The New York Times just ran an article titled “Where Thin People Roam, and Sometimes Even Eat“. Apparently, a new study which utilized body-mass index data found that the borough of Manhattan houses the thinnest people in all of New York City. In fact, people in Manhattan are thinner than the collective body mass indexes of both New York state, and surprisingly, the entire nation of the U.S.! (To clarify, this doesn’t mean that Manhattanites are the thinnest people in the country – it just means that if you compare the average body mass index of the population of Manhattan to the same figure for the country as a whole, Manhattanites are thinner. But is this really a surprise?)
The NYT article offers a few possible explanations for the thinness of Manhattan:
First and foremost, they said, Manhattan is a place where people walk. Even subway riders need to climb stairs. Storefront yoga studios, parks and pedestrian-friendly streets make working out relatively easy.
Note the plug of our favorite lifestyle activity, yoga!
The article goes on to interview several Manhattan residents about their methods for staying thin. ($300 workout coaching methods are mentioned, and one interviewee exclaims, “Look at my cute little triceps!” Ahem.) Through these mini profiles, readers are left with the distinct impression that Manhattan as a whole is… oh how shall we put it… quite superficial?
Anywho, reading this article reminded us of another interesting piece we read just last week in one of our favorite magazines, The New Yorker. This piece was titled “Why Are We So Fat?“, and it was penned by writer Elizabeth Kolbert. It’s basically a survey of several books published in the last few years about the enormous weight gain our country has experienced since the 1980s. Many of the hypotheses posited in these books are not new ideas to us, but one segment in particular caught our eye. Kolbert relays a brainstorming session which took place during the early days of McDonald’s:
Customers were purchasing a burger and perhaps a soft drink or a bag of fries, and then leaving. How could they be persuaded to buy more? Wallerstein’s suggestion—a bigger bag of fries—was greeted skeptically by the company’s founder, Ray Kroc. Kroc pointed out that if people wanted more fries they could always order a second bag.
“But Ray,” Wallerstein is reputed to have said, “they don’t want to eat two bags—they don’t want to look like a glutton.” Eventually, Kroc let himself be convinced; the rest, as they say, is supersizing.
Wow, we had never thought about the role that social pressure might play in the realm of the human appetite. Fascinating!
In this article we also learned about a burgeoning (and somewhat questionable) academic field called “fat studies” (along the lines of “black studies” or “women’s studies”…)
The movement known variously as “size acceptance,” “fat acceptance,” “fat liberation,” and “fat power” has been around for more than four decades… According to the authors of “The Fat Studies Reader,” the real problem isn’t the sudden surge in obesity in this country but the surge in stories about obesity. Weight, by their account, is, like race or sex or bone structure, a biological trait over which individuals have no—or, in the case of fat, very limited—control… Undeniably, the fat—the authors of “The Reader” are adamant advocates for the “f” word—are subject to prejudice and even cruelty.
Overweight people in America are certainly subject to discrimination. But the concept of “fat studies” departments at universities and the idea that undergraduates could choose to major in “fat studies” at college is kind of mind-bending! Kolbert goes on to elegantly outline some appropriate criticisms of the field:
But, just because size bias exists it doesn’t follow that putting on weight is a subversive act. In contrast to the field’s claims about itself, fat studies ends up taking some remarkably conservative positions. It effectively allies itself with McDonald’s and the rest of the processed-food industry, while opposing the sorts of groups that advocate better school-lunch programs and more public parks. To claim that some people are just meant to be fat is not quite the same as arguing that some people are just meant to be poor, but it comes uncomfortably close.
Anywho, it seems to us that ‘fat’ is a becoming a bit of a buzz topic at the moment. We wonder which other media outlets will join the discussion?
