Vidya Sethuraman
India Post News Service
Obesity is a common, serious, and costly chronic disease of adults and children. Americans are getting fatter: one-third of US residents are considered overweight by traditional BMI standards. And 2 out of 5 adults are obese.
About 20 percent of children are overweight or obese. The rise in weight comes amid a culture mandating thinness, as new weight loss drugs promoted by celebrities and influencers claim anyone can be thin. Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer.
These are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death. Obesity is serious because it is associated with poorer mental health outcomes and reduced quality of life. In the United States and worldwide, obesity is also associated with the leading causes of death, including deaths from diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer.
Speakers at the EMS Briefing on April 12 discussed the history of stigma surrounding fatness; the seeming demise of the body positivity movement and the push towards an anti-diet culture; the impact of new weight loss drugs; the role of social media in creating negative self-perception and unhealthy dieting behaviors among teens and young adults; and childhood obesity’s link to school bullying.
Dr. Susie Orbach, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, and author of “Fat is a Feminist Issue” said Fat shaming is not a new phenomenon. I wrote the book during the second wave of the women’s liberation movement. But nobody had really looked at the fact that we were living in a visual culture that was pressing us to be smaller and smaller and smaller. The idea of fatness was so scary to people. The book was a call to not be frightened about our appetites, not be frightened about food, to throw away diets, to dare to occupy our bodies, to live in our bodies,” she said.
Dr. Gary Goldfield, Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute with the Healthy Active Living & Obesity Research Group said social media is playing an ever-increasing role in how teenagers view and shame their bodies. Adolescence is a period where body image is more important for self-esteem than in any other life period.
Jasmyne Cannick, race, politics, and social issues commentator and an award- winning journalist shared that she herself was overweight and, being of African descent, felt that it was more difficult to cope with it, which is why she seeks to help people who experience the same situation. She said social networks play a very important role in many of the decisions that are made, since they present the way people in the United States should look, due to the different types of body sizes.
The number of victims of bullying has increased with the appearance of social networks, putting the lives of young people who are victims inside and outside of schools at risk. Experts agree that support and information management must be implemented within the reach of everyone in order to regulate the pressure exerted by the media and social networks of a standardized image of thinness to take care of people’s health.
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