In the 1980s, a panel of representatives from the national Health Institute in the United States identified obesity as a serious health threat, declaring it “a killer disease” (Owen 6). This declaration became even more amplified, when in 2003 the United States Surgeon General Richard Carmona declared obesity to be the greatest health issue facing America (Owen 3). Since, Americans have become infatuated with dieting, nutrition, and exercising in response to the “obesity epidemic.” New stories of “obese” and “overweight” people experiencing drastic, and sometimes unhealthy, weight loss is constantly seen on television, especially in reality shows.
Too often society is focused on how we look and what the ideal or “normal” person should look like rather than how we are born or how are genes influenced our appearance. Anti-fat bias runs rampant in many parts of the world, particularly in Western society. It is equated with a host of negative traits, such as laziness, unattractiveness or lack of moral fiber (Brandon & Pritchard 83). The universal media idealization of thin female bodies as it relates to dieting are widely recognized as contributing to the development of body dissatisfaction, restrictive dieting and ‘eating disorders’ amongst girls and women. Yet, little attention has been paid to the possibility that anti-obesity health promotion media campaigns are catalyst for vilification of fatness and fostering a Fatphobic Society.
In Prescription for Harm- Diet Industry Influence, Public Health Policy, and the “Obesity Epidemic” Lyons’ primary argument is that the diet industry is just that, an industry whose primary focus is making money, “weight bias and declaration of the “war on obesity” is “a cornerstone of public health policy so far and the drug industry profits have been inflaming these efforts.” As the public has come to accept the war on obesity, Lyons states that the “diet and weight loss industry has moved from the sidelines to the center of American life” (75). She claims that within this industry there exists a type of revolving door and that ultimately diets don’t work; “failure rate for sustained weight loss has remained constant at 90-95%” (75).
These two industries have remained crucial to shaping attitudes regarding fatness, advertising that the only way to achieve happiness and a healthy lifestyle is by losing weight.
This “war on obesity” demands that people labeled as “overweight” and “obese” lose weight to achieve “health.” However, the stigmatic of fatness has created a separate social identity for any person who is deemed “fat” by the media, medical/health industries, and the public. Obesity is a societal issue that is not portrayed very positively in the media.
The advent of smartphones and social media have transformed the way we communicate and get information. Every day we are berated, by magazines, and television and advertisements promote a single body type as the ideal and almost universally deride people who live in larger bodies. Coupled with social media, in which people regularly edit their images, promote only positive elements of their lives, and directly sell and promote diet products and approaches, we are living in an extremely distorted and fatphobic environment.
In How to Address Obesity in a fat Phobic Society tells a true story on how the media industry has played a key role in creating weight biases and shaming overweight people into believing their fatness is bad, ultimately placing them into this new societal class of “fat.” Each time you hear about the obese epidemic from News to movies, the message is people are fat due to lack of personal responsibility and their direct actions are as the reasons for being overweight or obese often omitting environmental and biological factors. Fat bodies are knowingly, intentionally and frequently used in both media and popular culture as “cautionary tales” while simultaneously labeling these bodies as inherently problematic or wrong (Owen 3). Television is particularly irreverent of fat people, using them as punchlines, representations of small-mindedness, and objects of disgust.
Public figures and media personalities speak out against fatness, with comments and public service announcements about the hazards of fatness to hate speech, such as journalist Kenneth Walker’s statement fat people should be confined to “prison camps,” for the good of society (Puhl & Brownell 788). Several celebrities have become spokespeople against fatness due to public shaming of their own bodies. Perhaps the most well know is Oprah Winfrey, who has been the face of Weight Watcher, and spokes women for weight loss since the Oprah Winfrey Show first aired in 1986 (Farrell 124). This is also visible in the political sphere.
In 2009 after the United State Supreme Court candidates were announced, female candidates who were overweight were considerably criticized in the media (Farrell 131). Media consumer, the constant demonization of fat people is creating a fatphobic society, that even celebrities and influential people cannot escape the persecution of societal norms. Obesity Inc., asks readers to consider “what if researchers found that, rather than being a killer disease, mortality figures for people considered ‘overweight’ are much lower than previously reported?” (p. 82) alongside the question of whether this would be enough for “Obesity Inc.” to reconsider its stance. In asking big questions such as these, following grounded evidence contradicting mainstream media iterations of “obesity” as a “killer disease,” Lyons aided readers in questioning why they are so easily manipulated by what they are told by news experts, physicians, and those individuals in their lives who may also believe worth can only be gained through health.
Recognizing media is a driving force behind the development and acceptance of a fat shamming, is just the beginning to changing the conversation. Part of being a media literate is to challenge the industries and communities that foster and facilitate the misaligned and phobic mentality and be willing to learn and unlearn societal norms. As media contributors, there is a responsibility to be part of the solution not the problem. The media will continue to demonize and discriminate against fat people, but the more opposition the industry encounters, they will be forced to change the rhetoric. Being fat is not a crime, how we depict them in the media is the really shame.