The Cultural Image of the Fat Poor in German News Media

Abstract

This chapter explores the cultural image of the fat poor and its use in journalistic text in Germany. In the cultural image of the fat poor, the discourses on poverty and obesity merge and imagine both conditions as consequences of certain characteristics, attitudes and behaviors. These include laziness, immobility, consumption without productivity and lack of willpower and self-discipline. The cultural image of the fat poor is a negatively connoted, stereotypical idea appearing in public and political discourse, entertainment, popular culture and news media. It marks a historical shift away from imaging the poor as thin and starving. The chapter introduces the concept fat poor, traces similarities between the discourses on poverty and on obesity and analyzes patterns of fat poor in journalistic text. A case study illustrates the image’s composition, its logic and functions and the politics the cultural image of the fat poor engages in: a combined culturalization and individualization of poverty, which both leads to depoliticizing and deeconomizing poverty and thus to veiling its systemic character.