“A life without
happiness, companionship, love. A life alone.”
“It’s time for them to lose the weight, find the self esteem
and gain the confidence”
The Biggest Loser 2012 pledges
to save fat people from a life of singledom. Finally, something that is
actually attacking the real side effects of weight gain!
Fortunately this pledge is wrong. Plenty of fat people get
married, have sex, and feel as happy about themselves as the narcissistic
personal trainers on The Biggest
Loser. Why is it then that we still believe the false correlation between
body weight and love life, or that being obese gets in the way of having a good
time? The Biggest Loser is perhaps the most direct example of societal
stigma against obese people, rather than obesity itself.
To cope with the national shame of potentially being the
world’s fattest country, we have waged a war on obese people. The logic that
fat equals failure, seems irrefutable, but an inherent dislike of The Biggest Loser has pushed me to
question my own long-engrained prejudices against fat people. Some quotes
against obese people I have heard this week alone:
“Fat person on the road! 100 points if you hit them!”
“Because she’s fat, I hate her even more”
“I would hate myself if I looked like that”,
And finally, “how could you let yourself get so fat?”
This question has baffled more than the weight bigot, or
“fattist”. The overweight and obesity crisis, which in 2008 included 61% of the
population*, has begged one explain why Australians seem to eat too much and
not move enough. As calorie input and output are largely at the mercy of the
individual, many will point the finger at lack of informed decision making, or
greediness, as reason behind unhealthy weight gain. Does this make it okay,
therefore, to pass judgement on obese people because they “chose” to be that
way?
As the line between personal responsibility and health is so
thin, a prejudice against obese people seems justified. Yet the war actually
hinders any progress obese people can make to achieve a healthier body size. By
turning obesity into a problem of personality, rather than health, people who
are obese often feel marginalised and second-rate. This is not a good start to
try new ways of living and lose weight in the long-term, as chronic weight gain
is often due to environmental factors such as sedentary jobs, an upbringing of
unhealthy eating, or as a consequence of emotional problems. These factors will
not suddenly change as they require a struggle against reinforced habits. Just
because an obese person struggles to make such changes, does not mean they have
failed personally while everyone else lives vice-free. All humans, including
the fittest athletes are lazy, make poor health choices and are weak to
temptation, especially of the culinary variety. Someone’s personality is
inconsistent and constantly in flux, making it impossible to determine with
something as stagnant as body size.
Obesity levels have doubled since 1985*, and with no
indication of rate decreasing, weight gain is set to become to become multi-generational
health problem. Based on previous rate growth, it is esteemed that by 2020, 80%
of adults will be obese*. Fattism is not helping fat people lose weight, and it
only adds to the nation-wide confusion of what, where, and how much to eat. Our
food and exercise choices are pushed into indecisive oblivion when we see the
gleeful victimisation of fat people in The
Biggest Loser, then straight after, a fevered thirty minutes of Masterchef that salivates over
calorie-laden decadent dishes. If plenty of basic food education is enforced at
school and in the public, perhaps we could see the unglamorous truth behind Masterchef contestant Lily’s rich
chocolate cake, currently the most popular recipe on the show’s website. The
media needs greater diversity in actor body types, providing entertainment
which does not encourage self-hate and exclude obese people. Theatres, planes
and clothing stores must modify to the larger consumer, and promote a consumer
culture which does not humiliate one for their size.
So to all the fattists out there: The next time you see
someone large, do remember that, just like downing three diet cokes a day, a
penchant for cigars or binge drinking once a week, it is a problem of health,
not personality. The war on obesity is not a war on people who are obese, it is
a war against diet and food habits. We do not live to eat, we eat to live. You
are more than what you eat.
*statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics
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