Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own (7 page)

The impact on the pocketbook is stark, too. People who are obese have a harder time finding jobs and are less likely to be promoted than their thinner counterparts. And whatever work they find pays less. “Women who are obese earn about six percent less than thinner women for exactly the same work performed. Obese men earn about three percent less than thinner men,” concludes Rebecca Puhl, PhD, of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University.

Actually, these numbers might even be more dramatic than Puhl estimates. I have also seen a study that concludes heavier women may face a penalty of as much as 11 percent of their salary.
²
Based on the 2010 average US wage of $669 a week, this would be like paying a tax of $76 a week for being fat, according to health economist John Cawley of Cornell University—and that’s provided you get the job in the first place.

Admittedly, weight is less important for men. Joe Scarborough has put thirty pounds on his six-foot-four frame over the past five years and it hasn’t hurt his earning potential at all. This doesn’t mean that men are immune to the pressures of professional judgment and public scorn, as Brian Stelter, the media reporter for the
New York Times
, understood. Brian began to gain weight at around the age of sixteen, about the same time he got his driver’s license. Having a car for the first time gave him not only the freedom to get around, but also the freedom to eat badly. “I trace it back to being able to go through the drive-thru, because until you have a car, your parents can control your eating more effectively,” he said ruefully.

By the age of twenty-four, Brian weighed 280 pounds.

“I looked like a slob, and in the back of my head I sensed that my bosses would judge me as a result,” Brian says. “I just felt in my gut that I wouldn’t succeed as much in my professional or my personal life if I didn’t lose the weight. I write about television, sometimes I’m on television, and I didn’t like the way I looked on television. And I thought to myself, I’m probably not going to be booked on the shows I want to be booked on if I hold on to this weight.”

There was also that woman who turned him down for a date, and unintentionally helped to motivate his weight loss.

Brian started a Twitter feed, posting every time he put something into his mouth. That helped him lose nearly a hundred pounds, and to gain a lot more confidence in himself and his career.

Donny Deutsch is another successful man who knows that his physical condition has enhanced his value and doesn’t mind admitting it. Donny is a well-known advertising exec in
New York City and a regular on
Morning Joe
. In his book
Often Wrong, Never in Doubt
, he has a chapter called “The Charles Atlas School of Management.”

“I always wanted to feel if shit went down at a meeting I could kick the crap out of the other guy,” Donny says. “Now, that’s obviously a metaphor, but I think staying in shape and looking good just helps your overall persona. I always say that when you look better, you feel better, and it shows self-discipline.”

Donny, like so many of us, admits that his weight goes up and down. “I was forty pounds heavier at one point. I find the times that I am on a physical regimen and eating right and looking the way I want to look, it is tremendously impacting on every area of my life.” Adds Donny, “I’m a guy that’s been made fun of a lot, because as a CEO I wore a tight-fitting T-shirt.” Go ahead and laugh, he says, but he thinks that sends a message about who he is.

“So many successful men are kind of schlumpy. I thought it was quite a feat to be somebody who was successful in business and at the same time focused on my physical well-being, because we all know the time and sacrifice it takes to be fit. I think people look at me and say, ‘Wow, this guy’s really got it going on! You know, he can really juggle a lot of balls!’”

I asked Donny how he thought my looks and weight affect my value as a newswoman. As an advertising expert who has sold all kinds of products, he knows what gets people to buy something—and those of us in the television business are truly selling ourselves. “Looks matter,” he emphasized. “There’s a reason you’re in that chair versus woman X. The brains and the ability are a given, so I’m not demeaning you by saying this. But
in a visual medium or in any medium that has to do with imagery, thinking that looks don’t matter and we shouldn’t judge—that’s just not reality!”

Comedian Susie Essman, co-star of HBO’s
Curb Your Enthusiasm
, agrees that women on TV are especially likely to be judged based on what they look like. And Susie says it’s a no-win proposition: a woman who seems to care too much about her looks “gets described as self-loathing. If she lets her weight go, then she’s described as not caring about herself. It’s like you can’t win.”

That’s reality, and research backs up this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect of things. A 2012 survey conducted for
Glamour
magazine by Yale’s Rebecca Puhl seems to confirm Susie’s suspicion. Puhl asked nearly two thousand women, ages eighteen to forty, to envision a female stranger who was either “overweight” or “thin,” and then to choose two words to describe her. The most common words used to describe the overweight woman were
slow, undisciplined, sloppy
, and
lazy
. Thin women didn’t fare much better. They were called
bitchy, mean, controlling, vain
, and
self-centered
.
³

Surprisingly, Puhl found that the weight of the survey respondents didn’t affect their answers. Heavy women were just as likely to use words like
sloppy
to describe someone who was overweight. Likewise, slender women were just as likely to say that a thin woman was
mean
.

“What that survey showed is that we judge people who are overweight in very negative ways, and then sometimes we judge people who are thin in negative ways as well. It’s a no-win
situation,” says Puhl, who is an expert in weight stigma. Part of that results from stereotypes of overweight and obese individuals presented in both children’s and adult media. “We know that the more people are exposed to media, the worse attitudes they have, and the more prejudice they express toward people who are overweight and obese. That is something that has increased significantly during the past fifty years.”

Puhl wants us to confront some of that negativity. “This highlights the need to educate ourselves about how the media and how our culture are shaping these values that promote bias and prejudice and judgment. And we need to find ways to challenge those.”

Weight is almost the only place where people are willing to speak bluntly about their prejudices toward an entire group of people. At Yale’s Rudd Center, researchers use a tool known as the Fat Phobia Scale to ask people to rate characteristics of those who are fat. Puhl says she would not have been able to get candid answers if she had used a similar scale to study gender or racial bias. “It’s no longer socially acceptable or politically correct to say that someone feels negatively, or has prejudice, because of race or gender. With body weight, that’s not the case. People are willing to express very readily the stereotypes and negative attitudes that they have toward obese people.”

People are willing to express very readily the stereotypes and negative attitudes that they have toward obese people.—
Rebecca Puhl

That willingness to stereotype reflects a prevailing idea that obesity results from lack of willpower and discipline. It totally ignores the reality of our contemporary food environment, which makes high-fat, high-sugar foods easy to access, and it shows ignorance about how such foods can get a grip on us that is hard to release. It shrugs off the mixed messages we get: one that tells us “being thin is worth just about any price” and one that says “this food is cheap, available 24/7, and designed to stimulate pathways in your brain that keep you coming back for more.”

When we lay fault entirely at the feet of people who carry extra weight rather than see them in that larger context, it becomes easy to say unkind things about them. “Blaming individuals for their excess weight is at the root of a lot of stigma that we see,” says Puhl.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie can attest to this. He is often in the spotlight, not only because of his leadership role, but also because of his size. Like any politician, he’s had to develop a thick skin, but he’s still deeply hurt by some of the hateful comments and tweets he gets. He read me these two:
HEY GOVERNOR, WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST TODAY, ONE STICK OF BUTTER OR TWO? and THINK GOVERNOR CHRISTIE CAN BE VP? HE’S TOO . . . FAT, AND AMERICANS HATE FAT PEOPLE
.

People would never say such vicious things about someone with any other type of health challenge. “It is extraordinary how brutal people will be about my weight,” the governor said. He thinks people assume he is lazy or lacking discipline because of his weight, and wonders, “Do they think I got this far in life without discipline?” I’ve heard Oprah say the same thing, and Diane says it, too.

“For somebody like me who’s had so much success in my life, and really been successful at everything I’ve tried, to not be able to be successful at this is incredibly discouraging,” revealed Christie. The attitude he encounters ignores the many complex factors involved in losing and regaining weight. Getting to a “healthy thin” certainly takes personal discipline and determination, but it also requires some changes in the world around us. It is not enough to say “eat less, do more.” Or to follow columnist Eugene Robinson’s simplistic advice for anyone with a weight problem: take a walk and eat a salad.

“That is the height of ignorance about what this issue is really all about,” Christie avows. “I’m well beyond the taking a walk stage. I work out four days a week with a trainer. I’m riding the bike and lifting weights and doing floor exercises for an hour a day. For people who have never had issues with their weight, they can’t understand it.”

Recognizing that our prejudices are counterproductive is a good place to start changing attitudes. Puhl thinks one reason our biases remain socially acceptable is that we somehow think they might be helpful. “There tends to be this perception that maybe stigma is not such a bad thing, that maybe it will motivate people to lose weight or provide an incentive for people to be healthier.” In fact, she says, the opposite is true. “When people are blamed, stigmatized, or teased about their weight, they’re much more likely to engage in unhealthy eating behaviors like binge eating; they’re more likely to eat more food; and they’re more likely to avoid exercise. All of those things actually reinforce obesity.”

So we need to get a lot smarter about how we look at people who are obese and how we support them. We also need our families, schools, and communities to protect our children from getting fat in the first place, and to support the work we need to do to reach and maintain a healthy weight. One out of every three Americans is obese (defined as a body mass index, or BMI, of 30 or above) and another one in three is “merely” overweight. With those numbers still rising, 42 percent of us can expect to be obese by 2030. We need to recognize that obesity is not just a problem that affects individuals. Right now, the costs threaten to cripple our nation.