Society has labeled fat people as the enemy. With headless photos and stigmas, fat people have been objectified as what is wrong with today’s society, painting the picture as if it is so black and white, skinny people are fit, hard-working, and smart whereas fat people are lazy, unhealthy, and not very intelligent. In fact, the picture is much broader, with the spectrum of weight telling a different story for everyone.
https://conscienhealth.org/2016/09/better-picture-obesity/
The term “fat” has been used as a tool by fearmongers by associating the word with ideas like shorter life spans, yet much of the data has been cherry-picked to depict a narrative that fat always means unhealthy. What calls into question the story that has been written for us on fat people was that in 2013, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the lowest rates of morbidity and mortality are among people who are classified as overweight (Flegal, 2013). This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to uncovering the scale of the narrative we have been fed that we must all fit into what society calls the “perfect” body. This has made me call into question my own preconceived judgments on our obese population and how grouping them and using generalized labels may be hiding a more elaborate underlying story about the fat population. That being said, there is a limit to how large people can get without having health implications.
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/senior-man-measuring-his-blood-pressure-at-home-gm1198516684-342566495
Like everything, there are always boundaries, and being overweight is no different, but maybe that line is different than where we perceived previously. And why limit our view to just fat people, as our population who is underweight or too skinny can face major health implications. As Amy Farrell stated in her featured writing Fat Chance, she explains how only focusing on the issues that correlate with extreme obesity can hide the very serious dangers of those who are severely underweight (Farrell, 2024). Metabolic issues, in particular, have been associated with obesity.
Still, they are not exclusive to the obese population, and this preconceived misconception can lead to miscues in addressing and diagnosing those same metabolic issues in our skinny population. This has become a prominent issue I have witnessed within our community at Dickinson as I have seen many students who would be considered “normal weight” being diagnosed with high blood pressure, but this was only detected after routine checkups. For many people, the notion that people of “normal weight” cannot have these health implications simply because they are not overweight can lead to underlying problems going undiscovered.
Work Cited
Flegal, K. M., Kit, B. K., Orpana, H., & Graubard, B. I. (2013). Association of All-Cause mortality with overweight and obesity using standard body mass index categories. JAMA, 309(1), 71. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.113905
Farrell, A. E. (2015, May 8). Fat Chance. Common Reader, 51. https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/fat-chance/
Ted. (2016, September 10). Getting a better picture of obesity – ConscienHealth. ConscienHealth. https://conscienhealth.org/2016/09/better-picture-obesity/
Jakovo. (2020, January 11). Senior man measuring his blood pressure at home. iStock. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/senior-man-measuring-his-blood-pressure-at-home-gm1198516684-342566495