Idea Lab -- Losing the Weight Stigma
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG Published: October 3, 2008
The public-health crusade of the moment is a no-holds-barred war on obesity. Those waging it dont have time for subtlety. When Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Obesity Prevention Act of 2008 this summer, he called obesity a medical emergency of hurricanelike proportions that is wreaking havoc on our families, on our society and on our health care system.
Times Topics: ObesityBut some activists and academics, part of a growing social movement known as fat acceptance, suggest that we rethink this war as well as our definition of health itself. Fat-acceptance activists insist you cant assume someone is unhealthy just because hes fat, any more than you can assume someone is healthy just because hes slim. (They deliberately use the word fat as a way to reclaim it, much the way some gay rights activists use the word queer.) Rather, they say, we should focus on health measurements that are more meaningful than numbers on a scale. This viewpoint received a boost in August when The Archives of Internal Medicine reported that fully half of overweight adults and one-third of the obese had normal blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar indicating a normal risk for heart disease and diabetes, conditions supposedly caused by being fat.
Full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05wwln-idealab-t.html?ref=magazine
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG Published: October 3, 2008
The public-health crusade of the moment is a no-holds-barred war on obesity. Those waging it dont have time for subtlety. When Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Obesity Prevention Act of 2008 this summer, he called obesity a medical emergency of hurricanelike proportions that is wreaking havoc on our families, on our society and on our health care system.
Times Topics: ObesityBut some activists and academics, part of a growing social movement known as fat acceptance, suggest that we rethink this war as well as our definition of health itself. Fat-acceptance activists insist you cant assume someone is unhealthy just because hes fat, any more than you can assume someone is healthy just because hes slim. (They deliberately use the word fat as a way to reclaim it, much the way some gay rights activists use the word queer.) Rather, they say, we should focus on health measurements that are more meaningful than numbers on a scale. This viewpoint received a boost in August when The Archives of Internal Medicine reported that fully half of overweight adults and one-third of the obese had normal blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar indicating a normal risk for heart disease and diabetes, conditions supposedly caused by being fat.
Full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05wwln-idealab-t.html?ref=magazine
