Pictures of Health
Pictures of Health
What does overweight look like? For a fascinating look, check out the Illustrated BMI Categories Project, which I found highlighted on Jezebel. The collection includes photos of women along with their weights and body mass index numbers. The pictures show normal looking women who are technically overweight, thin women who are normal weight, and supposedly obese women who look like pretty much everyone you know.
I think the intended point of this slide show is to demonstrate some kind of absurdity in the obese and morbidly obese labels – but all of the people who were labeled as obese and morbidly obese LOOK like they need to lose weight. Pretty much everyone who was labeled as morbidly obese looks like they need to lose 100 lbs or more. Americans can try to rationalize their increasing waistlines as beautiful or healthy as much as they want, but that doesn’t change the fact that all of the people who are overweight to morbidly obese in the slide show are just that: overweight to morbidly obese. Just because someone wants to impress upon the world that a flattering outfit makes their morbidly obese body somehow more palatable, it doesn’t change the fact that they are endangering their health and burdening those who respect their bodies with the exponentially increasing cost of their health care.
Another huge problem that I don’t think many people identify is that the overweight are creating a huge energy burden by forcing public places to use air conditioning in excess. I live in Houston, repeatedly ranked as the fattest city in the U.S., and attend Rice University where the classrooms are kept at inordinately low temperatures. When I look around in a cold classroom, the only people who aren’t shivering or wearing a sweater are those who exceed their healthful BMI by a great deal. Today one of my classes had the thermostat set at 60 degrees – my morbidly obese classmate complained that it was warm while the rest of us were shaking with cold. He also let us know that he keeps his AC at 50 degrees – and also that he is saving energy in other ways. Air conditioning in the south is often the greatest contributer to the power bill, and we need to lower our energy expenditures by raising the temperature to what used to be “room temperature” and is now just too hot for overweight people to handle. I think its ridiculous that people of healthy sizes are being refrigerated in Texas so that the obese can be comfortable. If you are hot when it is below 75 degrees, you simply need to lose weight.
— Whitney
