The change over time is the scary thing to me:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/fit.nation/obesity.map/

Something is different between now and 1980. I doubt it is willpower.

This got me thinking about what a slippery piece of rhetoric the word “epidemic” has become in the past fifteen years or so. My sense is that in this time its metaphorical sense of “widespread bad thing” has overwhelmed its literal sense of “widespread disease” in public discourse. It rankles me when I hear “epidemic” applied to anything other than a communicable disease, just as it rankles me when I hear “addiction” applied to anything other than a drug that produces withdrawal symptoms, and I don’t think I’m just being a usage curmudgeon here. There’s something shady going on.

It was only in thinking about Roth’s cranky bullheaded obsession with the “obesity epidemic” this morning that I realized what it was: some amount of free will is involved in deciding whether or not you become obese. Sure there may be complicated environmental and genetic factors, but individual agency is definitely part of the equation. Not so with actual viral epidemics, where the best precautions can be undone by one passerby’s random cough. In an epidemic, individual good sense is beside the point. When you refer to things that aren’t literally epidemics as “epidemics”, you take on an undeserved air of medical authority and implicitly move the debate towards the point where people need to be told what to do for their own good, which is just where you imagine the Roths of the world want it.

First of all, any given cupcake – or even cupcakes for every birthday of every kid in your class – is not going to make anyone fat who is otherwise eating healthy & exercising. And eating healthy & exercising are significantly related to class – if you are wealthy, you are more likely to have access to a gym (if you’re a grown-up) or nice playgrounds (if you’re a kid), etc. You are more likely to live close to a grocery store that sells fresh, nutritious food at reasonable prices. You’re more likely to live in a neighborhood where it’s safe to go for a walk or a run (although you’re also more likely to have a car and live in the suburbs where walking most places doesn’t make sense… so it’s also about how our cities and especially suburbs are organized across classes, too).

Anyway, the question of style & approach is interesting given campaigns based on trying to change things that are really problems – harassment of LGBT kids in school, say – but the wrong debate when the crusader is crusading against cupcakes as a cause of obesity.

Partly this may just have to do with the kind of “f**k you, authority” reaction (I was going to call it a teen reaction, but I realized I still have it, and probably always will). I think it’s because when you demonize something (sugar, drugs, sex) you have to construct this caricature of it; as soon as people are old enough and independent enough to make their own evaluations of it, they realize it’s not the terrible evil monster their parents/DARE educators/preacher said it was. At the same time, those kids haven’t learned any tools for coping with the problematic item in question, so they’re more likely to end up making choices that get them in some kind of trouble.