In class we talked about the news report we watched on obesity. Which really opened my eyes once again to what society does to people, and how we judge people on this type of interaction with them. Society shapes so much in our lives. Just as we were watching the news report they decided to only show the healthy fit peoples whole body, while they would only show the obese or overweight peoples body from neck down. This is wrong in many ways, because why if one person is different should they not be shown fully, are we trying to make them feel bad about who they are? Yes I agree obesity is caused by peoples habits and such... but what about those people who are born with thyroid issues or other medical issues that they can not help their weight. Also when they pin pointed and picked the states that were the most obese and then the ones that were the most fit to compare to each other to compare, which yes you need something to compare, but the issue just how we turn each one of these comparatives into a interaction between the things socially, and it sticks with it for a long time. We are now just going to socially accept that because of this news report people of Colorado are all fit and people of Mississippi are all obese and overweight. This is shaping peoples perception of how people of the south are, which is symbolic interaction.
Here is example for vegetarian people, and how we have symbolic interaction about one vegetarian they must all be the same. So what i get from this is that if you eat no meat you will be skinny like all the other vegetarians, which is just a symbolic interaction theory because most vegetarians are not skinny because they do not eat meat.
Olivia,
ReplyDeleteNice blog. Going with the idea of symbolic interaction, I really like the billboard example you gave. There's more than one example of symbolism here: first, there is the example of whales, as we know, "whale" is a term that we use to refer to fat people. Then there's the title of the billboard: "save the whales", which implies that if these "whales" become vegetarian, they will somehow be "saved". And then there's the whole reason this billboard was put up in the first place--does this organization want people to lose weight, or do they want to promote a vegetarian diet in order to push some other agenda? Finally, the person depicted in the billboard is definitely chubby and overweight, but I think describing them as obese would be a little extreme. As anybody with a basic understanding of human anatomy knows, diet and exercise is an effective way to lose weight (in most cases but not all). A vegetarian diet is hardly necessary, which brings me back to my last point--what is the real motivation for putting this billboard up?
I enjoyed your thoughts and liked that you explored how the media effects the labels we place on people. It does seem unfair that they group people into categories based on where they live. Just because we see someone that is considered to be obese, you're right when you say, we don't know their circumstance. The weight could be because of a clinical issue. Because we see the media portraying obesity as a personal habit we tend to blame the person even though they might have no control over the situation.
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