Our Bodies Under the Light

While reading Unbearable lessons Sunday night the television flashed a commercial that directly related to the subject matter that I feel obligated to post and elaborate on. Here is the video first off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXsoDx9s0j0


The reading has a primary focus on Canadian guidelines stating that in the late fifties a program was enacted by the government requiring twenty minutes of moderate to vigorous physical exercise as well as a four hundred dollar tax credit to families who enrolled their children in physical education programs that feasibly encouraged healthiness. Our nation, according to the USDA, has encouraged thirty minutes in our era and now, is asking sixty minutes.
According to the research in the article this only further elongates the period in which "fatness" is given an opportunity to humiliate children. I have to disagree with most of the conclusions that are being formed on the basis that 1. I am a kinesiotherapy major, 2. I was an obese child, and 3. I believe that a lack of proper education during the allotted time is the primary culprit, not the mandated sport participation time.
Considering that my primary focus is kinesiology (The study of the anatomy, physiology, and mechanics of body movement) with a focus on fitness, it is against my embodiment as a student to find it plausible that a "fat" body can be considered as healthy or natural as an athletic body. Obesity is a human created and human maintained state; both as a classification and a condition. There are many factors that may involuntarily or voluntarily contribute to the development of excess adipose tissue; economic depravity, parental control of diet, and lack of education just to name a few.
Although these are variables that contribute to obesity, they are not in themselves determining factors. Health is associated with thinness because when all components of health are stressed the individual that emerges has a thin,athletic exterior from the rigors placed on it. This isn't to say that an individual can't be healthy if they are "fat," it just exposes that health professionals aren't out to create mobs of fat phobic maniacs as the text seams to elude to.
As a child I was overweight and consequently underproductive in most sports. As I recall I was embarrassed when people made fun of me or called me names but I didn't and still can't blame that on forced sport interaction. There was never a time when our class was given the true meaning and reason behind our physical education; we just did it because we had to. When High school hit I joined team sports and my health class coincided with the teachings I received in the weight-room. Physically, my mobility, strength, endurance, and overall well being improved greatly.
I don't believe that the promotion of a thin society is a bad thing, many associate thinness with health as stated before, it's the ignorant scolding of a those that don't fit the extremes of a society that ruin the soul of healthy mandates. I'd like to present a video by levis that promotes this type of society in America in a different way than Obama and the NFL did previously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG8tqEUTlvs&NR=1

This video shows thinness as part of natural movement and embrace in human mechanics. Strip away the notion of obesity and sport and what we are left with is a joy to move freely throughout a world that is our playground. That's what the theme of this video is at least. ALong with this it promotes a healthy outlook on life which I believe is helped by a healthy outlook on the body.
Obesity isn't concurrent with laziness or moral incompetence but rather a lack of really KNOWING the body. The article states that we treat the body too much like a machine: calorie intake has to be less than calorie expenditure and exercise will burn calories, and so on and so forth. These are all guidelines that merely scratch the surface of what science coupled with experience knows about our body and the way it acts. In its most simplistic form, exercise encourages growth of the body and growth in itself is a fundamental progression of life.
Hatred, prejudice, and a fat phobia may exist as societal ploys to encourage the overweight to shape up. This approach can be broken down in many immoral ways that don't support the purpose behind them. Weight is another factor in life, and like many can be controlled with knowledge. If obesity becomes a desired state than so be it, all power to those who choose that lifestyle; it shouldn't effect social status, wages, or anything that is given equal advantage by our society. When cases are made that overweight children are deprived and harmed by their condition the education should play a roll in giving them what they want. If they want to be a better athlete but can't because they are overweight in a class of athletic kids they should have the knowledge that exercising and having fun on the field instead of simply standing around mulling over being picked last (such the case in the article)can help them like it has the other kids.
This may be a harsh way to look at the situation but look at the way it is being approached by the article. I feel as if it it subtly discrediting the work of health professionals and those who find exercise as a tool for better self esteem, health, fun, enthusiasm...I could go all day.
Even though I have experience on both fronts, my opinion is continually growing on behalf of the health community. Real professionals don't give obese people destructive criticism or call them names because we have the knowledge of what is happening within the confines of the body. It's the ignorance of society as a whole that hurts the approaches made by our government and medical community.

-By Chase Owens
Kin 332I
T/TH 12:30pm