On its surface, it's a cool look to the past at a great show in Soul Train merged with the modern music of Daft Punk. Many things could be said about the timelessness of cool or that modern music is nothing more than the appropriation of the past, but the first thing that struck me was that everyone in this video is quite thin. I know that we're supposed to be bombarded with images of thinness causing eating disorders and what with all the concern over obesity being on the rise, saying that people in the past were thin is no great revelatory statement. I think about myself sometimes when I think about fitness. I am 6'0'' and 175 lbs. My BMI comes in at the normal range of 23.7. If you were to see me walking around the street you would probably think nothing of my weight and probably consider me to be quite thin, if a little ill-defined and possibly flabby. Throw me in the Soul Train Gang and I suddenly become overweight, hell, they might just call me fat. (Part of my weight is that I like beer and eating fast food occasionally, sometimes more than occasionally. I should change that but I enjoy them quite a bit.)
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about the changes to thinness in America. Obesity is really an issue that we should grapple with due to the numerous health implications that stem from it. At the same time, how? Everything is getting fatter. Not to mention that we, as humans, appear to suck at staying thin. A lot of changes have been made to our lifestyles that has led to our packing on the pounds. We're more sedentary, we spend more time in front of computers or televisions, we eat a bunch of junk. In order to turn this from your standard blog post about weight I felt the need to explore some mental exercises. You see, when someone on the internet talks about weight or obesity there are only a hand full of ways that it can go. I have to call us a nation of fatties and talk about diet and exercise or I have to talk about how our fixation with obesity is undermining people's health by inducing eating disorders. I'm going to try avoiding those responses because there are places to read about that elsewhere. Neither statement is without some validity, I just don't feel like writing about them.
I guess when I think about weight loss in the United States I generally think that there needs to be some sort of policy solution. I say this for the same reason I support various policies regarding social insurance. I have a sense that while it is indeed possible on an individual level to persevere and triumph over the various adversities that arise in life, we kind of suck at it and tend to fail on a rather large scale. For instance, it is indeed possible to properly save for a retirement but it is exceedingly difficult and many fail to. Hence my support of Social Security. I could be convinced that some kind of similar policy solution may be needed with respect to obesity. The policy itself could not be the same as insurance because I don't see how one could insure against obesity, but there could be some solutions to take at the national policy level.
One step that could be taken could be with regards to how we actually produce food. I know picking on factory farming and GMOs is always popular, that's not the direction I am necessarily heading in. There's been a fair amount of news recently that showed that food companies have gone to great lengths to scientifically engineer food to be even better to us. For all of the remarks people have made about fast food or junk food, it does have a certain appeal to it that is hard to replicate. No matter how much I like my own homemade milkshakes with almond milk and reduced fat ice cream, they're still not quite like a shamrock shake. The food is good, and it is designed to make us want more. While it seems weird that we should attempt to halt businesses from improving their product, it also seems like their improvements have done demonstrable harm to people's health. We already take steps to limit the health impact of cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, and soft drinks, will junk food join it next? I can't say that I would be totally opposed to some kind of plan to limit the access of junk food or push/make companies into changing how they produce it. We could conceivably come up with policies that rewarded health and fitness. We have policies that reward home ownership, marriage, and fecundity.
I think many will object to this kind of policy plan because it seems like another imposition on individual autonomy by paternalistic forces. You can look at the reaction to Mayor Bloomberg's plan to tax large fountain drinks. I also think that people generally feel that fatness, more so than alcoholism, smoking, or gambling is a sign that you lack self control. Obesity is a punishment that is visited upon the idle and the indolent. While this could very well be true, I just don't see life as a morality play. If given the option, people are going to continue eating junk food and grow fat largely because they cannot help themselves. The control necessary for a sustained plan of diet and exercise is probably beyond many people's grasp because it requires such a total change. People who are on successful and sustained diet and exercise regimes bear the hallmark of Born-Again Christians. Not exactly a large group. Instead of dooming people to a life of heart disease and diabetes, it would be better to intervene on the food production line. As a final point, I doubt those dancers on Soul Train were on a diet.
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