CBS News recently ran a segment about the TV show “All in the Family,” which was a hit back in the 1970s. The theme of the segment was about the way the show represented political discourse at the time. Archie (played by Caroll O’Conner), who was an archconservative, and “Meathead” (played by Rob Reiner), an ultra-liberal. I had watched the show with regularity when it was popular, and the aspect of the CBS segment that came as a huge surprise to me was how slender Archie Bunker looked. Back in the 70s, I had thought of him as fat.
When I considered my surprise at seeing Archie look so slim, what occurred to me was that my perception of what’s fat and what’s not has changed. We know, of course, from a variety of published studies, that the average weight and waist sizes of those of us living in the States have been increasing over the years. The 1970s video of Archie had not been “Photoshopped” to slim him down, but my sense of what constitutes being “overweight” has changed. Because I had had the “fat” label for Archie firmly implanted in my brain, it came forward through time even as my perception of what “fat” means changed.
Although obesity has not been one of my areas of expertise, I have always been interested in physical fitness. I try to stay physically fit, and most of the people I know tend to be at least relatively fit. When I am out and about, however, I have a lot of opportunity to see those for whom physical fitness has not been a priority. Watch a bit of TV. Visit a shopping mall. Go to a restaurant. Or, if you really want to expand your perception, go to a meeting attended by people from Europe and Asia as well as those from the States. It won’t take you long to notice that those of us from the States have become the “fatties” of the world.
My guess—and although it’s supported by a number of studies, it really is an assumption rather than a “fact”—is that the primary causes are (a) the automobile, (b) snack foods, (c) soft drinks, and (d) TV. The automobile is a great liberator in allowing us to go where we want when we want, but we have become so enamored with the sense of “my car,” that we drive places we used to walk. In much of the world, commuters—even those who own cars—walk to and from public transportation, or they ride bikes on their daily commutes. Here, in spite of a variety of traffic and parking problems, we tend to drive. You may have even seen a driver circling a block time after time in the hopes of finding a parking place close to the desired store. Admittedly, driving may save time. But time for what? I suspect that too often it is time for sitting on the couch in front of the TV while eating potato chips and drinking a soda or two.
And snack foods and soft drinks are part of the problem. You may be old enough to recall a time (and if you are reading this, you probably are) when there really weren’t that many snack foods or sodas on grocery store shelves, and what was available came in smaller packages and bottles. I can remember putting a dime in a machine and getting what I think was a 6.5 oz Coke. There were no “diet” soft drinks in those days, so people couldn’t delude themselves into thinking that drinking 32 oz of soda didn’t count.
The final factor is that in the intervening years, TV has become much more entertaining and ubiquitous. Back in the 1970s, for most people, TV viewing was an evening activity that typically followed a family dinner that contained no fast foods. In 2009, The Nielsen Company reported that during the last three months of 2008, the average American television viewer watched more than 151 hours of television a month, up from more than 145 hours during the same period the previous year. I couldn’t find more recent data, but—considering the sales of flat-screen TVs, the proliferation of DVRs, Blu-Ray recorders, and online video—it seems unlikely that viewing would have decreased since that report was published. The real problem, however, isn’t the amount of time spent watching TV, as it is the time not spent doing other things.
Although TV advertising is not known for strict adherence to “reality,” in some ways it does not lie. You may have seen ads for a prescription drug to help control blood sugar levels when diet and exercise haven’t done the trick. The ad presents a definitely overweight guy walking his dog as “exercise.” It also shows him eating a salad as proof that he watches what he eats, but he is definitely not maintaining that girth on salads alone. A similar ad for a pharmaceutical to lower cholesterol when diet and exercise aren’t enough presents coasting downhill on a bicycle as “exercise.”
Unfortunately, the ads may reflect reality. Our collective idea of what constitutes exercise involves less physical effort than most people spent just doing their daily chores and/or walking to and from work two or three generations ago. Are you old enough to remember wringer washers? And—before the “modern” convenience of wringer washers—people had “washboards.” Try using one of those for a load of laundry, and you’ll have an idea of how hard your grandmother or great-grandmother had to work just to get clothes clean. No wonder people wore the same clothes for a week at a time….
While we can and should be grateful for the innovations that have greatly expanded our options and improved our lives in many ways, it seems to me that we would do well to remember that a life of ease (even if that life includes the stress of sitting at a computer in a cubical for 8 to 10 hours a day) has consequences. People in the States are living longer than they did several generations ago (although not so long as people in other industrialized countries), but gains in longevity have been primarily the result of reduction in early deaths by accident and disease. Who knows how long our ancestors might have lived if they hadn’t died with regularity in farming and industrial accidents, in childbirth, and of childhood diseases easily treated by modern medicine.
Be that as it may, we have the opportunity to create a healthier reality by reframing our perception. The transformation of Archie Bunker from “fat” to “thin” is, after all, a function of perceptual expectation. When you think “fat” (whether you prefer “overweight” or “obese”), what image comes to mind? My guess is that the image that comes to mind for you has put on weight—and perhaps a lot of it—since the 1970s. If you are comparing what you see in the mirror with the image you hold for “fat,” you may be risking weight gain as the cultural standard for “fat” continues to put on weight.
If you’re not doing so already, it may be time to start using really healthy people (physically fit and neither skinny nor fat) as the standard by which to compare yourself. Make sure that the model you intend to follow—not only in image, but also in behavior—is a good one. Modeling is, after all, the way we learn how to be as well as how to behave.
