The 'obese' female body has often been portrayed as the 'other' to the slender body. However, this process of 'othering', or viewing as different, has created a repressive discourse, where 'excess' has increasingly come to be studied as a 'physical abnormality' or a signifier of a 'personality defect'. A tendency to stabilise the implications of obesity through medical, biological or statistical data has been a recurring characteristic of Westem society's current cultural view of obesity.