There are a couple arguments that the wise person avoids.
Mets vs. Yankees
Jets vs. Giants
tastes great vs. less filling (ok, that was snark)
Some rivalries (sports in particular) are in good fun, but I'm putting sports and politics aside today and I'm looking at the rivalry between people with anorexia nervosa vs. obesity.
An edgy blogger for Marie Claire, who has a history of "anorexia", posted an insensitive review of Mike & Molly featuring two heavy people in love. She had it right:
I can be kind of clueless...
She was referring to not knowing the current shows on TV, however it could be applied to her failure to see overweight people as human beings with the same needs she has. She felt justified in her view that fat people shouldn't be allowed to walk across a room in front of her, let alone kiss. She thought people would naturally agree with her bias.
Maura Kelly was wrong and the entire Marie Claire organization is back pedaling from that post.
Marie Claire says their goal is to promote healthy self images for woman, but when you look at the web site, it's the same misogynistic fluff updated for the 21st century. They are clueless about the obesity epidemic, but avidly support underweight modeling. You would think there would be an adult in charge at Marie Claire that would have mentioned the post was something a mean girl might write.
Maura Kelly is trying to explain away her cruelty as a faux pas, a hang over from her history with anorexia nervosa. As if that fact alone excuses her denigrating obese people. Is she claiming a relapse of her former cognitive problem made her write something brutally cruel? In explaining her illness she mentions, "It's a control thing", but why didn't she "control" what she wrote? The truth is the anorexia nervosa patient often only has control over the food they eat and the exercise they do - that's the "control thing", but it's not absolute. So then, are we to surmise she is justifying her blog post by saying to obese people, "I was able to nearly starve myself to death, why can't you?". (Well, I suppose that's a little harsh, and just as wrong and as cruel as what Ms. Kelly wrote. I apologize for using a cheap shot to make a point.)
Obesity affects 31% of our adult population and 17% of our children, while Anorexia Nervosa affects about 0.9% of the entire U.S. population. About 72 million adults are obese while anorexics total about 2.8 million people including children. Obesity rates among Hispanic and African American populations is somewhat higher. The costs of treating a single patient with anorexia nervosa are more than the treatment costs of an obese patient, especially if the underweight patient ends up hospitalized for weeks. The total direct costs of treating eating disorders (excluding obesity) was over $16 billion per year in 2005. This is one health care administrator who is thankful that anorexia nervosa is the minority problem, because if there were 72 million people with anorexia nervosa, the direct costs would be over $423 billion (the indirect costs of treating the comorbities would be extra).
What would be society's opinion if the statistics were reversed? If there were only 3 million obese people and 72 million anorexics in America? What if we we could "prove" that $500 billion in direct and indirect health care costs came from anorexic nervosa patients? Would we say, "This wouldn't be a problem if you would just eat"? Would we find ways to charge an emaciated person more for services and products than people with "normal" weights? Would we dismiss the anorexic's explanations for their behavior as "excuses"? Would we allow anti-skinny bullying? Would we hold up emaciated people for ridicule?
Fat used to be chic. In some society's it still is, but not ours and not now. Hating fat people is ok with the average person and the formerly, obese join right in, just as soon as they join the ranks of the phat people. Disliking obese people simply because they are obese is the last protected bias you can have. Why is hating ourselves for being fat a good idea? Why is hating fat people "politically correct"? Fat prejudice may be unkind, it could bring you "bad karma", it isn't very charitable or a "Christian" attitude, but it's not against the law and some people revel in anti-obese animosity.
Why does the anorexia nervosa patient seem to have disdain (if not outright hostility) for the obese and why do obese people envy the anorexic? Both are sick. Both fail to see their bodies as they are. They both will die from side effects related to their weight, however, (counter to popular belief) the anorexic are at higher risk for death than the obese. Some formerly obese people envy the anorexic so much, they become anorexic.
More people sympathize with the Nicole Richie's and not the Billy Gardell's or Melissa McCarthy's. Most people like Maura Kelly mistakenly assume obesity is the result of hyperphagia, that as soon as the obese person gets control over them self, the weight will slide off them. A therapist friend of mine once wished there was an obesity related DMV IV code, that depression and/or OCD didn't cover what she was talking about. I casually asked if she thought it was like a "flip side" of anorexia nervosa. She saw the similarities. It gave her food for thought.
I wish Ms. Kelly well. I hope she finds a way to be more compassionate toward people she can't relate to. Will she take this controversy defensively or will she learn something about diversity? More importantly, will she become more tolerant of obesity or less? As to the fictional Mike & Molly? They deserve the right to pursue happiness, just like Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy do.