On this eve of a national gorging on junk food comes a quote from a Halloween past...
NOW (2007): Three out of five Americans are overweight and one in five is obese--the only thing is, most of them don't know it. Americans see fat as normal as weights rise. Obesity and, moreover, our perception of obesity has changed over the last few decades.
Milan left a funny comment yesterday (which I thought was a joke): "Apparently, Disneyland is replacing the boats on the 'It's a Small World' ride so as to better accommodate their larger guests."
He subsequently backed his comment up with a link to the story.
Disney's "It's a Small World" was designed and built in 1963 on the assumption that the male adult riders would average 175 pounds and the women about 135. Today those averages are laughable. Check out this excerpt:
The ride monitors attempt to leave empty seats on many boats to compensate for the hefty, but this routinely antagonizes the hundreds of paying customers waiting in line. When a boat does bottom out, a long line of other boats backs up behind it, their passengers slowly going mad from listening to the ride's theme song.
Shifting waistlines over the last 125 years and the maddening songs we must listen to as we wait for bigger rides, just another shifting baseline.
Medicine & Health
Comments
Unfortunately obesity isn't limited to the USA. The fattest people live in the South Seas. They have switched from the traditional plant & seafood diet to canned pork. They have real problems in travelling, because the seats in airplanes are too small, and travel by boat over the long distances is so slow.
Some backgroud statistics: http://www.iotf.org/database/index.asp
Posted by: Lassi Hippel�inen | October 31, 2007 6:22 AM
Uh-oh....I think she dropped something.
Posted by: Lara | October 31, 2007 7:45 AM
In an comment in the Adventures in Ethics and Science sciblog, I attempted to summarise an article in New Scientist which postulates that obesity is a driver for AGW: How the obesity epidemic is aggravating global warming (subscription required to read the full article).
Posted by: blf | October 31, 2007 8:09 AM
This post is interesting, but I became completely distracted by the unnecessary cruelty of posting that poor woman's picture to illustrate your point. A John Singer Sargent (I think) painting is one thing, but holding up a real person to be mocked is another. She's a real person, and a reader of this blog for all you know.
Posted by: Miriam Goldstein | October 31, 2007 11:08 AM
My apologies, Miriam. I allowed the cleverness of finding photos of a present day heavyset woman on a bench and an 1883 normally sized woman on a bench mask the cruelty of the heavy woman's reality. I've replaced the photo with something more anonymous and hopefully less distracting.
Posted by: Jennifer L. Jacquet | October 31, 2007 11:48 AM
Thanks, Jennifer. Now I can focus on the horror of being stuck in "It's a Small World." Eeek!
Posted by: Miriam Goldstein | October 31, 2007 12:08 PM
I don't think posting two contrasting pictures necessarily amounts to "mocking" or should be construed as cruel. These are real people with real problems that need to be addressed, not politely ignored.
Posted by: Vitis01 | October 31, 2007 12:12 PM
A shifting baseline: We used to think of fat as wealthy and desirable, now fat is seen as lethargic and disgusting (and embarrassing).
Posted by: Lara | October 31, 2007 12:26 PM
Vitis01 - I agree that obesity is a real problem that should be addressed, both by public health workers and by individual people & their doctors. That said, I don't understand how posting someone's picture as an illustration of obesity does anything but embarrass them, due to the huge moral weight our society places on being fat. I highly doubt that that woman would have reacted to seeing her picture here by saying, "Thanks for posting my picture. I had no idea I was overweight until I saw myself next to that handy 1883 reference point. Off to the nutritionist now!"
Posted by: Miriam Goldstein | October 31, 2007 12:48 PM
The ubiquitous fat headless torso is just as bad. It dehumanizes fat people, as if we were just blobs of flesh and not fully human.
Posted by: Novathecat | November 1, 2007 8:06 AM
The "headless torso" is the standard representation used, night after night, on all of the major television network news shows. The head is removed, not to symbolize anything but to respect the privacy of the individual. What are you saying, that obesity is such a taboo subject we are not allowed to present it in any visual form? In all seriousness, how else would you recommend presenting the topic visually?
Posted by: Randy Olson | November 1, 2007 8:35 AM
Whenever I see an article on the growing obesity epidemic in the US I have to laugh at the accompanying pictures and video. They almost always show persons of morbid obese stature. Just look at the Reuters article you linked to. And possibly the picture you use to illustrate the problem.
I wonder if those unrepresentative pictures deceive their readers into a false sense of security? Only 2% of American's have morbidly obese BMI over 40. That's a far cry from the 3 in 5 overweight and the 1 in 5 obese Americans. A person with a BMI of 30 might not outwardly appear to be very fat, and yet a BMI of 30 is considered obese.
Posted by: Doug | November 1, 2007 8:40 AM
Welcome to how we communicate broadly in this morbidly short attention-spanned society. You want to go with a merely "overweight" photo, it had better be Britney showing her gut at the VMA's if you want anyone to pay attention.
Posted by: Randy Olson | November 1, 2007 8:57 AM
Why is it that those who are offended by the truth are more interested in suppressing criticism than they are in rectifying the problem?
Being overweight is a solvable problem for most people.
Posted by: Nathan Parker | November 1, 2007 10:00 AM