In this issue:Yale Psychologist (Unwittingly) Encourages ObesityThe Psychological Solution to the Stigma of Obesity |
Dear Reader:
I am a bad boy. I have not sent out a newsletter since June, putting this current newsletter two months behind. I have been busy with some major projects, and that, coupled with my characteristic inefficiency (ask my family–they will tell you about it), are my excuses. I am hurrying up to try to get this September Newsletter sent out before September is over.
My last newsletter featured the fist of two installments on bullying in Japan. I promised that my next newsletter would contain my second installment, but I have changed my mind because something I feel more urgent has come up. Japan will have to wait for my next newsletter.
Why I am writing about obesity
What is the greatest danger facing our well-being today? It is not terrorism, bullying, or AIDS. Thanks to our sedentary lifestyle and increasing dependence upon processed food, two out three Americans today are overweight and one out of three is obese. Obesity leads to a large number of serious medical and emotional problems. It limits people's mobility, hinders their work efficiency, lowers their social status and interferes with sexual performance. These problems exact a toll not only on the obese but on their families and the rest of us, for we have to chip in to pay their medical expenses.
No health subject gets as much media coverage as obesity. It has also become a major focus of scientific research in recent years, as you would have noticed if you follow the news. And rightfully so. Our lives may literally depend upon defeating obesity. Despite all the media warnings–and despite the fact that diet books have topped the bestseller lists for decades–obesity continues to rise.
Recently psychologists have become concerned with the stigma suffered by obese people. Unfortunately, the way they propose to deal with this problem cannot possibly work. I don't claim to be able to end society's obesity epidemic. Fortunately, I know how to help overweight people stop suffering from stigma. The solution is essentially effortless and takes almost no time. So before society wastes precious time and taxpayer money on futile solutions, I will be presenting the solution in this newsletter. I invite you–no, urge you–to pass it on to others, especiall overweight people, and reprint it in your own publications.
I also invite you to reproduce articles in previous newsletters for your own publications, as long as you cite the author and source.
Please consult the right-hand side-bar for my upcoming seminar schedule.
Yale Psychologist (Unwittingly) Encourages Obesity
I want to ask you an important question. What is worse–obesity, or the stigma of obesity? Obesity, of course. Stigma doesn't kill people, clog their arteries or give them diabetes. Perhaps people want to kill themselves in response to the stigma, but that is something they would do to themselves. And if people weren't obese, they wouldn't have to suffer the stigma of obesity in the first place. Trimming our bodies is a challenging task, as so many people have discovered. But people (using my Bullies to Buddies rules) can easily learn to handle the stigma of obesity if they wish.
Psychologists, like other scientists, recognize the problems caused by obesity and are adding their voices to try to rein it in. However, human beings have been solving problems long before the field of psychology came into being. In fact, all social creatures, not only human, have developed mechanisms for solving problems. If our species had to wait for modern psychology to solve our problems, none of us would be here today. One natural mechanism, as I will explain, is stigma.
The Psychological Importance of Stigma
Having earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in science (Bachelor of Science and Master of Science), I was trained to think as a scientist. One of the scientific tools I learned is observation. We are supposed to look at behavior and try to understand it's purpose. If there is a universal human behavior, it must serve a positive purpose. Otherwise the behavior would eventually have disappeared. It is unscientific to take a universal human behavior, decide it is undesirable, and declare that we have to get rid of it.
One universal social mechanism for protection of both the individual and the group is stigmatization. Stigmatization is often engaged in consciously by the group, but it can also go on without anyone's awarenss.
To discourage individuals from engaging in dangerous behavior, the group stigmatizes those who practice it. Being stigmatized is not a pleasant experience. But it is not meant to be pleasant. Solutions to problems often require the experience of pain. If stigma were pleasant, everyone would engage in the stigmatized behavior and we would be doomed. Admittedly, not all stigma is based in reality, and the targets don't necessarily deserve the treatment they receive from the group. Nature isn't a perfect system. But the purpose of the stigma remains the same: to protect the individual and the group from harmful behaviors. My intention here is not to justify all stigma, just to explain its purpose.
Almost all social groups engage in stigma. There may be some groups, such as certain orders of monks, who have taken a vow to treat all living things with equal respect, but they are acting contrary to human nature, and they are extremely rare.
Even our "englightened" society constantly engages in stigmatization. The most powerful stigma today is against bigotry. We have to walk on eggshells when talking about people of other groups because if we say something about them that sounds negative we can literally lose our jobs. If you're a celebrity, society will treat you like you're guilty of genocide, and expect you to make grovelling, tortured public displays of contrition in the hope that you will be forgiven and allowed to continue with your life as before. While the stigmatization of bigotry has not had much success in getting people of diverse groups to want to be friends, neighbors and in-laws, it has done a wonderful job of getting us to guard our tongues and to react with horror when others express bigotry.
Society has done a nice job of using stigma to discourage cigarette smoking. Until a couple of decades ago, it was considered cool to smoke. Smoking has become less cool, and smokers are increasingly treated like pariahs, with regulations pushing smokers farther and farther away from public spaces.
In recent years, society has undertaken a campaign to stigmatize bullies. Popular and professional magazines have published articles demeaning bullies. I have seen TV commercials with celebrities urging us not to be bullies. Schools hang up posters and have assemblies against bullies. Our professional organizations lobby for laws against bullying. The stigmatization campaign hasn't made bullying decrease, but it sure feels good to satisfy our desire to have a group to stigmatize.
When stigma goes down, obesity goes up
According to an August 7 Reuter's report, two economists, Frank Heiland and Mary Burke, published a study in the journal Economic Inquiry finding that Americans' acceptance of excess weight has increased in the past decade along with the actual rise in weight. Two weeks before that, a July 25 Associated Press article reported a "startling new study" ("startling" to anyone who doesn't possess common sense, that is) by sociologists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler published in the New England Journal of Medicine finding that "obesity is socially contagious"; when your friends become overweight, it dramatically increases the likelihood that you, too, will become overweight. You come to see being overweight as normal, so you tend to judge your own excess poundage as normal.
In other words, the less social stigma there is attached to being overweight, the more likely people are to gain weight. Though one would hardly need to have a higher degree to expect such a finding, it is nice when research corroborates common sense.
Hurt feelings are worse than hurt bodies–aren't they?
For decades, psychological organizations have joined campaigns to make things like bullying, sexual coercion and drug and alcohol usage less socially acceptable. One would expect that they would do the same for obesity–the greatest danger of all.
But there is a problem in doing so. The predominant view among the psychological establishment is that hurting people's feelings is even worse than hurting their bodies. That is why we hear today that "the sticks and stones slogan is a lie." The new slogans are, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can hurt forever" (see the title of the recent book by child violence expert James Garbarino); "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words kill." How, then, can we stigmatize obesity without hurting people's feelings? It is better, therefore, to let people become obese than to embarass them for being obese.
Sounds crazy? Think I'm making this up? On July 12, Yahoo! News carried an article entitled, Weight Bias Threatens Obese Children's Health And Quality Of Life. It tells of a study published in Psychological Bulletin about the misery of children who are stigmatized for being overweight. The authors, led by Rebecca Puhl of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, found that children who felt stigmatized for being overweight were at greater risk for high blood pressure, binge eating, avoidance of physical activity, and suicidal ideation than overweight kids who didn't experience stigma.
The article concludes with the following quote from Rebecca Puhl:
"The childhood obesity epidemic is rapidly accelerating. That means thousands of children in North America are at risk for serious emotional and physical health consequences that science shows are connected to weight stigma. We cannot overestimate the urgency of combating stigma."
As we get rid of stigma, though, obestiy goes up, as the previous articles and common sense tell us. Is Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity concerned with reducing obesity? Or is it concerned with reducing stigma? Because you can't do both.
Unfortunately, academic psychology has replaced science with social activism. It is trying to create an Emotional Welfare State in which the government is responsible for guaranteeing that no one upsets us. A basic understanding of human psychologiy and biology would inform us that such a society is both a logical impossibility as well as unhealthy for the individual and the collective. Pain is necessary for our survival, for it motivates us to change what we are doing wrong. Nevertheless, our psychological emotional welfare state scientists abandon logic and fight for protecting people's feelings at all costs.
Cutting back successful school anti-obestiy programs
On September 9, Yahoo! News (I confess–I get a lot of my news through Yahoo!) reported about changes in an Arkanses policy designed to help children fight obesity. Arkansas had made the bold move–adopted in turn by some other States–to officially stigmatize obesity by weighing kids every year and giving them an "Obesity Report Card." Though some kids found this embarassing, it has apparently helped many kids significantly reduce their weight. School officials have been very happy with the success of the program. However, in order to protect children's self-esteem, pressure was put on Arkansas to change the law, and now kids will be weighed only once in two years. As the article reports, health researchers are worried that kids will go in the other direction and become heavier.
If health scientists can understand this, why con't our psychological scientists? Don't they realize that overweight kids' self-esteem will be increased more by their losing weight than by having society make believe there is nothing wrong with them? Apparently not.
The psychological solution to the stigma of obestiy
I have read article after article in professional psychological publications that declare that the solution to the emotional suffering of the individual is to make society change. The individual is no longer being held repsonsible for his/her own feelings. The rest of us are.
But it was not always so. Until a couple of decades ago, before the psychological establishment made the Emotional Welfare State its mission, counseling and psychotherapy were about helping the individual deal with the difficulties of life. And this is also the role of philosophy and wisdom. As Samuel Johnson said so elequently a couple of hundred years ago, "He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life away in fruitless efforts."
Are you overweight? Are you stigmatized for being overweight? Do you want to stop suffering from the attitudes and remarks of others? Here is a primer.
Step One: Stop expecting the impossible
The first step to dealing with stigma is to get rid of irrational expectations. You would like people to stop noticing your weight. But when you see other people who are excessively tall, short, overweight, or are different from the norm, don't you notice? Of course you do. It is impossible not to. So stop expecting others to not notice your difference from the norm.
Do you like being overweight? Do you think it is attractive and healthy? When you see other overweight people, do you admire them for it? Do you want your children to be overweight? Do you want them to marry overweight people? Of course not. So stop expecting others to think there is nothing wrong with you for being obese.
Let's say you are an employer and you have to choose between two people of equal qualifications for a job that requires some physical exertion or contact with the public. One of the candidates is obese and the other trim and fit-looking. Which one will you prefer hiring? The fit one, of course. So stop expecting others to have no bias against you. (This doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything to try to counter the bias. But don't be shocked and outraged by the bias.)
Step Two: Treat people who put you down as friends
Understand that stigma is Mother Nature's way–unpleasant as it may be–of pressuring you to lose weight. No single individual may be conscious of it when they do it, but realize they put you down as an attempt to pressure you to lose weight. So treat them like they are trying to do you a favor rather than trying to hurt you, and be grateful to them. Here are some examples of how to do it.
School situation
Wrong way:
Classmate: My God, you look more and more like a blimp every day!
You: No I don't!
Classmate: Of course you do! And your mother is even worse!
You: Don't talk about my mother!
Better way:
Classmate: My God, you look more and more like a blimp every day!
You: Yes, it's so hard to stay thin. How do you do it?
Classmate: I exercise and don't eat junk food.
You: That sounds great. I wish I could be as disciplined as you.
Classmate: That's right. You should be.
You: Thanks.
Classmate: You're welcome.
Employment situation
Wrong way:
Prospective employer: I don't think we can hire you. The job requires employees to spend hours a day on their feet. With your weight, we're going to need a forklift to move you around.
You: You can't discriminate on the basis of weight! It's against the law!
Prospective employer: You don't even have the job yet and you're already telling me what I can't do! Please leave my office and ask the next applicant to come in.
You: I'm taking a walk. Right to my lawyer.
Prospective employer: Without a job, how can you afford a lawyer. Now, roll out of my sight as fast as you can!
Better way:
Prospective employer: I don't think we can hire you. The job requires employees to spend hours a day on their feet. With your weight, we're going to need a forklift to move you around.
You: People think that because I'm heavy, I can't do what others do. I'm a hard worker and a perfectionist, and if you're looking for someone to help your bottom line, I'm the one for you.
Prospective employer: That is quite a big bottom line you have there.
You: It sure is! And I'll help your company's bottom line grow, too.
Prospective employer: I like people with a sense of humor. Let me take another look at your resume.
Couple situation
Wrong way:
You: Honey, we haven't been intimate in a long time. Maybe after the kids go to sleep, we can have some "quality time" together.
Spouse: Are you kidding? Look how fat you've become. You're as attractive to me as a hog.
You: How can you talk to me like that? You married me to make me happy. You can't deny me my conjugal rights. And you aren't becoming better looking either, you know.
Spouse: Leave me alone already. I have a headache and you're only making it worse.
Bettter way:
You: Honey, we haven't been intimate in a long time. Maybe after the kids go to sleep, we can have some "quality time" together.
Spouse: Are you kidding? Look how fat you've become. You're as attractive to me as a hog.
You: Have I become that unattractive to you? I still love you and I miss touching you.
Spouse: But look what's become of you. You were in such good shape when we got married. How could you let this happen to you?
You: I don't really know. I guess it's a lot harder to stay slim when you're married and have children. I should become disciplined and lose weight. I hate the idea that I am no longer attractive to you.
Spouse: I didn't really mean to hurt you. It's just that I care so much about you, and I feel like your physical condition is putting such a damper on our passion.
You: I know I don't look too great, but I still love you and find you attractive, and if you'll give me a chance, I think I can show you that I can still light your fire.
Spouse: I guess I haven't been all that fair to you. After the kids go to bed, lets pull out a bottle of wine and light some candles.
You: I'm so lucky I married you!
Spouse: I guess I'm lucky, too. I just wish you would get back into shape again.
You: Me, too.
Step Three (optional): Lose weight
As you have just seen, you don't have to suffer from the stigma that accompanies being overweight. You can still be liked and respected as an overweight person. But it sure would be better to lose the weight. You will do everyone a favor, especially yourself. It is easy to find excuses for not losing weight, but you'll be mad at yourself for the rest of your life if you don't. There are many excellent programs for losing weight; they just need to be followed consistently. And if you do lose the weight, dealing with the stigma of being overweight will cease to be an issue.
Best Wishes,
Izzy Kalman
email: izzy@bullies2buddies.com
voice: (718) 983-1333
web: http://www.bullies2buddies.com
