I only recently got around to seeing Moran Spurlock's Super Size Me. I'm not going to add to the comments around the film, except to say that it was obviously polemical, and of course with regular exercise and restricted consumption there would be different results. Heck, Michael Phelps consumed twice as much as Spurlock and remained a lean swimming if occasional bong smoking machine.
Rather I want to focus on a comment made in the film by Jacob Sullum, from Reason magazine. Sullum recounts a dinner where a smoker was asked not to smoke and given the usual reasons why. Sullum imagines what would happen if the 'large' woman also present in the restaurant had been castigated for ordering dessert. I think the answer is obvious. Whereas most smokers will duly comply, the woman in question would have left the restaurant, angry and embarrased.
Obesity is undeniably a major public health problem and one which in the future could have serious ramifications on state health institutions, which will have to treat diabetes, heart disease and hypertension to name a few. However, this public issue interesects at the level of the private more acutely than smoking.
We are our bodies. Our height, our complexion, our biological sex form part of our identity, even if this is an identity we wish to change or fight against. This is also true for an obese person. Their weight may be the result of poor lifestyle choices, but those choices are a more obvious part of their physical being than that of a smoker.
Smoking is usually tackled for its effects on others. It is accepted and acceptable in our society to rebuke someone for something we perceive as being against the common good. Of course, the 'common' good is not as absolute as people's desire to defend it. However, standing up to someone for creating plumes of noxious gas is pretty widely accepted. Moreover, the offender will acquiesce because they also acknowledge their effect on others. This is not directly obvious with an obese person.
When the focus shifts to the individual smoker, the discussion is usually couched in modality. "Don't you know what they can do to you?" "There is a high likelihood that you will suffer from heart disease or cancer." Which sounds quite obviously different to saying, "That food is making you fat." The linguistic sting conveyed by a declarative is undeniable.
As a former smoker and someone who has had problems with his weight I can tell you ostracization for the former never hurts like even the gentlest comment regarding the latter. When a former girlfriend refused to go near me after I lit up, I didn't care and snuck in an extra cigarette. When friends pointed out that I had put on some weight after quitting, I was devastated. The stench was something external, but my belly, my hated new belly, was something by which my whole being was judged.
This is not to suggest that we ignore the problem at the risk of offending people. Rather, when tackling obesity we might have to acknowledge that personal feelings are more at play. Simply put, smoking gives us a substance and a habit to demonize. With obesity, you are talking about people. Consequently, tackling the problem by hectoring obese people - assuming that worked with smokers - will not stem the tide of weight gain.
its weird how large people are vilified more than people that smoke. that being said, while its awful how people that are slightly larger than the magazine ideal are made to feel bad about their body types, the obesity epidemic is absolutely out of control in north america (while smoking is relatively under wraps)