Date of Award
2017
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Department
Art
Sub-Department
Creative Writing
First Advisor
James Barilla
Abstract
On March 24, 2010, my father walked into a hospital in North Carolina for an elective gastric bypass procedure; by Easter Sunday, it had become uncertain whether he would ever walk back out. Part memoir, part cultural analysis, Limited By Body Habitus: An American Fat Story traces the catastrophic consequences of my father’s botched gastric bypass surgery and examines the pervasive fat prejudice in the United States. As I tell the story of caring for my critically ill father while trying to navigate my complicated relationship with my mother, I wrestle with my own history of fat hatred. Additionally, I juxtapose our family disaster with another disaster that was occurring concurrently hundreds of miles away—the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that lasted for 87 days. By interweaving excerpts from medical records, journal entries, letters, and other primary and secondary sources into my story, I attempt to deconstruct the dominant narrative surrounding the “obesity epidemic” and complicate previously held beliefs about fat.
Rights
© 2017, Jennifer Renee Blevins
Recommended Citation
Blevins, J. R.(2017). Limited by Body Habitus: An American Fat Story. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4168