Echidne has a really good post up now about the overt hostility towards fat people, and how it relates to notions about responsibility and the shunning of those who we think of ill by their own hand.
Something similar is visible on many discussions about health issues. An illness is seen as “deserved” if the patient ever engaged in any activity which is now known to be correlated with that illness, and the illness itself is now viewed as punishment for evil deeds. Illness becomes a moral condition and the search for its epidemiology becomes a court case where the jury looks for that one decision where the patient went wrong, the one sin for which the current pain and suffering might be a just punishment.
In some ways we have stepped out of the framework where illnesses were caused by demons and into the scientifically medical one. But in other ways we have brought those demons with us, transformed into a different type of an ethical judgment or into a search of a different type of causal explanation, and that little hidden demon is what allows us now to judge other people without feeling any embarrassment over doing so. After all, if medical science tells us that some patients “caused” their own illnesses, then it is simply natural that we, too, point out that causal mechanism in all sorts of daily interactions.
This kind of discourse on illness is on the rise lately, because conservatives who are opposed to universal health care are rapidly trying to redefine pretty much all illness as a matter of personal responsibility to avoid taking collective responsibility for the health and well-being of citizens. Even the horrible and surely unintended car accident of the Frost family became an attempt to talk about “responsibility”, as if all misfortune could be attributed to a failure of will.
It’s an interesting push and pull, because the discourse around the rights of the sick and injured and the rights of fat people (or pregnant women, for that matter) always comes back to this odd belief that rights should only be extended to people based on what they can’t help. Which is to say, there’s the pity element going on, as if rights to women and non-white minorities came with a hefty dose of, “Poor things, can’t help being inferior.” The tide is turning on gay rights in no small part because of the argument that you can’t “help” being gay, which leaves bisexuals and transgendered people out in the cold, and also leaves conservatives in this dizzying and angry spot—-the entire “ex-gay” thing is a way of saying, “Yeah well you can’t help who you want to fuck, maybe, but you have control over whether you’re in the closet, so get your ass back in it.” The “you can’t help it” notion is frustrating to people fighting for equality, because it’s an implicit compromise with the phony idea that group X is actually inferior, but people have swallowed it because they understand that first you start getting the rights and then the social equality will follow. First march under the banner of civil rights, and then you get “black is beautiful”. First get the vote, then throw the corsets in the trash. The celebration of gay culture follows shortly on the heels of the shutdown of raids of gay bars.
This pity-then-acceptance curve puts fat activists in a quandary, because it’s widely accepted that being fat is in fact something you can help and therefore the onus is on the fat people to lose weight and not on the rest of us to treat them with decency. And understanding the arch of pity-to-acceptance, fat activists have put a lot of work into arguing that dieting doesn’t work, and that obesity is genetic. That tactic might work, but then again, it might not. One issue that’s going to keep coming up is that people successfully lose and keep off 10, 15, 20 pounds all the time, and erroneously think that a 20 pound loss for me can means a 150 pound loss for you. If you can disabuse people of that notion, then quite possibly the pity-than-acceptance route might work for fat activists.
But there is another model that is being used co-currently, which is the one used to argue for the rights of pregnant women. Pregnancy is a condition that is almost inarguably the result of something you’ve done in the past. And when feminists argue for the rights of pregnant women (to terminate, to drink half a glass of wine in public without being berated, to choose their own childbirth plan), they find that it’s not a winning, but a losing game to argue for some pity because of this. Instead, we’ve had to go the “so what” route—so what if the pregnant woman “did something” to get that way? Is it a crime to fuck? Do you want it to be a crime to fuck? For women or just for men? The beauty of the argument is that no one can walk around it; few people are willing to come right out and say yes, that sexual pleasure should be banned just because the idea of (other) people getting off makes them uneasy. In my mind, the more convincing argument for fat acceptance has always been that—it’s not mine to tell you what kind of food to put in your mouth, or to dictate to you what your pleasures are.
I’m not saying this model or that is a good one. Just spilling some thoughts on different strategies. It seems to me that disgust with fat people comes from the same place that the Junior Anti-Sex League does, this desire to separate those who are of the body and going to DIE from the rest of us. And of course, we all eat and fuck (or at least have sexual urges), and going on stampeding efforts to separate the good from the bad—from those who sin and face the wages of death from the holy and the pure—is so much pissing in the wind.
This is definitly where the idea of free will is a pretty bad problem…
The relative risk of obesity for acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) is around 1.3, with confidence intervals nudging the null (1.0 to 1.6). In other words, obesity alone raises risk by about the same amount as certain types of air pollution (by about 25-30%), where as things like smoking, high blood pressure, poor blood lipid profile, and diabetes raise that risk by 250-450%!
In other words, BMI is a poor prognostic tool when it comes to heart disease - and a number of other diseases - when compared to other readily available screening tools. Yet a high BMI can get you shitlisted for insurance, even if you have excellent scores on the far more sensitive and predictive screening tests (although some life insurers, like mine, toss out BMI if you have really good numbers on the other indicators).
The main problem: “obesity”, as it is statistically defined (not defined in terms of actual body fatness, which it predicts rather poorly on an individual level), is associated with a number of things - albeit weakly - but has never been demonstrated to be a CAUSE of those things rather than an EFFECT of those things. This is brutally true of diabetes type II, which can make some people fatter before it is clinically detected.
The secondary problem is few popular science writers know the difference and can explain the difference. Many like to get all high and mighty about being journalists but don’t understand how little they understand about the science.
We certainly apply the “it’s your fault” rationale to smokers, via increased cigarette taxes which (ostensibly) go into paying for the additional health care costs that smokers in general (though not each smoker individually) generate.
Would the arguments you have made apply to smokers as well?
This may have come up in the free will thread, I didn’t read it all, but I think there also is an element of fear to some of this. People want to believe they can control these things. The idea that there’s an element of randomness to bad things is too much too handle.
I’m fat, and honestly a bit divided about fat acceptance. Yes, it would be nice if there were far fewer “looks” at my thin wife and I when we are out in public, and if the undertone of (fat == (lazy AND stupid)) were diminished. OTOH, I’ve also been thin before and know that it is possible for my body type to be thin and I honestly prefer it that way.
Still for me being fat is not really an indictment of me but of the world around me. Healthy food is expensive; time to work out is short; the number of good-paying jobs requiring physical work diminishes with each generation. If there were more opportunities for a 40-hour (or better yet a 30-hour) work week that paid the bills and enough access to exercise and/or equipment all across society I think the number of fat people would drop rapidly until those who were fat really were just the people genetically predisposed for it.
The other thing that pisses me off about fat is the fact that powerful white men are *expected* to be fat as a norm, and those who aren’t are given even more special status as “rugged” successful men. (On the flip side, being fat and female or fat and black is *always* condemned.) Being a fat white man might make you *feel* bad but it won’t seriously stop you from getting a house, loan, or job (even though a thinner person might get your 1st choice, you will almost certainly get other chances). This pretty much ruins the chance for most other fat white men to link the self-esteem issues we/they experience as a part of being fat with the negative messages constantly bombarding women and POC and the unfair playing field they have to navigate. We fat white men get to feel bad about being fat, yet we deny ourselves the ability to make our fatness an indictment of society and instead project even more negativity at others. “I’m fat and it sucks, but that’s just my problem, I don’t blame others for it. Some day I’ll get off my duff and fix it, and that’s the kind of attitude women and POC should be after rather than trying to blame others for their problems.”
@anony,
I know your right (about people wanting to maintain an illusion of control) but I don’t quite understand the appeal. If/when I develop some form of cancer I know I’ll be a lot happier thinking it was bad luck than looking back over my entire life and trying to figure out what I did wrong or what I did to deserve it.
Are there really enough skinny non-sick people around to paint all the rest of us as failures without anyone pushing back? Are we as individuals that susceptible to the idea that my illness/pregnancy/weight gain is due to unforseen factors but your illness/pregnancy/weight gain is due to your total lack of moral fortitude?
In the last thread most people seemed to agree that having personal experience with something generally made one more compassionate to others going through the same thing, but maybe this is not as true as we would like.
Yeah, anony, a combination of fear and denial I think. Fear that it is all random and it could happen to them, and instant denial. Which means they actually give up any real control they have over the situation (the ability that we as a society have to ease the burden), because they want to convince themselves that they have ABSOLUTE control.
Carovee,
I see two possibilities:
1. People who have had personal experiences with, say, illness are still convinced that there’s something they could have done–so they walk around with a ton of guilt that they then place on anyone else in the same situation; or
2. A “for me but not for thee” philosophy rules the day. It was just my bad luck, but you should have known better and made better choices.
I was just thinking about the smokers…and to a larger extent anyone suffering from an addiction. It’s been proposed here in canada by some PC members that smokers have caused their own illnesses and therefore should have to wait longer to be cared for by the system. It’s kinda stupid sine I know plenty of people who never smoked and had gotten lymphoma and lung cancer… Anyway, when exactly did it become socially acceptable to shun smokers? It was like one day I could smoke and that was fine and then the next day I’m walking down the street and complete strangers are walking up to me and making snide remarks about my smoking… not that I condone smoking which obviously causes disease but it is an addiction. oi, i’ve forgotten my point.
It’s actually a very old belief, gussied up in new “scientific” clothes. My dad told me that when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, my grandfather said, “Well, she must have done something pretty bad for God to give her cancer.”
Have I mentioned that my dad hated his father for many good reasons? He did at least bite his tongue when his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer instead of saying what he really wanted to say.
The only difference now is that people use “scientific” reasons to blame people for the diseases they get instead of openly declaring it to be God’s judgement. Since most diseases like cancer have multiple causes, there’s always some way to fix the blame on the patient.
What about people who choose to have more than 1 or 2 children? Especially if the two children they have are different sexes. They brought that on themselves. Should *we* have to pay for the medical expenses of said children?
Oh by the way I have 4 children. Birth order is boy, girl, boy, girl.
This (and Echidne’s) is an incredibly important post for understanding not just fat as a public issue but *all* issues relating to rights in our mixed up society. I’ve been having this conversation all year with someone and I’m workign on a diary over at Kos to examine my conclusions but you’ve already sort of covered them in a nutshell. Basically its this: conservatives won’t help anyone else unless they can either
1) see the misfortune as totally random
2) first condemn the person for their manifold moral or intellectual failings.
Over and over and over I’ve had these strange conversations with my friend in which he eventually agrees he’d like to help x person but only if that person humiliates him or herself and begs for the help admitting total fault and liability in the situation. Almost no matter what the situation. And one of his biggest beefs, as a conservative, is the *failure of liberals to condemn people* before offering help. Before starting an anti drunk driving campaign, for example, we should humiliate people whose relatives have died driving drunk. Before helping out a woman who has too many children and not enough money we should reproach her for having the children…etc…etc…etc…
I agree with you about the strange moral valence ascribed to people’s life situations–the notion that people are only poor, or only have sick kids, because of some mysterous “choice” they made that they should have/could have avoided has indeed taken on an almost religious dimension. Its as though people have slammed together three different models for human action:
rational choice theory
free market theories
and sin/moral turpitude/theological approaches to sin.
It is now seen as a “sin” to fail to make the “rational choice” that would produce riches or health (in an ideal world without history, society, or gravity). And once the sinner has sinned its not the place of co-citizens to forgive them until they repent.
aimai
Oh, to live in Dana’s utopia, where companies can dump their waste water directly into rivers and public water supplies and not be fined, where fast food corporations can put carcinogens into their product to make them more “flavorful” and lie about it in their media campaigns, and where people can take a hefty puff from an unfiltered Camel and blow the smoke directly into a newborn’s face.
I’m sorry, but I believe the genetic argument is specious. You can’t have an eight percent rise in obesity in a population over the course of twelve years — which is only half a generation — and argue that this is a genetic malady.
As for pregnancy: While it’s a condition that is associated with health risks it’s bound to be more socially acceptable, if not the least because it propagates the species, and a lot of people think babies are so gosh-darn cute.
The Right seems to have no problem with rights based on *religious* choices–as long as they agree with the choice. Indeed, the religious often see God as a reason to discriminate–they should not have to hire atheists to run their faith-based programs–but don’t reject the bible thumper who makes everyone in the office uncomfortable. This causes them to lose their appetite for tort reform.
These people have no problem with the sick–see Terry Schiavo–as long as they can use the case to make a point. But they do object to *indulgence,* because it takes our minds off God. Their own worldview rejects pleasure–whether or not given by a Creator–so they want to deny others the joy life has to offer as well.
Joy, for them, is found only in Christ, who helps people manage their Hobbsean world. This is why they reject collective action and acceptance of diversity–it makes the world less nasty, brutish, and short.
“You can’t have an eight percent rise in obesity in a population over the course of twelve years — which is only half a generation — and argue that this is a genetic malady.”
Bullshit. Of course you can argue that it’s related to genetics.
A lot of genetic information seems to control for tendencies, not necessarily producing exact, repeatable results, but changing the probabilities.
The understanding of genes in modern genetics has evolved way beyond the point of one gene guarantees one simple result…
“But they do object to *indulgence,* because it takes our minds off God. Their own worldview rejects pleasure–whether or not given by a Creator–so they want to deny others the joy life has to offer as well.”
…unless the person seeking that pleasure has a last name like Scaife…
MikeEss, there’s no need to be rude. I’m arguing from facts, not emotional appeal. I’d appreciate it if you would either return the courtesy, or not reply.
As you point out, genetics is not usually “one gene” switching things on and off, nor did I suggest it was, so please don’t bother erecting that strawman again.
The very complexity of genetics belies your gruff denial of my protests; a genetic component — particularly a complex one — will not generally express in a population with human longevity over such a short amount of time. To at once deny that and deny the plausibility of environmental contributors to obesity is to be deliberately self-blinkered.
Warren:I’ll give you, in a nutshell why obesity rates have gone up so much. Two reasons.
High-fructose corn syrup…eating the same things has become a lot more unhealthier over the last few years.
GET OFF MY LAWN!!!, this more effects the younger generations, but the amount of play time and play AREA..the latter is important, more and more suburbs are being built without any sort of common ground for youth, namely because all activity is supposed to be supervised, through organized sport or something like that (which is really not appropriate for a lot of people), and increased demands from school create an environment where the old styles of youth exercise are just not feasible anymore.
These are decisions basically made by people. Consumers looking for cheap goods and investors looking for high returns (often the same people, I might add) in the first case, and homeowners who want “peace and quiet”, in order to protect property values in the second case.
Some huge differences between fatness and smoking, Dana:
“fat” is an arbitrary label, even when statistically defined. Smoking is pretty much do/don’t or do/don’t/did but quit
you have to eat to live, you don’t have to smoke (discretionary obligate behavior versus wholly elective)
One person’s eating doesn’t kill others in the room, stunt their growth, impair their lung growth, or increase their heart and lung disease risks
Smoking has been causally linked to multiple diseases, with high relative risks versus not smoking. Obesity has been associated, but causality is extremely lacking despite decades of research.
Oh. And cutting Phys. Ed classes so either A. local property taxes can be kept low, or B. More money can go to the HS football squad. That as well. More kids staying at school with unhealthy lunchtime meal choices as well. That’s another one. (One HS I visted once offered salads. For an absurd price and were the size of a small soup bowl. Yeah. That will fill the hunger of a teenager.)
“To at once deny that and deny the plausibility of environmental contributors to obesity is to be deliberately self-blinkered.
Nobody is denying the interaction of genetics and environment. And I suggest that self-blinkering is in the eye of the beholder…
It is very obvious that living conditions (in the US as that’s where I live and have experience) are very different from what they were a generation ago, and a generation before that, etc.
We have access to foods, prepared or natural, that were unthinkable not long ago.
As an organism is subjected to different environmental conditions, it will react based on its genetic coding. Some will thrive, some will suffer, some will be indifferent to the changes. Humans are no different in that respect.
Where some people see fatness as a “problem” that must be be solved/cured, perhaps nature sees it as a sign of success.
It’s all way too complex for simple concepts of “good” or “bad”…
I caught a couple of episodes of a terrible program on ABC over the summer called Fat March, in which overweight people competed to walk from Boston to DC (?) over several weeks, usually walking 10-15 miles per day and finishing with a marathon, I believe. It was completely absurd, but at the end of the program, each had lost over 30lbs, and most said something along the lines of “If I can do it, anyone can. Just get off the couch and walk.”
Dog knows, these people will most likely be back to their pre-March weights in a month or two, and the stress they put themselves through was not easily duplicate-able–they left their jobs and families for a full summer, and were followed by a camera crew and support team. However, they bought into the same problem of choice that paints them as lazy (as obese people) and suggests that losing weight is so easy, even in light of the fact that it took this ridiculous and drastic change to get them to lose 30-50lbs, and they were all still overweight! I saw the finale the same day as I read Gina Kolata’s excellent book Rethinking Thin so it was doubly depressing.
Warren, it can still be genetics IF you are talking about EPIGENETIC phenomena - the interaction between latent genes, the RNA-based systems which trigger, express, regulate, etc. those genes, and the environment.
For example: if gene expression is regulated by epigenetic factors which are triggered by hormones AND there are an increasing number of hormones or hormone mimics around to trigger those genes, those with genes which respond will respond.
We are seeing this with childhood asthma with a number of polymorphisms which “decide” how extremely kids will respond to ambient air pollution.
So, yes the genes have been there all along (or not), but the environment can “decide” if those who have fat genes or wheeze genes will get fat. Keep in mind that many such genes also segregate differently across ethnic populations.
Please note: due to immigration and childbearing patterns, the ethnic makeup of our population is rapidly changing, particularly in children. That means that the genetic succeptibilities within the population have changed markedly in the time span you mention. The more hyperresponsive asthma-related alleles I just mentioned are notably more prevalent in Latin-American Hispanic populations, and may drive the extreme responses and extreme increases in asthma related to Ozone noted in the NYC area.
As my dad used to say, “Only careless people have accidents.”
Parse that one and you’ve got their mindset in a nutshell.
“MikeEss, there’s no need to be rude. I’m arguing from facts, not emotional appeal. I’d appreciate it if you would either return the courtesy, or not reply.”
BTW, Warren, the facts say people tend to be fatter recently. That’s something we can all agree on.
You said: “I’m sorry, but I believe the genetic argument is specious. You can’t have an eight percent rise in obesity in a population over the course of twelve years — which is only half a generation — and argue that this is a genetic malady.”
Making a blanket statement that in your mind the speed of the change proves that it can’t possibly be related to genetics is not a fact. I just pointed out that your statement does not absolve genetics (and used one “naughty” word to emphasize my point)…
Warren,
That 8% increase also fails to take into account the 1998 change in BMI standards which caused millions of Americans to ‘become’ overweight and obese without gaining an ounce.
My take on fat acceptance is that fat isn’t a moral issue. Which, to me, means that there’s no need to deny the effect fat can have on some people’s health anymore than I should assume that fat is someone’s fault and/or will cause them health problems. I totally understand the motivation behind a lot of fat activists in focusing so much on debunking the myth of the gluttonous, lazy fat person, but I don’t think anyone deserves to be shit on regardless of their habits so I’m always a little wary of creating a fat acceptance movement where we always put the healthiest fat people front and center.
“You can’t have an eight percent rise in obesity in a population over the course of twelve years — which is only half a generation — and argue that this is a genetic malady.”
If you slide the BMI down, start judging obesity solely on where people sit on that scale, and conveniently ignore the fact that the population becoming taller and somewhat broader would have thrown them further out of whack even on the old BMI, you can have an 8% rise in obesity in 12 years without there even being a malady.
Now if only someone would solve our insurance crisis by redefining “insurance,” we’d break even on the national health front.
Crap - I think this thing ate my comment.
Anyway, Warren, are you aware of epigenetics? It has to do with the way signals from our bodies and environment switch genes on/off, turn the volume up or down, etc.
It may be genetics, but latent genes switched on by environmental stresses. A good example: kids with certain genetic polymorphisms have much more extreme responses to respiratory irritants like Ozone than kids who have different polymorphisms.
As for “stable genetics” in the last 40 years, well, not. Immigration has changed the ethnic landscape, particularly for younger people. as of Census Y2K, 40% of children under 5 were not white. That signals a huge ethnic shift.
Another example: Those polymorphisms for hyperresponsive airways tend to be far more prevalent in persons of Latin American extraction than in other ethnic populations. So the explosion of asthma in NYC and noted extreme responses of that population to ozone levels may be a matter of more of certain genes moving in to an area in the last couple of generations than any other factor.
I’m sorry, but I believe the genetic argument is specious. You can’t have an eight percent rise in obesity in a population over the course of twelve years — which is only half a generation — and argue that this is a genetic malady.
Human genome (30k+ years old) meets food products manufactured out of corn syrup (12 years old). It’s genes and the environment in which they function.
Mighty Ponygirl:Oh, to live in Dana’s utopia, where … people can take a hefty puff from an unfiltered Camel and blow the smoke directly into a newborn’s face.
Wow, that’s kind of unfair. Amanda said (sounding dangerously libertarian, I might add) “it’s not mine to tell you what kind of food to put in your mouth, or to dictate to you what your pleasures are.” All Dana was saying is that Amanda’s argument about eating and sex obviously also applies to smoking, which seems pretty intuitive.
The other problem with the “they must have done something to get sick/hurt/killed/etc.” meme is it doesn’t stop with things like eating choices, exercise choices, living location choices, etc.
Ultimately, you could have a “perfect” BMI, be a vegan, excercise every day at the gym, fun regular marathons, deny alchohol, caffeine, nicotine, eat only the purest organicly grown foods, etc.
When you get sick - and you will, as surely as death and taxes - you will still be blamed because it must be your relationship with god, or karma, or some other unknowable, uncontrollable force which has judged you and found you lacking.
When you start marching down the path of “total personal responsibility” you still end up wrongly condemning people for the bad things that happen to them, regardless of the actual facts involved…
Judge not, lest ye be judged…
Warren, you and MikeEss can both be right, which I believe MikeEss acknowledged from the start. People might not have had a “get fat” gene throughout history, but they might have always had a “get fat when exposed to high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar” gene that was never activated till people lived in modern American society, where unless you give up all processed foods, high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar are ubiquitous.
“I’m sorry, but I believe the genetic argument is specious. You can’t have an eight percent rise in obesity in a population over the course of twelve years — which is only half a generation — and argue that this is a genetic malady.”
You can, if you change the definition of obesity to include more people who previously were not considered obese. Oh, hey! That’s exactly what happened! Around twelve years ago! However, I’m sure those things are not related at all.
Ms. Kate: A shift in ethnic population distribution doesn’t strike me as being the same as a fundamental change in genes or their response to the environment, especially since, again, we’re talking about something that manifested in the adult population. Children weren’t included in the study I pointed to. Nevertheless it’s an interesting point.
I know of at least one example of a clear genetic component in both obesity and diabetes: A significantly large population of American aborigines in the SW US are afflicted with both, an adverse set of reactions to a diet which, for their group evolution, is far too rich.
Their ancestors had to survive on low-energy, nutrient-poor local foods, and when they became exposed to a Western/Caucasian diet both obesity and diabetes exploded through their populations. IIRC as much as 50% of adults in one tribe have one or the other or both.
attrice, preying mantis: Good points re BMI. I’d forgotten that the scale had changed. FWIW, I pretty regularly argue against the value of BMI; according to my age and height I’m about 30 pounds overweight, which is ridiculous. That translates to about four gallons’ volume of fat, and there simply isn’t anywhere on me that it might be located.
My observer-biased anecdotal evidence suggests I’m not alone in this. BMI appears to be a complex set of numbers that have, for the most part, been pulled right out of someone’s ass.
MikeEss: I wasn’t referring to the “naughty” word, but rather to the tone it implied. Any post that begins a response with “BS” or “Nonsense” is generally meant to be condescending and pedantic.
I never said that obesity “can’t possibly be related to genetics”; I’ll ask you again to stop strawmanning arguments. You do much better when you take issue with the actual things I’ve posted.
In general, I’d appreciate it if the preachy tones could come to an end. I did not make any statements suggesting I think obesity is “bad”; I haven’t attached any ethical significance to the condition, and the responses that suggest I have are entirely out of line.
elyzabythe
…Except that a person’s “personal” consequences for smoking also happen to be shared by the other people breating their air.
Warren, the issue that I take with your comment is that you characterize being fat with being afflicted with some malady. Given that there is no strong causation between fatness and disease, being fat alone has no inherent moral value. Obesity is not an epidemic; it is not a disease.
Fat is.
About blaming HFCS/growth hormone for fat: Those substances are not found in foods in Australia, and they have about the same rates of “obesity” as Americans.
As someone who gained prodigious amounts of weight on psych meds — and has seen her weight start to drop gradually after phasing them out in favor of directed amino acids — I have to ask: Why, with all the reams of articles about what greedy lazy stupid self-destructive pigs all these “fat Americans” are, why has almost nobody linked any percentage of our collective weight gain to the fact that psych meds are now the most widely prescribed medications in America? Why has nobody pinned more of it on dieting, which most people who are very fat have done since they were old enough to hold a fork, the process of which when started at such a young age almost invariably results in a clusterfuck of slowed metabolism, screwed-up hunger response and impaired insulin response that’s nearly impossible to fully reverse?
Why? Because it’s much easier to blame people for being greedy lazy stupid pigs than to point the finger at Big Diet, Big Food (which benefits hugely from millions of people being on a chronic diet/binge cycle in ways few can imagine) and Big Pharma, not to mention the ad culture which absolutely depends on people never being satisfied with how they look and gets people (especially girls) dieting younger and younger and younger.
Oh, and don’t forget that the threshhold for what is considered “overweight” keeps getting lowered. About a decade ago, “overweight” was considered BMI > 27.5; now it is BMI > 25. And people like Walter Willett at Harvard want it lowered to 21, which would make my boyfriend, who is so thin his shoulder bones protrude, barely “acceptable.” (Interestingly enough, Willett’s own BMI is 23.5, so I have to wonder, to what degree is self-loathing driving obesity-hysteria purveyors?)
Anyway, the whole idea of giving medical care only to Perfect People with Perfect Habits Who Do No Wrong just makes me want to vomit up my B complex. From there, it’s not too great a leap to not treating any of the following: Anyone who was injured in a bar or street fight; anyone who needs treatment for any STD, including HIV/AIDS; anyone who was injured as a result of driving drunk or stoned; anyone who got pregnant out of wedlock, whether it’s prenatal care or an abortion; all “extreme sports” injuries (although anyone injured as a result of football or jogging will be moved to the top of the list); any alcoholism-related liver disease (and if you get cirrhosis or hepatitis and don’t drink, you’d better be prepared to provide reams of paperwork to prove you aren’t lying); any smoking-related disease like lung cancer or emphysema, even if it resulted from secondhand smoke (you should have divorced the tobacco-addicted MF or quit your barroom job!); and of course any medical problem related in any way to recreational drug use. And of course there are all the psych disorders nobody wants to pay to treat, since apparently we can all just pray or think ourselves out of being “crazy” or “depressed.” There’s always something someone doesn’t “think I should have to pay for” because (they think) it would never apply to them in a million years, as if they alone were financing it and the person needing treatment never put a dime into the system themselves. Bleh.
That 8% increase also fails to take into account the 1998 change in BMI standards which caused millions of Americans to ‘become’ overweight and obese without gaining an ounce.
Exactly. There is an additional problem: BMI is not only arbitrary, but it isn’t appropriate for all populations, either. We may not have a “fatter” society at all: simply a darker one. There is a well-known shift for African Americans on the BMI-disease associations as well, indicating that heavier does not necessarily mean FATTER in this particular ethnic group.
The extension of BMI to children is particularly egregious, as all the validation studies I could find indicate that it has very poor predictive value for actual body fatness, and those predictions get worse with ethnicity and child’s increasing age. Garbage sold as gold.
Respiratory researchers use different curves for people who identify as “African American”, “Latino”, “White” and “Asian”. Put simply, these ethnic variations matter when you really want to do solid research. But since you can’t deride a person of color for having smaller lungs …
“People might not have had a “get fat” gene throughout history, but they might have always had a “get fat when exposed to high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar” gene that was never activated till people lived in modern American society, where unless you give up all processed foods, high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar are ubiquitous.”
Exactly.
And the real problem is we are living in this “experiment”. Until these (or other) cultural changes are widespread and we see what the results are (over years/generations), it’s very difficult to know what the actual effects (if any) will turn out to be.
On top of that, there’s no way to necessarily judge whether any changes that occur are “good” or “bad”…
It’s bugged me for a while the framing of rights for gay people and minorities being WELL THEY CAN’T HELP [wanting people of their own sex/having darker skin]! NO DISCRIMINATION! A friend of mine pointed out to me how fallacious that is - after all, we grant rights to Christians/Jews/Muslims/etc., and one could very well argue that those things are all choices that the Constitution explicity protects.
The idea that not being able to help something means it’s more worthy of protection (and as a result, if you want rights and CAN change, you’d better STFU and get to changing, pal) is just bizarre.
The Mighty Ponygirl said:
Except, of course, that that’s not always true.
A health services company in Michigan, Weyco, instituted a policy in 2004 which stated that no one who worked for the company could smoke — even at home. The company provided quitting-assistance programs, but by 2005, everyone had to be off cigarettes — and employees were routinely tested — or they became former employees. Weyco’s justification was that a smoke-free workforce was both more productive at work and incurred lower health care costs.
Weyco has since been bought out by another company, and I do not know if the policy is still in effect.
The Rotund: But there actually are correlations between “fatness” and disease (I’m not talking about diabetes). There are known negative circulatory and musculoskeletal effects strongly associated with obesity. The suggestion you seem to be making — that there are no deleterious effects on health associated with overweight — just doesn’t pass the sniff test.
And again, I have not attached any moral value to obesity, so please do not suggest that I have.
“But there actually are correlations between “fatness” and disease (I’m not talking about diabetes). There are known negative circulatory and musculoskeletal effects strongly associated with obesity.”
Warren, I suggest strongly that we defer to our resident epidemiological professional, (Dr.) Ms Kate, who is actually trained and employed in the field of understanding correlations between human actions and their possible health effects.
She has already weighed in a couple times, and if you ask nicely, she might address specific concerns you may have understanding this complex issue…
Dana, the “no smoking even at home” business is a classic attempt to avoid responsibility for toxins in the workplace. That’s one reason I don’t buy it.
The other is that companies who go off the deep end like this frequently have other policies that stress people out enough to need cigarettes to cope with their working environment (and yes, nicotine can do that for you). You won’t get a healthy workplace and realize cost savings by treating your employees like crap.
Mike, he’s actually sort of right - but not BMI=30 sort of right. Those issues crop up when people are carrying 40% or more of their body weight as fat.
MikeEss:
I’d definitely appreciate having errors in my view pointed out, yes.
Amanda, you’ve hit on something I’ve been thinking a lot about: the assertion that rights–mainly the right to be left alone, but expanded the right to live free from discrimination–are derived from whether members of the group can cover their difference from the majority.
Been thinking about this since I read a book called Covering: the hidden assault on civil rights. And since I gave it to a friend who is a family law attorney working on LGBT issues, I can’t spell the author’s name but he’s something like Kenji Yoshino, professor at Yale Law.
His book is easy to read because he wove his identity struggles, as a bicultural Japanese-American who is gay, through the framework of civil rights law. And his thesis is this: We are all outsiders in some way. Laws like the Civil Rights Act and ENDA are attempts to make certain kinds of outsiders, who can’t control their status difference, equal to insiders.
What’s really interesting is how he talks about the differences between race and sexual orientation. The demand on gay people to convert, which for most subcultures in this country is no longer pressing, can’t be brought to bear on people of (most) colors. The demand to pass, that we hide our differences so that they are unknown to the majority, is also unique to our minority.
However, the demand to cover–our workplaces, churches and schools that say they’re inclusive because you won’t be fired/expelled/denied admission solely because you’re gay/black/Latino/disabled–is with all of us. We share the burden to not be too black, too gay, too female, because those may violate specific rules that require everyone to be the same.
The trick is, the standard that ‘applies to everyone’ is that no one gets to wear their hair in braids, get time off to care for their sick kid, leave work to attend their non-marital partner’s college graduation. And those expectations demand that those who aren’t straight white males cover up that which makes us different from the standard or face the consequences.
So to bring it back around, there is a cultural bias toward stigmatizing those who are outside the standard in order to reinforce covering behaviors. That stigma plays out with fat people in the form of blame. Sick people get the same treatment.
I have spent my entire life being ridiculed for being fat - even when I *wasn’t fat.*
At the age of 16, I was 5′2″ tall and weighed 140 pounds. My measurements were 38-24-40. I had no love handles, no belly, no flabby upper arms or cottage-cheese thighs. I didn’t even have acne! I walked everywhere I wanted to go (I didn’t think anything of walking the 2-mile round trip to visit the neighborhood library), rode my bicycle to work, took belly-dance lessons. Looking back, I realize now that I was really quite attractive.
But I was treated as though I weighed 900 pounds and rolled everywhere like a giant beach ball, as though I had the world’s worst case of “pizza face,” as though I were contagious.
Of course, now I really am fat - after almost 30 years of office work where 2 minutes away from my desk is treated as theft from the company, where vending machines are filled with chips/candy/soda and they’re the only thing available when an hour before quitting you’re told you’re working 3 hours of mandatory overtime, where the stress of 40 hours per week of being told to do the work of 3 people for the pay of 1 and criticized for the quality of said work makes that Hershey bar the only moment of pleasure in an otherwise horrendous day, where the mental exhaustion is such that even thinking about exercise is more effort that I can handle.
Naturally, a conservative is going to blame me for being a big, fat, lazy pig who makes poor decisions in job choices, food choices, lifestyles choice - because *that’s fucking easier than changing the environment that makes those choices necessary.*
Bitter? Ya think?
Phoenix, I think you are on to something here.
Also, when you are “in” that normative group, there is pressure to prevent others from joining - hence the anxiety of white males when we redefine “normal” as “human” and not “white male”. Also witness the harassment of large women out walking, biking, or enjoying fitness in a fitness center. That unease and hatred is the expression of fear of losing one’s privilige to an “unworthy other”.
Mhorag:
It’s also cheaper, and allows the business owner to sidestep his responsibility for the terrible environment he inflicts on his wage slaves.
Just like with Graeme Frost and Bethany Wilkerson, it’s financially better for the conservative to deflect the discussion into “individual responsibility” rather than allow the subject to delve into dangerous waters, where the horrifying specter of Socialized Medicine (a.k.a. the policy of caring for your fellow human) lurks like a shark waiting to devour his closely-hoarded offshore funds.
Just additional thoughts on the contributing factors to the obesity “crisis.” Being a woman who is obese, from a family riddled with obese people (my mother is on synthroid after gaining 100 lbs in 6 months after giving birth to my sister in 1984, which she has never lost), that goes back generations (my mother’s side, great granduncles and aunts all 250+ lbs, 5′9″ in the late 1800s), I can say that genetics is a huge factor.
Moreover, when looking at these genetics factors, you have to delve into how the body is using energy which gets into a hefty study of the endocrine system. Since this system is a complex system of multiple glands and various hormones, all triggered by each other, it’s very much like a shell game. If one gland is producing too much of hormone X, but gland B is only reading half of that hormone, it produces hormone Y is copious amounts, but as to why gland A and B are producing said amounts can be attributed to a long list of factors. Endocrinology is a very new sector of the medical field (the American Association of Endocrinology was founded in the early 1990s) and because of that, there is a LOT to be learned about how the body metabolizes food and how that affects weight. This would include looking at dietary factors such as high fructose corn syrup and how it messes with the hormones. As others have said, we’re living in the middle of the experiment.
The other factors I’d like to throw into the pot are my own personal experiences. First, once I was labelled a “fat” kid at the age of 5 (which looking at me then, I wasn’t fat, just a larger frame), I never stopped believing it. Moreover, with our highly sexualized society and the ultra-conservative Christian upbringing I grew up in, I *wanted* to stay labeled “fat” so that I would never have to deal with sex or be fully identified as “female” so I could do those “man things” like read and write and think for myself. Just like this article from AlterNet chronicles the anorexic side of avoiding the unfortunate trap of being female and wanting to avoid misogyny and further social pain for being female and sexual, so did I but by going to the other extreme of becoming obese.
Obesity has multiple factors–some are physical and some are mental. And even if they are mental, it’s not always because someone is lazy or a glutton. I was a vegetarian for 2 years and put on 28 pounds. Each body is different and each mind struggles with its own set of belief systems that may or may not work for them. Part of what I’ve had to acknowledge is that yes “I did this to myself” (becoming obese), but I also knew no other way. To a child trying to make sense of the contradictory messages of what it is to be “female” and still have room for self, I did the best I could. Unfortunately, I have a hole to dig myself out of now and a genetic make-up that makes it more difficult.
To have a discussion on what causes obesity and its labels, I personally believe that you must include the psychological as well as the physical. Which would lead us to again look at the social factors that can contribute to obesity.
And with that, Warren, you and I are in agreement…
I have a giant comment in moderation, so I won’t go over anything that’s already there. But briefly:
- Correlation is not causation.
- Even if proven true that fat people have worse health than thin people, you can’t fully separate out the many potential co-factors of fatness that could also affect health — among them, the stress of poverty; the stress of being chronically shunned and shamed; poor health care (not being able to get insurance at all or being told by the doctor to go away until thin, which happens all the frigging time, inactivity (who wants to exercise in public with people mooing and oinking at you?), and yo-yo dieting or involuntary food insecurity issues from a very young age.
- Dieting (trying to lose weight) only works on a permanent basis for 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 people who try it, with the percentages much lower for people who try to lose 50 or more pounds, and almost never for adults who have been on diets since they were toddlers (and the fatter the person you’re talking to, the greater the chance that they were, in fact, dieted that young). So even if we fatasses do have one foot in the grave and you can prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt, what do you suggest we do about it that we haven’t tried, and tried, and tried, and tried? (By contrast, about 50% of smokers who try to quit permanently are eventually able to do so.)
The average American woman between 20 and 39 ate 376 more calories per day in 2000 than her counterpart in 1971, going from 1652 to 2028. Virtually all of that (~300 calories) is carbs, mostly sugar. There is no magic in refined sugar, except that we are eating too much of it. (Corn syrup may have some magic properties, the scientific jury is still out, there.) Similar, but smaller changes have occured in all other adult age/gender ranges. You want your explanation for the ’surge’ in obesity and diabetes? That is one extra pound (3500 calories) every 9-10 days. In general, women of all age groups eat 20% more calories than they did 35 years ago. See CDC statistics and Table 69 here (big pdf).
For men, calorie intake has risen about 150 calories but carb intake has risen 250 calories. (Men eat about 100 fewer fat calories than they used to, 70 of that is reduced saturated fat.)
In the same period, obesity has doubled for women -from 15% to 30% of the 20-74 population for white women only and overweight+obese has gone from 36% to 57% of the female population. This is much bigger than the 1998 switch can explain, it started long before 1998. This doesn’t reflect a racial demographic change - blacks and hispanics show higher obesity rates in all periods, seemingly independent of calorie intake - I believe it is true that the standard BMI ranges are way wrong for black women, who show significant morphological differences from white women. (But…But…But…race is a social construct, right? No, it is not, and never has been. Treatment and diagnosis both are very different for blacks than for whites. (More precisely, for the predominantly sub-saharan African descended population than for the predominantly European descended population. Hispanics are more complex because they are so variable - many are mostly of native descent, some are mostly European, a lot are mixed. The recent immigrants tend to be Indian or mixed in descent.) Some (not all) of the longevity differences between whites and blacks may be explained by differential treatment effects across race. The treatment that works for a white guy fails disproportionately often on a black woman. The medical establishment pretending otherwise for years killed more black people than lynching ever did.) I’d say the primary change the main tables need for the rest of us is relabeling overweight as high-normal, and the first “obese” range(30-34.9) as overweight.
The typical weight for an American woman 20-39 has increased about 30 pounds in that time, with only a very small increase in height. Men have seen a similar, but smaller, surge in obesity.
Correlation doesn’t prove causality, true, but there is a pretty good theoretical reason for believing that what you weight just might be related to the amount you eat. This doesn’t mean any given person’s obesity is intake-driven, or that any obese woman shoulda/coulda been a size 2, but it does mean that a bunch of women who, if they were their current age in 1970 rather than now, would have been merely overweight are now obese, or in my preferred categories, would be high-normal, but are overweight or obese. (It also suggests that calorie, or at least sugar/carb, intake is a ‘better’ explanation for any given person’s obesity now than it was 40 years ago.)
Not to mention that we have all of the fast-food corporations feeding us like geese destined to be foie gras. It is a fact that portion sizes have gone WAY up in the past 20 years. And when the easiest thing to grab between work and the kids’ soccer game is fast food, and when the huge “value meals” are $2 or $3 cheaper than the salad, what are people going to grab?
Even restaurant portions are larger. I have a friend who occasionally visits from Singapore who’s lived all over Asia and the South Pacific, and she’s always horrified at how much food is on her plate in a restaurant.
And that’s leaving aside stress (which causes weight gain), sleep deprivation (which causes weight gain), and no place left to walk in your neighborhood or near your job. If there’s no train or bus that easily gets you from your house to your job, you’re going to drive and you lose even that minimal amount of exercise that people 20 or 30 years ago got on a routine basis.
But, hey, if we can make people personally responsible for their own fatness, then corporations don’t have to change a thing, do they?
Meowser, do you have a link for that statistic? It sounds much more likely to me than the “95 percent of people who lose weight gain it all back!” scare quote that gets thrown around on the internet, but whenever someone asks me for a contrary fact, I can never find it.
Also witness the harassment of large women out walking, biking, or enjoying fitness in a fitness center.
I like to think I wasn’t completely insensitive to this until my recent accident, which required me to spend 2 hours a day at the gym/rehab place where everyone is skinny as hell, but the truth is I was.
I read that book, and have been thinking and writing quite a bit about the extent to which our choices are judged by their consequences, because I’ve been temporarily disabled. One of the themes that I’ve noticed is that our society is full of pressure on everyone to fit into a narrow range of ‘normal’.
When I went to the ER with life-threatening complications from a motorcycle accident, I was judged as ‘exceptional’ because those complications had not already killed me. The process of surgery on me was a teaching opportunity for over a dozen people because I had an injury that does not typically occur on anyone who is thin and triathelete-fit like I am.
So the nurse cuts my shirt off and I’m in a room full of people who are literally praising my fitness and thinness as having just saved my life because they can see what to fix. Which was a different way of saying, If you were fat you’d deserve whatever complications and consequences arose from our inability to treat your body in an efficient way.
This led me to the conclusion that because I was born with a set weight that falls within ‘thin’ and have been privileged to have the time to engage in sports, I’m being treated quite differently than would have been the case if I looked fat.
It should be a show-stopper to tell a patient, Lucky thing you’re thin so we’ll help you, but that’s such a part of the mindset of those residents and doctors that they didn’t realize what it sounded like.
So our society blames and shames anyone who is fat for being less healthy as a way to set the thin apart as deserving the better outcome. Fat has to be a moral issue or else we’re just all in equal danger of something disastrous we can’t control striking without notice.
Dana:
I sincerely doubt that anyone here feels that this was an appropriate action on the part of Weyco. This issue, in this context, is a red herring on your part.
Jeebus - reading all this makes me wanna go have a smoke…
“Moreover, with our highly sexualized society and the ultra-conservative Christian upbringing I grew up in, I *wanted* to stay labeled “fat” so that I would never have to deal with sex or be fully identified as “female” so I could do those “man things” like read and write and think for myself.”
Wow, Taka!!! That really made me think about my own issues with weight. I was not fat until after I had my first child- as a teenager and out of wedlock. I was so tired of the catcalls, and tired of people feeling like they could make rude comments to your face because if a girl is attractive AND has a baby without being married, you know she must give it out like candy! All bets are off! Everyone’s got a shot!!
I didn’t think I was getting fat consciously, but I do remember feeling relief when I got fat enough that I was de-sexualized and the comments stopped. I also became more respected for my opinions and began to move up in business. Like you said- those man things like the right to think for yourself and having worthwhile opinions tend to be handed to you more easily when you’re not sexualized. Sad, but true.
Maybe I’m old enough now that I won’t be too hot if I lost some weight?
As a Caucasian that lived in Japan for 12 years and then moved back to the US, I’d like to add my two cents.
The present-day US environment makes it extremely easy to pack on the pounds. Corn syrup, fast food, portion size, the fact that we get around by cars all the time rather than by walking. In Tokyo I walked everywhere–either I was using public transportation (as is standard) or I was walking around to do my shopping.
I was 130 lbs while in Tokyo and had no problem remaining at that weight. Move to US, boom, suddenly I’m 170 lbs, again stablized. I have to deliberately schedule in activity (sports club, whatever) and be extremely careful in my diet (NOT eat out, cook own food, etc.) in order to even remain at the present level. I find US cities not build for the human scale, but for the car scale. (In some cities such as Dallas, just try being a pedestrian, period. Impossible.)
I don’t think it’s genetic in my case….
Mnemnosyne:
stress (which causes weight gain), sleep deprivation (which causes weight gain)
Would that be “which can cause weight gain”? I ask because I am stressed and sleep-deprived a very much whole lot, and I am on the thin side of things.
I am not trying to nitpick, more I’m trying to see if I’m outside the norm here, as well.
Conservatives love the old Puritan ideas, both in regards to any kind of pleasure (sexual, gustatory, etc.) being sinful and any kind of misfortune being punishment by gOd. Understanding that is key to understanding a whole world of issues.
And the “personal responsibility” bugaboo is great for them. It pumps up their superiority complex and feeds their illusion of control. It’s a powerful psychological drug, which is why it can be so impervious to things like logic and facts.
It also lets them off the hook for government’s role in increasing obesity. And government has played a huge role. Our agricultural policies are all geared to helping big agri-business, which has contributed to the grossly overprocessed and nutritionally deficient diet that dominates in our society. And our health policies are all geared to the advantage of big pharmaceutical companies that have no incentive to deal with nutritional issues and every incentive to come up with synthetic, patentable drugs to “fix” our problems. And when those fixes cause side effects, they have drugs to “fix” the side effects. It’s a huge, cascading, public health disaster.
Taka is so right about the endocrinology aspect of this. It’s an incredibly complex system, and there’s so much in the modern world that can knock it out of balance, and most doctors don’t seem to be interested in (or, to be fair, have the time for) looking at restoring the underlying balance. They just treat the symptoms with the drugs that are being pushed by the pharmaceutical companies and move on to the next patient. Patients, being stressed for time themselves and lacking much in the way of healthcare alternatives, take the pills and go back to work, grateful to be feeling a little less miserable and not understanding that they haven’t really solved the underlying problem.
I’m in no way an expert on this stuff, but I’ve been researching a lot of things in respect to my own health, and the differences that the right nutritional supplements make to my own experience is huge. I don’t have food cravings anymore. I suspect there are a whole lot of health problems that could be well treated with better nutrition, but it’s frustrating trying to find good scientific support. Good research takes money, and most of the money in health research is coming from companies that have no interest in researching things that can’t be patented. And so the cycle continues.
I am not trying to nitpick, more I’m trying to see if I’m outside the norm here, as well.
You’re outside the norm.
PhoenixRising:
I wasn’t there, of course, so I can’t react to what the residents and docs said to you verbatim, but is it possible they were not saying it’s a good thing you’re thin; we’ll treat you because of that, and instead were saying, if you weren’t thin we wouldn’t be able to treat you, at least not as thoroughly as would be ideal?
A colleague here, regular triathlete, was hit by a car while cycling one day. Pretty significant injuries, but he’s on the mend and healing pretty rapidly. His athletic tendencies are a factor in his speedy recovery, but that’s not a value judgment about the merit of his lifestyle — after all, if he were sedentary, he wouldn’t have been out cycling in the first place and wouldn’t have been hit by the car.
The point is that recognizing a positive correlation between athleticism and quicker recovery in the treatment of trauma patients is not equivalent to saying, “Lucky thing you’re thin so we’ll help you”.
I don’t see how Dana’s example of the Weyco company contradicts or acts as exception to Mighty Ponygirl’s comment.
Was it from bread and refined sugars? Or were you just not cutting out alcohol and doing little exercise? Or were you overeating as a vegetarian - little portion control? I’m wondering because I had a similar weight gain experience as a vegetarian, which contradicted everything I read about in books on the subject. Last cholesterol and blood pressure check I was fit as a fiddle, but I went up almost two clothing sizes - and this is WITH regular exercise - as a vegetarian.
Thinking about fat acceptance gets me angry. Reaching out to thin people across the westernized world and asking them to treat me well *despite* being heavy is just totally fucking insulting. It would be so much easier to lose weight if people didn’t make you feel like shit for needing to lose weight in the first place. When I was heavy - I mean *raelly* heavy - I knew that when I met a group of new people, there would be a large number of people in that group who would have nothing to do with me, or talk to me like I had some sort of mental problem because I was fat. With no preceding negative behavior toward them from myself, they would act like it was bringing them down to be around me - am embarrassment. Over several years I lost a hundred pounds and was still somewhat heavy though definitely much more toward the “thin” side, and I still had people treat me that way. Not as many as before, but still - a lot. I’ve since gained back about 30 pounds and am trying to lose it again. I sometimes fear meeting people because I wonder whether they’ll be dismissive and condescending to me because of my weight. So when I think of fat acceptance, I think the best avatar for that is a fat chick swinging a club at every average self-righteous vogue wannabe who thinks avoiding friendship with fat people spares them social embarrassment. But of course, I’m conflicted about it. I want the people who don’t like me to like me, but then I resent them for not liking me, so then I don’t want them to like me because the resentment is so strong…. Ah, well.
I wonder if the fact that women tend to carry more fat than men has any effect on the “moral aspect” of obesity. A lot of us experienced weight gain after the end of puberty (around 19-22, also known as the “Freshman 15″), during and after pregnancy (duh!), and at peri-menopause and pre-menopause.
The “fat is bad” mindset has been particularly damaging for me as I’ve been trying to deal with three solid years of “yo-yo” weight as my doctor adjusted my hormone levels. First, my hormones caused (among other issues) my weight to swing 6-8 pounds every month, and every time they “tweaked” my hormones, my “settle” weight jumped about 4-5 pounds (basically, I’d swing up 8 pounds on my period, then only lose 3-4 that go-round.) Each time that happened, the “shaming” and self esteem bashing kicked in, and I became painfully aware of how much I’d internalized those messages.
I’m just curious if there’s any research on how much of the “fat is bad” attitude started out as “fat is just one more tool we can use to beat up on women”.
As for pregnancy: While it’s a condition that is associated with health risks it’s bound to be more socially acceptable, if not the least because it propagates the species, and a lot of people think babies are so gosh-darn cute.
Pregnancy can also result in abortion, which is not socially acceptable. Pregnant women who wish to terminate and those who don’t both find themselves having their rights constrained with the attitude of “you brought this on yourself”.
And Dana, I don’t think that smokers should have less rights. With fat discrimination, we have open shunning and issues where fat people get less health care. If smokers were treated this way, I would be up in arms. That said, I don’t think it’s completely wrong of the government to use taxes to discourage unhealthy behaviors, within limits. A tax on junk food doesn’t seem like the worst idea to me. A tax on an item is a much different ball game than mistreatment of a person.
Me, again.
How about another personal anecdote? I am fat - very fat - as in 325 pounds at 5′2″ fat. But my blood pressure is normal (it’s starting to creep up as I approach 50, so I need to start watching it), my cholesterol level is normal (boy, that irritated the doctor no end), my thyroid is normal, my blood sugar is normal, and my blood count is normal. I’ve never smoked, I do not cook with salt (I add only at the table after tasting, except eggs. Eggs *always* need salt.), a pound of butter lasts my husband and I a month (margarine gives me heartburn like you wouldn’t believe and has for years. Turns out the transfats were bad for me, anyway, heheh), I prefer fresh fruits and vegetables over canned or frozen, I do not drink alcohol (never developed a taste for it), I don’t drink soda (diet or regular) because I hate carbonation or sugary drinks like Snapple (diet or regular), I don’t drink coffee or tea, I don’t eat candy or fast food often (like once or twice a month only since I left the job that was making me insane), I’ve drunk skim milk since I was 22.
My main failing? Lack of exercise. Why? See my previous post.
My brother-in-law, on the other hand, is skinny. He’s 5′10″ and weighs 160 pounds. When I first met him (my sister lives in Colorado and I’m in Nebraska), I couldn’t believe how he could pack away the food and never gain weight (boy, was I jealous!). He has what we called a “fast metabolism” (he really does radiate heat like a little furnace), and he ate because he was hungry. We (meaning my family including my brother-in-law) went to a steakhouse, and I watched him eat a 36 OUNCE steak, baked potato, baked beans, salad, bread, and coffee. I ordered the smallest steak on the menu (9 ounces) and got through about half of it. Two and a half hours later, I watched him eat a hot fudge sundae. I was speechless - how could anyone eat like that, and still be slim enough I could practically wrap my arm around him (and I’ve got short arms!) (obviously he didn’t eat like that every day)? And he was active - always on the go, walking, biking, working, etc. Made me tired just looking at him.
His failing? He smoked. When he was 43, he had a MASSIVE heart attack (one of the cardiac arteries was 98% occluded!) and ended up with a quintuple bypass. Turns out his cholesterol was through the roof. He survived (thank God!), and manages to still work full-time (most people are either dead or disabled from this type of heart attack), but now he has to watch his diet, his activity level, and take a lot of drugs …
Somehow, being fat isn’t sounding so bad …
Anyway, my point is I have unhealthy behaviors and so did my brother-in-law. I’m fat and he’s skinny. But being skinny didn’t protect him from the heart attack.
Ranting again, aren’t I?
Deep6:
God, and here I was thinking I was the only one. It was a combination of factors. First was decreased activity. I went from working out regularly to not, but working more (60+ hrs. a week) with irregular hours. I also moved 3 times in the course of the 2 years. As a general rule, I don’t drink that often. Never really had the taste for it and in the past 2 years, I also started taking anti-depressants and alcohol works backwards toward the anti-depressed goal.
I would say the two biggest factors were this: carb intake and too little protein. I’m a type O blood type so I’m supposed to have lots of meat according to the blood type diet. I found that when I upped my protein intake and nearly eliminated carbs (which is backwards from the low-fat heart healthy diets they suggest) I started heading in the other direction. I added exercise and I’ve been down a pant size in under 6 weeks. Portion size-wise, I’m still learning. Being female, my hunger meter goes from hardly hungry to ravenous depending on monthly hormones.
What I’ve found that works: first, if you find that you’re packing on pounds from carbs, eliminate wheat gluten (it’s in just about everything). I think I might be intolerant or at the least, I don’t digest it well.
Second, listen to your body. This sounds simple but as a woman who tried to shut out all her bodily signals, it’s tough. If you crave broccoli, go for it. Always eat more raw fruits and veggies and then protein to your liking. Also of note: most of the vegetarian psudo-meat foods (like veggie sausage etc.) are almost exclusively soy protein (good) and wheat gluten (very bad). I loved the food I discovered as a vegetarian and would go back if I could, but my body practically jumped for joy when I added fish and lean meat into my diet again.
Third, try herbs. I go straight to the Chinese for this. Garlic, ginger, and cinnamons. They all help digestion and help burn calories.
Fourth, work out. Even mild exercise helps and it makes me feel better. In fact, I love my Dance Dance Revolution and you can’t take it away from me!
Lastly, and I can’t emphasize this enough if you are on anti-depressants, DO NOT drink or eat anything with aspartame. This means NutraSweet, Equal and other fake sweeteners. It actually causes me to head into depressive episodes. I also found that eliminating soda for water and juice and tea (lots of tea) has helped considerably. I’ve also heard that aspartame actually helps you pack ON pounds not work them off like the diet foods it’s in suggest.
As far as blood pressure and such, my blood pressure is perfect (has pretty much always been). My cholesterol is at 160-175 with meat, 140 without. My mother’s side has high cholesterol and it’s usually the “good” cholesterol that is high if I recall correctly. Some studies are suggesting that high cholesterol may be genetic and not be as big of a factor as originally believed. I hope this helps you dismantle what your body did on the vegetarian diet as well. And to all the vegetarians out there: you rock and I would never have discovered hummus without you.
Amanda:
True.
Apropos of this discussion I stumbled across an article on CNN just now regarding the latest crop of obesity awareness ads produced by the Fed. The money quote might just be this one:
Because, of course, the junk-food producers are insanely, sickeningly wealthy, as well as multinational.
This is like trying to win the “war on drugs” by putting users into prison for 20 years for buying cocaine sent over the border by the goddamned CIA.
Can I get an Amen for Karmakin?
I saw the homework problem growing while I was in school 20 or so years ago. My parents couldn’t believe how much more I got than they did, and now I see kids bring home even more than I did (whether or not it makes them any smarter is certainly debatable). When the hell are kids going to have time to play outside and get any sort of exercise? People like to blame video games and television, which are certainly culprits, but the larger concern may be the mountains of busywork kids have to haul home to prepare them to keep No Child Left Behind funding from being revoked from their school.
Can we get to January 2009 already? This presidency is starting to feel longer than “A.I.”
That doesn’t sound like it’s genetics. The situation you describe just means it’s the fault of agribusiness, of HFCS suppliers and users - and NOT genetics that have caused a rise in obesity. If people have the same genetics as before, but different fat percentages over time (especially a short time such as the 12 year figure under discussion), then the rise is pretty clearly due to environmental changes and not genetics.
It’s like blaming an automotive design engineer for a car not working after it falls off a cliff. When you give a system like the body inputs it wasn’t programmed to handle, it’s not the body’s fault when things go wrong, it’s the fault of whoever gave that input. In this case, it’s a combination (over the whole population) of food producers, who stuff more unhealthy ingredients in food, and food consumers, who continue to buy and eat unhealthy food*.
*to the extent that they have reasonable alternate options. In times and places where people have to buy fast food or go hungry, obviously I’m not going to piss on them for doing that.
Some of the people who have a lot of fat in their bodies are so because of genetic factors, yes, but I find it hard to believe that’s the case for most, or even most of the rise. It’s certainly not the case for ALL.
Anyway, I thought anyone who was remotely serious about health knew that BMI is not a very good measure of health. But raw body fat percentage has ALSO gone up, which has nothing to do with the shifting definitions of what is obese vs. overweight.
I have every sympathy for people who are fatter than they want to be; I should, since I’ve lost over 120 lbs and kept it off for almost three years. I also have no problem with people who are ‘heavier than normal’ (whatever that means) and are fine with that - it’s their body, and whatever they want to do with it is their business. What I do not support is people complaining about being overweight while not being willing to do anything about it, even though they’re plenty capable of doing so. And there are plenty of people like that.
Reaching waaay back earlier in the thread - one of the reasons for low exercise opportunity for kids is that for a developer to put a playground in a community (which would certainly add value for people with kids) exposes them to the risk of lawsuits. Putting any genuine common space into a development raises lawsuit issues. There are other factors as well (squeezing in as many McMansions as possible, f’rex), but as long as there’s a serious risk that kids running around on your land will get injured, there’s a serious risk of lawsuits. I’d have no problem at all with allowing kids to play on my property as long as they weren’t vandals, but given the risk of being sued - sorry kids: get the hell off my lawn.
But I was treated as though I weighed 900 pounds and rolled everywhere like a giant beach ball, as though I had the world’s worst case of “pizza face,” as though I were contagious.
And what if you did weight 900 pounds? What if you did have bad acne? Is there a cut-off point for when we can all decide to treat people like shit?
I am absolutely convinced that those who spew hatred at fat people are doing so because it’s among the Last Bastions of Acceptable Vileness. They’re too enlightened (maybe) to go after the gays or the Differently Colored Folk, but who can blame them for sneering at a fatty? And they’ve got to have someone to sneer at, right? I mean, we can’t go around extending humanity to just everyone, can we?
You’re outside the norm.
Thanks for the link! Now I’m curious as to why I’m not overweight, given how poorly I treat myself. (I am a lie-giver to the idea that thin == healthy.)
Um…Meowser’s statistic was that 1 in 10 (10%) to 1 in 20 (5%) of people keep the weight off. In other words, 90-95% of dieters gain it all back. It’s the same statistic.
My friend’s vegan wife is the same way. Anytime an omnivore gets sick she seems to revel in it.
My hostility towards fat people comes from working in a hospital where i have to move their fat asses around and hope I don’t injure myself. I wonder how many clinic workplace injuries are caused by the obese?
Sniper: Well, it *was* high school, after all. I swear, teenagers stay up nights just thinking up ways to ensure who’s “cool” and who’s not.
I was definitely NOT cool, and wouldn’t have been even if my weight had not come into it. Nerdy girls (y’know, the ones who are actually literate and don’t live for the next fashion fad/makeup tip/hottest boyfriend) are right down there with the kids with acne, glasses, and lack of athletic ability.
You couldn’t *pay* me enough to go through high school again …
I’ve been made fun of for being thin my whole life. (chokes back sniffle, struggles for self-control)
Some people are fat because they’re undisciplined and lazy (none of my business if they are), some are fat because it’s their natural genetic predisposition, and some are fat owing to the fact that the food eaten by the working poor tends to be full of garbage. The food eaten by the average educated person, even, is much higher in fat and carbs than it was 100 years ago — this assertion is indisputable, as I’m pulling it out of my ass.
But it’s not true that obesity has no ripple effect on anyone but the obese people themselves. It drives health-care costs up for everyone. Dana’s right, it is like smoking — it’s a (now, sit down for this) Public Health Concern that seems to spark bitter resentment on both sides just about as fast as you can mention it. (fumbles absently for lighter)
As for second-hand smoke, where is this second-hand smoke you reference? You mean there’s somewhere left where I’m still allowed to light up? Do tell. (burns finger while deploying flame, curses sharply as if lighter were a disobedient and somewhat loathesome pet. curtain)
pablo: What number of clinic workplace injuries are caused by clinic workers who can’t be bothered to double-check meds, or who hurry through H&P’s, or use the wrong size blood pressure cuff causing false high blood pressure readings?
I certainly would not expect a single person to move my “fat ass”, and would in fact refuse to allow them to do so. I’m neither heartless nor stupid, and I’m also well aware that there is bariatric equipment available developed specifically to handle obese patients.
Talk to the clinic owners about that, because the equipment will more than pay for itself in avoiding workplace injuries, workmen’s compensation, and lawsuits.
Oh, and the term “fat asses” is a perjorative.
Just so you know…
Perhaps you should blame the people who don’t give you the tools that you need to do your job safely?
Genetics vs. environment is a false dichotomy. Our genetic blueprint determines how we react to our environment - especially when we’re talking about things like hormone levels, cholesterol levels,