Weight Loss Rhetorics

I’m starting a new research project that looks at the technical rhetorics related to weight loss surgery from a feminist perspective. I have been hearing and learning about these surgeries for over 10 years while I served on my institution’s Biomedical Institutional Review Board. There are scientific studies that suggest that these surgeries “cure” diabetes and other health conditions although investigators are still studying why this happens.

This past October, I read a statistic recently that 86% of people who get these surgeries are women. Interestingly, men and women both experience diabetes at approximately the same percentage. If this is the case, and these surgeries primarily serve to help save lives and improve lives, why aren’t more men having these surgeries and having evasive things done to their internal organs in order to lose weight? Along the way, I have been researching questions about the risks involved in these surgeries and how they are communicated and the origin of the body mass index (BMI), and how its application works to persuade.

To help compile research, websites, and news articles related to this project, I have started this blog, and I look forward to feedback and comments.