RSS Feed MenuEven three years ago, conservatives were derided as fat, uneducated slobs who could not understand their own interests. But America’s political map changes and all that is solid melts into air.
On Slate.com yesterday, editor Daniel Engbar laid out a case for treating obesity not as a public health issue, but as a new field for self-pitying victim politics.
[F]at people face rampant discrimination on the job and marriage markets. … We know, for example, that if you’re fat, you make less money. … There’s also evidence that obese women are less likely to attend college or maintain romantic relationships, even controlling for socioeconomic background. (One survey found that a few extra pounds could reduce a woman’s chance of getting married by 20 percent.) … These data points suggest a rather simple approach to America’s obesity problem: Stop hating. If we weren’t such unrepentant body bigots, fat people might earn more money, stay in school, and receive better medical care in hospitals and doctor’s offices. All that would go a long way toward mitigating the health effects of excess weight—and its putative costs. But there’s an even better reason to think that America’s glutton intolerance is a threat to public health and the federal budget. Recent epidemiological research implies that the shame of being obese poses its own medical risk. Mental anguish harms the body; weight stigma can break your heart.
According to Engber’s novel analysis, we do not have an obesity crisis in the United States but a crisis of ‘weight-ism.’ He argues that the solution is to introduce a federal ban on weight discrimination or to alternatively cover overweight people under the Civil Rights Act.
To date, courts have not responded sympathetically to weight discrimination claims. Southwest Airlines has been sued for its policy requiring heavy passengers to buy a second seat, but so far no plaintiff has won. And yet, given the swift increase in the incidence of obesity – and the enduring power of identity politics – it’s easy to imagine how ideas like Engbar’s could advance.
Yet what exactly would that mean?
Does Mr. Engber propose doing away with gym classes or high school athletics? What about the new push for healthy eating and character education in our schools? Is it discriminatory to promote some modes of eating as better than others?
A growing body of work suggests individuals may be genetically predisposed to obesity, and this cannot be ignored. But the fact that obesity runs in families may only be evidence of children’s ability to internalize and duplicate their parents’ bad behaviors. Poverty induces obesity because poor people tend to be less educated in general, have less access to healthcare, and purchase cheaper foods that have more carbohydrates, salt and fat than middle class and wealthy people. Rather than encourage new ways to examine obesity, however, extending the Civil Rights Act to ‘weight-ism’ will discourage research. For the government to say that being obese is the same as being black or female is tantamount to saying that any effort to teach people ways to avoid obesity or to research its causes is discriminatory.
Engbar cites recent research into obesity. Yet there is one study he overlooks, and that is the most important of all. It’s the New England Journal of Medicine study that found that obesity is literally infectious.
A person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57%. … if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval. Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40% …. If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37%. … These effects were not seen among neighbors in the immediate geographic location.
In other words, one friend being overweight will influence his friends’ attitudes about acceptable weight in a way that encourages them to become overweight as well. The fat acceptance urged by people who think like Engbar will only invite even further worsening of the nation’s obesity problem.
Obesity is not like homosexuality, an involuntary characteristic that should not be stigmatized. It’s more like smoking, a lifestyle choice dangerous to oneself and others. We can sympathize with those people who struggle to change their lives. But the sympathy can be overdone: The American unwillingness to blame people for anything, even actions almost entirely within their own control, is among the most important causes of the obesity epidemic.
The answer, “I am not overweight, you are prejudiced,” may win applause – but won’t solve this problem.
EscapeVelocity // Oct 7, 2009 at 2:39 pm
You hatefilled sizest bigot!
EscapeVelocity // Oct 7, 2009 at 2:48 pm
All you are doing is alienating fat people with this talk. We need to be a big tent party, that recognizes the interests and feelings of large people, not dismiss them with references to gyms and healthy eating.
How are we every going to reach a majority by alienating large minority groups, like this?
America has changed and is changing, you have to accept the reality of that….if you want to effect good fiscal policy, debt and deficit reduction, good governance…..you know, the really important parts of Conservatism, not this superficial stuff that alienates voters.
LOL!
Ive David Frum down pat!
joemarier // Oct 7, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Okay, that’s pretty funny.
sinz54 // Oct 7, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Maybe what will work is a “Scared Straight” scenario:
I hereby invite any obese folks in the Massachusetts area to stop by my kidney dialysis center. We’ll be happy to show them what the end result of obesity can be:
http://tinyurl.com/ybcerhu
EscapeVelocity // Oct 7, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I thought we were about individualism and liberty, not paternalistic moralizing…nanny statism?
We should add fat people to our list of minority candidates, actively seeking to include fat faces, to attract fat voters to the GOP.
LOL!
EscapeVelocity // Oct 7, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Fat is Beautiful!
We should advocate for Fat Studies Departments in Universities to study the history of discrimination and persecution of fat people, now and currently. Devise plans for the promotion of diversity, affirmative action for fat people. Fat people earn less than their thin counterparts and are often passed over from promotion.
Up next Ugly People!
Ugly People are Beautiful!
mlindroo // Oct 8, 2009 at 4:01 am
By the way, Michael Wolf jokes(?) that the GOP has a huge opportunity with this particular segment of the voting population.
MARCU$
http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/288/soda-is-the-new-right-wing-issue-and-fatsos-the-new-base.html
[...] Super groovy cool self-satisfied yuppie people, like the president and his health-conscious family, don’t drink soda. But gross fat compulsive lacking-all-self-control normal Americans do.
It is an attempt to rally what could be one of the most significant constituencies in America: the fat. Let me not repeat the statistics. Everybody knows the fat are the nation’s fastest growing demographic. The right wing sees a potential opportunity here. The Democrats’ health care bill is clearly targeting and demonizing fat people for their disproportionate claim on resources, at the same time that television, with its myriad weight loss, but really fat-is-fun, shows, is promoting fat culture. It could be, the right is clearly figuring, an issue whose time has come.
The basic argument is about the government telling you what to do, taking away choice, being the boss of you. But the real message is about the high and mighty looking down on the hopeless hoi polloi (though the right wing would not say hoi polloi). A group called the Center for Consumer Freedom has a full page ad in the Times opposing the attacks on soda: “YOU ARE TOO STUPID…to make good personal decisions about foods and beverages.”
sinz54 // Oct 8, 2009 at 10:49 am
escapevelocity: I thought we were about individualism and liberty, not paternalistic moralizing…nanny statism?
Of course we’re for freedom and liberty. But with any type of insurance, cost and risk are pooled . That means that each person’s choices affect the costs and risks of the entire pool.
With auto insurance, a high-risk driver who is reckless and has lots of accidents ends up paying a higher premium. After all, he made the choice. In that way, safe drivers don’t have to pay extra for the risks of the high-risk driver.
Now folks who abuse their bodies by adopting high-risk lifestyles that will likely make them sicker in the future, are not required to pay higher health insurance premiums. As a result, they drive up the health care costs of society generally, and the premiums of healthy policyholders.
EscapeVelocity // Oct 8, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Yes, universal health care as the key to insert government regulation over every aspect of individual lives, micromanaging every aspect of them.
Who would of thunk it?
Better not to give the state a reason to be interested in you diet and lifestyle, I say.
But Im a real Conservative, interested in the important things…..not a David Frum Tory.
EscapeVelocity // Oct 8, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Which other minority groups cultural behaviors are going to be attacked. African American diets which lead to higher rates of heart disease? The hip hop lifestyle that leads to homocide and physical violence injury?
Stab proof knives? (UK invention)
Welcome Leviathon at your own peril and stupidity.
ltoro1 // Oct 8, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Well sinz, individuals should have to pay for the amount of risk (in the form of premiums) they are willing to take. The fact that we generally don’t do is one of the primary reasons our health insurance systems is a mess.
sinz54 // Oct 10, 2009 at 9:59 am
escapevelocity: Which other minority groups cultural behaviors are going to be attacked. African American diets which lead to higher rates of heart disease?
Not cultural behaviors, but conditions.
If you’re obese, that’s a health condition and a health risk. I don’t care how you got that way, whether it was from bad diet or from lack of exercise or both. The only exception to that rule is genetic predisposition. It is unfair to penalize someone for having bad genes. You can’t choose your geneology, after all.
If you have lots of auto accidents, the insurer doesn’t care if it’s because you’re reckless or because you’re absent-minded or because you drive on roads with lots of hazards. Your premiums will rise anyway.
EscapeVelocity // Oct 11, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Sinz, Im sorry, you dont know what freedom means. Its means having the freedom to choose poorly. Otherwise it is meaningless.
Will these poor choices affect others or society negatively? Sometimes yes, but that is the price of freedom. For example people that use speech to promote hate, like the Western Left likes to do with regards to White Christian Males.
But we accept this, as an imperfect but prefferred circumstance.
Elsewise, all you are doing is promoting a system where groups vie for control of the government to enforce their morality on other people….whether they be Environmentalists, Christians, Islamics, Gays, the Health Police…whatever.