A Look Back At The Year In Fat-Shaming

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From Your Health Journal…..”I wanted to direct my readers to an excellent article I found from the Philly Post written by Stephen Silver who wrote a interesting story on the shaming of fat people throughout the year. I encourage you all to visit the Philly Post site (link below) to view the full article. The article starts by noticing a decline in childhood obesity, but the author notes this really had nothing to do with fat shaming children, rather new approaches to school lunches as well as reducing the ‘liquid candy’ drinks in the school. Then, the article pointed to various times this year the media bashed an individual based upon their weight. In a world where many try to be politically correct, it is hard to imagine this happens, but it did. The author wrote, “If you don’t think fat people are shamed plenty already, you’ve probably never been fat. And if we went to a public health approach of all fat-shaming, all the time, the likely result wouldn’t be healthier or even thinner people; more likely, it would be greater incidents of eating disorders, not to mention depression.” Please visit the full story on the Philly Post web site. Mr. Silver’s message is quite clear, and important to read.”

From the article…..

I was surprised to read last week that rates of childhood obesity in some U.S. cities, Philadelphia included, are actually down. According to the New York Times, which cited a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the rate of childhood obesity in Philadelphia has dropped five percent. The positive change in Philly, which was seen across demographic categories, was attributed to “a broad assault on childhood obesity,” which has included such efforts as the removal of sugary drinks and deep fryers from the cafeterias in city schools.

With all the usual caveats applying about small statistical sample sizes, I was encouraged by this and fascinated by the Johnson Foundation numbers. It’s good to see some progress in a seemingly intractable public health issue.

Notice, though, that none of those successful efforts involved shaming the kids, getting them to hate themselves, or humiliating them into dropping a few sizes.

This news comes at the end of a year in which discussions of obesity, weight and body-shaming—in regards to adults—have been all over the culture.

There was Wisconsin news anchor Jennifer Livingston, who responded on the air to a letter from a viewer who bashed her for going on the air as an overweight person. There were public freakouts about modest weight gains by previously stick-thin celebrities like Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga. There were legions on Twitter who opined that CNN’s Candy Crowley, after asking a tough question of Mitt Romney in a presidential debate, was too fat to moderate the debate. There were dozens of speculative articles tying Chris Christie’s weight to his political future. And perhaps worst of all, there was a friggin’ licensed OB/GYN quoted in a news story calling Jessica Simpson “an absolute porker” for the unforgivable crime of gaining too much weight during pregnancy.

What a lot of this comes down to is the idea of fat-shaming. Jennifer Livingston’s correspondent did something that’s known in Internet culture as “concern trolling”—he pretended to be concerned about Livingston’s health and her being a poor role model, when he almost certainly just didn’t want to have to turn on his TV and see a fat person. The same with Gaga and Christina—and 10 years ago, wasn’t everyone freaking out about Aguilera being too thin?

To read the full article…..Click here