I’m not astonished by the hatred of fatness currently present in our culture, or by the extent to which it has intensified over the past few decades. Cultures go through phases and cycles, and there are always scapegoats and victims of shame and blame. What shocks me is how fully this hatred has been adopted into public discourse.
I’m not going to rehearse the critique of anti-fat discourse in any depth here. Suffice it to say that statistical correlations between fatness and illness have nothing to say about the causes of such illness or how about how to avoid it. It is impossible to isolate the health effects of fatness in a context of rampant dieting, since dieting itself seems to be very unhealthy. Even if fatness were shown to be a predictor of certain kinds of illness, losing weight wouldn’t necessarily be a solution. And even if it were, a predisposition to illness is the last thing in the world that ought to provoke anger or scorn.
At this point, none of us can tease the scientific or medical facts apart from the cultural revulsion attached to fatness. The assumed link between health and fatness is so strong that in many cases people don’t even draw a distinction. Again, what shocks me is when this takes place not among individuals or corporations looking to sell products but in the context of public “health” discourses. For example, the discourse of the “obesity epidemic” has gone so far beyond the realm of reasonable medical science that it has begun to resemble more and more terrifying forms of oppression. (Weight loss camps and the notion of a “fat tax” are among the worst examples I can think of, really starting to border on the fascist—and I do not use that word lightly.)
I now see posters on the subway from the New York City Department of Health that refer to drinking sugary sodas as “pouring on the pounds” and “drinking yourself fat.” This is an incredibly twisted message, a truly horrific counterexample to everything for which “communication” should stand. By equating sugar with pounds, these posters offer dangerous misinformation: If you drink lots of sugary soda but you’re not fat, your probably healthy; likewise, if you don’t drink soda but you’re still fat, you’re probably sick. Wrong. If there is a health-related problem with the carbonated sugar water so many people drink, it’s about sugar, not fat. And even if it were about fat, the type of tissue, it would not have any bearing on fat people. And even if it did have some relevance to fat people, that relevance would be at a social/statistical level and not an individual one.
Another extremely misleading poster from several years ago showed a photo of a starving African child next to that of a fat white man, presumably American. The notion of the “fat cat” exploiter goes back a long time, but in today’s world it’s completely incorrect. Fatness in the United States is correlated with low incomes, so this poster is actually pitting two iconic victims of capitalism against each other! Way to foster more unjustified hatred of fat bodies! And I wonder who is not in this picture?
Many people have pointed out that it’s senseless to rank prejudices or to try and figure out which is the “worst” or the “most acceptable” prejudice, since racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of violent intolerance are all linked together in complex ways. But it is useful to notice how prejudices move from one type of manifestation to another. As this recently popular image shows, there used to be protests against inter-racial marriage; now there are protests against gay marriage. Similarly, it used to be unthinkable to see a person of color in a fashion advertisement; now it’s unthinkable to see a fat person. Racism hasn’t gone away, but it has gone underground, stepped out of the public limelight, at least in its most explicit forms. Meanwhile, at this particularly moment in time, fat hatred is not only visible, it is proud of itself.
The movement to reclaim the concept of health—as distinct from an absence of bodyfat—is called health at every size or HAES. One way to visualize this is in the following image of world-class athletes. Each of these women is extraordinarily powerful and capable in a particular way. So why do most women in advertising and television look like the gymnasts and not the weightlifters? Something is being communicated here, but it’s not about health!
This is a great and useful image, but I want to add a further clarification: Athleticism is not health. The debate about what exactly health means goes back to ancient Greece. Does health just mean living a long time? Does it mean feeling strong? Are athletes the epitomy of health? In fact, athletes suffer more injuries and illnesses than the rest of the population because they push themselves so hard. So who represents health? What about spiritual health? Ethical health? It’s amazing how much we project onto body type these days, through our grossly oversimplified idea of health.
Let’s try a simple thought exercise: Have you ever eaten some food and then suddenly felt “fat”? Notice the fact that this actually has nothing to do with fatness. The food you just ate does not instantly become fat. You do not actually weigh appreciably more. You may be feeling bloated or lethargic—neither of which has anything to do with fat. Try labeling this feeling for what it is: You ate too much, or you ate something that didn’t agree with you. It has nothing to do with fatness. Now try noticing the same thing about exercise. When I exercise, I notice that I feel better physically. Exercise changes my posture and my sense of well-being. It also changes my appetite in various ways. None of this has anything to do with becoming skinny. I might feel “light,” but I might equally feel “strong” when I exercise. It also depends what kind of exercise, and not everybody reacts the same way to the same practices.
Eating food that makes your body feel good, and exercising in ways that make your body feel good, are important aspects of health. If we extend this idea of “feeling good” into the long-term, it becomes possible to talk about healthy diet (in the sense of food choices, not food reduction) and healthy exercise. None of this has anything to do with fatness. None of it is “guaranteed” to people who are not fat and none of it is inaccessible to people who are fat. So let’s stop talking about fat and let’s stop spreading fat hatred propaganda all over our cities and televisions. Until we do that, we can’t have a real, meaningful conversation about health.
Thanks Ben for this provocative article.
The part that I take the biggest issue with is the soda ad. I think that the ad is actually true in the sense that excess sugar is converted into fat. In that sense sugar, diabetes, and fat are often linked.
I agree that the fat talk obfuscates what is really going on, probably because weight is the easiest thing for everyday humans to see and monitor.
That recent splashy article about how one in four teens is diabetic or prediabetic does a service in that it emphasizes how even those teens who appear healthy are at risk. http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/21/nearly-1-in-4-u-s-teens-have-diabetes-or-its-precursor/.
I agree that both ads for and against junk food are constrained in how much info they can deliver. One of the biggest myths in social research is that people can be educated in ways that will change their behavior, when behavior is often determined by a number of complex variables, like environment and socioeconomic standing. What needs to change isn’t just the way the “public” is “educated” but the whole economy of how food is processed and delivered. I agree that the government should step in in many cases. MSG should always be labeled MSG, for example.
Thanks for this, Ben. I see your critique as working perfectly with something like “The Biggest Loser,” which seems to trade in a kind of hysteria and even obsession with the kinds of ideas about health that you’re talking about. Similarly, the craze over “lite”or “lo-cal” foods that people are now questioning as potentially unhealthy/”unnatural” is also related to your overall argument….
But I understand where Sarah is coming from on the question of the ads– for me, the soda ads do a great job of visualizing something that people (especially young people) don’t always think about: as you say, the sugar is the thing. (The awful version of those soda ads would have shown an actual figure.) When parents say to their kids, “don’t drink that, it’s too sugary,” it means much less than the kid looking at that ad and seeing that it’s not just like drinking flavored water. Perhaps it’s the way the ad is phrased– what if it had the same image, but the text read simply: “What are you drinking?”
I absolutely agree that healthiness (spiritual health, physical health, understanding health) should be the key. I wonder what you think about the images/messages coming from Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign? It seems to fit your basic idea of getting out and feeling good, not obsessing over the other stuff.
I agree that “fat bashing” isn’t the way to go.
However, I don’t think that certain campaigns that aim to get people healthy (which, although can’t be defined exactly, at least as Hillary put it- feeling good in some sense) aren’t necessarily as bad as you make them out to be. Sure it’s everyone’s free choice to drink soda, but if it is also contributing to a person’s discomfort (from, say, diabetes), I don’t see how the ads illustrating the negative consequences of soda are so bad.
I absolutely don’t agree with you that athletes push themselves hard in sake of burning fat/being healthy. I think that is a huge generalization and don’t believe that to be the case for most athletes.
Provocative post. I like it.
Thanks for an interesting post Ben. I agree with you, I think our focus on “fat” is misguided. Health is much more than that and healthy people come in all shapes and sizes. One factor that clouds this discussion are the limited range of female body types that American media/culture seem willing to accept as attractive. Images of women produced by the fashion and entertainment industries are not representative of health and also not representative of reality. They are literally reshaping women’s bodies with Photoshop, so much so that Europe is considering a system of labels notifying viewers how a particular photo has been altered. It is hugely unfair, but the range of body shapes that society seems comfortable with for men are far greater than those available to women, so gender is really important to this discussion.
All that being said, as someone who works with public health, and who firmly believes that health is a human right and that healthcare is something a civilized state provides to its citizens, I do support campaigns that aim to change eating and exercise habits of the general public. There is room for a fruitful debate regarding the range of healthy body types, but one thing is undeniable–America is obese. Part of it is the food we eat, part is our lack of exercise but this has serious health implications. It is a fact, obese people have shorter lives. The cost of care related to obesity related illness–diabetes, heart disease, etc. is massive. Just yesterday NPR ran a story about high rates of diabetes and pre-diabetes in children and youth. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/21/153030283/a-dire-sign-of-the-obesity-epidemic-teen-diabetes-soaring-study-finds. The fact that children are now developing type 2 diabetes is a public health emergency. There is no place in the world where this trend is more obvious than the US. Obviously this matter is complicated by issues of class. Poorer people in the US tend to be more overweight. It is debatable whether healthy food is actually more expensive (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/05/16/152823181/how-to-make-healthy-eating-easier-on-the-wallet-change-the-calculation), but legumes and fresh vegetables do take a lot longer to prepare. This brings class back into it–if all of the adults in a household are working, who has the time to chop veggies and cook beans? So I guess my question is how can have a reasonable conversation about what health is actually about and how issues like class and ideas about gender shape this debate? How do we balance personal freedom (should people have the right to eat whatever they want without carrots and sticks from the government in the form of fat or “vice” taxes? This sounds a little too libertarian for me. If we are going to be paying for the healthcare of people, as a moral nation should, then it makes sense to consider shaping people’s behavior through taxes as we do with cigarettes currently.) with the very real public health concerns that new patterns in food consumption raise? We are not just talking about a variety of acceptable body shapes in America, we are talking about the first generation in the history of the US which is not expected to live as long as their parents. This is a problem and an honest national conversation about it needs to happen.
I’m glad that my post has sparked discussion. People seem to agree that demonizing fatness and fat people is wrong. However, I am surprised by what seems to be a willingness to write this off as an unfortunate byproduct of well-intentioned campaigns to promote health.
@Sarah: The soda ad isn’t wrong for implying that sugar is converted into fat. It’s wrong for implying that fat is a problem in itself. The implied causality is backwards: If sugar is a cause of both fat and diabetes, this precisely does *not* mean that fatness is itself unhealthy.
@Sarah: You wrote that the article suggests teens who “appear healthy” may be at risk. First, the article actually refers to teens who are “at normal weight.” The fact that “normal” weight is so easily translated into “appears healthy” is exactly the problem I am pointing to. Second, although I’m glad the article makes this point, it fails to add the obvious corollary: that teens who are “overweight” may NOT be particularly unhealthy.
@Hillary: I’m honestly surprised that you seem to be saying it’s okay for ads to trade on the demonization of fat, with all the daily prejudice that implies, in order to get kids to eat less sugar. So, if kids don’t react to long-term health analysis, we’ll get them instead by threatening that eating sugar will make them fat? Never mind what this will do to fat kids who don’t eat much sugar…
@Hillary: I’m not very familiar with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, but from what I’ve read, it basically works the same way. That is, it uses the fear of fatness, which has much more to do with beauty standards (linked to gender and class) than with health, in order to shame and threaten people into getting exercise. The question is, who gets to benefit from “getting out and feeling good”? Is a fat kid really going to be supported in exercising even if it doesn’t cause her to lose weight? Are shame and fear the right way to promote exercise? (I just visited the website. The front page is all about healthy eating and exercise. But as soon as I clicked on the “kids” button, I was told that the project is dedicated to “solving the problem of childhood obesity.” How would I feel, reading this, if I were a fat kid who ate healthy and exercised?)
@Chrissy: I did not intend to suggest that top athletes push themselves in order to burn fat or be healthy. I don’t think that’s true at all. The two (very different) goals of burning fat and being healthy are applicable to many people, but serious athletes are in a completely different category. They compete to win. My point was simply that world-class athletes are not necessarily icons of “health” and that the very idea of health is much more complicated than is generally acknowledged.
@Jonathan: I agree with your analysis of the gender and class dimensions of anti-fat rhetoric. And I agree that we should fight for a reasonable conversation about public health. Such a conversation can only begin by distinguishing between body type, body size, and health. Personally, I think taxes should be imposed on all kinds of foods based on the extent to which their production impacts both the environment and public health. But until this idea is firmly separated from prejudice against fat people and the terror of being fat, there can’t be a reasonable conversation.
To sum up: Being fat is not the same as being unhealthy. Skinny people can be unhealthy and fat people can be healthy. Health itself is a complicated idea and in any case there is nothing shameful about being unhealthy. The question of how much control individuals have over their own health (let alone their own weight) is an open one for contemporary science. We know that dieting is usually not successful and often leads to weight cycling rather than weight loss, which may itself pose a significant health risk. There is some consensus about what constitutes healthy diet and exercise, but there are plenty of questions too, and in the current cultural environment it’s very difficult to achieve any kind of objectivity about this topic.
I don’t have the statistics or the energy at my fingertips to extensively refute the hundreds of anti-fat messages that we encounter every day. So I’ll just sum up with a few words about communication, the theme of this blog. In general, two things surprise me in the comments to my post:
1) Advertising campaigns intended to shame a specific group of people are being dismissed as unfortunate but perhaps necessary byproducts of something more important.
2) Emerging science, in an area where there is long-standing cultural prejudice, is being treated as if it were watertight and conclusive, when in fact there are many unknowns.
Haven’t we learned that no amount of communication shortcuts justify the scapegoating of a group of people in the name of the public good? And haven’t we learned that when science suddenly begins to confirm cultural prejudice, we ought to be skeptical of that science and how conclusive it seems to be? I won’t name specific examples from history because I don’t want to be reductive. Each cultural moment is unique. But the intersections of prejudice, propaganda, and science are not new.
I believe in public health just as I believe in public education. But a legitimate public sphere cannot be built on scapegoating. I have not in my lifetime seen such targeted propaganda against a specific group of people in such mainstream sources, like NPR or the NYC DOH. No matter how well-intentioned these programs may be (and I’m not sure that they are), they will continue to do more harm than good until the idea of decreasing health risks is distinguished from that of losing weight.
Interesting stuff, Ben. I should clarify– I’m definitely not saying it’s okay for ads to “trade on the demonization of fat, with all the daily prejudice that implies, in order to get kids to eat less sugar.” I’m saying that I just don’t see those particular city ads as trading in the demonization of fat. I think we’re just “reading” the images differently. You see that advertising campaign as shaming a group of people– I see that advertising campaign as shaming an industry that has previously had zero accountability to consumers.
But Hillary, how is this ad shaming the soda industry? It says: “Are you pouring on the pounds? Don’t drink yourself fat.” It seems clear that the person responsible is the consumer, not the industry. And much more importantly, what does the shame consist of? Fatness, plain and simple.
There is no mention in this ad of health or even “health risks.” The fact that the ad comes from the NYC DOH is the *only* indication of the underlying assumption that fatness is a health issue. Instead of making this point, the ad offers a visual and verbal connection between a bottle of soda and a pile of fat. The equation of sodas and fat couldn’t be more clear, and the shaming is all about how terrible fatness is, not just as an object (the pile of fat) but as an attribute of people (“Don’t drink yourself fat”).
It goes like this: “soda/sugar –> fat tissue –> fat people.”
How can this be read as not trading in the demonization of fat?
How about if the ad showed lots of soda, all kinds of people drinking it and attracted a mixed audience, with the real message of: Soda are full of sugar and can be hazardous to your health/ can cause diabetes.
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I agree that “pouring on the pounds” and “fear of fat” are not good messages; and the ad is over-simplified.
Write to the NYC DOH/MTA and ask them to do better.
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Or a soda being poured into a vessel marked “diabetes” – would that be ok? Maybe with a mother and child holding up glasses of water and saying “Let’s drink to be healthy. Skip the sugar.” in English and Spanish.
This is such a smart post! You’ve teased apart some of the most important aspects of the “war on obesity.” My favorite line here is when you write, “For example, the discourse of the “obesity epidemic” has gone so far beyond the realm of reasonable medical science that it has begun to resemble more and more terrifying forms of oppression.” That’s exactly right. As a science journalist I’m so often appalled at the “facts” that get thrown around on this subject–i.e., the sugar/soda debate.
Thanks for writing.
–Harriet Brown
Author, “Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia” (Morrow, 2010)
Thank you so much, Ben, for this brilliant and concise essay on a topic I’ve been addressing since I became a fat activist in the mid-90s. I heard about your post on the fat studies email list.
For the public health person here, I invite you to consider that the weight-based paradigm may not be as beneficial or non-harmful as is popularly imagined. The Health At Every Size® paradigm was developed in response to its significant limitations. Specifically in response to the claims about so-called “obesity” and cost, I hope you’ll look at this essay by Pattie Thomas, PhD, a leading fat studies scholar: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/i-take-space/201202/risks-obesity-financial-costbenefit-analysis
I would only add a brief mention of my personal experience: I became a fat activist because I was denied health insurance (as an individual applicant) based on my weight alone. This is an industry-wide practice. I see a great deal of handwringing about soda here. I never see public comments of concern about the very real barriers fat people face in accessing quality medical care from bias-free providers. I note that rates of type 2 diabetes among children are estimated to be about 11 in 100,000 while eating disorders among children of all sizes and genders are vastly more common. As a fat person and as someone concerned for the health and happiness of children, I find the anti-fat/anti-soda ads unconscionable.
Thank you Harriet Brown and Marilyn Wann for coming to read my post! I am honored.
I’m just reading Vasily Toporkov’s memoir about working with Konstantin Stanislavski, written in the 1940s, and I came across a description of one of the characters in a Chekhov play as “a stupid, fat, healthy country girl.” The author is making fun of the girl for being stupid, and this stupidity, at the time, is stereotypically associated with being both fat and healthy. Part of the humor is how darn healthy she is as a fat person, oblivious to those who are less well.
So each cultural moment develops its own stereotypes and scapegoat figures.
Again, I completely agree that the demonizing of “fatness” isn’t the way to go, and am all for people doing whatever they want to make themselves feel good. However, there is a lot to be said about specific consumption leading to objectively unhealthy types of fat (like the kinds sugary foods like soda bring). While the campaign itself may not be the way to go, something else has to be done. Americans are experiencing more and more problems brought on by their consumption, regardless of size. Scientifically speaking, though, there is a problem here in that most times the problems of heart disease, diabetes, etc. go hand in hand with body fat. For example, I have a family member who is considered obese, and whose MRI imaging has shown extensive amounts of unhealthy fat around his organs. While it’s of course wrong to demonize a person like him about his weight, it is undeniable that he would be healthier (rid himself of some of these diseases), more comfortable (i.e., being able to walk up steps better), and have a better quality of life (not need to administer medicine during the day) if he altered his lifestyle. Yet, instead of demonizing people like him, 1) how do we better get a message across, 2) what should that message be?
Chrissy, you’re making an awful lot of assumptions about your family member. Who says his lifestyle needs altering? Who says yours doesn’t? That’s what we’re talking about–the knee-jerk assumption that those who are thin live “healthier” lifestyles, and those who are fat don’t.
–Harriet Brown (who hasn’t drunk ANY kind of soda in 40 years, who exercises regularly, who eats lots of fruits and veggies and non-processed foods, and is still considered obese)
Harriet, this is coming directly from my family member himself. He “feels miserable” because he can barely breathe when tying his shoes, walking a few blocks, etc. But yes, I agree–it’s not because he’s obese. He doesn’t adhere to a lifestyle that you do (i.e., he doesn’t exercise, eats McDonalds, etc.). My question is how do we separate one from the other. I wasn’t trying to knee-jerk assume anything, and especially wasn’t trying to be negative.
I think we start by just doing it–separating health and weight, and looking at how to improve health without worrying about weight one way or another (what’s known as being weight-neutral). That’s what I love about Health At Every Size–it’s about improving health behaviors and outcomes for everyone. In your family member’s case, it would make sense to start with small things he can do comfortably and sustainably–walk 2 blocks every day, then walk 3 blocks, etc. I’m not an expert on this part of the process; maybe others will chime in.
Thanks for clarifying Chrissy, and I hope you didn’t feel attacked. But I agree with Harriet: It’s not hard to figure out *how* to separate weight from health. There are plenty of different kinds of measurements for health, and feeling terrible is definitely one of them.
If it seems difficult to disassociate weight from health, that’s because the push to equate them comes from powerful, long-standing cultural prejudices. We’ve already mentioned gender and class dynamics. I’d like to add that the diet industry doesn’t work against consumption; it’s a form of consumption in it’s own right.
The weight loss industry sells products. It’s advertising is designed to convince people to buy certain things in order to achieve their goals. In that sense it’s just like McDonalds. As I said at the beginning, what amazes and scares me is how this is playing out in the domain of public health.
This is a really interesting discussion. I’m glad you sparked it Ben. On the public health issue, I’ve been thinking about how this conversation could actually be translated into something that the average American could understand. It seems like the focus on fat is a lazy shorthand. Health and nutrition is complicated. Most Americans do not understand, nor care to understand how their bodies process food or how exercise changes the composition of one’s body. Also complicating matters is that scientific research in this area is frequently contradictory-some studies show coffee is good for you, others bad. When faced with 10 second soundbites on the local news twice removed from the scientific journal text, most people just focus on whatever supports their present eating habits. For example, I just heard that drinking coffee may prevent Alzheimers, great! I drink a lot of coffee.
So I suppose that the demonization of obesity for public health purposes is a way of addressing a much larger issue but by focusing on its most visually obvious sign. Yes, I think it is lazy, but I’m not sure it is necessarily untrue. By whatever definition of health we want to use, seriously obese people are not going to be healthy. Whether we are talking about running a mile, walking up stairs, or being able to carry around groceries, children etc. I come from a family full of obese people (well it used to be more full, most have died already of the usual suspects: diabetes and heart disease and have left behind obese children who I expect will also have shorter lives- I’m being glib here, but really this stinks. These are aunts, uncles, cousins and their lives have been drastically shortened.) I have watched them struggle. I do think it is wrong to demonize them, but as a society, we have to figure out a way to deal with this. Obviously it is not just about fat content or soda (though honestly, I’m happy with those soda advertisements. people do need to know how awful for you 24oz. of soda is. I think a lot of young people don’t realize it.)
Getting back to American exceptionalism, I think it has to be acknowledged that there is something seriously different about the size of American people. It is undeniable, every time I have been outside of the country for a while, I always am shocked at how large people are, and we are not talking about healthy people. It is the worst with children. Here is an area where there is real scientific evidence, something is going on here. Rates of type 2 diabetes are skyrocketing among young people. What kind of life prospects do elementary school students have if they are already diabetic? This is a public health disaster. I guess the issue is how do we get the point across that it is not OK for children to be so huge without devaluing them as people. I don’t think the weight loss industry is going to do that for us.
Maybe you remember a couple years ago there was a lot of news coverage about US reserve soldiers? They were unable to complete the physical requirements to be deployed for duty. Again, we are not talking about levels of attractiveness or pleasing body shapes, these are US military service people who were unable to perform basic physical tasks like running, and doing pushups and pullups.
I don’t know whether it is the video games or the types of high calorie super-processed foods we are eating, but I think that no matter how naive and simplistic the public health community’s reaction has been, there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. What we have now is epidemic obesity and alarmingly high levels of anorexia and bulemia. I think the solution to both of these issues is related, but it means really placing a value on health, that means really valuing exercise and and healthy eating habits and teaching them to children. How are they going to get them though, if their own parents don’t value either? This is a tough situation at least in part because food makes us feel good, especially fatty and sugary food that is bad for us. At the same time, especially for people who are out of shape, exercise is unpleasant, especially when it is something that people feel is forced upon them.
Thanks to all who have posted such insightful comments; I too find it fascinating, especially the suggestion that there’s too much focus lost by the issue of sodas + sugar + weight, rather than the larger public health issue of eating disorders.
@Ben, your response sounded like you questioned whether the early responders to your post recognized that “Being fat is not the same as being unhealthy. Skinny people can be unhealthy and fat people can be healthy.” I do recognize this, and your post was insightful in its articulation of how public discourse obscures exactly that. But I think that we each bring our own highly charged associations with body image and physical health to the table when we try to understand how these images work on us every day, so I don’t think it’s necessarily surprising that people have very different understandings of what these various campaigns are doing, who they’re speaking to, and what they’re saying.
Take the specific example of the NYC ads; when I worked in an elementary school it wasn’t uncommon to see one of my 1st graders hauling a hefty plastic bag of candy & multi-colored drinks that they would bring to school as “snacks” to eat with lunch, usually bought at a bodega for a few bucks. Then they’d go back to the same store after school and buy more. (And yeah, it was one of those schools with gym class about once per week, another issue.) Should a six year-old be eating a jumbo pack of twizzlers every day and chasing it with a 24 oz. drink with high fructose corn syrup in it? No. Does the visual on that advertisement get across that message? To me, it does. If this should be about improving health behaviors and making small changes, as Harriet suggests, lowering one’s soda intake is one of those small changes.
I also viewed those ads as “shaming” the beverage industry in part due to the soda industry’s decision to fight back with its own (oversimplified) ads: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/05/09/coca-cola-pepsi-reportedly-join-nyc-subway-anti-obesity-ad-battle/
But I too share the concern about a growing hysteria (that works in tandem with the photoshopped ideal images in popular culture) that compounds the confusion about what “HEALTH” actually is/could be. And continued thought about how public campaigns can facilitate that is so important if we’re to work towards health as a continuum and a process, not one set standard/goal…
In your family member’s case, it would make sense to start with small things he can do comfortably and sustainably–walk 2 blocks every day, then walk 3 blocks, etc. I’m not an expert on this part of the process; maybe others will chime in.
I wrote about some of the “starting exercise as an out-of-shape large person” things I learned in recovering from a knee injury. (How’d I get the knee injury? I started exercising the wrong way, aka too much.) It’s at http://living400lbs.wordpress.com/exercise/
Just a couple short responses:
@Hillary, you wrote: “Should a six year-old be eating a jumbo pack of twizzlers every day and chasing it with a 24 oz. drink with high fructose corn syrup in it? No. Does the visual on that advertisement get across that message? To me, it does.” I absolutely agree with public health initiatives to promote health through better eating habits, and I’ve also been horrified at the way young people drink HFC sodas throughout the day. (I’m equally horrified by the plastic bottle itself, by the way, even if the contents are water.) The visual image in the ad may get across the message that people should drink less soda, but only by routing it through the widespread prejudice against fatness and fat people. The explicit message in the ad is not “don’t drink yourself sick” but “don’t drink your self FAT.” Maybe the ad contributes to people drinking less soda. Maybe it also contributes to more unhealthy dieting, eating disorders, and weight cycling.
@Jonathan, you wrote: “At the same time, especially for people who are out of shape, exercise is unpleasant, especially when it is something that people feel is forced upon them.” This is an assumption I find very troubling. Different kinds of exercise are pleasant or unpleasant for different people at different times. A big part of that is the prejudice and sense of competition that we face, which has to do with the climate of how exercise is promoted. In this context, the idea that if you exercise you should lose weight is particularly relevant. Many, many people actually measure their “success” in physical activities by how much weight they lose. Since for a lot of people moderate exercise won’t cause much weight loss, it’s no wonder that exercising is so often unpleasant. You might as well say that doing math is unpleasant for people who aren’t good at math. Actually, what makes it unpleasant is when one feels inadequate and unsuccessful.
On a brighter note, I just (via the trackback below) came upon this great set of Illustrated BMI categories:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/
This is great visual communication to counteract body-size prejudice and show the absurdity of BMI as a measurement of health. It’s not just that the photos reveal the huge gap between what people imagine to be the “obesity epidemic” and what these categories actually look like. Additionally, taken together, the portraits also point to how reductive it is to label people in this way.
I do wish there were more photos of men. All the same, I’d like to see these images (with the captions, with quotation marks) on the NYC subway!