Justin Orndorff

Soc 360

Blog post #3 “Fat”

             I can’t eat that it’s too fattening. Do I look fat? I wish I had his body. How many times can we listen to men and woman say the same thing over and over again, do I look fat?  It is words and phrases like these that seem to plague over 7 million people across the United States.  65% of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight. (1). Obesity is the fifth leading risk for heart disease in the United States.  2.8 million adults die each year as a result of obesity.  In addition obesity causes 44% of diabetes, 23% of heart disease and between 7% and 41% of certain cancers are do to obesity. (1).

            I’m not saying being overweight is ok or not.  I’ve just decided to choose the word “fat” for my blog.  Calling someone fat dehumanizes them to some extent.  Should we just decide how we are going to treat someone based on their appearance alone?  How dehumanizing is that?  I’m sure being overweight is hard enough, but having people look at you as lazy and unmotivated just stigmatizes that obese person even more.

            It’s easy for a thin person to call someone fat because they themselves are not fat.  But surely most of society realizes that it’s not acceptable to call someone fat.  It’s degrading, dehumanizing, humiliating, and hurtful.  But for some reason I hear the word “fat” or “fatass” being tossed around all the time.   Why do we stigmatize and dehumanize obese people all the time?

            From a social view someone who is fat or obese can send a message that they have given up on life or don’t value themselves which creates low self-esteem in the obese person.  Society can also view the fat or obese person as stupid or having a lack of intelligence.  Maybe society thinks that the fat or obese person is too stupid to even know how to go about losing their weight in the first place.  But calling someone fat certainly isn’t motivating that person to lose weight.  I have a friend who is very overweight and he gets so depressed sometimes he won’t even leave his house in the fear that people will call him fatass or laugh at him.  My friend isn’t lazy or unmotivated he just has slow metabolism.  That’s what his doctor told him.  My friend exercises and eats healthier than I do it’s just his slow metabolism that keeps the fat on him.   But he shouldn’t be labeled as deviant or dehumanized because of his weight.

            Bariatrics is the field of medicine that deals with the etiology, prevention, and treatment of obesity.  Bariatrics has become a surgical specialty in the United States. (3) 
In fact, most people who are fat or obese already realize this and when they are mocked and called fat it just lowers self-esteem.  You can correlate this to Howard S. Becker’s labeling theory that states “Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders” (Howard S. Becker, as in the book Readings in Deviant Behavior). We label fat or obese people as the outsiders labeling fat people as deviant.  (2).

References

1)      http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html

2)      Becker, Howard S. "Labeling Theory." Readings in Deviant Behavior. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2010. 39-41. Print.

3)      http://www.answers.com/topic/bariatrics