Generous

A Google search on obesity produced results confirming a national sentiment that obesity is a medical condition. The first hit was for the definition of obesity from the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.  It described obesity as the means of having too much body fat. The  results that followed were of a similar nature, providing in their first few sentences a medical definition of obesity as well. An image search for obesity turned out charts, maps and other info-graphics. The first hit was an image of a child shown at various stages of weight gain. This image is indicative of the how obesity and youth have become a topic of growing public concern.

The same search conducted on Bing showed similar results. However, this search engine provided adds related to the search. The five ads that showed up were representative of the offered and accepted solutions for anyone dealing with obesity. The first ad was titled Living with Obesity? It offered an option for increased mobility—the scooter. I would like to think they didn’t appear in order of popularity. An image search on Bing presents similar results as the Google search. Here, images of children are prominent as well.

Search engines are fashioned in a way to turn a result that most people are looking for. Words are optimized to reflect their connectivity to other words, so searches for obesity will automatically result in ads for lap-band surgery and images of overweight children. Can a Google search correlate to a widely held opinion? If so, does that mean people are curious about what obesity is? Or whether it is real? Or are they looking for a solution? Where are they getting there news from if they click one of the first links that appear? The majority of the hits that appear on the first page for both the Google and Bing searches are from respected medical websites, including one, PubMed, which is a peer reviewed collection of medical articles and abstracts. That information is being relayed to the public through far more accessible means—News coverage by the LA Times and the New York Times show up as well, with articles on the “Obesity Epidemic”. An image search for obesity includes gratuitous photos of fat babies, mixed in with graphs, showing how obesity has increased in America over the last 30 years.  

 Just by glancing at the search results from both these engines it is easy to understand why there is a fear and stigma attached to obesity. There is the lurking feeling that you could be next. As if obesity was an issue to soon come upon you without notice. The images of people who are obese are caricatures. Men and children are shown with their shirts off, bellies and rolls on display for our ridicule, shock and disgust.  Also included are graphs showing how obesity has increased over the years. Together with the web search results, someone seeking information on obesity could easily be scared.

A search for obesity and change produced results regarding lifestyle changes. But the images continued to produce similar images as the obesity search. Considering these parameters, it is fair to suggest that there is moral panic regarding obesity. We are surrounded by its image and its threat. Moral panic  chose a scapegoat, a people to blame and ostracize. Looking to the image search results for confirmation, we can easily guess who such scapegoats would be—those who already are obese. Their bodies are memento moris for the rest of us.