Fat Rights By Anna Kirkland

As I better grasped my understanding of what Obesity and how it affects America, I wanted to look into more of the different standpoints people/groups of people of on the controversial topic. As Anna Kirkland describes in her book “Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood,” “America is a weight-obsessed nation. Over the last decade, there’s been an explosion of concern in the U.S. about people getting fatter.”(p. 14) Kirkland addresses how the trend of when weight becomes more and more of a problem, it consumes Americas thoughts and daily lives. Day in and day out, our decisions and choices are affected about what we each individually perceive about weight and obesity. With a multitude of different opinions and solutions, I wanted

Secondly, she addresses one of the largest contributors to the problem of obesity in America, fast food. As fast food commonly catches heat for targeting children and providing cheap and often unhealthy alternatives to healthy home cooked meals, it is beneficial to my research that the blame is justified. Garcia provides a strong standpoint but she also provides me with hard data and a fantastic perspective of obesity from a mental and sociological point of view. As many of my questions push the traditional reasons for obesity, Garcia adds a new and fresh point of view that not only points the finger at food and our diet but also ourselves, making a great first research

I looked to “Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic” which was written by Oliver J. Eric, who is a political science professor at the University of Chicago and provides just that. Eric brings a sense of both rationalism and further analyzation of the blame game. In one of his more profound statements throughout his book Eric (2006) states that “obesity as something that is beyond most people’s power to control, in other words, a medical disease of epidemic proportions. Yet, as we’ll see, calling obesity a disease not only distorts the reality of America’s weight gain, it is likely to cause even more problems than it solves.” (pg.38) As he brings many of the universal thoughts on obesity to light in his book, Eric calls many of the solutions that people provided as not just a faulty solution but the problem itself. Eric shows throughout his book that in reviewing scientific evidence, that little proof for obesity is worthy of the title of an “epidemic” and that obesity has pushed “millions of Americans towards dangerous surgeries, crash diets, and harmful diet drugs.”