It’s time for me to finally come clean about my deepest, darkest secret. It’s a nasty habit that I picked up a long time ago. A habit that a lot of people consider to be disgusting, nasty, shameful. People who pick up this habit are usually thought of as less intelligent and weak. Why, people ask, would you ever take up this habit, much less keep it up for the past 30 years? Amazingly, I took up the habit when I was just 7 or 8 years old.
My habit? Not smoking, or drinking, or drugs. I’m talking about being fat.
Lately, I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of people who refer to being fat as a habit, much like smoking. Funny, I don’t remember waking up one day in second or third grade and saying to myself, “Self, it’s time we started being fat.”
The latest “expert” to relate being fat to a nasty habit like smoking is Daniel Callahan. He is the “Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus” of the Hastings Center, “a nonpartisan research institution dedicated to bioethics and the public interest since 1969.”
Sounds impressive, right? Well, Dr. Callahan recently authored a paper called “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic.” The first half of the paper lays out statistics about how many Americans are obese, and touches briefly on some of the causes of obesity. He then spends some time talking about the ways in which this country has attempted to fight the obesity epidemic (hint: we’ve been pretty much unsuccessful).
And then Dr. Callahan lays out his three strategies for success: “Strong and most likely somewhat coercive public health measures, mainly by government but also by the business community; childhood prevention programs; and social pressure on the overweight.”
This highly educated man actually proposes that we need to spend more time and effort (and money, of course) shaming fat people. That’s it! That’s the key! After all, it’s worked really well for smoking. And we all know being fat is the same as taking up smoking, right?
According to Dr. Callahan, if we stigmatize fat people enough, they will finally be able to find the magical key to lasting weight loss. Never mind that it has been proven repeatedly that around 95% of diets fail, and that long-term weight loss is nearly impossible (if you don’t want to read the studies, just look around you – or even in the mirror; if you do want to read about this, start with this great post). None of that matters – we just have to make fat people feel crappy and embarrassed enough, and they will beat those nearly impossible odds!
So, now that we know how to cure fat, who should we focus our efforts on? Dr. Callahan writes, “One obvious target would be the large number of people who are unaware that they are overweight.” Where are those people? Does this man really think there are fat people out there who aren’t aware that they are fat? He also says, “They should not want to be that way.” Brilliant! Guess what, Dr. Callahan? I don’t want to be fat. Wanting to not be a certain way doesn’t magically make you not that way. But apparently if enough people repeatedly tell me that it’s shameful and disgusting that I’m fat, that I’m ruining my life and making life more expensive and unpleasant for others, then magically I’ll find the key to not being this way anymore. Thanks!
You know what you have to have to believe that shame is a motivator? You have to have a complete lack of common sense, and, as shame relates to fat, I believe you have to have a deeply ingrained hate for fat bodies and fat people. That’s the only logical explanation for how this man could come to the conclusion that making me feel like crap is going to motivate me to change (and by change, of course, yet again, I mean “get skinny” and “become more acceptable in society’s eyes” – because if health was the major concern here, the good doctor would instead focus on the poor health habits of all Americans, not just the fat ones).
If you want to read all of Dr. Callahan’s thoughts on how we ought to be bullied into magically being skinny, click here. Or don’t, and instead spread the message that love and acceptance make the world go ’round, not shame, fear, and stigmatization. Shame on you, Daniel Callahan.
