Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Scared straight?


These kind of scare tactics are, after all, the logical extension of the "war on obesity."

Only the author of this little news item is forgetting something rather important: food and cigarettes don't play the same role in a human being's life. You can live (much better, thank you) without smoking. You can't live without eating.

So what, exactly, is this fear-mongering supposed to accomplish? How about a new generation of disordered eaters? Oh, right, we've already got that. So . . . what's left? A new diagnosis for DSM-V--cibuphobia?*

*Cibus = latin for "food"

7 comments:

Laila said...

exactly.

amen sister.

Meowser said...

Yeah. What happens if you manage to scare kids to death about cigarettes? They won't smoke, and life will go on. What happens if you scare them to death about fat? Seventy-five percent of women will adopt disordered eating patterns, that's what. Telling people they shouldn't be hungry when they are, or that if they're hungry they should be satisfied with a few lettuce leaves, is just bizarre, but that's what we do to women in this country from the time they're old enough to hold cutlery, and more than a few men pick up on it too.

Piffle said...

Okay, I left a comment; but I also glanced at a few other articles there and I'm not impressed by the site in general.

I was particularly unimpressed by the article on labioplasty (western style FGM, IMO).

lilacsigil said...

It's not just that you can't live without food - you can't live without body fat.

Harriet said...

Too right.

Jenna said...

*Meanwhile others are also trying to harness fat's potent yuckiness.*

What? My fat doesn't have any "potent yuckiness".

Perhaps she meant to write 'potent body warming magic' or 'potent sexy softness'.


Er...maybe not....Oh god....I need a soda!

S. said...

Wow...I just read the article about the Self survey. How horrifying! And the scar tactic idea is just unspeakable. (Though, as a smoker, when I saw the images on cigarette packs in Canada it didn't deter me at all. That's because I'm an addict. But, as y'all said already, we need food and fat! It's not an option!)