This paper focuses on the study of obesity as a morality issue in England and France. Now considered by experts to be a disease and an “epidemic”, obesity has for decades been defined as an individual issue with strong moral implications. Studies tend to show that obese people are viewed as selfish, impotent, lazy and unattractive; they are stigmatized in every aspect of their life, from their work to their education or health. The medicalization process that occurred in a very thorough way since the 1950s has not changed that fact that obesity continues to carry a lot of symbolic and cultural dimensions that have a lot to do with the cultural promotion of beauty in our modern societies. From a qualitative analysis led in two countries (England and France), we would like to stress in this paper how governments tried to regulate a problem long considered to arise from bad individual behaviours. The problem has finally been put on the political agenda in the two countries thanks to a change in its definition. This change was the result of the political mobilization of experts in epidemiology and nutrition who were able to present obesity as a complex problem requiring political attention, and not a moral problem that only requires individual change. Yet, we would show that despite their commitment not to stigmatize individuals, governments have shown a propensity to individualize their public policies against obesity, leading to a greater moralization of the issue.
