How pharmaceutical companies misappropriate fat acceptance

ABSTRACT

Pharmaceutical companies influence whether we perceive conditions as relevant to the medical sector and in need of pharmaceutical intervention (pharmaceuticalization). Recently, through coordinated media and professional campaigns, pharmaceutical companies are coming to influence our understanding of bodily size. Beyond merely affecting conversations about how weight should be understood and engaged with in healthcare, however, pharmaceutical companies are swaying how society approaches weight stigma. By elevating certain voices, those of organizations and clinicians with whom they partner, and not others, including fat acceptance activists, pharmaceutical companies are having a regressive impact on body acceptance veiled as “obesity” stigma advocacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Obesity
• weight loss
• conflicts of interest
• stigma
• pharmaceuticalization
• medicalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Fat and higher-weight are used throughout this manuscript non-pejoratively as neutral descriptors; obese/obesity (BMI ≥ 30) are presented in quotes to emphasize the contested nature of the pathologization of fatness (Meadows & Daníelsdóttir, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.