May 29, 2024 — Progress comes in surprising ways. Proving this point, we now have a crude cartoon – South Park – telling the world that fat jokes are too offensive and stupid to be funny. One of the primary characters, Kyle, delivers this new enlightenment in a speech to his school cafeteria: “I was wrong. I used to […]
April 16, 2023 — The availability of advanced medicines for obesity presents a dilemma. On one hand, people are accustomed to both patronizing and disparaging a diverse industry devoted to helping people lose weight. It ranges from the obvious frauds of dietary supplements that promise to help people lose weight quickly and permanently to behavioral support programs like Weight […]
December 1, 2022 — The Whale is premiering next week in theaters everywhere, after a New York premiere this week and a tour of film festivals that has many people suggesting Brendan Fraser will win an Oscar for his performance in the film. But why should we care? In a word, this film is already prompting discomfort with a […]
August 7, 2022 — Bill Maher has a full-time commitment to bigotry, says Eric Wemple at the Washington Post. Stereotypes about Asian women, gender, Islam, the N-word – at various times he finds a place for all of them in his dubious humor. But really, the talent he has is the talent of a bully and this is the […]
July 11, 2022 — It seems like an endless struggle. On one hand we face strident voices from some corners of public health who want to catastrophize obesity. These are the voices of moral panic. But on the other hand, we have to contend with voices who seemingly deny that obesity is a health problem. That the only problems […]
June 29, 2022 — Today in New York, the Media Empathy Foundation is unveiling an unusual report and, hopefully, starting a conversation. Both the report and the conversation are all about weight stigma in popular media. Because popular media has a way of shaping popular culture and right now, weight stigma is pervasive in all media channels: news, entertainment, […]
