the cruelty of ignorance

I'm an 18 year old senior in high school, and last week in my modern problems class we were coming up with topics for our end-of-the-year debate.  These ranged from "Should all schools have metal detectors" to "Should we bring our troops home from Iraq."  As controversial as these topics are, the following was the most shocking to me:

"Obesity should be illegal."

I couldn't believe it.  After that topic was mentioned, people started joking around (not to anyone in particular) saying, "You're fat!  Go to jail!" and "That'll be a $500 fine -- but you get this free thigh master." 

I'm not obese, but I am slightly overweight according to my BMI.  But as a girl who is not the epitome of beauty in society today, I couldn't help but  be hurt by these comments.  My three older sisters are all classified as obese, and they are wonderful people who contribute to my family and to this world. 

People are so ignorant of the fact that obesity isn't always a choice.  Whether it's due to stress, genetics, childbirth, self-confidence, or reduced self-worth, people usually cannot be blamed for their obesity. 

I just wanted to scream:  "WE'RE TRYING!"  Because I am.  My sisters are.  People all over the world are desperate to be thin.  Why can't they support us, rather than blame us?

This brings up so much hurt inside of me.  So many questions.  Should we penalize anorexics?  Bulimics?  Binge eaters?  People with thyroid disorders?  How about we arrest the entire human race, rather than support each other to make a change for the better. 

Thanks for listening, guys.  I hope you can make a positive addition to this post.  I know it brought up a lot for me. 

delve_deeper

Sorry you had to hear that! Unfortunately there is always going to be ignorance in the world..LOL.. That should be illegal.    Anyways, don't let get to ya,,, as hard as that may be. Who are they to judge you? Does their opinion define you as a person? NO. Of course not. You can loose weight stupid is forever!

Interesting.  I think the topic is greater than that of our own society's problems though.

For instance, many feel that democracy gives people too many choices.  Past more militaristic orders thought all young people should be fit to either be soldiers or have children...being in top shape was a duty...not to oneself, but to the nation.

Because we focus on the individual, this line of thinking can seem backwards and frightening sometimes...so I completely understand where you're coming from.  But try to see it from the perspective of history when people didn't really have certain rights to determine their own food intake or exercise schedules...I think it explains it in a greater context than the label ignorance does (despite the fact that your classmates are probably ignorant...haha I hated high school myself).

Sounds like most people thought it was absurd.  I'd probably be one of the ones joking around, not at the obese, but at the concept and whoever thought it was a good idea.
The fact is, most people who are thin do not realize how hard it can be to lose weight.  The only way to make them understand is to get them fat and make them try to lose the weight. =)

Hmm...well I disagree.  Yes, in rare cases there are medical conditions that can cause weight gain but I believe that obesity IS a choice.  The majority of obesity today is not due to a medical condition.  I find people are often quick to blame something, anything to blame for their shortcommings or failures.  Personally, I feel that I am 100% in control of myself and my life.  Every day, all day I make decisions that effect my life as a whole.  No one is forcing you to eat that cookie, YOU are making the decision to eat it.  YOU are making the decision not to be physically active or push yourself hard enough to see results.  I am not perfect myself and know that I am overweight and not in great shape because I choose to be this way.  I have struggled with BED and other disordered habits.  It takes hard work and determination to overcome these things and change your attitude.  There is no such thing as "TRY".  You either DO or you DO NOT.  The whole idea of "trying" is setting yourself up for an excuse for failure.      

I feel I must politely but vehemently disagree with Falling and say that while you may be 100% in control of yourself and your life, not everyone is so fortunate.  Mental illness and poverty play a huge role in obesity.  The working poor in this country may make bad choices such as going to McDonalds for dinner instead of cooking at home.  But when going to McDonalds is your only opportunity to "eat out," the only thing you can afford to do with the family or your kids that feels like you are treating yourself then hey!  you do what you have to do to try and feel normal and like other people. 

And if you are struggling with depression, you can't even get out of bed because you feel a cloud shrouds you wherever you go, and the only comfort you can find is in a box of cookies, then guess what, that's what you do. (and I might add, that's what you might do if you'd ever felt the debilitating effects of clinical depression)

I count myself among those who are mostly in control of my health and life but I am a social worker and see too often how outside forces steal this power and control from the disenfranchised and it makes my heart ache.  

Obesity isn't a choice.  It is an addiction to food...like all addictions though...it is unhealthy.   People fail because unlike alcohol or drug addiction, you can't obstain from food.  It is one of the hardest addictions to control because of that fact.  It is also easy to obtain and readily available.

Only way to cure it is to treat it like an addiction.  Realize the reason you are eating more is because you're eating for enjoyment...not for sustainance.   Once you realize that...you can start breaking that pattern.

Another reason you know it is an addiction is because the process of eating is enjoyable.  Afterwards is guilt from eating so much...

the high than the low.....

@bintzp:

the question is then, are the working poor then really left without choice?  or are their choices just harder?  is "feeling normal" like other people eating out really a right?  or is that just erroneous thinking on their part and like everyone else, should they educate themselves about their options so they can choose more wisely?

of course: do they have time to educate themselves?  do they have as many other options as other people?  if no (as I tend to believe), is it fair they get stuck with extra responsibility?

this is why poverty and social issues combined with food politics takes away people's ability to control their own futures...something seriously wrong with a democracy, in my opinion.

Amen, kungfu.  I'm not sure I understood the comment about "is it fair they get stuck with extra responsibility" 

Just to clarify I believe being happy is a basic human right and wanting to feel normal is, I believe, human nature.  Also, I love the term "food politics."

Delve!  Your anger response was the right thing, now "speak your mind, even if your voice shakes!"  Let people know that fat jokes are unacceptable to you. 

Extra responsibility meant (in my head) being in a situation where you have less choice (the odds stacked against you, so to speak, where it would be easy and normal to just give in and not think about it) and still having to choose the right thing...to me, that's a high-responsibility situation, as it's more than might be expected of other people, or the "average person."

Of course, having the options perhaps doesn't make it any easier, which was implicit in my formulation.  Or does it?   To an extent, I think being able to buy fresh, organic vegetables is a privilege I have (based on income, location) that makes it easier for me to be healthy, so perhaps more choice does indeed mean less work for me...

Starffy:
LMAO @ "The fact is, most people who are thin do not realize how hard it can be to lose weight.  The only way to make them understand is to get them fat and make them try to lose the weight. =)" - OOOH - I vote YES - lets tie them down and stuff them till they explode with doritos, mcdonalds fries, ho-hos, chocolate, cocacola and all the other stuff they think we're constantly hobbling our big bottoms home to devour in one bite.

The reason I found this site in the first place was having been exposed to this ignorance in such a sever level that I got mad at myself.
For the first time in my short 25 years, I realized I was overweight because of my lack of portion control - not really just choice in food - but the excessive amounts I would consume!  I can't fathom doing that ever again.
 LINK - read this - my last check in showed 64 pages of this ignorance. (my handle was darkestmyst on this blog)
It's out there, guys.  They're constantly blaming us for things we never knew we had control over.

cjeka, =)

I also wanted to add that obesity is a mixture of factors both involving choice and not.  There's medical conditions, upbrining (my mother forced me to eat so much fruit and vegetables that I avoid them whenever possible, also, taught not to waste food), social concerns (poverty, availablity of healthy choices), and also availability of information.  The last one is one of the biggest problems right now.  There so much misinformation out there because of comercialism.  Everyone wants to sell a best seller, and manufacturers want to push crap claiming it's the best new thing for weight loss and you don't have to worry about eating properly.  It all adds up to people who want to be thin, and will make an effort, but don't really know how to do it properly and maintain it.

Wow.  This kind of question says loads about American education on history and civics.

It doesn't matter why people are obese.  The reason it will never be a law is because it doesn't take away from anyone else's unalienable rights.

You should ask them the questions you asked us here.  I would also ask, "How would one enforce said law? Will we have the 'obese police'?  Who would fund this program? The American tax payers?  Surely the 30% of Americans who are obese would oppose such a law."

And that's just for starters.  I would also question what else they would like to police.  Because laws like this open a whole can of worms I'm sure they wouldn't want to deal with.

I hope you get a chance to debate this question.  If you do then remember this: It's not perosonal.  They don't understand....  So, help them understand.

Then there is the fact that some people can eat piles of fat and crap and gain nothing, while others can practically starve themselves and be morbidly obese. I have a friend at work and she packs away the calories-she doesn't gain a thing. I have another friend that lives on two slimfasts a day, sometimes one, and she is gaining weight. She is morbidly obese. So no one can sit there and tell me that obesity is simply a choice in all cases. Is it that way in some cases? sure. Some people simply put too much junk in there bodies. But there really are some people who hustle there whole life to loose weight, and can't. Thyroid? maybe. but she doesn't have health insurance and can't get medicaid. She isn't poor enough, apparently. They can barely pay their bills and have enough to buy food, but whatever. Under this kind of stress, people are supposed to make all the right food choices? I think not. Apparently fallingstars has never lived through that. I have. So please, don't judge where you have no understanding or experience. Is this meant to be an excuse for obesity? Should we coddle people and let them stay the way they are? no. Should we judge them harshly? no. We should give them a hand, cut through the crap and educate people in the real world. ugh. I got riled up over that, didn't I?

Haha don't worry it's frickin High School, drama and all hahaha. I'm a Junior myself, if I heard that I'd laugh, I'm slightly overweight too, but I'd take it as a joke, at least, that's how I am, I rather laugh things off. But if it were said a bit serious and it was considered then I could understand you, but that's the point, to debate and discuss, I'm sure many people eventually ruled that one out.

High School is full of stupid people, not that I'm anti social or anything haha, but, at least in my school, I've noticed people just do it as a filler or just because they have to, although I know next to nothing about the University, I'm sure that's when things will get serious and no more BS like in HS. For example in HS people just BS things (Assignments) or cheat to get the grade, they don't really care overall.

Anyways, don't know if that will make you feel better, if not then sorry, hope it doesn't make you feel bad though, not the intention.

Probably making it illegal is overkill, they should however, probably probe and try and individually help out people who might have weight problems rather than try to target them indirectly through Physical Education classes in school, where kids don't even have to really do things or aren't pushed and/or motivated enough. At least, that's what I think :/

This may not be the most popular viewpoint here, but I tend to take responsibility for myself and my actions, and happen to think that the world would be a better place if others did too.

I don't agree that there should be a "fat police" for adults, but sometimes I really wish someone would take a look at how to get parents to stop allowing their children to become obese - it's child abuse, in my opinion, plain and simple.  Those poor kids will have a lifetime or problems because many were never introduced to a fresh fruit or vegetable, learned what a healthy portion looked like, or were allowed to sit in front of a tube for 8 hours a day.  This didn't happen in the 50's, so you can't tell me it's all "genetic."

I am not saying that life is fair, or that some people don't get the short end of the stick. BUT ... I don't believe poverty or "willful" ignorance are good excuses, in today's society in America, to continue unhealthy behaviors one does not want (be it overeating which leads to obesity, or smoking, or drugs, or not exercising, or watching too much TV, or letting your kids play video games for hours).

Sorry, but the lower-income person has just as much of an opportunity to eat healthy as an upper-class person (been there).  It's a matter of buying those apples INSTEAD of those potato chips; eating a McDonald's salad INSTEAD of the Big Mac.  Walking or biking to work INSTEAD of taking the bus or driving (the choices I was forced to make due to my financial situation at one time).  I'm not saying those at poverty level will be able to buy organic peaches or fresh salmon daily, but certainly low-cost healthy food does exist, and if cooked a certain way (stop frying, start baking) it will be just as healthy.  Especially if you add up the amount of money spent on junk food, which causes most of the obesity.  No one ever got fat off of collard greens.

It's also possible, via the free library system and free internet available to everyone, for anyone to gather as much information as the most educated PhD on any topic, and it's also possible to get tons of free or low-cost help for just about anything.  Just look at this website.

So yeah; I'm with fallingstars.  I'm not saying losing weight is easy, especially in stressful situations; however, it IS a "choice" in that no one is making you do anything you don't want to and the weight gain is a direct result of cause and effect (except for the very, very, very few who have rare medical disorders).  Although eating disorders do happen (been there too), they are treatable, and "food addictions" just sound like a convenient way for most people to explain why they "can't lose weight", instead of having to figure out what to do to make the necessary changes (people hate change). 

I do agree it's not "fair" for those few "genetically gifted" metabolic giants to eat all they want and not gain weight.  But although some people may drink just one or two slimfasts a day and still be heavy, other than a thyroid disorder, there are probably much more explainable reasons out there ... such as lack of exercise and a "broken" metabolism which could be "fixed" in as little as 2-3 months of healthy eating.  I wonder, for instance, how many hours of TV mickismommy's friend watches, how much exercise she gets, even if it's walking (free); or how long she "tries" to lose weight with the Slimfasts before giving up; or how many "cheat meals" she has in a week; and even how far she parks from the store when going shopping.  It's physically impossible to do the right thing for LONG PERIODS OF TIME (which will vary with each person) and get no result (unless, as stated before, there is a medical disorder, which are few and far between).

This is an interesting topic.  Of course, my kneejerk reaction (which is probably like most people's, and which I consider the ethical response) is that, at least in our society, the illegalization of obesity is immoral, unjust, and as one poster mentioned before, logistically impossible (enforcing/funding the laws, etc).  Delve, if you really want to start an interesting debate in class (and maybe piss off a few people  haha), bring up how this "proposal" mimics past societies' complete disregard of human rights, for instance, extermination of Jews, Catholics, mentally handicapped, etc (anyone who was not supremely Aryan) by Hitler's regime.  Or how the mentally handicapped were sterilized in previous decades so that they would be unable to contribute even further to a strain on public resources.  Or, how even after the Civil War, blacks were completely relegated to second class citizenry.  All of these are basic examples of discrimination against a group not by their beliefs or choices (although, yes, this can be argued as untrue in the case of religion, but even then people are often born into that system), but by physical circumstances over which they had little, if any, control.  What is so terrible about these circumstances, however, is not simply that these were an individual prejudice by a single person, but that these were government sanctioned, applauded, and often enforced prejudices which resulted in alienation (if not worse) of entire groups of people.  Allowing people to be punished by law for physical attributes is how certain societal systems have spiraled way out of control.

On the other hand, as a medical student and someone who is taught about and deals daily with the physical, psychological, and social ramifications of obesity in our society (from individual health and well-being to the multi-billion dollar strain put upon our society by our aging, fatter population) it is obvious that something does need to be done, and changes need to be made.  Perhaps your class debate could then center around motivational health and wellness programs, as opposed to punishment of things which are not in and of themselves a crime. 

You sound like a very intelligent young woman, delve, and instead of letting people get to you and making you feel badly about yourself, maybe take this as a great opportunity to educate others about all sides of the issue.  Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now and go polish off that pizza  lol  (j/k)!

Although I have to add that I do agree with zarelha that people stuffing their children's faces with pizza and MickyDs everyday are engaging in child abuse--it's one thing to do it to yourself, quite another to set your child up for years, perhaps a lifetime, of physical and emotional health problems.  But what is the answer?  Ruling out judicial punishment of these parents, I'd be nice to have some sort of mandatory parenting classes if your child has been found to have a high BMI (of course, disregarding medical conditions), such as with defensive driving courses for people who have had DUIs and such.  But again, who pays for it?  Who enforces it?  Who pays for the extra childcare while these parents are off getting parenting classes? etc, etc, etc

Zarelha,
I agree that people should take more responsibility for their actions, but there are some limits to that. 

One, you can't control who your parents are or what food principles they are going to impose on you growing up.  My parents used to buy a lot of junk food, and even though they tried to get me to eat health-ish, they made that available, and any time I wasn't eating what they considered enough, they told me to at least eat some of this or that-- meaning something that I really liked the taste of.  I also had an older brother who was large and at a lot of junk food, and it's hard not to follow that pattern as a kid.  I'm not saying that I didn't have an option, but as a kid, I wasn't concerned about health.  And schools also gave a bad sample of food.  To this day, I still feel bad about wasting food.  And, yes, I have a choice as an adult to reverse those efforts, which I'm doing here now, but, and this brings me to number two, it's not that easy to find the right information on how to lose weight.

I have tried many times in the past, and I've done research and tried many diets reading the science or at least theory behind them.  I've also done tons of research on exercise.  But in the past I've never been able to stick to those diets.  Some of them would make me feel sick or so low on energy and irratable that they affected other aspects of my life, and I couldn't keep them up.  Some of them didn't help at all.  And they all sounded like sound advice when I started them.  Okay, maybe not all of them, but some of them.  Body for life for instance is a decent diet, but I personally took it too fat and wasn't eating enough on it.  This website is great, but I see advice I disagree with here sometimes, and on similar sites, I see complete crap information being thrown around as dogma.  The fact is that weight loss information is not that simple to come by.  Before coming to this site, I never knew that eating less than 1500 calories a day would stall my weight loss.  Most places would give information that would lead me to believe that my metabolism was lower than I thought and I should decrease calories further.  There are a lot of people who want to, and try to lose weight, but are unsucessful because they don't know what they're doing, and it's not simply a lack of trying to educate themselves on the matter.

I'm not saying that I'm not responsible for my being overweight, but instead of blaming people, we should work to educate. 
Then you can blame the people who still don't try.  (I have to try to throw a little humor in somewhere :-)

Perhaps the most sensitive delver was the person who asked in the first place "should it be illegal," meaning should it be punished. Great question. Go teeny boppers.  Everyone here obviously agrees, no, it should be addressed positively and supportively. But "should it be punished" actually bluntly questions the current, undeniable status quo, a critical societal contribution of our naturally insightful, frequently cruel young people. 

Obesity is punished. I don't need to say more.

By the way, it could be very easy to police, very easy to mete out serious and unpleasant consequences, and gets easier every day with consumer tracking and refined identification standards.  It's never actually been that complex. Military members will concur.

I really think we shouldn't just blow this question off. Not whether or not you can go to jail for being fat, but if we accept being fat as the issue it is and start putting resources towards it. Should we, as a society, recognize that being Obese is a huge problem?

How about if we have a fat tax? Would you guys be willing to do that? We tax you if you're fat?

Actually, I like this idea alot. We already have sin tax on alcohol and cigarettes that are supposed to go towards helping educate people before they start smoking and drinking and help heal those that are sick. And there's rumblings of a carbon tax to help cure global warming.

So how about a fat tax. Everyone who is Obese or higher (BMI of 30 or above) pays the federal government a tax. Profits from this tax would go towards actually dealing with the obesity epidemic, educating people about the TRUTH about nutrition and not the garbage that the diet industry sells you, and help put money out there to treat people who aren't fat of their own volition.

Not only that, but it helps people recognize in a way they truly understand (hitting them in their wallet) that, hey, their lifestyle isn't healthy. And, hey, maybe they should put down the triple whopper and start understanding why it's not healthy and why it would be better to be a healthy weight. Because you're being taxed, if nothing else.

No blames goes to those who are Obese by choice instead of those who are Obese by design. Instead, we just work towards making EVERYONE happy with the funds we collect from the new fat tax.

What do you guys think?