IT'S OK TO HATE THEM - WE HAVE SCIENCE ON OUR SIDE

July 30 2007: We construct and distort scientific cases against those we hate - and then we can hate them with clearer consciences and harder hearts.

There is an ignoble tradition of such stigmatisation stretching back throughout history, sometimes attaching to extreme religion and even more frequently cloaking blind prejudice against those who are the unfortunate but convenient Others of the moment.

There has been a troubling outbreak of such thinking in the last few days with regards to obesity and overweight.

A US report has suggested a correlation between keeping the company of overweight people and an increased risk of personally gaining unwanted weight.

Whatever the science, the media has had a field day, eagerly moulding fresh ammunition to hurl at the overweight. Amongst many crass treatments, the following from Dublin’s Sunday Independent is typical and illustrative:

THE LATEST DIET ADVICE: DON’T HANG AROUND WITH FAT PEOPLE

The research says nothing of the sort. The point it makes might in fact seem rather banal: in the midst of all the searches for genetic underpinnings to obesity, it suggests that body size has strong social influences, with close peer example playing a strong role. This cultural influence on fatness and thinness certainly comes as no surprise to us at The Weight Foundation.

Another study being commented on extensively in the media suggests that disgust of fatness is linked to primal, emotional, self-protective instincts. Just as anger primes us for self-defence and fear readies us for flight, so disgust puts us on our guard against contamination by disease and contagion.

The research from The University of British Columbia draws a link between those who appear to have an elevated fear of disease and their supposed heightened negative reactions to fatness.

It would be interesting to discuss how the study deals with how a continuity of negative reaction may or may not be present down through many ages and how current cultural influences may play out in these results. Then again, such contextualising might prove very difficult to achieve in practice.

Anyway, The Daily Mail conveniently analyses it for us:

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER WHY THIN PEOPLE DISLIKE FAT PEOPLE

And there’s more. This week’s Observer carries a piece about a childhood obesity report it describes variously as “secret”, “leaked”, and “damning”. Young people are predicted to continue to become heavier for the foreseeable future unless some significant lifestyle changes are widely adopted.

The upshot of this, The Observer tells us, is that:

BRITAIN IS FACING AN UNPRECEDENTED PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

Indeed, it is easy to argue that mass obesity is not in fact a good thing. However, one needs to ask again just what kind of context is being advanced for the dramatic preceding claim; is childhood obesity really going to supplant The Black Death in the annals of British health crises? – There’s responsible risk assessment and there’s parish-pump panic journalism.

There is generally a growing obsession of locating weight issues within the field of the pre-ordained and the inevitably bio-scientific. Cultural and behavioural solutions increasingly play second fiddle to the constant and growing clamour from statistical doom mongers. It is, of course, much easier to ride a bandwagon than it is to break new territory in fresh and constructive directions.

And the mass media absolutely loves hopping up onto that bandwagon via a good knee jerk, still better if that knee catches those loathsome fatties right where it hurts.