Power and Surveillance: The Critical Examination of the Medical Construction of Fat

Abstract

Stigmatization and discrimination against individuals with higher body weights occur in multifarious ways in different cultures. Fatness was not a medical condition or even a health issue a century before. Medical field was more concerned about slenderness.  But fatness is assessed as a medical condition nowadays. Upswing in the pathologization of fatness, through which the medical industries thrive is shocking. This paper tries to analyze, with the help of the Foucauldian terminologies- power, panopticon and surveillance, how and why the medical industry medicalizes fat.