Samantha Stetzer/Winonan
As obesity rates continue to rise on a global scale, America is putting more emphasis on getting fit. Between First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign and a plethora of weight loss programs, America is fighting against obesity one person at a time.
However, a recent book written by a Winona State University professor says as people fight against obesity, they neglect the fight against the stigmas that are related to the problem.
The stigmatized wrongs concerning obesity in the world and society’s role in addressing the problem are discussed in professor April Herndon’s book “Fat Blame,” set to be released on May 5 and available for purchase now on Amazon.
The book, through all the work, she says, was always a goal of hers.
“I won’t believe it’s real until I actually get the paper copy in my hands,” Herndon said. “It was a life goal to write that book.”
Herndon, an associate professor of English and affiliated with the women’s and gender studies department, took a yearlong sabbatical last year to finish this book.
Starting last year on the day she turned in final grades, Herndon would wake up at eight in the morning and write until five at night, during an intense nine-month writing spree.
A book on this particular topic was important for Herndon. For the better part of her life, Herndon was overweight, weighing around 300 pounds. When her mom was diagnosed with diabetes, Herndon visited a nutritionist to get help lowering her blood sugar.
After losing 120 pounds, Herndon was able to see the changed perspective of how people viewed her.
“I knew as a large person that I was not treated in the world the way thin people were,” Herndon said. “When I lost weight, it became more clear to me how differently people treated me as a thin person, and that just made me even more angry because it’s so wrong to treat people badly based on body size.”
From her firsthand experience, Herndon was compelled to write “Fat Blame.” She wanted to begin discussing the issues of how people lose weight, how society views weight gain, especially towards women and children, and the practices used to achieve weight loss.
“We have done this weird thing where we talk about it socially, but then we expect people to take personal responsibility for it and actually do things to their body,” Herndon said. “We have no evidence that these practices are making people thinner or healthier, and in a lot of cases these are more harmful.”
The practices, sometimes meant to be encouraging, come with negative connotations.
“I know people have this weird idea where they think shaming people to death makes them lose weight, but it just makes people feel terrible about themselves,” Herndon said. “There’s nothing about that that makes people healthy.
There’s nothing about that that makes people want to lose weight.”
One of the social issues Herndon scrutinizes is the growing trend of using obesity as a way of interfering with a woman’s reproductive rights, where women perceived as being too fat are told they cannot have children.
“We’re actually at a time where women are now being expected from even way before they become pregnant to become thin, not to eat over a certain amount of calories for the fear that they will reproduce fat children.”
The issues discussed within the book are reflected and integrated into Herndon’s seminar class, looking at the way fatness is addressed and believed to be eliminated and breaking it all down.
Students in Herndon’s class said their views on obesity and the rest of society have changed dramatically from this class. For senior Christian Cassman, the class has exposed the complexities and different elements of the issue.
“My views concerning obesity were very simple prior to Dr. H’s class: fat is bad, unhealthy, undesirable,” Cassman said. “This class however, reveals just how complex the issue really is. So many influences contribute to our attitudes about weight, such as biomedical and social assumptions, which often work together to suggest that fat is the enemy, a message which is widely distributed throughout society by the media.”
Senior Leah Dobihal shared how Herndon’s class has changed the way she approaches the topic.
“I feel so much more aware of the way our society stigmatizes fat and feel a greater responsibility now to change my own views and assumptions. When you really dig deeper, this subject contains so much more than it seems on the surface,” Dobihal said.
Herndon has shared her gratitude towards those who helped her achieve her lifelong goal and passion.
