What We Think About When We Think About Obesity
(Liya Rechtman)– “If I have to pay more for luggage if it’s five pounds over, fat people should have to pay more too. They’re weighing us all down.”
The above is a direct quote from my boss the one summer I experimented with working on Wall Street. It was a summer full of seven-coffee-cup days and men in jeans more expensive than my phone ogling at my still semi-pubescent breasts. They called me the “little hippie” and I was pretty patently unhappy to be in the office in the first place, but that comment took me over the edge. I knew I couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t directed at me, merely flung out over my cubicle to the business-school-bound college grad who shared my desk. I remember my hands shaking as I took a giant swing of coffee and learned to stomach the tip of what I now understand to be blatant and widespread discrimination against America’s growing population of obese.
Here’s a fact: obesity is a HUGE problem in our country. The Center for Disease Control estimates that as of 2008, 33.8% of adults and 17% of children can be classified as obese in the United States. These numbers are only increasing. Obesity causes all sorts of health complications, most notably type II diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and infertility. These health issues lead to huge costs for the American people.
You’ve heard the facts before. You’ve seen Michelle Obama’s healthy eating campaign, and the American Heart Association advertisements. You’ve also probably heard that fat people are lazy and stupid.. You’ve probably seen a morbidly obese person eating a giant hamburger or smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer and it’s made you feel disgusting. You may have, out of a perverse sense of curiosity, checked out The Biggest Loser, at least during that ground-shattering first season.
We, especially at an elite predominantly white institution, have a pretty set and uniform idea of who and what fat people are. And that’s exactly the problem.
Because there are a couple things we don’t talk about.
People don’t just ‘get fat’ by eating poorly. The situation is more complicated than that. Obese people are very often of a lower socio-economic status. Yes, of course unhealthy, high-fat/sugar food leads to unhealthy weight gain, but it’s also the cheapest, and therefore most accessibly food available. When an apple costs as much as a McDouble and you only have so much to spend on dinner, you’re probably going to go for the meaty, filling burger. And that’s assuming you have there are apples at the closest grocery store, or that you have time to buy fresh groceries weekly. Obesity rates are highest (around 30%) in African American and Hispanic populations, the two demographics that are also as a group of the lowest socio-economic status in the country. Obesity, then, can become a coding for race and class.
So when we, say, at a small liberal arts school in the North East or a fancy Wall Street office, talk about obesity, what do we actually mean? Are we really just talking about ‘fat people?’
When my boss, returning from a highly unpleasant flight squeezed in between two fat people, made his comment, my co-worker laughed. As did a man in the cubicle over. It is highly significant that the comment was made in the workplace. Because discrimination against the obese is so normalized, offensive statements like that can be made publicly. My boss would never dare to make a similarly spirited observation overtly regarding race, or gender (at least in New York state…), but there was no thought on his, or anyone else’s part, about the effect of his comment on the obese population.
Similarly, there is no institutional movement to consider that fact that obese people have a much harder time getting jobs, and are substantially less likely to receive promotions than their thinner counterparts. Studies show that obese people, especially women, are systemically subject to stigmatization in the workplace, and further, employment-related victimization.
Finally, the real problem: obesity becomes an easy cycle. If obese people are being discriminated against in the workplace (at all levels), then they are being paid less. If they are paid less, they have less expendable income and time to spend on making healthy food and exercise choices. If they have less time, they will continue to become obese. AND, if they have children, they won’t have resources with which to provide those children healthy food either. Hence, more obese children.
Would’ya look at that? We seem to have an epidemic on our hands… moreover, an epidemic in which poor black and Hispanic people are yet again legally discriminated against and subordinated.
#newjimcrowpart2: Michelle Alexander rightly categorized the American penal system as a 21st century renewal of Jim Crow laws, pushing black men out of the voting booths and into jail for non-violent crimes based on mandatory minimum sent. In much the same way, discrimination against the obese pushes specifically black and Hispanic women out of the workplace, thereby relegating them further into economic stasis and restricting access to healthy choices.
This isn’t a post about fat-hate, or body positivity, which I easily could have written instead. And this in no way should be read as directed simply at my boss that one summer, or the Amherst community simply by virtue of the fact that Amherst College is an elite PWI. No, this a bigger issue than either of those isolated communities. The question of discrimination against the obese is a bigger problem than that: who do we protect legally, why, and who are we actually helping? This is a complicated issue. So c’mon, git at me (respectfully, of course, lovely readers).
- Liya Rechtman
11 Comments on “What We Think About When We Think About Obesity”
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Not a bad point. The original joke wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t offensive. It’s just a joke. Shit, we gettin to the point where everything is offensive. But anyways, obesity isn’t unavoidable like race. Sure we need to change some shit up cuz yeah poor people eat shitty food cuz its cheap, but this problem isn’t the same as race. You can lose weight. Its gonna be harder for some people, and that shit sucks, but sorry if you’re a fatass I’m not gonna be crying over your trouble hand feeding you some iceberg lettuce. Obesity is not Jim Crow, and it’ll never be Jim Crow. If someone decides to not serve black people in a restaurant, thats fucked up. Sitting next to some black people on a plane is not a big deal. And if youre a racist then just chill and take a nap, w.e. Sitting between two fat motherfuckers while their 50 pounds of muffin top falls onto your lap and their tree trunk whale blubber legs cram you in the middle like you in some kind of cattle car (exaggeration, no disrespect to the Holocaust) is a problem. If you weigh 400 pounds you should have to buy two seats, because the normal dude paid for his and he ain’t gettin a full seat and a good experience. That’s the issue. Fat people are in many cases a burden, one which we have to take care of. But I ain’t tryna accommodate your fatass. Put some green in school lunches. Encourage people to get the grilled chicken wrap over the big mac, but at some point its up to the mothafucka himself. Don’t ask me to censor myself.
So I chose not to censor this person, or edit their remarks at all – primarily because “real talk” serves as a perfect case study for what I was talking about. We don’t see obesity as a trait that deserves protection from discrimination. We feel like we can say whatever we want about obesity because its “their own fault.” Isn’t that similar to what Michelle Alexander argues is so insidious and effective in the criminalization of otherness in our American penal system?
“Real talk”‘s comment above is truly hurtful and perhaps in not censoring him I am alienating other readers. The fact that a) I am not obese but b) more importantly, his comments seem so outlandish yet relevant to my article renders censorship unnecessary in my mind. Thoughts, readers?
Although I think you are making a very salient point about the way we blatantly discriminate against obese people, I think making a comparison between this and the new Jim Crow is going too far. although overweight people are often discriminated against and ridiculed, they are in no way the victims of an institutionalized policy of discrimination carried out by their own government and legal system the way racial minorities are today. And although I agree with you that your former boss’ comments were inappropriate and disrespectful, we cannot deny that there are cases in which obese people do constitute a liability. Either way, this issue needs to be addressed and acted upon without stripping people of their dignity, something your former boss and “real talk” obviously haven’t mastered yet.
While I can definitely understand how fat-shaming might devolve into a form of classism, I have to object to treating the obesity problem as gently as we would other forms of discrimination. Of course there’s far less ‘personal choice’ involved in nutrition than it is intuitive for us to believe, just as this is the case with crime, drugs, etc. But recognize, also, that unlike in the other situations that might lead to discrimination, obesity is unambiguously bad. There is no redeeming quality to obesity and because, as you say, the obese are so heavily overrepresented in the lower classes, it is a tremendous drain on our economy. I will absolutely admit that solutions need to be pragmatic instead of blame-based. The same goes for crime, drugs, prostitution, etc. The epidemic is that our society is weakened by a pattern that can be, on a personal basis, corrected. Of course it’s not as easy as those ignorant of the problem would make it seem, but I should think that it isn’t nearly as systemically coercive as is the drug problem. Unnecessary fat-descrimination should be forbidden through legislation, but we ought to concentrate our efforts on making our society more resilient against obesity, rather than on making it more accommodating of it.
Thanks for your comment, Dan. To continue the comparison with “the new Jim crow” (although I do agree with anonymous that there are major differences), drug use and dealing are unambiguously bad too. The question of how they are treated in comparison to other crimes, considering who commits them and why forms the argument that they create a new under-class. What do you mean by “systemically coercive”?
And it should be stated, as per whymartin and anonymous – yes, the fact that the penal system is an institution and the workplace is an amorphous force certainly means that they’re not directly comparable and discrimination in one is a) more problematic and b) perhaps easier to see than discrimination in the other.
i think i’m on the same lines as Diner here.. i see your point, and i understand how you got there, but i wonder if discrimination against the obese is really the “new” new jim crow. i don’t know if i’d personally go that far, but I do agree with the fact that those in the lower socio-economic ranks are the ones who hurt the most from the fast food industry and in turn are the most likely to be obese, have type 2 diabetes, and everything else that comes from it.
this reminds of the whole food desert situation, and how food has become a mode of classifying people even further (with the “organic” revolution and all). while the upper middle class largely goes to stores like whole foods, buying organic fruit and vegetables that may or may not be healthier for them (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/opinion/roger-cohen-the-organic-fable.html?_r=0), the lower classes often live in areas where grocery stores are replaced by liquor stores and candy bars are more viable snack options than bananas. it’s kind of crazy how eating healthy in America has become a question of money
What exactly constitutes a necessary fat-discrimination?
yeah nothing is anybody’s fault anymore. no one gotta take personal responsibility for shit nowadays. not saying we don’t need any reform, but at the same time we gotta realize that its in our own hands. cant go around blaming everybody else for stuff. this isn’t structural like jim crow. someone couldn’t just take it upon themselves to be white. what they could do is prove that they’re just as skilled, or more skilled, than a white guy. and what people need to realize is that being fat isn’t a permanent state. take some responsibility. and when you’re eatin 7 meals a day don’t expect people to treat you like a prince.
‘real talk,’ you have a very shallow understanding of what you’re talking about and you’re being very inappropriate. Please stop.
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For many people, food is an addiction not unlike drug use:
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-food-addiction