Let me see if I can get this completely straight.
Louise Wallace said on the brain dead wasteland that is morning Breakfast TV that fat people should have tape over their mouths as a response to NZs crippling obesity rates, fat activists went several shades of rage on social media and screamed ‘fat shaming’ between mouthfuls of emotional support doughnuts and demanded the crucifixion of Melissa Chan-Green for not saving them from feeling triggered by body shaming and demanded a group therapy session for the country to love its fat so we could all stop feeling negative about our bodies and embrace ourselves while in denial about the health ramifications?
Did I miss anything?
It’s like the perfect example where identity politics has once again trumped a class based analysis and the inevitable ‘my feelings are hurt’ is the only philosophical argument left once you hose off all the middle class virtue signalling.
As someone who has been overweight all my life and have lived the joy of being surrounded by a chunk of the population who immediately assume from your size that you are stupid and lazy and ugly and down right evil, allow me some thoughts.
Firstly, who the fuck cares what Louise Wallace has to say on any topic whatsoever? This is on bloody Breakfast TV, the dumbest thicko town of little aotearoa, this graceless brain fart of ignorance is the very level of dialogue we get in NZ, so ripping on Melissa Chan-Green for the shittiness of it all is a bit like finding the spelling mistakes in a QAnon social media post the most offensive part of their roll call of who to hang at the Summer Treason Trials.
Why can’t we talk about the normalisation of obesity and its root cause? Why is that impossible?
We have a terrible obesity rate in this country. Because it has all been smothered in wellness seminars and self love guru life coach bullshit, we utterly fail to see obesity as the class issue it is and how it’s exacerbated by the economic corporate interests served in a deregulated capitalist state.
Instead it’s all about feelings and self worth and identity and loving yourself which is nice, but utterly misses the fucking point. Unfortunately our media simply doesn’t have the intellect or maturity to cut through this emotional support blanket and instead we are left with this shallow debate.
This terrible obesity rate is generated very deliberately by a couple of factors.
Human Beings evolved with hungers for salt, fat and sugar as we ran around hunting and killing things in our early species. While our material world has fundamentally changed for a proportion of the planet our evolutionary drives for fat, salt and sugar have not.
It is against this deep human drive for those fats, sugars and salt that Fast food manufacturers with unlimited advertising budgets hook in young consumers and keep them for life.
In some socially deprived areas, the local fast food playground is the only playground, Big sugar get to pimp their drug in almost every manufactured food and personalising obesity as a personal failure is the exact same tactics American polluters have used since the 1970s. By framing pollution as a personal issue, American Polluters used a native American crying as the way to avoid any significant regulations against them.
Same with corporate food and big sugar. The cultural framing of obesity as a personal failing allows those industries completely off the hook for the product they sell and promote.
The solutions are sugar taxes, more gastro bypass surgery, more adult cooking class lessons via adult education at schools, GST off fresh food and vegetables, no advertising during children’s programming, free gym memberships via Drs prescription, limit of fast food venues, free healthy breakfasts and lunches at school and banning tuck shops at school.
The problem of our inability to talk sensibly about the vested corporate interests driving obesity and pretending its all some personal moral failure swimming in a lard of self hate is best exemplified in TVNZs ‘Snack Masters’ where food artists are compelled to make duplicates of shitty manufactured garbage food and pretend that’s entertainment.
It’s like making sculptures from your own shit.
Being fat makes you feel shitty, and when you feel shitty, you eat more shitty food. I’m not denying the emotional part of the problem with obesity, but suggesting your emotional relationship with your body identity is the only way to frame this debate is dumb and eye rolling.
The root cause of our obesity epidemic is the barely regulated corporatization of our food, it’s not about your feelings at being fat shamed. That’s why Louise Wallace’s ‘tape over your mouth’ comment was so fucking stupid, because it utterly ignores the way our basic human evolutionary drives for fat, sugar and salt have been manipulated by big business.
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Let it or people be broke and then offer to fix them for a price, Today’s story. There is a clear business system that is outrageous when you realise it but as we are being farmed we will go along like chickens until there is no profit from us. The thing is that we will be marketed stuff made by corporates, wealthy or aspiring, and then when their product is proved beyond doubt, and the media decides to run a campaign on its bad effects, another company springs up to remedy it.
So they have had a market created for them, or the original corporate trades on knowing it will harm so makes a profit from treating the now chronic condition. We are too traumatised by fast-moving everything to think and understand we are being suckered. The stress created is spawning a myriad of helping agencies.
I remember satirical comments from Flanders and Swann in post WW2 years and their song ‘It all Makes Work for the Working Man To Do’ which was about something being fixed but that leading to another needed repair and on. Get used to it suckers. It’s like a Mafia protection racket, Pay up for the repair or limp on trying to keep your life and machinery together on your own. Just buy a new one but oh dear, you can’t afford that. But don’ttry your own repairs, open that thing you’ll get electrocuted. Lithium batteries last longer but may burn part of your house in a sudden reaction.
Can you get insurance, that helps. In the old days there were co-operatives that you paid into weekly that helped with some of your emergencies. Then we had a government that helped so we didn’t need the small self-help insurance outfits. But now? And we are having the tools and skills removed from us all the time. Soon we’ll be unable to do the simplest things without pressing a button on an enabling device first.
Grey Warbler. How right you are. Your thesis may also explain perplexing government appointments.
Why don’t you drive right in, why leave it to a warbler?
Big girls need love too.
OK we love you Sam. Feel better?
I thought Wallace made some valid points that merited a discussion but instead all we got was an angry online lynch mob calling her every name under the sun.
DAME Valerie Adams, in an embarrassing social media post, even suggested Wallace punch herself in the head.
wow.
Civil debate seems to be dead in the water, How did we fall so low so fast?
Critique is not allowed by the woke police and this makes the situation worse.
Let’s just allow our population to get obese but feel good about them dying early, take out the health system and the majority not being able to do much with their lives due to their weight.
Obesity is able to be stopped very easily by diet and exercise, but like all neoliberal activities the woke and neoliberals want more people obese so they can make more money off them and privatise the health and social welfare system. Therefore any critique of obesity is not allowed.
NZ’s shocking statistics
The New Zealand Health Survey 2020/21 found that:
around 1 in 3 adults (aged 15 years and over) were classified as obese* (34.3%), up from 31.2% in 2019/20
there was a significant increase from 2019/20 to 2020/21 for women (31.9% to 35.9%), but not for men
the prevalence of obesity among adults differed by ethnicity, with 71.3% of Pacific, 50.8% of Māori, 31.9% of European/Other and 18.5% of Asian adults obese
adults living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas were 1.6 times as likely to be obese as adults living in the least deprived areas**
Child obesity statistics
The New Zealand Health Survey 2020/21 found that:
around 1 in 8 children (aged 2–14 years) were classified as obese (12.7%), up from 9.5% in 2019/20. Prior to this, the rate of obesity among children had been relatively stable
the prevalence of obesity among children differed by ethnicity, with 35.3% of Pacific and 17.8% of Māori obese, followed by 6.6% of Asian and 10.3% of European/Other children
children living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas were 2.5 times as likely to be obese as children living in the least deprived areas**
Aren’t you tied of using a worn out trump’ism?
Yup it just comes down to personal responsibility – even the brain dead know that a bad diet and lack of exercise lead to obesity but those who choose to ignore this just want to blame anyone or anything else other than themselves.
If you are a kid and not in control of your own diet then yes there are extenuating circumstances but if you are an adult you have no excuses.
As one fatty to another…
Right on Bomber!
-Did I miss anything?-
Nuance.
The quality we seem to have lost nowadays. Everything is answered with extreme reactions. Too fat? Tape their mouths shut. Too poor? Work harder/longer. Too ill? Don’t get unwell. Don’t get on with your neighbours? Just shoot the bastards. Gang problems? Just lock ’em up in gibbets. Woof! Woof!
Tweeeet, here boy! And we all come running like fucking sheep.
Your car sliding on ice requires very small movements on the steering wheel not panicked lunging in all directions. God help us if NZ ever starts sliding on ice…
j s bark Good to read. You’ve got ways to cure boredom and the blues and throw in ideas to the pot as well.
“emotional support donuts” Ha Ha !!!! Made my day.
Martin, you’re assuming breakfast television has a brain in the first place.
until we understand obesity is expensive for ALL of us nothing will change.
So one part of the answer is more gastric surgery because some people can’t control their calorific intake?
This is just nuts – if we continue to deny the reality that if people aren’t held responsible for their actions or inaction they will behave accordingly. Outside of the very small numbers of people with genuine medical issues being fat is largely an issue of either too much intake, not enough exercise or both.
The costs of managing obesity related illnesses like diabetes, heart failure, etc. are are staggering and if some people just put the burger down we’d be in a much better place.
It’s as much cultural as it is class based – as long as we indulge the idea that fat is beautiful whilst supporting the insanity of things like Fat Studies at Uni we’re on the road to hell.
If you support congestion charging then there’s a good argument that the obese should pay more for their healthcare as they will consume more costs whereas those of us who eat the odd salad and walk to work pay more than is reasonable.
Back when we had a functioning society, this wasn’t a problem.
Are you proposing that neoliberalism be completely destroyed and its proponents put where they deserve to be (generously, in prison for the rest of their lives)? If not, well, we’ll need some stopgaps.
there’s also changes in food content -high fructose corn syrup, and changes in consumption patterns – the number of takeaways eaten….and before anyone sneers ubereats etc are takeaways too.
now these foods can be avoided/minimised but societal pressures (massive advertising budgets exist for a reason) make this difficult for some.
the fact is no one woke up on monday morning suddenly obese, to get to that state requires commitment, calorific intake, over a longish period….eating a box of a dozen doughnuts and 3 takeaways followed by 2 family size chocolate blocks is no mean feat…it takes practise.
OK, Dame Valerie not showing her best side with that retort , but ‘tape your mouth shut’ is hardly a comment that will kick off civil debate.
Just a quick comment, Martyn, in defence of the “Crying Indian” ad’. It was not about individualising responsibility for America’s trash – far from it. The ad’ was a poignant statement about what “civilisation” had done to America the Beautiful.
That was its enormous power.
If you watch the ad’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM you see the Native American paddling his canoe on a clean river through a majestic and mature forest – the very image of America before the coming of the White Man. Then he encounters “civilisation” in all its ugliness. And he weeps.
The ad’ blames the system, Martyn, not the individual. It is only at the very end of the ad’ that the obligatory “don’t litter” message is included – hardly surprising since the whole production was paid for by “Keep America Beautiful” organisation.
Interestingly, the ad’ coincided with some of the first Earth Day gatherings – which were huge – and was one of the straws in the wind that set the corporate reactionaries on the denialist course that has led us to where we are today.
The real story behind the crying Indian tear is one of corporations tricking people into believing individual action could stop pollution
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html
I brought up 3 kids.
One of which was my wifes from a previous marriage. (He arrived at 15 months old)
All the kids were treated, fed and exercised the same)
The 15month old grew up as a solid wee guy, but not fat.
The other two were slim(like their stunningly good looking father(now 76)
The 15month child went to polytec at 18 and moved in with his girlfriend(now wife)
Ballooned to obese in around 12 months and god bless him, has tried all everything for exercise diet etc etc
Still lingers around 160kg as he reaches 50 and he cooks the evening meal every day!
So sorry Bomber your solutions are rubbish in my view. They fall in to the Social posturing realm.
The solutions are sugar taxes, more gastro bypass surgery, more adult cooking class lessons via adult education at schools, GST off fresh food and vegetables, no advertising during children’s programming, free gym memberships via Drs prescription, limit of fast food venues, free healthy breakfasts and lunches at school and banning tuck shops at school.
You do realise that the multibillion dollar diet industry will be fighting you every step of the way.
Ra, calories in, need to be burned somehow. Or calorie intake regulated. The other factor might be that your wife’s son is suffering father-loss issues, rejection by his birth-father causing deep-seated lowering of self-esteem? What you seem to be arguing is that nature trumps nurture, that somehow your wife’s son was genetically predisposed to being overweight from his birth father’s genes?
And Louise Wallace was utterly wrong about taping people’s mouths closed, just as David Benson-Pope was wrong about stuffing a tennis ball in students’ mouths to keep them quiet.
This Louise Wallace story is more about out-of-touch entitled “influencers” like Wallace posing as “breakfast news” pundits, a female shock-jock Mike Hosking https://www.hauraki.co.nz/video/hauraki-tv/like-mike-open-letter-to-john-key/.
Morning news is shite!. It’s Simon Power’s vapid vision of New Zealand without John Key’s flag fluttering over the South Pacific Tax Haven.
John Campbell’s gone, no longer sitting in a chair that was too low for a 58 year old could be comfortable in. And what have we got now that Kamal Santamaria is ‘sorting out family issues’?
Matty’s breathless, Monday morning man-stubbled, butched-up interview with Harry Tam was morning breakfast at its worst. It’s a scripted prequel to Christopher Luxon’s ‘Breakfast Tuesday Opposition Leader’s Party Political Broadcast on behalf ACT, National, The Taxpayer’s Union’, the squeezed middle. The evangelical saviour of decency hitting back against the “bottom feeders” (https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/03/22/christopher-luxon-explains-his-bottom-feeding-comments/), the gangs, the poor and the victims of the “bottom-feeders”, shopkeepers. Matty’s first question to Luxon tomorrow should be:
Are gangs the “bottom-feeders” you mentioned in yourinterview with Kerre McIvor https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/kerre-woodham-mornings/video/national-leader-chris-luxon-joins-kerre-mcivor-live-in-studio/ and https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/03/22/christopher-luxon-explains-his-bottom-feeding-comments/
But, dear, swett Matty won’t ask that question? I’ve said it here before, Dear Matty is no John Campbell. Key Mark 2 (Chris Luxon) is safe from Campbell’s incisive Kim-Hill-style of off-script cut and thrust questioning of politicians, rather than a list of pre-prepared patsy question, with no research and some puppy in a parcel-tray noddy-shots! Key wanted Campbell gone! https://thestandard.org.nz/i-want-that-left-wing-bastard-gone/
Louise Wallace and Matty McLean are definitely NOT the alternates.
@Ra I’m afraid your wife’s son, and thinking viewers, are all victims of media takeovers by the moronic Louise Wallace and the politically-motivated, avuncular Simon Power to protect of Chris Luxon on behalf of John Key and the National/ACT alliance.
It lost the name Breakfast News, because it isn’t. It’s sequel, prequel, gotcha politics on behalf of the NACT coalition. Next we’ll be having David Seymour Wednesday, because he is the third highest polling party behind National and Labour?
There should be a viewer warning before every Breakfast show. All news items are biased and uninformed, viewer discretion is advised. All dissenting, clear-thinking individuals have had their mouths taped shut! Or fired because John Key wanted rid of “that left-wing bastard!”
You’re not fat Bomber; you’re just big boned.
Yeah: Big bones with mash and gravy! LOL
You fatties are choking up the hospitals with your heart and diabetes problems so I can’t get in for elective surgeries caused by my running and cycling addictions. :-).
Just say no to pies.
Why do people listen to someone as flaky as louise wallace she needs a tape over her mouth and some dettol to wash out her toxic mouth.
Covid is Pa. On a serious note, I agree with your sentiment here. Louise is just speaking as a Real Housewife of Auckland. I’ve never watched these women, and I doubt anybody takes them seriously apart from other people like themselves. Unfortunately, they re-inforce the old misogynistic view of housewives being empty-headed, and she does women no favours in doing so.
I think it was Marilyn Waring who wrote the first analysis of women’s, and in particular, housewives’ contribution to the national economy via the unpaid work which we do, but these poseurs sound divorced from the realities of women’s work and they reduce us to something which we and our mothers rarely were. They’re the photo-op girls. Our mothers and grandmothers, and all the single ladies of the parish, contributed much more to society than the Real Housewives of Auckland do, so let’s celebrate them – ignore the fluffies.
“Housewives’ contribution to the national economy via the unpaid work which we do” . . As the husband of a housewife who not only manages our home but also our 6 kids (on her own when I am ‘at work’) and everything that it entails I completely understand and appreciate all of the unpaid work that housewives do.
It is a relentless and important and seemingly increasingly thankless job that someone has to do.
Fat-shaming? Is there also overeating pride? Kate Moss was shamed for being heroin chic (thin)? If people are ashamed of being fat surely that’s their own perception. This non-idea is a completely different thing to the physical schoolyard bullying of the fatty kid.
I knew a sales rep a while ago who was hugely overweight because the company he worked for had done a deal, where a 5 Star Hotel they were supplying had included Free Long Lunches in the deal so that the supplier’s sales reps could assist their other client’s decision-making. He quit, got a fencing contractor job, and lost 50kgs. (First, he was paid to eat free food then he was paid to lose weight both his personal decisions). A fat person in this economy can get a physical job (warehouse picker, fencer, forester) any day of the week and be paid to lose the pounds and increase their health if they want.
Throughout history, obesity has been a sign of a good comfortable life. If Capitalist Coke and Mac are the cause of the ‘obesity problem’ may be some Maoist Down On The Farm is the solution 😉 Oh and those Gloriavale farm people never look fat!
Sugar taxes are not the answer. There is sugar and corn syrup in heaps of both so-called “good foods” and “bad foods”. Won’t a sugar tax just increase the price of food? The need for food is not the same as the need for cigarettes. And those ‘bad parent’s that feed their kids fast food and coke they are not committing neglect, they are, feeding their kids. Those other ideas can all be implemented very easily. However, the thing not talked about is sedentary screen addiction for couch potatoes, gamers and computer desk-based workers and kids not being forced to participate in team sport. May be some public Tai Chi at 6am every morning like in China!
we can differentiate in tax terms between cane/beet sugar and high fructose corn syrup…which since it’s relatively recent introduction can actually be fingered as bad, sugar may not be good but HFC is shite we won’t eliminate obesity but we can go for harm reduction, often ‘maximalist solutions’ (ie war on drugs) are not achievable so we have to settle for what is ‘doable’
Well put Martyn. “Kiwi women are Lardos and Heiffers” was one time TV presenter Rachel Smalley’s previous contribution to this kind of thing.
Industrial scale processed food leads to obesity for sure when coupled with mass marketing and placement of outlets in certain areas. Organic food stores and wellness centres in working class areas–I don’t think so–Liquor and takeaways.
GST off fruit and veg has to happen. Free food for all school kids has to happen.
Karen does have a point.
Oh dear, I would say this storm in a teacup presented a marvellous distraction ( tv princess v. tall ball chucking sportsperson) from the bang ram raid/ shoot now realities Bomber keeps pointing out. All agenda. The suggestion of tape is potentially triggering so not gracious. My killer figure was ruined by a stay in hotel California, never to recover from the multifaceted array of pharmaceuticals on offer, which you couldn’t refuse.
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