Obesity, parents and me

Abstract

Obesity discourses are shaping us. Amidst an avowed obesity ‘epidemic’, we are all considered at-risk, hailed to understand ourselves as such, and persuaded that we have the capability to author our bodies in a desired/required slender form. Attention has shifted from ‘fat’ adult bodies that have thwarted reform, to the bodies of ‘innocent’ babes, drawing parents into the firing line. This thesis destabilises obesity scientists’ authority over truths about parents and obesity. It enacts a poststructural sensibility, using Foucault’s ethics of discomfort to disrupt the ease and certainty with which parents are known as responsible and blameworthy for fat on children’s bodies. Through an analysis of New Zealand based obesity scientists’ texts, personal obesity encounters and evocative analytical writing, this thesis journeys to a destination where it is possible to ponder parents otherwise.