Reading through both the original blog post and the response was a thought-provoking experience. I guess on one hand it did confront me about my own biases. Maura Kelly, the author of the blog post which suggests that looking at very overweight people is as disturbing as watching someone stumbling around drunk, using heroin or in other words, abusing a substance and/or themselves - a type of self-harming. Reading her post, offensive though it is, I do find myself understanding where she is coming from. As a survivor of an eating disorder (anorexia) herself, she clearly has severe body issues to begin with. But besides that, there is a degree validity to her argument. Let me tell a story to illustrate.
When I was living in Cardiff, an extremely overweight woman used to shop at my local supermarket. She had difficulty moving, so she would waddle to the baked goods aisle and fill her trolley with boxes of cupcakes, family-sized packages of chocolate bars, and various boxes of prepared frozen foods and the like. She used to take ages in the checkout line, and she always seemed (or acted) shocked by how much money her bill came up to. I gathered from her conversation with the cashiers that she had kids as well. Looking at what was in her cart made my stomach churn a bit, and I'll admit I felt a mixture of pity and something like irritation, even anger, because of what she was doing to herself and her family. I couldn't really understand it. In my mind, it is like an illness. If I consider it as an illness I guess it is easier for me to swallow (pardon the pun). But then I am imposing a category of 'ill' on people who may not consider themselves as such. Nevertheless, I can't seem to shake the idea that this is self-harming behaviour, and in order to continue it, that person would have to be somehow not well.
Why should this bother me or anyone else though? If someone else wants to eat or drink themself to death, at their own expense, then why should anyone else be bothered about it? I think this ties into my last post, about empathy. We feel a desire to see other people being healthy and happy (which ties into my post about sadness as well). Seeing other people being sick and miserable makes us feel sick and miserable too, so we don't like it. We want to shake them, and make them treat themselves better, and feel better, and spread joy through being an example of health and happiness. This is why watching really obese people doing various things, like eating huge portions of food, or buying loads of cupcakes, is disturbing.
However, there are many obese people out there, and I would think that not many of them are obese out of choice. Instead, I would imagine that many, if not most of them would rather be of a more average size, if only for practical reasons such as health and mobility. Yet as anyone who has tried to lose weight will tell you, it is not easy! Not even when you are perfectly healthy, fit, exercise several times a week and only need to lose a little bit of weight. So if you've become overweight already and are facing health problems, the challenge is even greater, and often requires a full life change, massive willpower, and the help and support of other people. The other thing that irks me is that many people become obese not even due to having chosen an unhealthy path out of more healthy ones. Many people, especially in America are stuck with long commutes, massive portion sizes and junk food every where, and very little time and opportunity to dedicate to healthy lifestyle choices. Cities are not always walkable, jobs and homes are often far away from each other, in families often both parents have to work, often at sedentary jobs. That means little time for cooking healthy, balanced meals, or taking the time to sit and relax with food, instead of just shovelling fuel in to get through the day....
In other words, there are a multitude of societal factors that result in people becoming and staying obese. Just as there are a multitude of societal factors that result in people becoming and staying unemployed (see this BBC Radio 4 broadcast regarding people on state benefits). I think as members of a society what we need to be able to do is recognize the problems that are being caused and perpetuated by various societal factors and direct our dissatisfaction towards those factors, rather than the people who become victims of them. If various aspects of the physical, social, political and economic environment produce particular problems, such as poverty or obesity, we need to be looking for the causes, and part of doing so is to try to understand, and empathise with, people in those situations, which may involve acknowledging and suppressing reactions such as distaste and annoyance as well as any pre-conceived ideas and prejudices. In other words, truly trying to understand the situation in order to be able to consider how to help and promote better alternatives.
Really enjoyed reading your spin on it. :)
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