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In Barbara Ehrenreich’s narrative “The Naked Truth about Fitness,” she exposes society’s perception of health as a moral standard. Society craves “moral purity” and expresses this craving by an elitist perception. Society believes those who do not make ‘right’ health choices have a higher chance of illness because of their moral negligence. However, defining health as a moral standard, results in a self-centered culture. Society’s perception of health reveals a desire for dominion over sickness. Ehrenreich observes, “But like pretechnological tribalists, we’ve come to see every illness as a punishment for past transgressions” (Ehrenreich, 1995, pg. 5). Society victimizes the ill because of their poor health choices. Since society believes healthy choices form a basis for morality, illnesses result from poor health choices. This ideology coincides with Ehrenreich’s argument, “If health is our personal responsibility, the reasoning goes, then disease must be our fault” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 5). By blaming illness on poor health choices, society lacks compassion towards the ill. Emphasizing an elitist perception promotes a …show more content…
selfish culture. Moreover, a self-centered culture, obsessed with a physical standard, threatens healthy relationships.
Society endures strenuous workouts and healthy diets to appear morally advanced. Ehrenreich states, “‘Commit to get fit!’” is the current slogan, the verb reminding us of the moral tenacity that has become so elusive in our human relationships” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 4). Since society values control, maintaining a physical standard provides a sense of superiority. The shift in society’s value from empathy to self-image leads to an elitist perception which impairs relationships. Ehrenreich believes, “…, healthism tends to reinforce longstanding prejudices” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 6). A dysfunctional and selfish culture results from undervaluing relationships. A lack of empathy and an increase of elitism amongst social classes causes
discrimination. In addition, society measures morality through an elitist perception by the status of an individual’s health. Ehrenreich alleges, “It’s easy for the middle-class fiber enthusiast to look down on the ghetto dweller who smokes cigarettes and spends her food stamps on Doritos and soda pop” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 6). This example of elitism within a higher social class illustrates an unsympathetic perspective of poor health choices. A self-centered culture develops from an elitist view of the status of an individual’s health. Ehrenreich examines, “If healthy habits are an expression of moral excellence, then the working class is not only “tacky,” ill-mannered, or whatever else we’ve been encouraged to believe-it’s morally deficient” (Ehrenreich, 2015, p. 6). Because of the upper class’s desire to achieve an ideal physical standard, they perceive themselves as superior to individuals from lower classes who lack this desire. Because society confuses health with morality, fundamental values deteriorate. A self-centered culture results from a lack of compassion for each other and increased idea of self.
The audience of this publication is the typical health-conscious American folk that are grappling with the pressures of modernity and the morality of embracing natural course of life. The readers are notably people well aware of the controve...
Balko develops an angry tone about the fact that government believes unhealthy people should depend on healthy people or they should not hold any responsibility. Actually, Balko complains the way government prohibits any private insurer to charge additional fee of obese clients is unwise. Balko’s claim is that if people had to pay more financially, they would be more cautious about their choices on what foods should they consume. I agree with him on this point, because if insurers want to charge overweight clients with higher premiums, the clients would try to be fit in the average range to avoid paying any hard-earned money from their pocket. Balko evokes ethos appeals by demonstrating if the government is willingly paid for his anti-cholesterol medicine, then what the motivations for exercising are. He makes the audience sympathize with him by saying that what the government does is wrong. Toward the end, Balko implies that people will make better choices if there is no one responsible for those choices.
This country places great value on achieving the perfect body. Americans strive to achieve thinness, but is that really necessary? In his article written in 1986 entitled “Fat and Happy?,” Hillel Schwartz claims that people who are obese are considered failures in life by fellow Americans. More specifically, he contends that those individuals with a less than perfect physique suffer not only disrespect, but they are also marginalized as a group. Just putting people on a diet to solve a serious weight problem is simply not enough, as they are more than likely to fail. Schwartz wants to convey to his audience that people who are in shape are the ones who make obese people feel horrible about themselves. Schwartz was compelled to write this essay,
Richard Balko and Mary Maxfield discuss personal responsibility, and choices in one’s health in their essays “What You Eat Is Your Business,” and “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” respectively. Balko feels the government should not intervene in people’s food intake because it is an individual preference. Instead, Balko asserts that the government should foster a program to assist the American people to take on personal responsibility and ownership of their own health. Similarly, Maxfield paints the same picture that our culture now finds it immoral to eat what our body needs, therefore believing in the idea of eating less is healthier. Maxfield points out the multi-billion dollar campaign of corporations into advertising false hope into consumers by buying into eradication of fatness. Why has food have suddenly become a risky subject at the dinner table? And who is to blame? Is it everyone else or do we blame ourselves?
The patient should have confident and trust in their doctor, but the doctor must also recognize that the patient is entitled to have an attitude to illness and his preferred way of tackling this (Turner-Warwick, 1994). Buchanan infers that paternalism eliminates an individual’s power of making their own choices and thus pressed into making decisions. To achieve public health goals, greater considerations must be directed toward promoting a mutual understanding of a just society (Buchanan, 2008). So, if people are given the choice to make certain decision over another, then they are still granted freedom of choice. Buchanan identifies 3 arguments in justifying paternalistic actions: informed consent, weak paternalism, and utilitarianism. To support his argument of informed consent, Buchanan admits there is no significant ethical concern because an individual may reach out to the professional for help, but it is problematic when an intervention is targeting the entire population (Buchanan, 2008). This point of view from Buchanan is flawed and completely limits what public health is all about. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) defines public health as “what we, as a society, do collectively to assure the conditions for people to be healthy.” With its use of the phrase “we, as a society,” the IOM emphasizes cooperative and mutually shared obligation and it also reinforces the notion that collective
Fitness consumes society and distracts them from problems emerging around in the country. The problems, the real source of anxiety, keep developing and classes have become to engrossed in themselves to notice. Ehrenreich emphasis, “By confusing health and virtue, we’ve gotten testier, less tolerant, and ultimately less capable of confronting the sources of disease…” (Ehrenreich, 2016, p. 339). Her emphasis sheds light on America’s failure to understand the impact society makes, as a whole, since the individual selves take the focus. American society lost sight of worth and in their attempts to find it placed their worthiness into how strong and toned they became. The worth of America society as a collective is the influence they can bring about and if America can find that worth, as Ehrenreich urges, “…It can make us fit for something: strong enough to fight the big-time polluters, for example, the corporate waste dumpers; tough enough to take on economic arrangements that condemn so many to poverty and to dangerous occupations; lean and powerful enough to demand a more nurturing, less anxiety ridden social ladder” (Ehrenreich, 2016, p. 340). Building up strength and endurance to come together as “We the people” and invoke change is among some of Americas greatest worth. However, if society does not pull the cord of the so-called medicine, that is healthism, off America will never be able to wake up and return to her former
Personal responsibility is crucial for maintaining wellness, I find the multi-causation disease model diagram according to McKenzie et al, a clear distinction of the components the three circles in the model represents, the outer circle covers factors such as economics, environment , health care system, water quality, infectious disease outbreaks and air pollution, these are factors out of an individual’s control, followed by the middle circle which covers personality, beliefs and behavioral choices, this can be altered through choices and specific behavior patterns with the potential to impact health, the inner circle is genetic endowment, the DNA that we inherit. I have based my argument on the middle circle as the bridge to wellness. The obvious is, the outer and inner circles comprises of factors beyond our control. Encouragingly, personality, beliefs, and behavioral choices that represent the circle in the middle has the potential to bridge the gap between what we cannot control and the behavior modification that can impact our genetic endowment for better or worse. From this observation coupled with the public health goal to educate and motivate the population and communities to become proactive in their well-being, the focus of this paper is to highlight the personal inherent qualities, the intangibles that can be cultivated to the state of homeostasis.
Without the proper resources, support, and access to healthier options, it becomes challenging for even the most determined person to make a change. The exercise made it evident that Jane would be more successful in her endeavour to lower her blood pressure than Joe would, because of the resources, support, and access than her higher economic status afford her. Sadly, as a result of such an unequal wealth distribution in America, many people are in Joe’s shoes; despite the desire to be healthier, they are unable to control their circumstances and surroundings or get the proper support to help them successfully improve their unhealthy habits or
Peter Conrad’s book, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders, examined several cases of human conditions, once viewed as normal, now considered as medical issues. Conrad defined this transition of human problems to disorders that are medically defined, studied, diagnosed and treated as “medicalization”. Specifically, Conrad discussed certain conditions, such as adult ADHD, as age related phenomena that have been medicalized. Throughout, Conrad demonstrated how these issues became medically defined because of the current research and financing structure of medicine in the United States. Those newly defined illnesses changed people’s perceptions and expectations of health and old age, thus dramatically altering society’s expectations of medicine and subsequent life quality. Conrad’s ethnography is a good example of the ethnomedical approach to medical anthropology that addressed several health conditions that are prominent in the United States. He culminated his book by arguing medicalization primarily serves as a form of social control, solving problems with individuals and not society. While the book clearly explained a wide range of negative causes and effects of medicalization, Conrad only acknowledged a few examples of successful resistance briefly in his last chapter. In order to empower its readers beyond education, the book should have examined these instances of anti-medicalization to find similarities and derive productive countermeasures for individuals to follow. Conrad thoroughly outlined the history, examples and influencing factors that promote medicalization, but failed to offer any combative solution to the resulting problems of medicalization.
Besides their health benefits, exercises also offer social comfort to many people. Moreover, regular exercising and fitness also keep me active. Therefore, I train regularly, and my fitness routine can only be disturbed by other social and professional activities. Fitness and yoga fill me with energy and stamina. This training is also helpful in concentrating, making me alert when serving my patients. The energy I derive from exercises keeps me alert. However, my values and behaviours could also hamper my ability to appreciate the problems of others, including obese people, whom culturally unaware people consider careless and
Richmond, K. and Germov, J., 2009. Sociology of Health Promotion. In: Germov, ed. An Introduction to Health Sociology. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 476-499.
As discussed, it is clear that when it comes to public health the lines are often quite blurred. The Biomedical Model and the Lifestyle Theory Model both have their advantages however a common theme throughout both models is that they are both too reductionist in their approach to health. They failed to consider other health models viewpoints, or incorporate external factors such as the social gradient into their reasoning behind the cause and effect of bad health. Therefore instead of trying to categorise health into definite ‘health models’, health needs to be accepted more for what it is - a forever changing and adapting concept.
Health as a Social Construction In my essay, I aim to find out why social construction affects the health of our society. Ill health may be defined as 'a bodily or mental state that is deemed undesirable'. This means that health is the condition of the body both physically and mentally. Social construction of health refers to the way health varies from one society to another.
Bibliography:.. https://www.palgrave.com/biotonpdfs0333 994571914 cha13.pdf (Accessed 11-04-2014). http://interruptions.net/literature/waitzkin-JHSB89.pdf (Accessed 12-042014). Cliffsnotes.com. Article p: 4 sociology perspectives on health.
(EHFA, 2013) Contemporary discourse (a communicated message) within this field suggests fitness enhances health, being free from disease or illness, and wellness, being in a positive state of health and a biological and psychological well-being illustrated by a quality of life and sense of well-being. (Bouchard et al, 1990) But is this discourse correct? 5.2 million adults, in the UK, are now members of private gyms, (Mintel, 2010) with discourse suggesting physical activity needs to become part of our lives, the following aims to argue if commercial and private involvement is positively enhancing health and wellbeing, is it really the panacea to society’s ills as discourse suggests, looking at the real impact it may be having on the individual in the UK.