Abstract
This article explores the postoperative experiences of weight loss surgery patients. More specifically, it investigates why bariatric patients seek out and form connection to similarly situated others in online and in-person support forums. Based on a thematic analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews with individuals who have had bariatric surgery, it is argued that the experience of having been medically classified as obese or severely obese, a long history of failed dieting attempts, fears of future morbidity and mortality, and then undergoing bariatric surgery serve as an axis around which some individuals interact, create identity, and form community. The perceived lack of postoperative support from home bariatric clinics, inadequate provider knowledge about the particularities of bariatric bodies, and the fact that patients must “work with” their surgeries to avoid postoperative adverse events are additional drivers for the formation of such bariatric kinship. It is argued that Paul Rabinow’s concept of “biosociality” provides a helpful theoretical frame for understanding these processes. However, just as the aforementioned factors push bariatric patients together, tensions around the type of bariatric procedure undergone, the amount of weight loss, and economic access to reconstructive plastic surgery cause conflict, leading to the formation of subgroups within bariatric communities. It is argued that, ultimately, bariatric biosocialities are spaces in which bariatric patients collectively work to achieve normative health and aesthetic standards. However, these spaces also reflect highly complex, sometimes divergent and conflictual, and often ambivalent frameworks of understanding and experience.
Highlights
During the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries as population-level body mass index (BMI) climbed and obesity became referred to as an epidemic (Boero, 2012), the United States witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of bariatric surgeries performed
The analysis suggests that bariatric communities become spaces in which individuals who have had WLS collectively negotiate the physical, physiological, psychological, and social changes that are typical of postoperative life
Bariatric patients seek one another out around the following common experiences: having been medically classified as obese or severely obese; having felt profound hopelessness over a lifelong history of unsuccessful dieting and escalating body weights; being highly concerned over current and future weight-related health risks; undergoing WLS; contending with the adjustments required of bariatric surgery; fears and realities of weight regain; and a perceived lack of postoperative support from home bariatric clinics as well as inadequate provider knowledge about the particularities of bariatric bodies
Summary
During the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries as population-level body mass index (BMI) climbed and obesity became referred to as an epidemic (Boero, 2012), the United States witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of bariatric surgeries ( known as weight loss surgery [WLS]) performed. It is reasonable to assert that rising anxieties related to the “epidemic” nature of obesity drove this increase. During this time, obesity was increasingly described in media coverage in terms of crisis, urgency, and alarm with a significant proportion of news articles using war metaphors to describe the vital need to take action (Saguy & Almeling, 2008; Saguy & Riley, 2005). In 2006, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona referred to obesity as “the terror within” that would destroy the United
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