Abstract
The case of obesity in Mexico constitutes an emblematic example of how, in the messages emitted by public health television campaigns, strong beliefs regarding the issue of body weight prevail. The main objective is to reflect on certain epistemological effects that abound in biomedical media narratives related to obesity. To do so, aspects of the rhetoric employed in two initiatives of the Ministry of Public Health - Muévete y Métete en Cintura [Move Around and Slim Down] in 2008 and the 5 Steps Program in 2011 - are analyzed, as is the discourse surrounding the tax measure introduced by the Mexican tax service in 2017. This study also looks at other similar practices that, although taking place outside of Mexico, stoke the fires of lipophobism, such as the "Cormillot industry" in Argentina. As a result, a strong discursive influx stemming from a reductionist vision of bodily diversity has been identified, supported by the pathologization of fat bodies through moral prejudices and biased generalizations.
Highlights
The case of obesity in Mexico constitutes an emblematic example of how, in the messages emitted by public health television campaigns, strong beliefs regarding the issue of body weight prevail
This study also looks at other similar practices that, although taking place outside of Mexico, stoke the fires of lipophobism, such as the “Cormillot industry” in Argentina
No Comercial — Esta obra no puede ser utilizada con finalidades comerciales, a menos que se obtenga el permiso
Summary
Cuando se da a conocer un elevado incremento de los datos estadísticos en torno a alguna situación, se considere inmediatamente que los hechos han cambiado. Las campañas transmitidas en los medios de comunicación masiva, en especial el televisivo, fueron incrementando el entusiasmo por instaurar, en la audiencia, una formidable confianza en estrategias de cuantificación del fenómeno; el método de medición de índice de masa corporal y el método de medición de circunferencia de cintura constituyen dos casos prototípicos. Por otro lado, alimentan una concepción hipersimplificada de los problemas asociados al peso corporal, los cuales son imaginados como si el peso dependiera exclusivamente de las cantidades de alimento ingeridas y gastadas. A continuación, se revisará escuetamente uno de los ya mencionados (y más popularizados) instrumentos de medición del peso corporal, el afamado índice de masa corporal (IMC), para pasar luego a una reflexión sobre algunas de sus incisivas implicaciones
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