Maternal Bodies And Obesity: Rethinking Dominant Perspectives, Exploring A Path Less Travelled

Abstract

A perceived global obesity epidemic, accorded the imprimatur of the WHO, has led to a moral panic and quest for causation fuelled by a dominant biomedical discourse that constructs obesity as a facile issue of individual lifestyle choice, and a consequent spotlight on maternal bodies as a probable source of obesity. This thesis utilizes a feminist poststructural methodology in tandem with a SDOH lens to explore the meaning ascribed by two pregnant women to their everyday experiences of obesity. The result indicates a submersion of maternal obesity in a biomedico-moral discourse epitomizes their everyday experiences of constraining power relations. Notably, a singular biomedical approach to the multifaceted issue of maternal obesity in preclusion of a kaleidoscope of contextual factors, leads to a labeling of these women based on their bodyweight and upholds social inequities that make, paradoxically, the very maternal-fetal health it ostensibly seeks to promote the ultimate casualty.