# Being a Statistic



## PeanutButterfly (Feb 23, 2012)

Is anyone else here getting a little tired of being "the obesity epidemic"? I sure as hell am. I know theres not much I can do except stop clicking on the asinine articles but it just seems to be getting worse. I am not a "disease". I am not a "problem". I'm a freakin' human being with just as many rights to exist as everyone else. Gah its so frustrating. 

If I hadnt found Dims I'm pretty sure I'd hate myself everyday for being "part of the problem". That makes me so sad that there are people out there who feel that way.

I don't know what the point of this thread was, other than I'm really sick of constantly being a negative statistic.


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## AuntHen (Feb 23, 2012)

The word obese itself annoys me... if you say it low and long it just sounds gross. I am sure it was meant to. 


OOOOOOOOOOOBEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE.


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## one2one (Feb 24, 2012)

I hate the word, too. The tone in which most people say it it the worst part of it for me, though. They can claim it's just a benign, clinical descriptor all they want, but no one ever uses that tone when describing chocolate.


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## Theatrmuse/Kara (Feb 24, 2012)

I read that word on my medical chart at age 20...........must have weighed around 200 pounds and was extremely fit. It crushed me as a new wife who was feeling wonderful about herself and her achievements as a young scholar. I will never forget that particular moment.

BUT over the years, I have come to realize it is only a word and I will not let it have ANY power over my fabulousness! NONE! Kara


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## Surlysomething (Feb 24, 2012)

I was heartbroken when I first found out I had Type 2 diabetes because I was now a statistic. I'm tired of fat being an epedemic for sure. ALL through history there have been people of assorted sizes. It's never going to change.

I honestly don't read a lot or listen to any of the bullshit anymore that is out in the media etc because I don't want to be shamed about ANYTHING.


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## seavixen (Feb 24, 2012)

This is one of the reasons I cannot stand to read / watch news anymore. There's so much venom out there directed toward fat (and fat people), that it makes me sick inside. Honestly, hatred in general (toward many things, from political beliefs to lifestyle choices) has become so blatant, widespread, and socially acceptable that I often have to just close the whole world out and lose myself in something pleasant.

Fat hate, fat blame, etc., are definitely hot right now. I'm pretty sure that fat and fat people have been blamed for just about everything possible by now...

The statistics can go play in some traffic, as far as I'm concerned. Generalizations rarely help anyone with anything.


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## TexasTrouble (Feb 25, 2012)

PeanutButterfly said:


> Is anyone else here getting a little tired of being "the obesity epidemic"? I sure as hell am. I know theres not much I can do except stop clicking on the asinine articles but it just seems to be getting worse. I am not a "disease". I am not a "problem". I'm a freakin' human being with just as many rights to exist as everyone else. Gah its so frustrating.



About a year ago, I went to this talk where a professor read from W.E.B Du Bois' "The Souls of Black Folk" where he talks about what it was like to be an African American in the early 20th century. It's really beautifully written and it begins with Du Bois talking about "How does it feel to be a problem?" To have your body be an indication to the world that you are a "problem." I'm not comparing the treatment of fat people to African Americans for a variety of reasons, but I remember sitting there and thinking: "_I_ am a problem. For a lot of people, I could be that headless fattie on the news representing--in their minds--what's wrong with America. No matter what kind of person I am, what I provide to the world, I am just an example of a problem." 

It was a very sobering experience. Not necessarily a sad one, though, because it did make me feel pity for people who are so willing to "problematize" others--it's really easy to feel superior when others are the problem. After the talk, one of the students in the audience got up during the Q & A and talked about how he could relate because he once had a drug problem that left him homeless and how the looks people would give him when they passed him on the street just made him feel worthless. I realized that a lot of people are symbols of "problems" and somehow that made me feel better (oddly enough).


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## bigmac (Feb 28, 2012)

seavixen said:


> ...
> 
> The statistics can go play in some traffic, as far as I'm concerned. Generalizations rarely help anyone with anything.



Statistics can be fun. Like the fact that fat people live longer than thin people and that it's the extremely underweight who die the earliest.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/24/overweight_live_longer/


So statistically its thin, not fat, that kills.


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## Lizzie (Mar 20, 2012)

PeanutButterfly said:


> I am not a "disease". I am not a "problem". I'm a freakin' human being with just as many rights to exist as everyone else.



This. Characterizing a group of people as a problem is not going to be key to finding the solution. It does, however, serve as an excellent distraction to finding the solution. If we (collective we, not any group in particular) focus on identifying the obesity epidemic and discussing the obesity epidemic that leaves very little time or resources for solving the obesity epidemic, if said epidemic ever existed.


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## Captain Save (Mar 23, 2012)

Surlysomething said:


> ALL through history there have been people of assorted sizes. It's never going to change.





TexasTrouble said:


> I realized that a lot of people are symbols of "problems"...





Lizzie said:


> Characterizing a group of people as a problem is not going to be key to finding the solution. It does, however, serve as an excellent distraction to finding the solution. If we (collective we, not any group in particular) focus on identifying the obesity epidemic and discussing the obesity epidemic that leaves very little time or resources for solving the obesity epidemic, if said epidemic ever existed.



I wonder, if said epidemic ever existed, would it plausibly be caused by processed food substitutes manufactured by corporations who are more interested in profit than the health of of those who eat it? It would be easier in my eyes to blame sedentary lifestyles and the proliferance of convenience food for unhealthy people, especially in the face of prohibitively more expensive healthy choices.

To be honest, obesity is not something new, and I'm a little hard pressed to see obesity as a problem until I'm told it's directly responsible for lots of medical expenses I have to pay for that are even more prohibitively expensive. I think we have one of the most capable medical systems in the world, but also one of the most expensive. When it's time to identify the culprit behind what is considered avoidable financial disaster, fat makes a much easier target than corporate malfeasance for a few reasons:

A. The media can tell us people do it to themselves and look for others to pay the medical bills.
B. Fat is cosmetic, and easily seen.
C. Life threatening medical conditions are rarely visible to the untrained eye.

I have to disagree on the word obese, though. I always pictured a large curvaceous woman in spandex with slicked hair and a smile, the sun shining in her face through the trees in the background...
:happy:


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## PlumBlossom (Mar 27, 2013)

fat9276 said:


> OOOOOOOOOOOBEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE


Oh!Bees' Sneeze!

Yeah, the word obese itself as a word seems gross and unappealing. Like the words rose, melody, anemone or whatever sound lovely. There are other words that sound unappealing to people. Like a lot of people don't like the word masticate or moist. Like words for thin people are what? Skinny, thin, fit...the letter themselves are thin and tall. But for fat people the words chosen are OBEEEESE, chubby even the letters are chubby like O and B haha. Anyway, just rambling.

But yeah, I see it as discrimination. The word obese is an unflattering word, nobody can make the word obese sound good. Some people have accepted the word "fat" as a normal non-threatening word but obese? Everyone can agree that word needs to disappear.

If the entire country and world went out and took candid photos of homosexual people and started announcing to the whole world that there's a "homosexual epidemic" and broadcasting those clips of homosexual people as if they were a disease, that would be hate-crime or discriminatory so why is it *ucking okay for the world to do that exact thing but with fat people? If a person is homosexual, just let them BE. If a person is fat, then just let them be too! Ugh.

Also if obesity is OH SO LIFE THREATENING then why oh why are there so many fat people around? Wouldn't that in itself prove that there is nothing scary/life threatening going on about "obese" people? Like the above poster said, they make a big deal out of "obesity" because it's something you can see. They see fat people everywhere and get scared but they don't think about HIV or cancer which is probably even more wide-spread but just because they can't see it, they don't make a point about it.


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## spiritangel (Mar 27, 2013)

Lizzie said:


> This. Characterizing a group of people as a problem is not going to be key to finding the solution. It does, however, serve as an excellent distraction to finding the solution. If we (collective we, not any group in particular) focus on identifying the obesity epidemic and discussing the obesity epidemic that leaves very little time or resources for solving the obesity epidemic, if said epidemic ever existed.



You said it DISTRACTION while the 1st world is beating each other up, making money and otherwise distracted and obsessed by the weight issue what other issues are slipping through our fingers?

I have said it before I feel like they step up the obesity thing to distract us from more important issues, after all if we are body obsessed are we going to question what is put in our foods? the fact that education standards seem to be slipping?

that a vast percentage of the world even if they work their arses off are no on or below the poverty line?

yes these issues still come up but have you noticed that when there is stuff going on that governments and media want us to turn a blind eye to there is always a hot new diet trend or product to push or someone who lost an amazingly huge amount of weight doing something extreme?

just sayin its like the dumbing down of pop culture that is around atm. It is designed to shift the focus from the really important stuff to something or a group of people so that instead of questioning our governments and leaders (and lets face it fellow Aussies we really havent had a good choice for leader in years), the war on obesity gets stepped up.


Steps off soapbox

I get sick of people acting like my size is their bussiness and it is their job in life to save my fat arse from dying young or telling me I should be out living life (if I could afford to be i would be)

Thats the other thing that really peeves me about the whole war on obesity it is often cheaper to buy a jumbo bag of potato chips or frozen chips than it is to buy a kilo of potatoes if they really wanted to help they would stop letting the price of healthy food skyrocket into crazy town and actually go back to monitoring what our supermarkets are doing.

I just find it interesting that they create a system that fills food with crap and unnatural things that often does not need to be there, and then get all high and mighty about body size

oops ok really stepping off soapbox now I probably have a ton more points as this is something that annoys me and I have thought about a fair bit given I am called on to defend who I am as a fat chick a lot.


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