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THE RED CRITIQUE |
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Let
Them Eat Stigma: A Review of Fat
Land Julie Torrant
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Greg
Critser's Fat Land: How Americans
Became the Fattest People in the World has been widely and
positively reviewed in a variety of media outlets from Salon.com
and Mother Jones to The
New York Times. What is particularly noteworthy about this text is
the way it introduces the question of class into the debate over
obesity. Its discussion of the relation between obesity, health and
class is, in fact, the book's main selling point. Laura Miller marks
this emphasis in her review of the book in Salon.com,
writing that "[t]he innovation Critser brings to the literature
of obesity is to take what turns out to be a valid perception after
all—working-class and underclass people are
more likely to be fat—and pull a switcheroo (January 13, 2003).
Rather than regard class status as a stigma unfairly affixed to fat
people, he presents fat as a health liability unjustly foisted on the
poor and insufficiently addressed by the affluent". Miller, like
other reviewers, finds this aspect of the text "refreshing"
and "persuasive". For Critser,
however, class is not a matter of one's objective relation to the
productive forces of society—whether one owns the means of production
or whether one works for the owners—it is instead a matter of what you
buy. Class, in other words, becomes lifestyle and all people are, in the
end, part of one single (non)class of consumers. On the basis of
this notion of class, Critser puts forward an argument that is exemplary
of a renewed "tough love" conservatism whose
"concern" for the poor and working class amounts to an
injunction for more (market) discipline for those who can least afford
it for the sake of renewing profitability for capital. It has, in short, become impossible to ignore the fact that obesity
is a class issue. Numerous studies have shown that the fastest growing
rates of obesity in the United States are among the poorest segments of
the population.
However, at the core of the ideological
force of Critser's "exposé", and
what has made it such a "popular" account of obesity,
is the way he blurs class divisions
and displaces any analysis of
capitalism as a system of production for profit as the cause of
"fat" with a theory of "affluence" and
"gluttony". In doing so, Critser puts a new, consumerist spin
on a very old idea—the idea that the problems of society such as the
healthcare crisis are not due to capital's drive for more and more
profits but are due rather to fat, lazy workers and those misguided
liberals, leftists and others who enable them in their gluttony. To
follow Critser's logic, and see how he puts a new "acceptable"
spin on his very old ideas, it is necessary to examine his tale of the
fattening of America and the central role of (workers as) consumers in
this tale. One of the key stories in this narrative involves Earl Butz,
Richard Nixon's secretary of agriculture. According to Critser, during
his tenure, Butz was faced with two problems—falling revenues for
farmers and demands from consumers to lower the price of food that had
been rising with inflation. Through his down-home ingenuity and charm,
as the story goes, Butz accomplished both these things. For one, he
encouraged farmers to plant enormous numbers of crops. This not only
increased their revenues, but also provided surpluses of, for instance,
corn. These corn surpluses were then used to produce high fructose corn
syrup, which in turn enabled the production of inexpensive, abundant new
food products. Butz also brokered new trade deals with countries such as
Malaysia, which provided an inexpensive source of fat in palm oil. The
negative side-effect of what Critser presents as a matter of an
arbitrary confluence of historical forces and characters, including not
only Butz and American farmers, but demanding consumers, was that these
consumers were now eating very high-calorie foods full of high fructose
corn syrup and palm oil (a "tasty" but highly saturated fat).
What Critser leaves out of this picture is that this move to cheaper
(and very unhealthy) sources of food was not simply a matter of
historical "happenstance" nor was it a farmer and/or consumer
driven development. Rather, the driving force behind this move was
Agribusiness and companies like Pepsi and McDonalds, which in turn are
representative of Big Business in capitalism. That is, the move to
cheaper raw materials such as high fructose corn syrup was driven by the
development of capital under the pressures of competition, wherein
companies are constantly working to lower the production cost of their
products in order to be able to price cut and thus gain market share. Producing foods with cheaper raw materials and therefore for less
money not only benefits companies like Pepsi and McDonalds in their
competitive struggles with other companies for markets and the profits
that accrue from them. The production of these foods also benefits other
capitalists by helping to control the costs of wages. The
introduction of "cheap" foods such as soda, fast-food, and
other foods high in sugars, which are by-and-large nutritionally poor
but calorie rich, provides for a cheap source of high energy that acts
as a substitute for more nutritious, but less profitable foods. Because
the primary concern of capitalism is the expansion of profits and not
the conditions of the workers who produce it, fast-foods like McDonalds
and Pepsi have emerged to provide the working class with a quick, cheap
meal that enables them to continue working longer and longer hours (U.S.
workers work among the longest hours in the industrialized world)
regardless of the effects it has on their health. In other words, the
availability of "cheap" foods means lower wages, since it does
not cost as much to ensure that workers get enough calories to return to
work. If the representatives of Big Business are now concerned about
health problems of workers drinking 14 billion gallons of soft drinks a
year (as a 1997 study found), it is because it is cutting into their
profits, not because of any concern for the conditions in which people
now live. Thus as Marx argued, the reason the cheapest (and poorest)
commodities are the most abundant and abundantly used is that in a
society such as capitalism that is "founded on poverty
the poorest products have
the fatal prerogative of being used by the greatest number" (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy). In
short, in capitalism, as a society founded on poverty—including both
relative and absolute poverty—the priority of owners to produce
profits structurally blocks meeting the needs of workers, including the
need for both sufficient and high quality foods. The use of mass
production—and the potential of such mass production for meeting the
nutritional needs of workers—in order to produce enormous quantities
of very poor quality foods is just one of the many symptoms of the
suppression of the possibilities for meeting needs under the current
class system. In
contrast to this analysis, Critser represents the situation in the
United States as one of "abundance" and "affluence".
In fact it is this affluence, according to Critser, that is ultimately
the problem. He argues, for instance, that over-eating is a natural
response for humans who have not yet "caught up", culturally,
with this environment of abundance. This is the logic behind Critser's
reading of the resolution of the inflation-crisis of the 1970s when
consumers were angry because of the rising price of meat. He represents
the production of calorie-dense foods made with palm oil and high
fructose corn syrup as "deliver[ing] everything the modern American
consumer had wanted" with "a new plentitude of cheap, abundant
and tasty calories". It is of course quite a problematic reading of
social history to say that consumers' protest of rising meat
prices—which was a matter of asserting a need for affordable and
nutritious food—was a matter of the "desires" of American
consumers who "wanted what they wanted when they wanted it"
and that these "desires" have been fulfilled by Burger King,
Coke and super-sized fries. However, this framing of the issue is
crucial for Critser because it is this explanation of the rise of
obesity as driven by the un-bounded "desires" of American
consumers (pushed along by some crafty marketing executives), and
particularly the poor and working class consumers, that allows him to
propose as the solution to the obesity crisis
that the poor and working class should be restricted—for their
own good—from "exercising" their freedom as consumers and
thus satisfying their "desires". It
is crucial that Critser naturalizes over-eating as well as avoiding
rigorous exercise (which he says is a matter of "laziness",
not exhaustion from long work days) as a "natural", human
response as opposed to a quite socially conditioned response to
commodity culture, particularly for those who cannot afford the
"finer" pleasures that culture has to offer. In doing so,
Critser naturalizes commodity culture—and the profit motive behind
it—and argues instead for a cultural solution to the problem.
Specifically, Critser blames a "culture of permissiveness"
which has allowed the "natural" gluttony and laziness of
people to be given free reign. This culture, which has been promoted by
a whole cast of (left-leaning) characters, including
"liberals" such as former president Clinton, feminists, and
religious leaders who have abandoned teaching against the
"sin" of gluttony, has played a major role in the rise of
obesity, according to Critser, because it has "denied" the
social stigma and negative cultural reinforcements that prevent the rich
from getting fat. Critser writes, for instance, "In other words,
perhaps boundaries, an unpleasant but good thing for affluent white
people, are also a good thing for poor and middle-class black
people" (121). In short, on the basis of his so-called
"argument" in which class becomes
measured by one's level of "self-control", Critser
concludes that what women of color need more of is not
well-paying work and affordable childcare, but more social stigma! In
addition to more stigma, working class and poor people are to get,
according to Critser, access to various diet programs and other forms of
(remedial) education on diet and health. That is, they are to get access
to various "reforms" at the site of consumption rather than
making any changes in the root cause of obesity and other forms of
malnutrition in the production relations. The real concern underlying
such reform programs, much like the anti-smoking campaigns which have
only begun to be instituted now that the economic costs of smoking have
become clear, is the skyrocketing costs of healthcare for diseases
related to obesity and poor nutrition such as diabetes as well as the
economic costs of lost productivity due to these nutrition-related
health problems. Critser,
for instance, cites figures such as $3.9 billion in lost workdays due to
obesity. Of course, when capitalism is in an expansionary phase, such
figures do not command so much attention, but with a sinking economy,
such a loss—for capital—can no longer be afforded. Like
all such reformist programs, the "fat reform" programs that
now even include the possibility of "tax breaks" for weight
loss programs benefit capital economically by controlling the
costs of labor at a crucial juncture, as well
as act as an (albeit small) economic stimulus by opening up a new market
in exercise equipment, diet books, clothing, and other
"lifestyle" commodities. Of
course, capital
also benefits even when these programs (inevitably) fail to end the
actual health and economic problems—which are rooted in for-profit
production. It benefits because this argument about obesity provides a
convenient way to scapegoat the poor and working class and to
distract attention away from capitalism as the cause of the healthcare
crisis and other social problems. As with
all such "tough love" conservative narratives, the pedagogy of
scapegoating is only just barely under the surface of Critser's book and
emerges, in particular, when he talks about healthcare costs. For
example, he cites James O. Hill, the "dean" of obesity
studies, who says: "When people who are fit really begin to
understand this, it will be a catalyst for one of two things, though
likely both: anger, and then a demand for change" (148). This
"suggestion" that fit people will become angry when they find
out how much poor nutrition and fitness is costing (a cost which Critser
blames on workers-as-greedy-consumers rather than corporations hungry
for profits) is nothing short of a call, especially to the middle class
whose relative privilege is under attack, to identify with and consent
to capital's renewed war on the poor and the (lower) working class.
After all, if the poor and working class are the most likely to be
overweight, and they are also least likely to have healthcare, then from
this logic they—and not Agribusiness and corporate medicine—are to
blame for the skyrocketing healthcare costs and moreover they are the
ones who must "change their ways" and reign in their
"desires", not capital. The
way the dominant understandings of obesity put forward by Critser and
others in the culture industry are being used to enable capital in its
new war on the poor and working class in order to solve its
profitability crisis is strikingly evident in a recent article published
in the New York Times
(February 23, 2003). The article, "Are the Poor Suffering
From Hunger Anymore?", reports that while food assistance programs
have traditionally been the most resistant to cut backs since it has
been difficult for conservatives to represent such programs as
"welfare" (and therefore "bad"), in the recent push
by the Bush administration and Congress to cut poverty programs, food
programs such as food stamps and subsidized school lunches have been
"receiving unexpected scrutiny". As the article explains, one
of the justifications for cutting back food assistance programs which
has emerged among conservatives is that such food assistance programs
are now unnecessary because the poor are no longer hungry, but are,
rather, overweight (and thus, from this logic, over-fed). The article
cites an advocate for the poor who indicates that poverty has changed in
the United States where now "[p]oor people are rarely hungry for 25
days a month" but that they experience hunger for part of the
month. This, of course, does not mean that hunger is over in the United
States, but rather that it has changed its form, and that additional
problems in terms of nutrition are emerging in such "rich"
countries. Instead
of providing an analysis of the cause of the new problems such as
"food insecurity" (intermittent hunger) and obesity, which
would of course point to the limits of capitalism, and then working to
combat these problems, what the conservatives are doing through their
attacks on food stamps and other food assistance programs is to rollback
even the contradictory and limited social progress in combating poverty
and want that has been achieved in the world's wealthiest nation. In
other words, what Critser and other conservatives are saying, in effect,
is that the problem in the United States is that "our" poor
and working classes are not enough like the poor and working classes in
the South—because they are not hungry all the time! "Fat" is indeed is class issue, but class is not, as Fat Land understands it, a matter of the individual and her consumption, it is a matter of the social system of production. In order to bring an end to obesity as a social problem alongside hunger and other forms of malnutrition, it is necessary to change our system of production from one that prioritizes profits for the few to one that prioritizes meeting the needs of the many. THE
RED CRITIQUE 8 (Spring 2003) |