SWA #9

Ross Alberghini
English 101, Section 056
November 8, 2007
Short Writing Assignment #9
Obesity In America

The issue of obesity is increasing in today’s society in the United States. In her excerpt from “The Fat Girl’s Guide To Life,” Wendy Shanker talks about the issue of obesity relating to women. She talks about how to accept being fat and how to deal with it. The ethos that is presented in this article is that our society has, for the most part, a fixed attitude about people who are fat, as she says in the article “being fat means you are loserish, lame, disgusting, and hopeless.” (246)

Her target audience is really anyone who happens to be reading the article, not just fat people. I think that she is trying to get the reader to realize what influences their thinking about fat people, and also targeted to fat people because the title of her book will catch their attention. In the beginning of her article, she describes herself as a teenager, fat, and realizing that it was okay to be fat, and that she needed to change her attitude about herself and accept the way she was. Society in general puts value and emphasis on being thin and attractive, almost as if there is a pressure to be thing and beautiful so as to be accepted. There are many influences that affect the way people feel about themselves, such as “the government, the media and celebrities, family and friends, feelings, fashion, and feminism.” (243) Although these influences are present, self-acceptance is more important, and it is necessary that we “start by changing the way we see ourselves.” (244) Instead, we need to use energy to “work on stuff that really mattes to you as an individual,” (245) which will allow you to be more successful. In today’s society, “fat means bad,” (246) and even if that is true it is necessary to be more optimistic and think that “words are just a bunch of letters in a row. The words can stay the same; it’s our attitudes about them that have to change.” (248) Therefore, if we stop associating fat with being bad then being fat will not actually be bad. She is trying to tell the reader that maybe we need to adjust our attitudes and thinking as to how we view and treat fat people rather than trying to make them change.

Eleanor Randolph’s article “The Big Fat American Kid Crisis…and 10 Things We Should Do About It,” contains information and ideas on how to help the rising obesity in young people. She presents her argument in a very matter of fact way. The article starts out with statistics about how many Americans, especially adults, are overweight and obese and that childhood obesity has become a medical crisis. More children are being diagnosed with diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, which are typically thought of as being adult diseases. The National Institutes of Health has statistics about the deceasing of the lifespan by 5 years with the younger populations. In addition, obesity is a cost to our health care system, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to some facts, she feels that food companies and advertising are largely responsible for these issues.

Randolph believes that we need to take action as a nation to help solve the problem of obesity. She outlines ten different areas that she feels are the places to start in order to solve the problem. Each of her ten ideas emphasizes the problem, and gives information to back it up, and also how to help it. I think that her arguments are very sensible and convincing because they are backed up with data and statistics from reliable sources. I agree with her feeling that we need to start when kids are young to promote healthy eating and exercise. In addition, we need to include educating adults as well so they can set the proper example. A change in advertising and corporate America is necessary to promote healthy eating and fitness, and although it is a big problem to tackle, it needs to start somewhere.