by Becca Stussman ’12

Obesity is not healthy. According to WebMD, someone who is 40 percent overweight is twice as likely to die prematurely than a person of average weight, and obesity is the second most prevalent carcinogen, lesser only to smoking. Obese people can be accomplished and skilled, productive and sexy, popular and loved. They can be doctors, lawyers, athletes and leaders. But obesity is not healthy.

Obesity kills. It overflows the healthcare system and severely burdens society. And yet our hesitancy to take action against it, due largely to fear of wounding citizens’ self-esteem, keeps the government from launching the full-scale health campaign essential to a productive America. We place so much emphasis on the psychological effects of obesity yet neglect its physical consequences.

According to the American Heart Association, 73.4 percent of adult male citizens and 67.4 percent of women are overweight or obese. Yet when first lady Michelle Obama initiated her “Let’s Move” campaign in 2009 to counteract childhood obesity through nutrition education and exercise campaigns, she faced outcry from many who claimed the cause infringes on individuals’ independence and damages children’s confidence.

Maintaining a healthy weight is not easy. We live in a society of enclosed spaces and glowing screens; we check our smart phones compulsively and graze Facebook rather than walk outside or play sports with friends. Endless sugary snacks line our stores, and organic, low-calorie foods are often the most expensive. Society needs to encourage healthy decisions to improve self-esteem and ultimately create an enriched, productive nation. Health campaigns will not disrespect obese citizens but rather support the near-entirety of Americans, myself included, who struggle with weight.

Precedents of widespread government health campaigns demonstrate the potential effectiveness of an anti-obesity movement. In 1967, in an effort to counteract the prevalence of cigarette smoking, a federal court mandated that radio stations allocate “a significant amount of time” for anti-smoking public service announcements. Four years later, congress banned the advertisement of cigarettes and later all tobacco products. These efforts were successful. In 1944, 41 percent of Americans reported to have smoked cigarettes. By 2007, however, after a huge effort from the government to eliminate the harmful practice from citizens, that number dropped to 21 percent. With education programs, exercise initiatives in schools, public service announcements and regulations on food products, we can save our country from the epidemic that is obesity.

Yet opposition lingers. In a 2009 issue of the New York Times, reporter Susan Saulny commented on the “fat pride” movement, which reportedly lobbied against the health care act for allowing insurance agencies to use weight when pricing consumer policies. The article details leaders in this movement, one of them Marilyn Wann, author of the book Fat! So?, who proudly flaunts her 285 pound, 5’4” figure, claiming it unnecessary for her to even attempt to lose weight.  Wann asserts that overweight people, who often struggle with self-image, are and deserve to feel attractive. She stresses that everyone should have the right to feel comfortable with his or her appearance.

In these statements Wann is correct, even heroic. Obese people are capable, talented, worthwhile individuals just like everyone else. But they are unfortunate victims of a physical deficit. Obesity should be attacked because it is dangerous, not skirted around because it prompts low self-esteem.

Obesity is a devastating plague that scourges American society. It causes death, saturates the health care system, and makes the country fall behind in international productivity. The government needs to take the kind of proactive approach that it has used with past crises such as cigarettes and drugs; obesity is a deadly epidemic, and we need to both acknowledge its prevalence and fight its devastating effects.