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The image above shows the percentage of obese individuals in America by state in 2006. Source=CDC. Click on the image for a bigger map.
I understand that obesity is a problem in the United States–just look at the above map or play the video below (please ignore the music, it was the only animation of the map I could find).
I also understand that obesity costs taxpayers money and shortens lifespans of otherwise healthy individuals–so do alcohol, tobacco, and guns. It’s definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, but this is ridiculous. It’s old news, but I’ve been meaning to write about it for a long time. According to the article, three legislators in Mississippi want it to be illegal to serve obese customers at restaurants. “The proposal would allow health inspectors to yank the permit from any restaurant that ‘repeatedly’ feeds extremely overweight customers.”
Are you kidding me? It’s a good thing that this bill isn’t garnering much support in the Mississippi legislature. Not only is it discriminatory, but it’s got to be a logistical nightmare. According to the bill, the department of health is supposed to prepare “written materials” that help the restaurants determine if their customers are too obese to be served. Then they’re supposed to distribute the materials to those restaurants. They’re also supposed to inspect the restaurants and enforce the law. All of those things are going to cost money. Where’s it going to come from? If the state actually closes restaurants for violating this law, what’s going to happen to the people who work in those restaurants? It just doesn’t make any sense. Even if the bill were successful in fighting obesity in Mississippi, all it really does is shift problems around instead of solving them. There are countless reasons why this is a bad idea. What’s next, making people with dirty hair buy shampoo? Maybe making people with bad breath buy breath mints and mouthwash? I just don’t get it.
But here’s the real problem. This bill would make it legal to discriminate against people based on how they look. We’ve all seen those “owner reserves the right to refuse service” signs out there in the world. And I’m sure some of those owners refuse to serve people based on their prejudices. But those are individual business owners acting on their own accord. This is totally different–this is state mandated bigotry with serious consequences for breaking the law. We don’t need to make obese people feel worse about themselves than they already do. Why is it that it’s no longer alright to be a racist, sexist, or homophobe, but it’s still OK to be an obesist? (actual word…google it)
J.D.
17 responses so far ↓
1 MS // Apr 2, 2008 at 6:42 am
I’d love to see those written materials:
Your customer is too obese to serve when:
They beep when backing up
They need a boomerang to put on their belt
When they sit around the house, they sit AROUND the house
etc.
2 Anne Keckler, Personal Trainer // Apr 2, 2008 at 6:43 am
I believe this bill was already defeated. At any rate, the folks who introduced the bill admitted that it was intended as a publicity stunt to draw attention to the problem of obesity.
The very idea that anyone would seriously consider such a law, though (as some on the internet have), or that we could believe such a law could actually come into being in our “free” country, should tell us a lot about how far our society has fallen into the pit of authoritarianism.
3 BLF // Apr 2, 2008 at 7:36 am
I live in Mississippi and I believe Anne is correct, although the defeat of the bill got much less press than its introduction. Our politicians love few things more than making publicity campaigns out of proposed legislation. But if you really want to have fun, follow our city council as they prepare to create a law banning saggy pants in the next few weeks.
4 Rachel // Apr 2, 2008 at 8:53 am
This has got to be the most idiotic, expensive, waste of time I have ever heard of.
Apparently Mississippi must be an awesome place to live because they have so few problems that they only have stuff like this to make bills about! The next bill will be about dressing up homeless people like mailboxes or trees, another set of people that are icky and need to be taken care of.
Sheesh….
5 Red // Apr 2, 2008 at 9:24 am
I actually discussed this a few weeks ago in my video blog here.
I believe the legislator was just trying to draw attention to Mississippi’s place as the fattest state in the nation, which he did successfully.
6 AndrewE // Apr 2, 2008 at 10:43 am
Heh…imagine having to step on a scale just before eating at a restaurant. Even people who are not obese wouldn’t want to do that!
7 Rachel // Apr 2, 2008 at 11:25 am
Red // Apr 2, 2008 at 9:24 am
“I believe the legislator was just trying to draw attention to Mississippi’s place as the fattest state in the nation, which he did successfully.”
I understand wanting to draw attention to a cause, but this is like trying to draw attention to racism by calling a bunch of people racial slurs and suggesting people move to the back of the bus!
Just because he’s not calling out a particular race or religion doesn’t make it okay.
8 Josh // Apr 2, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I was going to write a huge rant on this but decided it was not constructive to the conversation.
Nevertheless, I completely disagree with other commenters and think comparing racism/sexism to “obesism” is nonsense and sort of offensive in itself.
-Josh
9 meh // Apr 2, 2008 at 1:08 pm
‘Obesism’? Seriously? You’re fat. Go on a diet or shut the hell up. When can I apply for being discriminated against for being under 6 feet tall, being left handed, or the mental damage and gneder confusion associated with occasionally sitting down to pee?
10 macdaddy // Apr 2, 2008 at 1:14 pm
@meh: thanks for helping to prove the point.
11 Zack // Apr 2, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I agree. While racism is becoming less acceptable, anti-smoking feeling (not sure what *thats* called) is becoming more common. I don’t think the two are related (racism and obesism). One is based on an unalterable fact of birth, while the other is an attitude against behavior that is self-destructive as well as costly to society. What other behaviors should we sanction then? Anorexia? Alcoholism? I don’t think people should denigrate someone for being fat, and the bill only made sense as a publicity stunt, but people should not want to be fat either, any more then they should want to be sick.
12 TosaJen // Apr 3, 2008 at 5:18 am
My first reaction was “April Fools”. Oh, April 2nd . . . ‘K!
I think that obesity needs to be treated with sensitivity, education, and support, same as we (should) deal with other unfortunate and difficult but changeable situations, like drug/alcohol abuse, poverty, unemployment, undereducation, etc.
However, obesity should not be a protected class, because it is changeable for most of us. When I was a kid, it was rare to see a spherical person — now they’re all too common. It’s not unalterable genetics then, is it?
13 Kevin // Apr 3, 2008 at 11:16 am
“Why is it that it’s no longer alright to be a racist, sexist, or homophobe, but it’s still OK to be an obesist?”
Because people don’t choose their race, gender, or sexual orientation, but they do choose whether or not to be fat. (Yes, yes, with a few rare “thyroid condition” exceptions).
14 Kaila // Apr 3, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I totally agree this is a ridiculous bill that has already wasted more tax dollars than should ever have been allowed. It would almost be like banning skinny people from the gym.
But I have a problem with something else that you wrote…
“I also understand that obesity costs taxpayers money and shortens lifespans of otherwise healthy individuals–so do alcohol, tobacco, and guns.”
Alcohol, tobacco, and guns are inanimate objects. They cannot act on their own accord. PEOPLE must use them in detrimental ways in order for those OBJECTS to have any effect on society. When humans decide to legislate alcohol, tobacco, and firearms into the ground– humans cause a drain on taxpayers and society. When humans choose to smoke, drink, and purchase, load, and pull the triggers of guns, those human actions have the potential to shorten human lifespans.
As a society, we’ll only be hurting ourselves by shifting the blame from ourselves to human-created objects that don’t have the capability of acting in any way (positive or negative) on their own.
15 BirdOfParadox // Apr 4, 2008 at 7:59 am
First off, the bill has been dead since mid-February.
http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2008/pdf/history/HB/HB0282.xml
Also, bear in mind that Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation. Many economic assistance programs only offer vouchers for highly-processed products like white bread and “juice” largely comprised of HFCS.
Maytall’s idea of “fixing” Mississippi’s obesity epidemic is simple: Just don’t let fatties eat anywhere more public than in the shaming, private light of their own refrigerator. Obviously, in Mayhall’s eyes (as well as some of your commenters) every overweight person in Mississippi so obsessed and consumed with an endless insatiable need to stuff their gullets full of lard and sugarbombs, they cannot be trusted to consume food in public at all.
One such as Mayhall might even consider it a beautifying project for Mississippi: one’s grand daring to FEED THEMSELVES (even when eating healthily) is evidently repulsive, given the stares and looks of disgust from other restaurant-goers.
Incidentally, all of the bill’s sponsors and cosponsors are all linked to the pharmaceutical industry, which makes unspeakable amounts of money on obesity-treating drugs.
A lot of people can easily point their fingers at fat people and immediately pass judgment on them for their size; that obviously, they don’t care about themselves, they don’t eat well, they sit around on the couch all day. It’s very easy to ignore that there are obese men and women with normal cholesterol, thyroid, etc. panels, who exercise daily and even compete in triathlons. It’s easy to dismiss obesity as laziness or gluttony or intense self-hatred. It can be any or all of those things, but it doesn’t have to be. There are those of us who exercise, who have weighed their food and listened to a nutritionist and taken their prescriptions and it is STILL a neverending war against the weight. We don’t need anyone’s disapproving looks, casual internet idiocy, and certainly not a bill that is intended to shame and demoralize.
I think that perhaps likening it to religious discrimination is more appropriate than various -isms, though. It doesn’t matter if you were born ___ or became it; it is what it is. People are going to have opinions, especially on the Internet where officious busy-bodying reigns supreme.
16 Misheru » Blog Archive » Completely off-topic post about health and fish // Apr 6, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[…] I found this graphic, listing rates of obesity by state, really interesting. Here’s a great post by Get Fit Slowly about an actual bill in Mississippi that would make it illegal to feed fat people in restaurants, […]
17 Misheru » Blog Archive » Completely off-topic post about health and fish // Apr 6, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[…] I found this graphic, listing rates of obesity by state, really interesting. Here’s a great post by Get Fit Slowly about an actual bill in Mississippi that would make it illegal to feed fat people in restaurants, […]
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