Americans are getting fatter: One-third of residents are considered overweight by traditional Body Mass Index standards; and two in five adults are obese.
Meanwhile, about 20% of children are overweight or obese.
The increasing weight gain comes amid a culture that demands thinness, as new weight-loss drugs promoted by celebrities and influencers claim that anyone can be thin.
During the videoconference “Can we ever escape our phobia of obesity? Organized by Ethnic Media Services, participants talked about the stigma surrounding it.
Dr. Susie Orbach, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author of “Fat is a Feminist Issue” (Fat is a feminist issue) said she wrote the book in 1978, at a time of women’s liberation, when they faced difficulties in taking their place in the world.
“The idea of fat was very scary to people, as if it somehow excluded you from the culture. The book was a call to not be afraid of appetite and food, and to throw away diets.”
She said she experienced it herself and woke up every morning judging herself and scared of her appetite.
“A lot of people told me that was their experience whether they lived in the African-American, Italian or Irish-English community.”
Dr. Orbach considered that the body has become one of the great secret industries.
“Capitalism has reached not only our bodies, but also feminists around the world. “It is deconstructed, it has attacked other cultures whose body shapes can be very different.”
And he recalled an experiment that was done in Fiji, in the 90s, which concluded that 11.9% of adolescent girls were obsessed with toilets and bulimia because they wanted a Western body and did not perceive bulimia as something negative.
He said we need to stop telling people they look great when they’ve lost weight.
“We have to start enjoying people with their characteristics; daring to say we have had enough and eating real food and recognizing not only physical but emotional appetites and responding to them.”
Jasmyne Cannick, a commentator on racial, political and social issues, said she is an overweight African-American woman.
“I work in politics and with the media, and people tell me, you need to have your own television show, and I tell them that I’m too fat for that, and that the presenters and reporters need to look a certain way.”
He commented that he recently wrote an editorial about the singer and rapper Lizzo and the anti-diet movement whose common denominators are our bodies and weight.
“Lizzo made herself loved around the world, saying that she was a plus-size woman, that I was going to dress however I wanted, and show her entire butt on social media, and she knew that there would be people who would applaud her and others who would not. they believed her,” said Jazmine, who is a fan of Lizzo’s music.
So he said that with that editorial he wanted to start trying to get us to have a real conversation about cyberbullying and how social media is basically the world that judges you.
In her case, she said that when she was on her way to becoming diabetic, her doctor told her that she had to make changes in her lifestyle and she decided to take the drug Ozempic, which she defined as an easy way to lose weight because it makes you lose your appetite without do exercise
“I have to say that as a plus-size woman, I feel more confident in who I am, but it is a pretty expensive medication like $1,300.”
The influence of social networks
Dr. Gary Goldfield said that a growing constant is the prevalence of dissatisfaction with the body, and it is a global problem that has expanded with the advent of social networks.
“The high use of social networks has become a norm in our culture.”
He stated that we have heard a lot about big food companies and the influence they have on consumption and our health, but big technologies through Instagram, Tic Toc and Facebook are like the new big tobacco companies with little regulation.
“The urge to use social media is stronger than the urge to eat tasty foods, which is scary because foods in the lab and in the real world have been shown to compete with drug abuse.”
He said that basically, social media could be as addictive as drugs.
“The problematic use of social networks is increasing and we have a very serious public health problem on our hands.”
It made it clear that we live in a period of time where social validation and the need for acceptance and sensitivity to social rejection is also more pronounced.
“So it is a kind of perfect storm, between the needs, and the aggressiveness of big technology with its algorithms. “If someone were to look for healthy ways to lose weight, they would come across all kinds of unhealthy ways on social media.”