For those of you who would like to check out what I had to say on the Marie Claire fat hate saga on the telly today, you can check it out here.

Comments welcomed!

Hello! (Just thought I would write that given that today’s post is brought to you by the letter ‘H’!)

This week I was lucky enough to speak at Dr Rick Kausman’s If Not Dieting Seminar about the different types of messages that we give about weight, and the actual impact that these messages are having on members of the general community. If you want to read some of the studies we have done on this, you can have a look at our papers here and here.  The seminar was really interesting, despite some discomfort that we had with some of the concepts recommended in the first talk – mainly about banning ‘Fat Talk’ and getting women with body image issues to improve their self esteem by ‘comparing down’ rather than ‘comparing up’ (Elizabeth Sutherland has written a terrific post on the talk here.)

The talk really reinforced to me the range of conflicting and confusing messages that we give about weight, and in particular about ‘obesity’. Almost all of the information that we receive about obesity in public spaces promotes that fat is a bad thing. It is something to be afraid of. That we should be worried about the impact of fatness not only on our own health and wellbeing, but on the health and wellbeing of our friends, our communities, and even our planet. Not only is this fear fuelled by the diet industry, but I think it is also by the hundreds of news reports of academic studies that seek to ‘prove’ why we are fat, and why we should be scared about the impact of fatness on our communities.

Over the last week I decided to track all of the stories that came out about obesity in the news. Now this is in no way a scientific study, but I was curious to see the range of different reports that came out about obesity. Every single report that I identified was negatively framed towards obesity. Let me share a few examples of the headlines and the content of the stories:

1. Disturbing Diabetes Forecast Linked to Obesity Up to one in three American adults will have diabetes by 2050 unless something is done to curb unhealthy lifestyle trends in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Friday.

Okay at first look, no blame and shame about obesity! Yey. Until we get a few paragraphs down.

The rise in number of obese American is also one of the largest contributors to the CDC’s projection, according to ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser.
“Obesity is the biggest risk factor that’s changeable and we haven’t been able to tackle the obesity epidemic in this country” ….. “You can’t change getting old, you can’t change your family’s risk factor, but you can tackle this issue of obesity,” said Besser. “It’s lifestyle, it’s proper diet, it’s regular exercise.”

Look I support this concept of a healthy diet and more exercise. But its a message that applies to ALL of us. Fat and Thin. It should not be constantly linked to irresponsible behaviours from fat people. And you cannot automatically assume that fat adults are not eating well and exercising.

2. Fat Daddies Put Daughters at Risk Fathers on a high-fat diet are more likely to produce daughters with a higher diabetes risk, a new study suggests.

Okay that is not a good start. Especially when we look at the fine print and see that the study was actually conducted in mice not humans:

“The study, published today in the journal Nature, shows female offspring of obese male rats had the same glucose intolerance as their fathers.”

Even though this study looks at biological drivers for obesity, the study does not have clear outcomes. The authors report that they now need to do a more rigorous study to investigate the findings. Despite this, we have a clear headline which basically sets up the results as reliable AND translatable to humans.

But more problematic was this picture that they ran alongside the article:

3. Medical Costs of Obesity Higher than Previously Estimated The price of being fat may be worse than we thought. According to a new report, obesity accounts for 17 percent of all U.S. medical costs each year — nearly double the 9 percent that researchers estimated last year.

Again, within seconds the article sets up the moral agenda on fatness. It goes on to blame previous underestimates of obesity because:

” …Americans are unlikely to report their true weights……obesity is clearly a major burden on society”

Ahh great. So now fat people are liars, as well as being a burden on society.

Each of the above articles do two things:

1) They reinforce that obesity is basically a problem caused by weakness of will, laziness, and gluttony. If we only got up of our arses and exercised, and ate better, the world would be a better place.

2) They create a moral panic about obesity. That obesity is something that people should be scared about, that is shameful, and that needs to be changed. The problem with this is that ‘fat fear’ impacts on people who are both fat and thin. Fat people are stigmatised and shamed. Thin people are scared that they will get fat. What we don’t know is how this will impact on peoples behaviours. But let me give you one example of how I think this is affecting people:

Last night I was talking to the mother of one of my kids classmates. She stated how worried she was about her 6yo daughters weight. Her daughter is a gorgeous kid. A healthy kid. By all accounts an active kid. But she is what society would call a fat kid. Her mum was worried about the amount she ate. She described how her daughter was always hungry – that whilst she didn’t eat junk food, she could easily eat three banana’s in a day.  She described how she had tried to restrict her eating, and that she was trying to model her daughters behaviours by saying how dissatisfied she was with her own body. Now before you all jump in and throw sticks and stones at this mum, here is the thing. She inherently thought that she was doing her best. That this was the right thing to do. Why? Because she this was the message she had constantly gained from news reports and the press about the health risks associated with being fat, and about ‘eating less’ and ‘exercising more’.

So I guess the point of this post, is that it is time to think much more carefully about the way we frame ‘obesity’ in the community. We might not be able to control the media reporting of different studies, but we could hope to see a bit more counterframing of studies. More critical analysis of what we are reading. More balanced reports. And the engagement of experts who are able to more clearly articulate a complex message about weight, rather than a simple ‘obesity is bad, eat less, exercise more’ message.

Maybe then, we wont have to advocate for programs that want to ban fat talk. Maybe then we will start to get some sense into discussions about weight in our communities.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the Break the Habit Ad (you know the one comparing giving your kids heroin with giving them a burger). I thought you might like to see how the maker of the ad Henry Motteram (managing director of the Precinct Studios) thinks about fat kids and their parents. This was from a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Sorry it’s in bold. I thought it was worth making this stand out:

”I hate it when I see little overweight children,” he said.

”You have that sense of disgust. But you shouldn’t be focusing that on them. It’s not their fault. The more I thought about it, the more it came back to the parents every time.”

Mr Motteram agrees the message of the ad is provocative but necessary given that a quarter of Australian children are overweight.

”We decided that until people really understand that the problem exists it’s hard to find a solution to it,” he said. ”We felt that we need to smack them between the eyes a little bit and hopefully get some conversation within Australia about this very topic.”

The advertising executive believes that giving children junk food is tantamount to child abuse.

”It’s not difficult to feed your children healthy food,” he said.

”As a parent I think you have a responsibility to keep your child safe. You hold their hand while your crossing the street, you try to make them better when they have a fever. Why does that not apply to making sure they don’t become obese?

”These parents are the custodians of their child’s future and here they are destroying that child’s future both psychologically and physically. ”How can we ever argue that it’s not the parents’ fault when they have been given the right to raise the child?”

Wow. Seriously.

Well I guess we can all see where the motivation for the ad came from can’t we.

Constructive criticism of Mr Motteram’s views are always welcome here at Discourse.

So today I discovered Culture Magazine. They posted a bunch of photos from their latest edition on Facebook, and one of my friends recommended them as “AWESOME”.

I don’t know that I agree. Actually for me these images are just really disturbing.

I’m sure they are considered edgy and creative and cool by some sectors of the community. But I think they send some really dangerous messages about women and the female body.

I don’t really understand what type of ‘culture’ Culture Magazine is promoting here.

Any thoughts?