Fat and Thin: What Do We Know?

Now thats something I never understood. Why would you pick a complete stranger and make them a role-model, why even have a role-model? Are we completely unable to think for ourselves?

Exactly how does one’s natural weight even come into consideration for a ‘role.’ She’s thin, her genetics make it so. She is an actress, by defination she isn’t being herself but a character someone dreamt up.
Everytime I hear ‘role-model’ I get reay for some holier than thou right-winger pointing out normal flaws in normal people or some unbelievably overblown media-created issue about celebriities.

When this topic started, I wanted to be able to refer to an article I’d read some time ago. Problem was, I couldn’t remember whether it was in Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, or The New Yorker, or who the author was.

This weekend, I happened across the new book by New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point. I finished it before going to bed last night, and noticed that there was a reference to Gladwell’s web site, http://www.gladwell.com. Today, I checked it out, and lo and behold, there was the article listed among his New Yorker pieces.

The article discusses what science has learned about obesity and weight gain and loss from a fairly comprehensive study over the last thirty-some years of the Pima tribe in New Mexico and from various other experiments regarding the effects of genetics and other physical factors on metabolic rates, etc. The upshot is that there’s a lot more at work than lack of willpower in many cases of obesity, and that once the body stabilizes at a “setpoint” (a body weight that’s been maintained for some time), the metabolic system will go to great lengths to maintain that weight, even in the face of dramatically reduced caloric intake and increased exercise, even for years at a time, until a new setpoint is established. Not the most encouraging news in some ways, but it at least holds out the hope that we may soon understand the physical processes involved sufficiently to make the hard work of dieting and exercise much more likely to have the desired result, instead of boomeranging catastrophically.

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Why would you pick a complete stranger and make them a role-model, why even have a role-model?
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It’s not so much that individual people are role-models in terms of ideal weight, but that everyone shown in the media is below-average weight. Watch it long enough and you get the sense you are unattractive and a freak in comparison to this societal standard, and you take potentially drastic and life-threatening measures to conform and be lovable. (Like that song by The Story, “everyone will love me when my ribs show clearly and my thighs are thin even when I sit down.”)

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Exactly how does one’s natural weight even come into consideration for a ‘role.’ She’s thin, her genetics make it so. She is an actress, by defination she isn’t being herself but a character someone dreamt up.
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Unfortunately, when the character is defined as a young “successful” woman (e.g., Ally McBeal), this is synonymous with thinner-than-average. How does blonde hair or beauty come into consideration? An actress who interests the viewer by being this image of “perfection” is considered optimal. This leads to the idea as above that this should be attainable for the rest of us who clearly aren’t trying hard enough. (no I’m not bitter…:slight_smile:
Also, it seems to me intuitively that the same activity level for the same period of time would require more work for a heavier person (more energy to carry more weight), and that the charts reporting calories burned must be an average…?

Nature just started an Insight Section and its introductory feature was “Obesity in the new millennium” starts on page 631-677 and on page 538 even discusses leptin - 6 April 2000 / volume 404 / go to http://www.nature.com and see how much of it has been put on the web for freeeeeee. Too close to supper or I’d go look myself.

You need to subscribe to one of the Nature journals to be able to get the full text of the articles.

The article ‘Whatever happened to leptin?’ by Marina Chicurel was mentioned during the discussion with the guy who discovered the hormone. She’s a free-lance writer and I got the impression that she might not have the strongest science background. It seems her grasp of the research was flawed, but then again, the guy might have just been defending his turf. I’ll have to read it the old fashion way-in the library.