A few weeks ago, just when the panic about obesity seemed to be reaching a tabloid roar, the Guardian published an article which threw a lot of ice-cold water over the subject. The article (an extract from his forthcoming book) by Paul Campos called The Big Fat Con Story. You can argue that Campos’s argument is eventually as sensationalist as the fat-journalists’, but his voice needs hearing: for one thing, take the BMI (body mass index). It’s a cultural construct, and has different implications for men than for women. “If Jennifer Aniston had the same BMI as her husband Brad Pitt,” Campos argues, “she would weigh approximately 55lb (nearly four stone) more than she does”.
The most disturbing part of the article is about the crudely evangelical approach of obesity warriors, who want to change the way black and Hispanic women view their own bodies – apparently, these groups are less neurotic about their weight than others, and are happy to be curvy. As a result, some diet companies allegedly target black and Hispanic women, because until they can get these women to be eating-disordered, they’re losing out on a big part of the potential market. There’s more – much, much more, in the article.
What worries me, though, is how this article seems to have just been forgotten, to the extent that if you read today’s Guardian article (Charity slams growing ‘fat divide’) you won’t see a single link to it on the page. The obesity panic is getting obese itself, putting on more and more weight as it sits unchallenged on the media sofa, unexcercised by reason, debate or different perspectives. Hurrah for the Guardian, I thought when Campos’s article came out – but why didn’t they or other papers follow through?
Because, I suspect, this would water down the story and make the headlines less interesting – a point, ironically, which Campos makes himself. I had hoped that the British broadsheets would make a better stand than this.
