A discursive look at large bodies--implications for discursive approaches in nursing and health research.

This article illuminates discursive constructions of large bodies in contemporary society and discusses what discursive approaches might add to health care. Today, the World Health Organization describes a current "epidemic of obesity" and classifies large bodies as a medical condition. Texts on the obesity epidemic often draw upon alarming perspectives that involve associations of threat and catastrophe. The concern we see for body size in contemporary discourse is not new. Understandings of body size in Western societies are highly cultural and normative and could be different. The way we approach large bodies affects health care practice as well as subjects' self-perceptions.