OPINION:
In 1992, a popular Calvin Klein advertisement featured svelte supermodel Kate Moss, only in her Calvins, with her long, dirty-blond hair cascading down her back. She was embracing a fit, toned Mark Wahlberg, who stared into the camera with smoldering machismo.
Fast-forward to 2022, and the same brand’s advertisement highlights two obese, homely, androgynous models (one of which we presume is a man, but it’s unclear, since he’s wearing a bra) devoid of any sexuality or signs of good health.
What has happened to our society in 30 years, where the definition of beauty has morphed into a celebration of unappealing corpulence?
Many will say brand advertisers and retailers like Target and Nike, which now display plus-sized mannequins in their stores, are just trying to reflect their customer base. Strikingly, over the last three decades, obesity in the U.S. has increased by 70% for adults and by 85% over the same time period for children, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
And rather than trying to address the problem, discussing it has become a cultural taboo. Overweight stars like Lizzo prance around in spandex leotards, preaching the gospel of “body positivity.” Lizzo has made it a point to only hire “big girls” for her shows. Television programs like TLC’s “1,000-Lb. Sisters” normalize the grotesquely fat. News programs continually speak on the need for more inclusivity, acceptance and self-love for the obese. Both Cosmopolitan and Vogue have featured size-24 model Callie Thorpe on their pages, with Cosmo granting her cover status and declaring, “This is Healthy!”
No, it’s not.
Health issues related to obesity include heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer — among the leading causes of preventable, premature death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A study published in Obesity Reviews in the summer of 2020 found that overweight people who contracted COVID-19 were 113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die.
So, where are the government-sponsored advertisements urging Americans to get active and lose weight? Nowhere to be found.
Why is this? I would note three factors: (1) The government has been complicit in causing obesity, (2) both Big Pharma and parts of our health care industry stand to profit from the status quo and (3) our culture is just reluctant to face some hard truths if they conflict with being woke.
In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded scientific research to downplay the risks of sugar in one’s diet and to shift the focus of concern to fat. As NPR reported in 2016, “the motivation by the industry was [that] if Americans could be persuaded to eat a lower-fat diet — for the sake of their health — they would need to replace that fat with something else. America’s per capita sugar consumption would go up by a third.”
Coca-Cola bankrolled researchers who studied how sugary drinks didn’t affect one’s weight. The candy trade association funded studies showing how children who ate sweets had healthier body weights than those who did not.
Not surprisingly, these studies affected the U.S. Food Guide Pyramid, which, when issued in 1992, labeled “fats” as bad. Americans took note, replacing high-fat foods with highly processed, low-fat junk food. Only in 2015 were the U.S. guidelines revised to recommend eating less added sugar. Nutritional experts say industry lobbying continues to influence the federal government’s dietary guidelines. But if U.S. government officials were to admit as much, they would be confirming their own hand in today’s obesity crisis.
Obesity is also a big moneymaker for the health care industry. The CDC estimates the annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was nearly $173 billion in 2019 dollars, and medical costs for obese adults were $1,851 higher than those of people with a healthy weight.
Just last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics decided to push drugs and surgery — not physical activity or dieting — as the best way to treat children with obesity. The U.S. bariatric surgery market was valued at $669 million in 2021 and is expected to grow at an 8.1% compound rate annually through 2028, according to Mordor Intelligence. Sales of anti-obesity drugs are expected to climb to $13.3 billion by 2029, from $2.8 billion last year, according to Fortune Business Insights. Big physiques are big business.
In our woke culture, where value is derived by how disadvantaged, discriminated against, or dispirited one is, celebrating — or excusing — fatness has become the inequality cause du jour. NBC’s “Today” show recently did a feature on a plus-sized social media influencer and her struggle with “atypical anorexia.” The news segment wanted us to believe that “eating disorders don’t discriminate by body size. Anorexia is a psychological disorder, and many people in larger bodies suffer from the same obsessions and anxieties around meals, body image and weight gain.”
Never mind that the Mayo Clinic defines anorexia as “an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight.” A 200-pound-plus person can have it, too. Feel sorry for them.
It’s time for some brutal honesty: Obesity has become a national epidemic. It is not cute, woke or stylish to be fat. It’s a very serious health concern. It’s time we as a society treated it as one.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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