Obesity Epidemic Definition Essay

The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers this definition: “obesity: a condition characterized by the excessive accumulation and storage of fat in the body” (Webster Online Dictionary). The Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines obesity further: “…obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the “body mass index” (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it correlates with their amount of body fat. An adult who has a BMI between 25 and 2.9 is considered overweight, while an adult who has a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese “(Center for Disease Control). Table 1 presents quantitative information on obesity, based on one’s height, weight range, and BMI. Figure 1: Summarizes obesity.
Yet even as more Americans are becoming overweight, in our society, “thin is in, and fat is regarded as a stigma” (Langford). Stigma is defined as “1. a) a scar left by a hot iron, b) a mark of shame or discredit: Stain, c) an identifying mark or characteristic: specifically: a specific diagnostic sign of a disease” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). In whatever way the word stigma is defined, social stigmatization stems from societal values on body type. This stigmatization causes weight-based discrimination. Fat people are most of the time looked down upon because of their physical appearance; they are “often ostracized at social functions, find discrimination in the job market, and are somehow viewed as inferior or of lesser character due to a “lack of willpower”” (Langford). Studies have been directed to finding out how serious is the stigma attached to obesity in the United
As a result, she committed suicide. She left a note that said: “I got fatter and fatter and sadder and sadder. Everyone got meaner and meaner…I wasn’t too stubborn to ask for help, I did ask, but they did not pay any attention” (The Times, 2004). Recently, Domonique Ramirez, a seventeen-year-old beauty queen, was told to ““get off the tacos”” after she showed up for a bikini photo shoot looking larger than the usual, which, as a result, made the pictures ““unusable””; she was stripped of her crown. This case was taken to the court, and justice was served when the jury ruled the pageant officials guilty; Ramirez won back her crown (Hindustan Times). While magazines, newspapers, and various articles display extreme examples of the result of stigmatization related to being overweight “reels out of control” (Rex-Lear), novels, poems, proses, and other literature works, are doing the same as authors release their attitudes and feelings toward weight