseases such as those one is born with or is the
result of an infectious disease. However, many kinds of cancer are seen as a
welfare disease which is caused by lifestyle behaviors such as smoking or
eating too fat and too salty. In that sense, havingcertain kinds of
cancer and being overweight fall in the same category. It is for this category
that I claim that medicalizationinstead of being a protective shield
offers new opportunities for stigmatization and discrimination.
Obesity as Disease and Deviance 119