Germans are less and less active and are becoming “fatter and fatter.”16 There is always a handy scientific study to quote from when the press or the political sphere declares that around half of all Germans are overweight and about one-fifth obese. More than twothirds of Americans are said to be overweight and almost 40 percent obese, especially in rural areas. Depending on state and demographic group, the obesity rate rises to 55 percent, the key elements being social status, level of poverty and, interwoven with these factors, race and gender. In other words, poor black women in Mississippi are among the fattest of the fat. The particularly fat are considered to have failed to meet the demands of a liberal society. Moreover, fatness is viewed as pathological. It is therefore referred to, using medical terminology, as obesity. Since the late twentieth century, fatness has even been called an epidemic. It is not spread by a virus, but has infected large numbers of people due to certain living conditions and circumstances. The US government officially adopted this medical terminology in 2001 and literally declared war on obesity the same year. The WHO, meanwhile, has for some time been referring to “globesity” to highlight the increasingly global scale of this phenomenon.17
I do not intend (and am not qualified) to evaluate the health effects of too much or too little body fat here. The various statements made on this topic are, in any case, highly controversial, while for years the seemingly straightforward relationship between body fat and health has become increasingly contested. For example, the Body Mass Index (BMI) has ceased to be a widely recognized indicator of body fat. Many commentators doubt that the BMI is an effective predictor of disorders and mortality rates. Recent studies have in fact shown that at least a certain amount of body fat is beneficial to one’s health. What is more, some research findings are more likely to be published and receive more attention than others, and those who do not subscribe to the prevalent fatphobia seem to experience a certain publication bias.18 The social demonization of fatness continues virtually unabated. Here the deceptive power of the visible seems to be at work. People feel they can see with their own eyes that fat cannot possibly be a good thing, but makes one sluggish and immobile.19
My concern here is not with what is truly healthy or unhealthy, but with the power and persistence of the discourse on fatness and fitness and its social effects. The discourse on fatness is deeply political in many ways. First there is the classic political level. In 2007, the German government adopted the “Fit Not Fat Action Plan,” and launched a campaign known as “IN FORM. Germany’s Initiative for Healthy Eating and More Exercise” in 2008. Initiatives of this kind have been instigated since the 1970s. Fit Not Fat and IN FORM are intended to embed the “healthy lifestyle as a social value” by 2020, improve Germans’ eating habits and increase their physical activity. But it is not laws or punishment that are to pave the way for these changes. Instead, the goal is to appropriately shape the overall framework within which people make decisions and take action, providing them with all sorts of incentives. Government agencies and representatives should be good role models, provide knowledge and information, and motivate people to eat better and exercise more. Germans can continue to decide freely whether to eat fries or salad, whether to stay at home and be couch potatoes or go for a bike ride. But the decision-making architecture should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate a healthy choice. This kind of politics is called “nudging,” a form of governance that seeks to prod or steer citizens to make voluntary decisions that are viewed as “better” and “healthier.” Certainly, from this perspective, free individuals in free societies should make their decisions freely. But at the same time, they should make decisions that are conducive to their own productivity and, therefore, to that of the community. “Prevention,” as the first sentence of the Fit Not Fat action plan emphasizes, “is an investment in the future.”20
Michelle Obama received a great deal of public attention as First Lady of the United States, and it reached its apogee through her campaign against fat. Her “Let’s Move” program was aimed primarily at African American children, the goal being to motivate them to exercise more and eat better. Obama privileged information, incentives, the cooperation of school cafeterias and industry, and her own status as role model. She grew vegetables in the White House garden, cooked with children, skipped, danced, lifted weights, and did push-ups as she made her way through the American media landscape. Of course, the First Lady was aware that a program like “Let’s Move” cannot succeed by issuing directives and that fitness cannot be enforced politically. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg failed spectacularly when he tried to ban the sale of soft drinks by “food service establishments” in cups of more than 16 ounces in 2014 (a similar fate befell the German Greens in 2013 with their “Veggieday”). The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled against Bloomberg’s “Soda Ban” because the New York City Board of Health lacked the authority to issue such a prohibition. The public and political battle, however, focused not on the powers of institutions, but on civil liberties. The opponents of the Soda Ban assailed the “nanny state” and its alleged fantasies of omnipotence. Michelle Obama, meanwhile, was aware of the tremendous importance of freedom of choice and decision as a political principle, a precept that has shaped the United States since its birth, attaining unprecedented heights since the 1970s. Obama thus eschewed a ban-oriented approach. Instead, she sought to mold the architecture of decision making in such a way as “to make the healthy choice the easy choice,” as she herself put it. Nonetheless, Republicans accused her of state interventionism, highlighting the dogged nature of American battles over freedom of choice and decision.21
But the political dimension of the discourse on fitness and fatness goes far beyond the classic sphere of politics. It is about more than the actions of lawmakers and members of government, action plans, controversial statutory prohibitions, or sugar and fat taxes.22 A culture and society that draws its strength and success from the productive capacity of individuals and the population as a whole may be described, with Michel Foucault, as biopolitical.23 The “birth of biopolitics” took place in the nineteenth century, a process I describe in more detail in the next chapter. Here I give the reader advance notice that a biopolitical order has its sights set on the population and its potential, and it defines and positions people and groups through their bodies and bodily form. Such an order regulates their access to resources and social participation and thus influences the recognition they may experience as productive members of society. Body shape becomes a sign of the ability to make responsible decisions, to function in a free, competitive society and to aid its development. Hence, body shape decides who gets to be a homo politicus. Fatness is believed to reveal a lack of these abilities. Just as self-trackers are the prototypical embodiment of the biopolitical fitness society, and supposedly even demonstrate the desire to be and the attempt “to become a better human” (as producers of smartwatches want to make us believe), fatness seems to stand for a dearth of decision-making ability, productive capacity, and motivation.24
The crisis scenarios ramifying out from the alleged epidemic of obesity, then, bear witness to more than an individual problem. En masse, as the cover of the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic shows so clearly, fat bodies seem to signal a crisis of liberal society, its functioning and principles (see figure 2). The corpulent Statue of Liberty carries an unambiguous message. The survival of the social order, which is based on freedom and builds on the pursuit of happiness, on autonomous action and motivation, is at risk from body fat. In fact, this social order appears to be facing imminent collapse. Slimness, agility, fitness: in an age of neoliberalism and flexible capitalism, these terms are used more than ever to describe ideal individuals and their bodies. Such terms also serve to characterize the performance of society, economy, and state. Lean bodies for a lean state, fit (typically freelance) employees for fit companies and their “lean production.”25
Figure 2 Cover of The Atlantic, May 2010
“Neoliberalism” denotes
