Aside from prices that everyone ultimately shares, like super-size airplane seats (or better yet, heavy-duty hospital beds), other obesity-related costs are apt to be distributed amongst various members of society. Some of the people who pay in one way or another are teachers; some are medical professionals, others are parents, and many are children.
Often, the expense borne by the public due to the existence of obesity is a formal tax, of the sort that buys scales for schools. On other occasions, there seems to be an informal, unlegislated sort of a tax, which nevertheless involves expense and hassle.
At the edge of awareness
What could be called the obesity tax shows up in many guises. It needs to be further explored, starting with some of the ways by which the price of obesity is collected from members of the public on a depressingly regular basis. We probably all do need to be reminded, now and then, that there are other options besides eternally paying.
Obesity has been allowed to take over and affect every American indirectly, even if the individuals themselves are not overweight. But fate does not have to land this way, nor does changing the general consciousness need to be cruel or divisive.
There is no need for society to be sucked down into the quicksand of cruelty and blame. There are ways up, and ways out; and just to see this clearly, and acknowledge the truth of it, is a dynamic starting move.
The dark side
Society has accepted that people with reduced mobility need allowances made for them, like the occasional wheelchair ramp, and on a normal day, it’s no big deal. The fate of an obese person is slightly different. Some fellow humans apparently simply cannot help feeling insulted by the existence of the overweight. From their point of view, it appears that obese people know good and well how offensive their corpulence is, and savor their awareness of being so annoying.
Even without access to overweight people’s confidential medical records, many folks on this continent still find it very easy to assume that some of our fellow Americans are using their large frames to express hostility. Their bulk is a weapon they purposely acquired and enjoy brandishing in a way that implies peremptory hostility toward society.
Just kidding!
Of course none of that is true. But some folks act as if it were a proven, immutable, and universally accepted fact that fat is not just uncomfortable and inconvenient and unattractive, but actually a subcategory of evil itself, which must be fought vigorously and without compassion.
Childhood Obesity News has explored a number of ways, in addition to physical and psychological tolls, in which the public pays the price of obesity. But why such incessant harping on crass old dollars? Shouldn’t this be a more elevated conversation?
No, not entirely, not exclusively, and here is why: Because everything that costs parents money has the indirect consequence of depriving their children of some other thing they could have had instead. New shoes, a professional clown at the birthday party, dental braces, a pet, a trip to Disney World, an adequate college fund. It’s even the difference between a summer at fat camp or at music camp. Which one is a child going to feel better about admitting to, come autumn?
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