Nobody told me how big it could be! Sociocultural construction of the bodies of people with acromegaly

Abstract

This work presents some results of the research carried out in Mexico City, between 2010 and 2012, in the Acromegaly Association, with a group of men and women suffering from the disease. Acromegaly is a condition that entails a series of degenerative physical transformations and changes the perception that people have of their body image. The objective of this article is to address the sociocultural construction of the acromegalic body, based on the experiences and stories of these subjects as social actors. Following the phenomenological perspective, the research is based on a qualitative methodology, which allowed exploring and interpreting the perceptions and experiences embodied in the bodies of those who face this health-disease process, in articulation with the theoretical proposal of Guzmán (2008), which considers six dimensions in the body.

Keywords: Acromegaly, body image, body schema, body posture, experience.