Big Fat College Credits
Fat Studies, coming to a campus near you? Maybe.
According to this article, it's an emerging field (although you know that some copy editor almost had a stroke avoiding "growing"). However, as Stephen Balch says, "Ethnic studies, women's studies, queer studies - they're all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group.... But if the purpose is to vindicate fatness, to make fatness seem better in the eyes of society, then that purpose begs a fundamental intellectual question."
I attend one of the colleges mentioned in the article but had never noticed the course on obesity, probably because I never look at the courses offered outside of my program. The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee professor is described as being skeptical about the "war on obesity" (I'm assuming those are air quotes attributed to the professor, not the writer, but it's not really clear) and the idea of a professor who has a combative agenda for an entire semester does not sound appealing. Also, speaking from experience, those UWM deskchair things that are definitely foot soldiers in the war on obesity, with or without air quotes.
Is the study of fatness in an academic institution as legitimate as Native American studies or GLBT studies? Are such courses just trying to justify being chubby or encouraging diversity? After reading Mr. Balch's quote above, does it justify kicking him hard in the groin more only if you subsitute the word "black" or "gay" for "fat"? Would you sign up to go to Fat Class?
According to this article, it's an emerging field (although you know that some copy editor almost had a stroke avoiding "growing"). However, as Stephen Balch says, "Ethnic studies, women's studies, queer studies - they're all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group.... But if the purpose is to vindicate fatness, to make fatness seem better in the eyes of society, then that purpose begs a fundamental intellectual question."
I attend one of the colleges mentioned in the article but had never noticed the course on obesity, probably because I never look at the courses offered outside of my program. The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee professor is described as being skeptical about the "war on obesity" (I'm assuming those are air quotes attributed to the professor, not the writer, but it's not really clear) and the idea of a professor who has a combative agenda for an entire semester does not sound appealing. Also, speaking from experience, those UWM deskchair things that are definitely foot soldiers in the war on obesity, with or without air quotes.
Is the study of fatness in an academic institution as legitimate as Native American studies or GLBT studies? Are such courses just trying to justify being chubby or encouraging diversity? After reading Mr. Balch's quote above, does it justify kicking him hard in the groin more only if you subsitute the word "black" or "gay" for "fat"? Would you sign up to go to Fat Class?
posted by Weetabix at 6:30 AM
17 Comments:
While the idea of a prof with a chip on their shoulder is not my idea of fun, I probably would take the class. Our society's fragmented and moralistic view towards the body in all it's shapes and forms is interesting to me. Plus I'm really convince that we're not going to make any progress in addressing disease that's related to intake or body size until we confront fat bias head on... discrimination does NO ONE any bit of good.
Please don't kick me in the groin, but I'm inclined to agree with Mr Balch. IMO, a unit or two of "Fat Studies" would do more good within medical courses, so that future health professionals can gain some compassion for, and understanding of, their clients.
I think a more interesting class would cover how America GOT so fat -- how we're a society that is obsessed with value and size (ie, supersized meals), that the pharma companies and food companies are in bed with each other, poisening us with high fructose corn syrup... how there are studies showing that there is the same sensory reaction in an obese person eating as there is in a heroin addict shooting up... I'm not as interested in the acceptance issues as I am in the education -- I think we deserve to know that stuff, but very few are talking about it.
It could be called "My Big Fat Conspiracy Theory"
And PS: I didn't attend that particular university, but I did go to school in Wisconsin, and find it highly humerous that the state with one of the highest obesity rates, whose population subsists on beer and cheese and beating the wife after the Packers lose, is spearheading this.
It seems that this movement is rooted in California, as UWM was the only non-California school mentioned. And despite anecdotes to the contrary, according to this, Wisconsin is tied with New York for the 34th fattest state. Or, I guess, the 16th leanest state? The national population average percent of obese adults is 22.8 and Wisconsin comes in at 20.9 percent, by far the lowest among the Midwest states. This only measures the extreme, though. It might be more statistically significant from a sociological standpoint to note percentage of a state's population with a BMI over 25. Maybe if we're lucky, Jen Wade will pop in and give her thoughts.
Jessiferseabs, I don't know how valid I consider Men's Fitness magazine, but in their survey of the 25 fittest and fattest cities, Milwaukee came in as the 15th FITTEST city, while Chicago came in as the 5th FATTEST city for 2005. For whatever that's worth (probably not much, admittedly).
As someone who has spent her entire life in Wisconsin, I'm more than a little tired of the "brat-and-cheese-eating, beer-swilling, blah blah blah" stereotype. That's not to say that those people don't exist (the stereotype came from somewhere, obviously), and certainly you run into it more once you leave the more urban areas. But I have to take issue with your generalization, since I know from experience that it's far from accurate and more than a little condescending.
In spite of the fact that I think there are a lot of parallels between fat and other forms of discrimination, it seems odd to me to make this a college course on its own. Given the direction America has steadily been going since television hit the scene, I think we need a general course deconstructing appearance-based judgment, which has evolved to the point now where just having teeth that aren't blindingly white can make someone pass negative judgment on you and deny you opportunities.
I agree w/Susan about including sensitivity training for medical students. Also, Weetablog - those desk/chair things are EVIL!!!!
I think we need a general course deconstructing appearance-based judgment, which has evolved to the point now where just having teeth that aren't blindingly white can make someone pass negative judgment on you and deny you opportunities.
Good idea, Mary. I remember a guest on David Letterman referring to him as a "gap-toothed freak"!
Oh hey, look, I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek -- I loved my days in Wisconsin, and i've lived in Minneapolis for the rest of my 29 years, so it's not like things are much better here.
I'm very surprised about the obesity thing though. When I was in college, granted that was 6-10 years ago, the stats were much different.
Wisconson has risen to the 29th fattest now:
How are these kinds of courses graded? I would be leery of taking a course where your grade goes down if you don't buy into everything the professor says, and if you just honestly disagree with the whole philosophy of the course, you get brought up before some campus kangaroo court on hate speech charges and kicked out of school. Or does that only happen in Canada?
I would be leery of taking a course where your grade goes down if you don't buy into everything the professor says
Well that was certainly the case when I did a few units of Sociology back in the 70s. Sociology was considered a "lite" course back then and it looks as though nothing much has changed.
I'd be interested to know what kind of work a major in "Fat Studies" would qualify you for.
Susan - I dunno...editing an anthology of neglected fat authors?
I'm kidding, but actually, there's something in that. Until relatively recently, fat authors flew under the radar pretty well. Nowadays, you should look young and thin and beautiful even if you want to be a nuclear physicist. I'm pretty sure that Jean Auel, for example, would never have hit it as big as she did with "Clan of the Cave Bear" et al if she were starting out today instead of in the '80s.
I'm all for sensitivity training of medical students. I'm still angry about an episode of, it was either The View or Oprah. It was on a long time ago.
They had a doctor on whining about how much trouble fat patients are, about how she has to move them around in slings like "Barbero", referring to the injured horse.
I was really like, this person is on TV? She should have her liscence taken away, not be put on television to spew her Anti-Hippocratic hatred of fat patients.
I really think there should be a psychological exam for medical students to take. Something where, they can't tell what answers will disqualify them as a perspective medical person, but a psychologist could see that it would. Like, seeing a predisposition towards a bias against the overweight. So these perspective medical students will know, that part of being a doctor is caring..that just because society wants to make a pariah of a group of people, they can't join in. First do no harm. Apperantly alot of them think that psychological harm doesn't count.
I really really REALLY like Jessifer Seabs' course ideas.
Kind of an interdisciplinary studies thing. (I just did a curriculum like that, so I know they can be created.)
I'd take that course, and market it to about 6000 of my closest friends. People won't even read or go to see the film "Fast Food Nation" because it makes them squirm, but there's really more to the nationally increasing obesity rates than meets the eye.
Jessifer, when does class meet?
Hi again JessiferSeabs. I didn't mean to jump down your throat in my last post, it's just that a lot of people do look at Wisconsinites that way. That said, I do think your course idea is a good one, and that some kind of cultural/fat studies course would be excellent for health care professionals.
One of the med school questions a woman I know got was, "Do you agree that people who are overweight or obese should be denied healthcare?" She (the interviewee) was disgusted with this idea and said that, no, no one should ever be denied healthcare. She got into med school (one of the top 3 in the country) on the first try (which is almost unheard of).
As one of the few fat graduates of my university, I would have been enormously happy to have seen courses like this!
We had a candidate at my university, within the general category of film/visual media, who studied representations of fatness in film. Although I'm very pleased with the person we eventually did hire, I wanted to hire this man. It wasn't about fat-is-good, or fat-is-bad; it was about how, like race or gender or a lot of other categories, it's constructed. What is fat? What does fat "mean"? As a fair number of "fat people" know, there's no one answer. At 150 pounds and 5'7", I have colleagues who consider me "skinny" and colleagues who consider me "fat." Which am I "really"? There isn't any clear "really." There's what we construct fat to be, to mean, to signify (laziness, sloth, ill health, perversion, mental illness, self-love, self-hatred, defiance of norms, sensuality, take your pick.) There are health effects associated with obesity, sure (Jen put her finger on my problems with Big Fat Blog), but those too are subject to interpretation, to study, to construction (as Big Fat Blog is correct in pointing out, though I wish BFB were more open about acknowledging that their viewpoint too is constructed.) Meaning is made. And I really liked our Fat Studies candidate's interest in the myriad ways fat is constructed. This is something that could benefit from more study, study as free from polemic as the author can make it. And I don't know what job it would qualify the Fat Studies major for, but I'll bet it's an academic one. In the academic humanities, despite all the sometimes-justified ivory-tower sneers, the big focus of interest is just that, how we make meaning individually and collectively, how we use it to create binaries and to categorize people. I for one found it fascinating.
I actually take issue with this portion of the last interviewee's comment, "Ethnic studies, women's studies, queer studies - they're all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group." I've never actually taken classes in any of those fields of study, but it seems to me that there's a lot more to them than vindicating grievances. I mean, what makes focusing your studies on Old English poetry inherently any better than focusing your studies on the experiences of women throughout history?
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