Almost every day there is media coverage about that horror of horrors, the "obesity epidemic." It's in the mainstream as well as the anti-establishment alternative media. The folks that eschew traditional medicine for alternative healing are just as righteously indignant about the shame of obesity as the hospital crowd. And whether it is Dr. Phil, or Oz, the CEO of an organic foods company, or a woman working to create local foodsheds in New Mexico, everyone uses misconstrued statistics about fat people to elicit shock and disgust from their audiences.
Often the news stinks so obviously of corporate interests that it's hard to believe anyone would take it seriously. A recently published study, sponsored by NCCI Holdings, "the nation's largest provider of worker's compensation data" posited that fat people are more likely to suffer medical complications after workplace injuries (to the tune of an average of 75 visits to the doctor versus 3 for the thin-bodied according to one reporter, or 30-60 times higher costs for the worker's comp claim). Studies like that don't bode well for the future of medical care available to the fat.
Sometimes the stories are about breakthroughs by a medical community obsessed with eradicating the causes of obesity (for which I should be grateful?). According to one recent article fat is literally caused by the dirty air we breathe. Another points back to how women behave during pregnancy. One can only imagine that in the not-too-distant future medical insurance will only available for those fat people who can afford to self-insure and obese women will be barred from having kids. If thin women accidentally pop out fat kids, there will be hell to pay (or, at the least, huge medical bills and the threat of having one's children taken away "for their own good"). There have already been cases where fat kids were taken from their parents, who are assumed to have been abusing the kids by "letting them" get fat.
Aside from the medicalization of fat and its supposed antidotes, modern U.S. culture is one obsessed with myths of “instant” transformations from fat to thin. Perhaps this has something to do with movies - where time is compressed into only the most compelling moments, where GI Jane transforms herself into a hard-bodied fighting machine in less than an hour. Or TV, where from the comfort of our couches we can witness fat people suffer for a few weeks to see who will come out The Biggest Loser.
Often the news stinks so obviously of corporate interests that it's hard to believe anyone would take it seriously. A recently published study, sponsored by NCCI Holdings, "the nation's largest provider of worker's compensation data" posited that fat people are more likely to suffer medical complications after workplace injuries (to the tune of an average of 75 visits to the doctor versus 3 for the thin-bodied according to one reporter, or 30-60 times higher costs for the worker's comp claim). Studies like that don't bode well for the future of medical care available to the fat.
Sometimes the stories are about breakthroughs by a medical community obsessed with eradicating the causes of obesity (for which I should be grateful?). According to one recent article fat is literally caused by the dirty air we breathe. Another points back to how women behave during pregnancy. One can only imagine that in the not-too-distant future medical insurance will only available for those fat people who can afford to self-insure and obese women will be barred from having kids. If thin women accidentally pop out fat kids, there will be hell to pay (or, at the least, huge medical bills and the threat of having one's children taken away "for their own good"). There have already been cases where fat kids were taken from their parents, who are assumed to have been abusing the kids by "letting them" get fat.
Aside from the medicalization of fat and its supposed antidotes, modern U.S. culture is one obsessed with myths of “instant” transformations from fat to thin. Perhaps this has something to do with movies - where time is compressed into only the most compelling moments, where GI Jane transforms herself into a hard-bodied fighting machine in less than an hour. Or TV, where from the comfort of our couches we can witness fat people suffer for a few weeks to see who will come out The Biggest Loser.
We love to watch other people survive punishment and come out victorious. The problem is, we don't do much analysis of what’s at stake with our misconstrued notion of victory. Nor do we seem to be able to see the larger issues at play (power, the misrepresentation and skewing of information, the accumulation of capital, blaming the individual, warped ideas of beauty and, of course, all those “isms” we were supposed to get over in the 90s).
Whether we are being bombarded by hard news or shown gruesomely optimistic photos of someone’s “before” and “after” transformation, at all times the message is being sent that fat people (women more than men) are unhealthy, untoward and must be changed. This is both outrageous and painful and something we should all be working to stop.
Whether you are thin or fat, whether you love your body or can’t stand to look in the mirror, you should be incredulous about the so-called obesity epidemic and about the interests behind the manipulated statistics. This creates fat people as easy targets who can’t hide (unlike those reporters who occasionally put on a “fat suit” to see what it’s like to live for a day as an object of scorn, I have no such option to appear other than as I am). And the targeting leads to fat people who mindlessly accept themselves as weak and diseased. They internalize the exterior forces at play and believe they would be happier, healthier, live longer and make everyone around them more relaxed if only they could lose that pesky weight.
The notion that the obese are hiding behind our fat is incongruous with the experience of walking out the door into the public eye as a fat woman. Believe me, hiding is one thing fat people do not have the option of doing. God forbid you are a fat and diseased. Then you are simply the worst (and expected) outcome imaginable, a hopeless cause, a suck on the economy and a physical reminder of death. After all, I’m not just fat, I’m morbidly obese. There’s not a bigger downer in this culture than someone who reminds us of our own inescapable future.
I stopped dieting years ago. I made the choice as a political act of rebellion, recognizing that a society which continually reinforces how bad I am because of my body must really be messed up. There's a word for it. Hegemony. But making that choice to fight the power doesn’t make it easy.
You nailed it with the paragraph about before and after photos and how we all have to do something. What is so right on about what you're saying is that marketing fatness as an affliction that needs to be fixed creates a fake consumer market. And really, this borders on Orwellian groupthink. And that is frightening.
ReplyDeleteYou are a great writer Jenny! Heather C
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