I have often spoken about the idea of the body image and how it is shaped by a culture. In Asian societies in particular, the ideal size is a small framed slim woman who still has an S-line (50kg, but with curves). In stark contrast, the Western body type has taken on a different shape. In some respects it is of our own doing, as we shove a negative plate of rhetoric in front of people who don’t eat three square meals a day and sometimes a snide look at extremely healthy people (health ‘freak’ comes to mind).

The LA Times (no surprise) recently published an article about the retaliation of the fit. What I found surprising were the statistics that they posted, quoting 68% overweight and 33.8% obese (I’m assuming that 33.8% is part of the 68%) for the US. The NHS states that England is not far behind, with 61.4% of adults overweight and 24.5% obese. Some of the measures that attempted to squeeze themselves into the American system were obvious attempts to legalise discrimination against the overweight population (Mississippi in particular is one of the fattest states in the US, and they nearly passed a law that allowed restaurants to turn away obese people). Michelle Obama has joined the campaign against obesity and is meeting with US lawmakers to increase ‘the number of healthy schools’. She has even put her own children on a strict diet.

In Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book called Nudge, the two University of Chicago economists illustrate how easy it is to convince children to select healthy foods. While corporations take advantage of the increasingly necessary subsidies, however, the complete elimination of choice will not take place. Interestingly enough, my elementary school did not give students the choice to eat sugary snacks, so it is safe to assume that healthy schools exist.

The NYTimes, in their attempt to illustrate the lull in obesity, published this table from the CDC statistics. Now, in their attempt to ‘break down’ obesity by showing divisions of gender and ethnicity (note that Asians are not even listed) they have inadvertently created a new discrimination (thus the danger of making generalisations). Here I point to previous generations and the existence of a wide span of shapes and sizes. The difference is that now we are given a colourful array of choices, but only if you have the time and money to invest in maintaining a healthy diet.

Let us turn back to my original thought - body image in various cultures. After living for some time in London, I have finally pushed away the need to constantly diet, and focused my attention to maintaining healthy eating habits and getting regular exercise. Is that cultural? Perhaps. More likely, it is taking a realistic approach to food and diet, and being realistic about my own goals - taking these thoughts into consideration will make for a much more effective campaign.