Young Adult Obesity Issues

This morning I was on Bart reading last week’s Newsweek. I love the quotes and cartoon section. I usually have the following reactions: “that’s so funny”, “WOW---very inspirational” or “this person is stupid but I’m over it”. However, this week I saw a quote that I just can not help but be a little upset about.

“We’re on the Titantic and, rather than forcing our children into the lifeboat, we’re telling them to join the band.”
MeMe Roth, president of National Action against Obesity, on new clothing lines aimed at plus-size teenage girls from retailers Target and Forever 21.

It’s one thing to be an advocate for obesity but it’s another if you are leveraging on this social problem to create consumption. To me, no matter how you spin it that quote is telling me that retailers want to make more money out of teenagers so they are extending their product offerings to a new group. It is problematic for that quote to be coming from the president of a nonprofit organization aimed to protect against obesity because she is utilizing her power to advertise for this new product offering. This message is saying to youth: If you want to “fit in”, now you are free to be like all the “other girls” and shop at Target and Forever21 (something you couldn't have done before). That brings me to another point, that statement is clearly singling out the obese population saying that before this line started, plus-size teenage girls could not stop at retailers like Target and Forever21. So in order to make them “assimilate” we need to create a separate line calling out that THIS SECTION IS FOR PLUS-SIZE girls.

That quote bugged me so much I just had to do a quick research on this woman. So it turns out, she has made other quiet disturbing comments in the past as well aiming to “address obesity problems in youth”.

"When I look at Jordin I see diabetes, I see heart disease, I see high cholesterol. That's what's so sad about this - she is not the vision of health - she is the vision of 'unhealth'. Her extra weight is a reflection of today's society and a culture where many of our children have compromised health due to unhealthful food choices and inactivity ... We have to stop with the 'baby fat,' 'curvy,' 'goddess' euphemisms and own this child health crisis."

That statement is so problematic on EVERY level… I don’t even want to try and start dissecting it into sections and commenting on it.