Is this really necessary?

Images like this one are presumably meant to provide visual interest and context to a story. The faces are usually edited out, and the pictures range from relatively neutral to film footage that follows obese individuals walking on the beach - clearly meant to provoke a negative response. Why do we need these images? Don't we all know what fat people look like? If we think it's okay to put pictures of random overweight individuals on the internet, does that imply that they somehow deserve public mockery - for maintaining a BMI that's too high?

Think about the other pictures you see embedded in the media. Some human interest features show local heroes or innocent participants - like a kid at his desk in a back-to-school story. These are neutral images of people who probably clip them out for their refrigerator. Most other news stories involve either actions by public figures or alleged criminals. Fat people walking down the street fall into neither category.

It's perfectly legal to take pictures of anyone in a public area, and to use the images in any non-libelous way. The faces can be shown if an editor chooses to do so, though few would risk it. But perfectly legal actions are often wrong, and exploitative. Unfortunately, overweight people already face enough discrimination in our society that it will take a movement before people even notice that images like these in the media are inherently exploitative and cater to our collective prejudice.

Plus, aren't there more interesting graphics that can be used to draw attention to a news piece? Or are the overweight enough of a spectacle to get the job done?

Bravo! Looking at this article, I, too, was struck by the exploitative and unnecessary photo of "an overweight couple." First of all, what does their possibly being a couple have to do with it? Given the well-documented contributions that genetics make to one's body shape and size, maybe they're brother and sister. Maybe they're two random people walking down the street.

Secondly, given that this is a piece about overweight children, the choice to include a photo of overweight adults suggests that the photo is not intended to illustrate the actual content of the article, but instead to make readers say, "Gross! Fat people!" ...much as Saletan himself seems to do. See <link> for Saletan's overwhelmingly offensive suggestion that people should dump their fat friends, not only for their own sake but for the sake of the overweight. He says (verbatim), "To resist a fattening norm, you need willpower. To reverse it, you need to promote responsibility, which implies blame. You almost certainly need stigma." In other words: "By punishing them with social ostracism, maybe those fatsos will finally lose some weight". As if overweight people were feeling so accepted and loved by society otherwise...

So you would be content if it was a picture of two faceless, obese kids?

The piece is about obesity, so it makes sense to have a picture or a drawing of obese people. If you think merely showing a photograph of the subject of the article is offensive and discrimination, you perhaps need to work on your own self esteem problems.

Sheesh.

Freki

Hardly! My point is that they probably wouldn't post a picture of overweight young kids, because it would come off as cruel. But adults (who may have no idea they're even being photographed) are fair game?

It's true that it would be wrong to assume that every picture of overweight people is insulting or offensive (there are plenty of fat people who would argue that there's nothing wrong with how they look, and so why should they be ashamed of photographs showing this?). However, given the context of the article (which was written by William Saletan, who's pretty openly anti-fat) and the picture's only marginal significance for the topic at hand, I maintain that the picture does serve to poke fun at overweight people's bodies.

Finally, it's telling that you would take someone's defense of a group that faces discrimination as proof of a lack of self-esteem...I'd argue that defending a group so universally looked down upon takes a lot more self esteem than jumping on the bandwagon...

The photos do not upset me, although I know many look at them and go: yup, there are some more of those fat people walking around, with no shame. How could they!?!

I enjoy people-watching, as do most people, I think. For me, it would be incredibly boring if everyone had a perfectly thin, toned and/or "normal" body. I'm glad there are fat people walking around, if only for visual interest.

Let's not get silly here. It's an article about obesity, after all. That's what obese people look like. Nothing complicated about it.

Of course, you could get all politically correct and demand that no human being should EVER be photographed looking less than their best, but that would knock hell out of the camera companies, wouldn't it? Plus then you could never have that picture of your toddler with the droopy diaper and the mud he was playing in.

As for obese kids...I wish the fat apologists would hang around across the street from the high school by my house. They would see first hand what's going on with eating habits in this country. Some of these kids are so fat and out of shape that they have to have a rest halfway up the steps to the front door. Seeing a normal-sized kid is so unusual that people take note of it. It's a disgrace.

What picture should be there instead? Is it really offensive to show pictures of obese people in an article about obese people? I think not.