Overweight In America

3 Pages 718 Words

Overweight in America
How many hit movies have had overweight people play the starring role? How many ads in the personals request heavy men or women? What newspaper articles describe fat women as “beautiful”? The answer is close to none. W. Charisse Goodman, the author of the 1995 The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America. Her thesis is that “American society tolerates and even encourages prejudice against people, especially women, who are not thin.” The chapter being analyzed here, “One Picture Is Worth a Thousand Diets”, she discusses the ways in which the media make invisible or deal with disregard women whom are overweight. This depicts the nation’s values when it comes to overweight people. It does, however, spark emotions due to her examples and word choices.
In Goodman’s first paragraph, she blames the mass media for encouraging people to “absorb as many goods as possible far beyond the saturation point.” (Lunsford, 408) She states that people believe the more have, the sexier and more successful they will be. However, when a woman is perceived as being too fat, she finds that she has committed a “social crime”. She also argues that thinner women are portrayed as sexier, happier, and more dynamic. (409) Even though this principle may not be acceptable, she makes conscious cases for it in the rest of the article.
Goodman claims that movies not only lack heavy women, but that heavy men are not as severely criticized for their weight. She states that people consider size in a man a sign of his physical power. She makes a good point when she asks the rhetorical question, “can anyone imagine a female version of Cheers’ Norm – a lazy, work phobic, beer-guzzling woman who assiduously avoids home and husband – being hailed as funny, let alone ‘beloved’, as one news article put it?” (410)
This article has inartistic appeal because it uses facts and evidence. Goodman randomly...