14 DAY TRIAL // Were one to divide people by the stances they take towards body weight, we could probably note two major categories: one that speaks for acceptance and embracing the body each and every one of us lives in, and another that is completely opposed to anything beyond the limits of “normalcy,” meaning either skinny or overweight people. For some reason or another, people today cannot find a balance between the two. Moreover, the rhetoric against fat people is becoming louder and more virulent with each day, with the US standing out from the crowd as the biggest hater of them all, a recent piece in NewsWeek says.
The common tendency is to turn against overweight people solely on the premise that they have done the harm themselves, therefore must suffer the consequences no matter what they are. In the US in particular, the piece says, the anti-fat rhetoric has reached such heights (or lows, depending on how one considers it), that packing on a few pounds seems the equivalent of the biggest crime one can commit. And, what’s even worse, the feeling of hatred and, to some extent, the discrimination towards those struggling with their weight is spreading fast, which leaves nutritionists and psychologists at a loss as to their next move, preferably one that wouldn’t attract even more negative media attention.
Speaking of which, it was almost unbelievable to see how the US public reacted to President Obama appointing Regina M. Benjamin Surgeon General. Benjamin has an MBA and is the receiver of a “genius grant,” but she is also overweight and, for several major media outlets, naming her for the job was the same as having the President openly saying obesity was OK. For a country where 60 percent of the adults are overweight or obese, even such an apparently insignificant detail can have catastrophic consequences, the piece explains.
There is concrete, undeniable, unmitigated hatred directed at the fat, and expressing it out loud is becoming a tendency with most Americans. “There’s this general perception that weight can be controlled if you have enough willpower, that it’s just about calories in and calories out. It’s a failure to control ourselves. It violates everything we have learned about self control from a very young age.” Dr. Glen Gaesser, professor of exercise and wellness at Arizona State University, says for NewsWeek. Thus, despite the existence of studies that show that there can be heavy yet toned people, fat has come to mean lazy, weak and disgusting. Sad. Self-destructing. Intolerable.
“A lot of people struggle themselves with their weight, and the same people that tend to get very angry at themselves for not being able to manage their weight are more likely to be biased against the obese. I think that some of this is that anger is confusion between the anger that we have at ourselves and projecting that out onto other people.” Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the Yale University, says for the same publication.
Psychologically, this phenomenon is known as the fundamental attribution error, where we see our faults as the result of circumstances, while other’s problems are their own doing, for which reason they should pay up, be held accountable for them. This type of anger that we direct at those struggling with their weight is also our best weapon against feeling guilty for our own flaws, at regaining some sense of control over our lives by dumping the blame entirely on someone else, in this case, an overweight person, experts believe. At the same time, it also makes dealing with obesity as a medical condition harder, because any measure towards this could actually up the bubbling rage by a lot.
There might not be a solution in sight to the problem – at least, not right now, when people are yet to learn how to react to the ever-changing dimensions of the human body, and especially when pressure comes from all sides to look a certain way in order to be socially accepted. For the full NewsWeek piece, as well as for more on what experts make of the anti-fat rhetoric in the US, please refer here.