• What s Wrong with .

The United States, we are told, is facing an obesity epidemic-a "battle of the bulge" of not just national, but global proportions-that requires drastic and immediate action. Experts in the media, medical science, and government alike are scrambling to find answers. What or who is responsible for this crisis, and what can we do to stop it? Abigail Saguy argues that these fraught and frantic debates obscure a more important question: How has ness come to be understood as a public crisis at all? Why, she asks, has the view of "" as a problem-a symptom of immorality, a medical pathology, a public epidemic-come to dominate more positive framings of weight-as consistent with , beauty, or a legitimate rights cl-in public discourse? Why are heavy individuals singled out for blame? And what are the consequences of understanding weight in these ways? What's Wrong with ? presents each of the various ways in which is understood in America today, examining the implications of understanding ness as a risk, disease, and epidemic, and revealing why we've come to understand the issue in these terms, despite considerable scientific uncertainty and debate. Saguy shows how debates over the relationship between body size and risk take place within a larger, though often invisible, contest over whether we should understand ness as obesity at all. Moreover, she reveals that public discussions of the "obesity crisis" do more harm than good, leading to bullying, weight-based discrimination, and misdiagnoses. Showing that the medical framing of is literally making us , What's Wrong with ? provides a crucial corrective to our society's misplaced obsession with weight.