An interesting article from Newsweek, "America's War on the Overweight," tries to answer the question, "Why does an overweight country hate people who are overweight?" It is a bit of paradox that in a country where the majority of people are overweight and one in three is obese, there still seems to be a lot of anti-fat sentiment, especially in the media. Much of this sentiment stems from the perception that weight is controllable, and therefore people who are overweight lack self-control and must be lazy and self-indulgent. Although I tend to agree with the first part of this (weight is controllable), I don't think that the latter conclusion follows necessarily from it. But that tirade is for another post...
What is so bizarre about Americans' disdain for the overweight is that so many Americans are in that category. How can we berate others for doing what we ourselves do? The writers of this article hit the nail on the head:
Some of it has to do with the psychological phenomenon known as the fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in other people are the result of their bad choices. Miss a goal at work? It's because the vendor was unreliable, and because your manager isn't giving you enough support, and because the power outage last week cut into premium sales time. That jerk next to you? He blew his quota because he's a bad planner, and because he spent too much time taking personal calls.
Sadly, very few people recognize this inherent bias in our judgment of others and ourselves. Of course, I think when it comes to weight control, probably the majority of people DO blame themselves and their own choices. I think they are wrong about that, too. They think that if they just had enough will power or if they weren't so lazy, they wouldn't be where they are. Unfortunately for them, it isn't as simple as that and instead of providing motivation, this self-guilt-tripping only promotes more failure.
Those who doubt that other forces outside the individual are at work in creating the obesity epidemic, I ask you this: What has caused the rapid increase in obesity in our country and around the world in just the last few decades?? Have we all just gotten lazier and lost our self-control? That seems unlikely to me. And what would explain the difference in obesity rates between states? For example, Alabama has an obesity rate of 31.4% while Colorado's rate is a "mere" 18.5%. So are people in Alabama less virtuous than people in Colorado? It just doesn't make sense to me. I believe, as I've said before, that we should be pointing the finger at changes in the environment and in culture and lifestyles, rather than at individuals.
