'Attack on Obesity Starts Before Life': (At Least) 5 Problems

This is a guest post by George Parker:

5 quick-fire reasons why I have a problem with the public health approach reported in the New Zealand Herald today under the headline: ‘Attack on obesity starts before life’:

1.     The studies were based on animal experimentation (sheep) and there are still many questions about how or whether the findings of these studies translate to humans and human environments.  It is therefore way too early to use these studies as a basis for public health policy (this is leaving aside the ethics of animal experimentation that involves starving and/or force-feeding pregnant animals).

2.     The relationship between obesity and health is highly contested and we should question the very idea of public health interventions aimed at obesity prevention.  The study of obesity, the findings of those studies, their representation in the media, and their application into public health policies are all influenced by anti-fat bias – the socially constructed notion that fat is bad and that fat people are ‘lazy’, ‘greedy’, ‘stupid’, ‘out of control’ and ‘unproductive’. Anti-fat bias results in stigma and discrimination for fat people which is itself a health risk. For example, fat people report frequent dieting with both physical and psychological effects, avoiding recreation in public spaces, and forgoing health care because of the attitudes of health providers towards their fatness.  Variations in body weight should be understood as part of natural human diversity, and identifying and addressing anti-fat phobia should be a public health priority.

3.     Public health policies specifically targeting women as reproducers and mothers to improve population health are discriminatory on the basis of gender.  Such policies are a continuation of a long history of reproductive injustice that has resulted from the reduction of women to their reproductive organs, the elevation of the interests of fetuses over pregnant women, and the responsbilisation of women, particularly mothers, for social and health problems.  This in turn has justified, and continues to justify, the surveillance, regulation and control of women’s reproductive bodies including for example restrictive access to contraception and abortion, and policies and prosecutions aimed at foetal protection.  

4.     Public health policy focused on changing individual behaviour is influenced by neoliberal ideology that seeks to justify reduced state involvement in and responsibility for the population’s health and wellbeing by responsibilising the individual for health.  This is unjust - it masks and maintains vast and persistent social and health inequalities and other relations of power eg. racism, poverty and gendered social roles, that create the conditions for and determine poor health. It is no coincidence that the ‘attack on obesity’ by targeting women’s dietary choices before and during pregnancy is our dominant public health strategy at a time when solo parents welfare entitlements are being reduced; when affordable, safe, warm housing is difficult to secure; and when many families are experiencing food insecurity.

5.     Public health interventions targeting individual behaviours frequently translate, not into increased social support, but rather blame, guilt and punitive sanctions on those who fail to improve their health regardless of their material realities and social contexts. Not only is this unjust, it also fails as a public health strategy because it risks disengaging people from health and social services.  Women are especially vulnerable to anti-fat bias in health services and are already subject to increased surveillance and intervention because of their role in reproduction, particularly women marginalised by their socio-economic circumstances and due to racist systems of oppression.  The potential to disengage those women who could most benefit from health and social services is thus high and poses a significant threat to women’s and their children’s health.

(Related reading: Werewolf article: Policing Pregnancy, by Alison McCulloch)

On Margaret Thatcher and empathy

Margaret Thatcher would have been delighted at the way her death is being treated by the left.  What better compliment could there be for the woman who did as much as she could to dismantle society into a collection of individual men and women than to treat her death as so important?

The neo-liberal project was and is all about shifting our thinking from empathy, from community well-being, from collective action and compassion for others to self-interest, to individual motivation, to all too often, greed.

So dismantling the collective provision of free health care, education, affordable and adequate housing, pensions, provisions for people who are caring for others – all of those mantras of Thatcher and co – while they open up opportunities for profit, also teach us not to care for other people.  Smashing unions, undermining collective employment rights and reducing unemployment protections  – while they keep those seeking and in work desperate to find and keep employment and vulnerable to exploitation, also create competition and antagonism between workers.  To say nothing of the othering of people on benefits which is an ongoing necessity to justify continued cuts to the most vulnerable people in society.



Margaret Thatcher would have revelled in the importance her individual death has been granted because it continues that placing of the individual above society, that privileging of individual agency over the importance of social structures, that she held so dear, that she championed so fiercely.

And she would have loved the lack of empathy on display.  Loved it.  Is there any clearer indication that the values of those seeking to destroy the social contract, seeking to promote selfishness and complete lack of collective responsibility, than the revelling in the death of an old, sick woman that’s been on display over the last few days?

Let’s tell the truth of Margaret Thatcher and other neo-liberals.  Let’s pay attention to her deliberate smashing of dissent by treating the British Police force as her own private army, criminalising protest activities and public gatherings.  Let’s notice that in Thatcher’s case her neo-liberalism was mixed in with social conservatism and nationalism with devastating results for the rights of all minority groups.  Let’s note the woman who hated beneficiaries was herself a beneficiary of the feminist movement, even while she trampled all over women’s rights.

By all means, let’s hate the neo-liberal project and the ways it has unleashed the disgusting, obscene gaps between rich and poor all over the western world by shifting our thinking from care, solidarity and collective responsibility to individual selfishness and greed.  Let’s keep organising, keep showing solidarity, keep championing compassion, equity and justice as guiding values for our society.

But I for one don’t want to celebrate her death, though I understand many, many others seem to feel that need.  She was just an individual, in a society.  And much as I detest her policies, I want to live in a world where empathy rules, not hatred.