- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Dickerson is right that an unhealthy lifestyle is a choice, and not an inescapable one. Unfortunately, she sends her call to action off the rails by listing all the risks of obesity in a condescending fashion, as though the overweight members of her audience are too stupid to know them. If the cultural divide between white and black is as large (no pun intended) as she seems to think it is, my experience may not apply here, but getting the lecture from my doctors every time I "sought out" my doctors for a sore throat only served to increase my defensiveness and excuses: "At least I'm in proportion," "Grandma never worked out a day in her life, and she lived to 93," and, yes, "My boyfriend doesn't mind." It was only after I determined that my dissatisfaction with my unhealthy habits was internal and not from external criticism that I was willing to start making changes.
If you're dealing with someone as stubborn as I am, no amount of social pressure and citation of long-range risks can encourage that person to make the right choice. Emphasizing the simplicity of certain healthy choices on an individual basis - say, avoiding weight-gain or weight-loss supplements, or that steamed greens and grilled chicken taste good, too - goes much further.
