viz.

Image Credit: The Museum of Fat Love

H/T: Layne Craig

Amidst massive media coverage of the “obesity epidemic,” visual arguments have emerged online that challenge the terms of the current debate.  One example is the website, The Museum of Fat Love, which presents a collection of photographs of smiling couples.  Similarly, Newsweek ran a series of photographs on their website titled “Happy, Heavy and Healthy” in which readers submitted pictures of themselves performing athletic feats.  Both websites called for volunteers to submit evidence that individuals classified as overweight or obese can live healthy, happy lives.  The use of visuals in both instances is striking—both websites are predicated on the understanding that overweight individuals have been misunderstood (perhaps even vilified) in the course of public debates on obesity and public health.

These photo collections led me to consider representations of obesity in other media and, particularly, the cropped photographs that feature so regularly on local nightly new programs.  Why is it that obesity is so often represented by a headless body?  Although the obvious answer is to protect the identity of these individuals, such images paint an eerily dehumanized portrait of obesity.  The obesity debate has created a strange visual rhetoric that photographic montages such as The Museum of Fat and “Happy, Heavy and Healthy” may be attempting to reorient. 

Image Credit: MSNBC

In a recent article in Slate Magazine, "Glutton Intolerance," Daniel Engber argues that social stigmas against overweight individuals are not only deplorable but may actually cause the health problems associated with obesity.  Citing a study by epidemiologist Peter Muennig, Engber writes that weight discrimination contributes to the stress-related illnesses that are generally attributed to obesity.  If weight-stigma is itself a public health “epidemic” then perhaps visual evidence for active, well-loved plus-size people may perform an important function in undermining stigmas and, thereby, relieving dangerous stress.