Weight Debate

We all have opinions and stereotypes on the Great Weight Debate. Some of us may feel that it is up to each individual to maintain his or her own weight while others believe that it is our healthcare system that is failing to do their part to stop obesity.

These are three essays that all lead to the same conclusive point that our society puts too much emphasis on being skinny. However, they make their points in very different ways. Additionally, their styles reflected the specific audience that they were trying to reach.

The author Mary Ray Worley in her essay "Fat and Happy: In Defense of Fat Acceptance" is descriptive, and emotionally looks for sympathy from the reader. The essay is very personal. "In August 2000 I attended the annual convention of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) in San Francisco, and it was like visiting another planet altogether. I hadn't realized how deeply my body shame affected my life until I spent a glorious week without it. I'll never be the same again." (492) Ray Worley is using very positive descriptive words to put a positive light on being over weight. "They were exquisitely beautiful and voluptuous and graceful and serene." (493) "I discovered to my delight that the more physically competent I became, the better I felt about my body." (495) I felt that the parts of the essay that lost my attention were not credible ideas. For example when she states, "On my own account there is no way I want to diet again, because it will just make me fatter in the long run. Help like that I don't need and I sure as spitfire don't need to pay through the nose for it." (494) In my own personal experience I have not seen a diet put weight on to a person. Also, she is using strong descriptions to support her own opinions in this statement such as, "I sure as spitfire don't need to pay through the nose for it." While these statements may not be credible to me I think her points are very comforting to the related reader, other over weight people. She makes strong points that it is okay to be fat and "enjoy being in their bodies without a shred of self-consciousness." (492)

In "Fat and Happy?" by Hillel Schwartz, he writes an extremely argumentative essay with an angry tone. His argument is geared to people who promote dieting. His word descriptions are important to the essay. He purposely uses statements that would generally be offensive to most people. In his paragraph, "The Fat Society," he gives examples of how a fat society would be beneficial. His word choices are very shocking to all readers, " Dieting is cannibalism. Dieters eat off their own bodies. You see fat as suicide, I see weight loss as murder-genocide to be precise- the systematic murder of a biological minority by organized medicine." (516) He gets your attention by using these bold statements. As a reader he draws you in, regardless of your opinion of the topic. His anger is the strength of the essay. He keeps your interest and you wonder what he will say next. Even through his anger he can persuade the skeptic. In his statement, "Fat people are waddling reminders of the failure of medicine to come up with a safe, workable program for long-term weight reduction, just as poor people are homeless people, area stark reminders of the failure of economic system," (512). He makes the reader pause and consider his point.

Roberta Seid's essay,"Too "Close to the Bone": The Historic Context for Women's