Sizing up harm of fat jokes

Opinion

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This article was published 06/05/2015 (3790 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fat-ass. Fat tub of crap. Porker.

You name it, Marty Enokson has heard it.

Enokson, who works as a paralegal in Edmonton, is an emerging and much-needed voice in the fight against weight stigma and bias. He and a few others spoke out eloquently last week in Toronto at the Canadian Obesity Summit, which brought together more than 1,000 researchers and scientists in obesity treatment and prevention. The Canadian Obesity Network, the conference organizer, has been explicit in encouraging researchers to adopt bias-free language and has created an image bank that features less dehumanizing images of large bodies than we commonly encounter in the media.

“You are going to be part of this really fabulous club, ladies and gentleman,” Enokson announces. “You are going to be looked at and stared at and made to feel like the most insignificant person on the planet.

“I am a part of the club. Do you want to join?” An uncomfortable silence falls over the room.

Fat stigma and bias, it seems, are the final frontier. Racism, sexism and homophobia may be rampant, but they are socially and culturally proscribed. Fat jokes are harmless, right? While policy-makers grapple with finding the appropriate “regulatory mix” of policies to support “healthy living” without banning specific activities or products, weight stigma has only recently gained attention as a policy issue.

Legal scholar William Bogart, the author of Regulating Obesity?, told the summit discrimination against big people must be seen as a human rights issue.

Stigma and bias have real, demonstrable effects on the lives of people living with obesity, many of whom are discriminated against in the workplace, or avoid the health-care system altogether for fear of being lectured by well-meaning health-care professionals about their weight.

In an episode of CBC Radio’s Black Coat, White Art, host Brian Goldman revealed doctors and others use offensive slang to describe their large patients.

Why is it socially acceptable to discriminate against people living with weight problems? Does it reflect a general agreement they are lazy, unmotivated, and just need to work harder at trimming the fat?

“Eat less, move more” is one slogan that particularly irks folks who have struggled with their weight. Given the mounting evidence on the complex link between environments and people’s health, it seems strange we would cling to models that assume individuals are in full control of their health decisions — “calories in, calories out.”

Efforts to impose zoning restrictions on fast-food restaurants in places such as Los Angeles have failed. Rates of obesity actually increased after the ban, so the assumption curtailing access is good public policy might be misguided if factors such as poverty remain untouched.

In Quebec, when newly elected Premier Philippe Couillard anointed Gaétan Barrette as his new minister of health and social services, few were surprised by the choice of a fellow physician to manage the vexing health portfolio. After all, medical doctors have a unique vantage point from which to confront the challenges of delivering health care in an age of fiscal constraint.

Barrette is morbidly obese, the most serious and apparently morally repugnant form of obesity. And a marketing firm began an online petition demanding a “healthy health minister.”

While the petition was later removed, the sentiments expressed received support from organizations such as the coalition on weight-related problems. Like other victims of fat shaming, Barrette communicated his struggle with weight loss; he has been on the dieting merry-go-round. Message: I really don’t want to be fat. I am trying to be a better person.

What is wrong with having an obese health minister? Some suggest that a health minister should serve as a role model for others. Yes, you read that correctly. Ministers are expected to be shining examples of appropriate, responsible conduct. Never mind the stench of corruption that has engulfed Quebec in recent years. Having a health minister who is obese is said to send conflicting messages when his department is tasked, among other things, with promoting healthy living, which is code for fat-busting. Obesity, then, is inconsistent with a healthy lifestyle.

Individuals with weight problems are not always overweight, however. The rate of eating disorders in girls is 18 per cent, while the rate of obesity is about nine per cent, according to the National Initiative for Eating Disorders.

As scholar Julie Guthman reminds us, we live in a neo-liberal age in which, paradoxically, individuals are exhorted to consume more and eat less. Talk about a mixed message.

Barrette might turn out to be a mediocre minister without the capacity to manage the health portfolio. But it is not likely his weight will be a deciding factor. There are appropriate ways to measure individuals’ success or failures; it’s not clear their size should be one of them.

 

Michael Orsini is a professor of political studies and director of the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is studying the impact of emotions on policy-making, drawing on obesity as a case study.