The New Fad: Obesism

This past weekend, I attended a show, Panic on Cloud Nine, at Chicago's The Second City comedy club which provided some critical social commentary on sexuality in 2015. In one skit, a group of girls at a slumber party go around revealing secrets. The girls who reveal that they are secretly lesbian, transgender, or even secretly men are all responded to with huge acceptance, with the other girls saying that its not a big deal to be part of the "LGBTQ" community. The other girls kept saying, "It's 2015!" However, the skit ended with the last girl sharing her secret: "I think I might be gaining some weight". To this, the other girls shouted things like, "Fat ass!" and "You're disgusting!" I took this to mean that, in 2015, somebody can have any color of sexuality they please and no one will bother them, but if your obese, you will still receive all of the hurtful, prejudiced treatment that previous generations loved to use so much.

Despite the fact that this was a part improv comedy show- a hilariously funny one by the way-, I wondered to what extent this is true in my society today. I wonder if people with weight problems have truly been skipped or missed by the movement of tolerance and acceptance that has come with my generation. Of course, obese people are not denied any rights by U.S. law like homosexuals were denied the right to marry, but I wonder if they have been denied the right to fair treatment or freedom of bullying or hazing in some way.

So, I researched the issue on the omniscient internet, and found that overweight or obese individuals do face more struggles than their healthier weighing peers. According to a CNN article, obese middle-school children are sixty-five percent more likely to be bullied. The article then quotes Dr. Matthew Davis, a primary care physician and director of a children's hospital, on his thought about the potential underlying causes of this trend. "'We always have to keep in mind how we're modeling respect for others around multiple issues, including weight,' he says. 'Imagine how many signals kids get about weight just by hearing conversations by adults or seeing advertisements on TV. The messages are everywhere in terms of trying to control weight and be a different size than you are right now." Maybe Photoshop, the ubiquity of modern advertising and the messages it sends about body image have led children to this conclusion: fat is not desirable, skinny is attractive.  

If children are truly influenced into being anti-obesity from a young age, then perhaps obese people are facing injustice, however, not simply because of something like homophobia or racism like with other groups which have faced discrimination, but because of the modern age we live in. Obese children are not actually the demographic that missed out on the tolerance of the young generation, but they might be the new generation to be discriminated against in the ever-expanding world of digital perfection.