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The Metamorphoses Of Fat - A History Of Obesity by Georges Vigarello, C. Jon Delogu is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Metamorphoses Of Fat - A History Of Obesity about?

Georges Vigarello maps the evolution of Western ideas about fat and fat people from the Middle Ages to the present, paying particular attention to the role of science, fashion, fitness crazes, and public health campaigns in shaping these views. While hefty bodies were once a sign of power, today those who struggle to lose weight are considered poor in character and weak in mind. Vigarello traces the eventual equation of fatness with infirmity and the way we have come to define ourselves and others in terms of body type. Vigarello begins with the medieval artists and intellectuals who treated heavy bodies as symbols of force and prosperity. He then follows the shift during the Renaissance and early modern period to courtly, medical, and religious codes that increasingly favored moderation and discouraged excess. Scientific advances in the eighteenth century also brought greater knowledge of food and the body's processes, recasting fatness as the "relaxed" antithesis of health. The body-as-mechanism metaphor intensified in the early nineteenth century, with the chemistry revolution and heightened attention to food-as-fuel, which turned the body into a kind of furnace or engine. Durin

Author

Georges Vigarello, C. Jon Delogu

Publisher

Columbia University Press 2016-07-12

Published

2016

Language

EN

ISBN

9780231159777

Subjects

Medical, Medicine