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Newsweek: America’s War on the Overweight
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213646?GT1=43002
America’s War on the Overweight Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than ever. Why our overweight nation hates overweight people. By Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin | Newsweek Web Exclusive Aug 26, 2009 | Updated: 8:08 a.m. ET Aug 26, 2009 Practically the minute President Obama announced Regina M. Benjamin, a zaftig doctor who also has an M.B.A. and is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant," as a nominee for the post of Surgeon General, the criticism started. The attacks were vicious—Michael Karolchyk, owner of a Denver "anti-gym," told Fox News' Neil Cavuto, "Obesity is the No. 1 issue facing our country in terms of the health and wellness, and she has shown not that she was born this way, not that she woke up one day and was obese. She has shown through being lazy, and making poor food choices, that she's obese." "This is totally disgusting to have some one so big to be advocating health," wrote one YouTube commenter. The anger about Benjamin wasn't the only example of vitriol hurled at the overweight. Cintra Wilson, style columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote a column so disdainful of JCPenney's plus-size mannequins that the Times' ombsbudman later wrote that he could read "a virtual sneer" coming through her prose. A NEWSWEEK post about Glamour’s recent plus-size model (in fact, a normal-sized woman with a bit of a belly roll) had several commenters lashing out at the positive reaction the model was receiving. "This model issue is being used as a smoke screen to justify self-destructive lifestyle that cost me more money in health care costs," one wrote. Heath guru MeMe Roth has made a career out of bashing fat—she called size 12 American Idol Jordan Sparks a "bad role model" on national television, and derided size 2 Jennifer Love Hewitt for having cellulite. (That Roth is considered something of an extremist doesn't stop the media attention.) Virtually any news article about weight that is posted online garners a slew of comments from readers expressing disgust that people let their weight get so out of control. The specific target may change, but the words stay the same: Self-destructive. Disgusting. Disgraceful. Shameful. While the debate rages on about obesity and the best ways to deal with it, the attitudes Americans have toward those with extra pounds are only getting nastier. Just why do Americans hate fat people so much? Fat bias is nothing new. "Public outrage at other people's obesity has a lot to do with America from the turn of the 20th century to about World War I," says Deborah Levine, assistant professor of health policy and management at Providence College. The rise of fat hatred is often seen as connected to the changing American workplace; in the early 20th century, companies began to offer snacks to employees, white-collar jobs became more prominent, and fewer people exercised. As thinness became rarer, says Peter N. Stearns, author of Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West and professor of history at George Mason University, it was more prized, and conversely, fatness was more maligned. At the same time, people also paid a lot of attention to President Taft's girth; while Taft was large, he wasn't all that much heavier than earlier presidents. Newspapers questioned how his weight would affect diplomacy and solicited the funniest "fat Taft" joke. "This [period] is also when you get ready-to-wear clothing," says Levine. "For the first time, [people were] buying clothes in a certain size, and that encourages a comparison amongst other people." Actuarial tables began to connect weight and shorter lifespan, and cookbooks published around World War I targeted the overweight. "There was that idea that people who were overweight were hoarding resources needed for the war effort," Levine says. She adds that early concerns were that overweight American men would not be able to compete globally, participate in international business, or win wars. Fatness has always been seen as a slight on the American character. Ours is a nation that values hard work and discipline, and it's hard for us to accept that weight could be not just a struggle of will, even when the bulk of the research—and often our own personal experience—shows that the factors leading to weight gain are much more than just simple gluttony. "There's this general perception that weight can be controlled if you have enough willpower, that it's just about calories in and calories out," says Dr. Glen Gaesser, professor of exercise and wellness at Arizona State University and author of BigFat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health, and that perception leads the nonfat to believe that the overweight are not just unhealthy, but weak and lazy. Even though research suggests that there is a genetic propensity for obesity, and even though some obese people are technically healthier than their skinnier counterparts, the perception remains "[that] it's a failure to control ourselves. It violates everything we have learned about self control from a very young age," says Gaesser. In a country that still prides itself on its Puritanical ideals, the fat self is the "bad self," the epitome of greed, gluttony, and sloth. "There's a widespread belief that fat is controllable," says Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. "So then it's unlike a disability where you can have compassion; now you can blame the individual and attribute all kinds of mean qualities to them. Then consider the thinner people that are always watching what they eat carefully—fat people are symbols of what they can become if they weren't so virtuous." But considering that the U.S. has already become a size XL nation—66 percent of adults over 20 are considered overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control—why does the stigma, and the anger, remain? Call it a case of self-loathing. "A lot of people struggle themselves with their weight, and the same people that tend to get very angry at themselves for not being able to manage their weight are more likely to be biased against the obese," says Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. "I think that some of this is that anger is confusion between the anger that we have at ourselves and projecting that out onto other people." Her research indicates that younger women, who are under the most pressure to be thin and who are also the most likely to be self-critical, are the most likely to feel negatively toward fat people. As many women's magazines' cover lines note, losing the last five pounds can be a challenge. So why don't we have more compassion for people struggling to lose the first 50, 60, or 100? Some of it has to do with the psychological phenomenon known as the fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in other people are the result of their bad choices. Miss a goal at work? It's because the vendor was unreliable, and because your manager isn't giving you enough support, and because the power outage last week cut into premium sales time. That jerk next to you? He blew his quota because he's a bad planner, and because he spent too much time taking personal calls. The same can be true of weight: "From working with so many people struggling with their weight, I've seen it many times," says Andrew Geier, a postdoctoral fellow in the psychology department at Yale University. "They believe they're overweight due to a myriad of circumstances: as soon as my son goes to college, I'll have time to cook healthier meals; when my husband's shifts change at work, I can get to the gym sooner.…" But other people? They're overweight because they don't have the discipline to do the hard work and take off the weight, and that lack of discipline is an affront to our own hard work. (Never mind that weight loss is incredibly difficult to attain: Geier notes that even the most rigorous behavioral programs result in at most about a 12.5 percent decrease in weight, which would take a 350-pound man to a slimmer, but not svelte, 306 pounds). But why do the rest of us care so much? What is it about fat people that makes us so mad? As it turns out, we kind of like it. "People actually enjoy feeling angry," says Ryan Martin, associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, who cites studies done on people's emotions. "It makes them feel powerful, it makes them feel greater control, and they appreciate it for that reason." And with fat people designated as acceptable targets of rage—and with the prevalence of fat people in our lives, both in the malls and on the news—it's easy to find a target for some soul-clearing, ego-boosting ranting. And it may be, that like those World War I-era cookbook writers, we feel that obese people are robbing us of resources, whether it's space in a row of airline seats or our hard-earned tax dollars. Think of health ca when president Obama made reforming health care a priority, it led to an increased focus on obesity as a contributor to health-care costs. A recent article in Health Affairs, a public-policy journal, reported that obesity costs $147 billion a year, mainly in insurance premiums and taxes. At the same time, obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes have spiked, and, while diabetes can be treated, treatment is expensive. So the overweight, some people argue, are costing all of us money while refusing to alter the behavior that has put them in their predicament in the first place (i.e., overeating and not exercising). The reality is much more complicated. It's a fallacy to conflate the unhealthy action—overeating and not exercising—with the unhealthy appearance, says Schwartz: some overweight people run marathons; eat only organic, vegetarian fare; and have clean bills of health. Even so, yelling at the overweight to put down the doughnut is far from productive. "People are less likely to seek out healthy behaviors when they're criticized by friends, family, doctors, and others," says Schwartz. "If people tell you that you're disgusting or a slob enough times, you soon start to believe it." In fact, fat outrage might actually make health-care costs higher. In a study published in the 2005 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Abigail Saguy and Brian Riley found that many overweight people decide not to get help for medical conditions that are more treatable and more risky than obesity because they don't want to deal with their doctor's harassment about their weight. (For instance, a study from the University of North Carolina found that obese women are less likely to receive cervical exams than their thinner counterparts, in part because they worry about being embarrassed or belittled by the doctor because of their weight.) The bubbling rage against fat people in America has put researchers like Levine in a difficult position. On the one hand, she says, she wants to ensure that obesity is taken seriously as a medical problem, and pointing out the costs associated with obesity-related illnesses helps illustrate the severity of the situation. On the other hand, she says, doing so could increase the animosity people have toward the overweight, many of whom may already live healthy lives or may be working hard to make heathier choices. "The idea is to fight obesity and not obese people," she says, and then pauses. "But it's very hard for many people to disentangle the two." |
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Newsweek: America’s War on the Overweight
On Aug 29, 1:52*am, Billy wrote:
In article emailer.net, (Tina) wrote: http://www.newsweek.com/id/213646?GT1=43002 America’s War on the Overweight Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than ever. Why our overweight nation hates overweight people. By Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin | Newsweek Web Exclusive * Aug 26, 2009 | Updated: 8:08 a.m. ET Aug 26, 2009 Thanks for the article. It is a subject that should be irrelevant, but if that is not to be, then people should remember that we are all doing the best we can. Should you be judged on your intelligence, or looks? Should the developmentally disabled woman with the sweet laugh be mocked, and the churlish mathematician, who can describe the interaction between two mathematical models, be applauded? Perhaps your view of the environment displays more about you, than it does about the environment. -- ³When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.² -Archbishop Helder Camara http://tinyurl.com/o63rujhttp://coun...erts020709.htm Tina might want to check the laws concerning copyrights before making another post. |
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Newsweek: America¹s War on the Overweight
In article
, wrote: On Aug 29, 1:52*am, Billy wrote: In article emailer.net, (Tina) wrote: http://www.newsweek.com/id/213646?GT1=43002 America¹s War on the Overweight Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than ever. Why our overweight nation hates overweight people. By Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin | Newsweek Web Exclusive * Aug 26, 2009 | Updated: 8:08 a.m. ET Aug 26, 2009 Thanks for the article. Tina might want to check the laws concerning copyrights before making another post. True, NEWSWEEK may not want the attention they will get when people find out what an interesting site they have (it was my first time there). Next thing they'll have advertisers offering them more money to advertise on their site, and MAYBE, all they want is to be left alone ;O) Unless you some how are making scads of money by reposting an article, I wouldn't be, and haven't been concerned. In a somewhat related article, a fat (her term, not mine) nutritionist discusses health and fat, and the idea of "Health at Every Size". http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehu...09/08/28/the-f at-nutritionist-how-i-learned-to-love-my-body.aspx Posted Friday, August 28, 2009 7:11 AM The Fat Nutritionist: On Loving My Job and My Body Newsweek By Michelle Allison Let¹s start with this: I identify as fat because, well, I¹m fat, and also because I don¹t think being fat is necessarily a bad thingÑüit¹s just a thing. But calling myself a nutritionist feels like a fantastic act of audacity. I¹m still technically a student, though I¹ve completed the work core to my nutrition degree and am now taking a psychology minor. I initially got interested in nutrition by going on a diet to lose weight when I was 21. I did it to feel better about myself, because I hated my body, hated being fat. What I told everyone, naturally, was that I was losing weight for the good of my health. Except I didn¹t get healthy. I was constantly injured from overexercising, and I came down with a virus that developed into really nasty pneumonia that I couldn¹t seem to shake. What kept me on the diet was the intoxicating sense that, for the first time in my life, I was following the rules. I was doing it right. I was compliant. I was a model eater and exerciser. My habits were above reproach. In the end, I lost 30 pounds and gained a bunch of disorder behaviors. And I hated my body more intensely than before. I knew that wasn¹t how it was supposed to workÑüyou were supposed to lose weight and feel great about yourself and be healthy. But when I asked all of my dieting friends, no one could give me an answer. We were all so focused on eating the right number of calories and getting the right amount of exercise that no one had managed to figure this part out yetÑühow to actually be healthy? How to stop hating yourself? Around this time, I stumbled onto fat acceptance and Health at Every Size. In a nutshell, fat acceptance is the idea that human bodies naturally come in a range shapes and sizes, and that being fat is not necessarily pathological. It recognizes that there is a strong prejudice in our culture against fat people, resulting in yet another form of appearance-based discriminationÑüwhich is morally wrong, and requires a political response. Health at Every Size is complementary to fat acceptanceÑüit¹s the belief that people can do positive things for their health (like eat well and exercise) in a positive, compassionate, nonpunishing way, without pursuing weight loss, and that even fat people can be healthy by all other objective measures. It¹s the belief that self-acceptance, whatever your size, is good for youÑüespecially when combined with other health-promoting behaviors. * After discovering these things, I decided to make nutrition my profession, and no one has ever questioned my credibility or competence based on my body size. Even when I worked in one of the more traditional areas of nutrition practice, diabetes, my superiors never seemed bothered by my weight. I was hired even after competing against thin applicants, after all. And I believe my presence in the diabetes clinic as a nice-looking, intelligent fat lady, often with doughnut in hand, was perhaps comforting to patients, and deeply subversive to the notion of ³nutrition equals weight control.² I think people assume nutritionists all eat ³perfectly.² Well, I don¹t, and I don¹t know any dietitians, even thin ones, who do. I¹ve been lucky to work with dietitians who have all loved food and would never turn down a homemade brownie. As for myself, I¹m genuinely positive about food and my body. I¹m no longer at war with either one. When I stopped dieting, it was extremely difficult to relearn ³normal² eating. I read a lot of books and struggled on my own for five years. In the end, it was a dietitian who practiced Health at Every Size who taught me how. I learned to eat lovely, nourishing food without worry and stress, and my weight finally settled into a stable, happy place. Four years after being her client, I¹m still doing well, and I want to help other people the way she helped me, now that I have the education and experience to do so. I¹ve done some hard thinking about what it means to be healthy. First, I learned to separate a person¹s state of health from their value as a human being. Second, I stopped seeing healthiness as an end in itself, or as a reward for good behavior. Instead, I now define health as a combination of the cards you¹ve been dealt, and the way you choose to play them. Even if you¹re dealt a s--tty hand that can¹t be changed, you can still play your cards well enough to enjoy a meaningful life. AcceptanceÑüthat is, learning to accept the things you cannot changeÑüis key to health. This philosophy is embodied by the Serenity Prayer, by Jean-Paul Sartre¹s concepts of facticity and transcendence, by mindfulness theories, and, lastly, by fat acceptance and Health at Every Size. - Allison blogs at The Fat Nutritionist. -- ³When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.² -Archbishop Helder Camara http://tinyurl.com/o63ruj http://countercurrents.org/roberts020709.htm |
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Newsweek: America’s War on the Overweight
wrote:
On Aug 29, 1:52 am, Billy wrote: In article emailer.net, (Tina) wrote: http://www.newsweek.com/id/213646?GT1=43002 America’s War on the Overweight Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than ever. Why our overweight nation hates overweight people. By Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin | Newsweek Web Exclusive Aug 26, 2009 | Updated: 8:08 a.m. ET Aug 26, 2009 Thanks for the article. It is a subject that should be irrelevant, but if that is not to be, then people should remember that we are all doing the best we can. Should you be judged on your intelligence, or looks? Should the developmentally disabled woman with the sweet laugh be mocked, and the churlish mathematician, who can describe the interaction between two mathematical models, be applauded? Perhaps your view of the environment displays more about you, than it does about the environment. -- ³When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.² -Archbishop Helder Camara http://tinyurl.com/o63rujhttp://coun...erts020709.htm Tina might want to check the laws concerning copyrights before making another post. sarcasmOh my god! You mean somebody actually reposted an online magazine article on usenet? And they even included the URL of the article itself? What's the world coming to?/sarcasm -- (If you want to email me, lose the pretenses.) Don't settle for corporate values misrepresented as Christian values. Join the Project for a New American Populist Movement. http://www.populism.us "Everybody knows everything about all of us. That's too much knowledge. I can't get behind that."--William Shatner featuring Henry Rollins "Knee-jerk disdain of Government cannot rebuild our levees or fix our schools."--President Obama -- Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service -------http://www.NewsDemon.com------ Unlimited Access, Anonymous Accounts, Uncensored Broadband Access |
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