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Perfect Drugs: Media Critiques

Weigh to go![1]

by

Tharaphi Than

Obesity is defined as an excessively high amount of body fat or adipose tissue in relation to lean body mass.[2] According to data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), during the years between1988 and 1994, 45.3% of American white males and females, 60.1% of black males and females, and 64.5% of Hispanic males and females were obese.[3] Since obesity has been rising at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years in the United States, reducing its prevalence among adults to less than 15% has become one of our country’s national health objectives for the year 2010.[4]

This recent epidemic of obesity has created many health problems nationwide, such as increased rates of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke, among others. Clearly, trying to attack this problem just on the individual level will not yield satisfactory results. Approximately 280,000 adult deaths in the United States each year are related to obesity, and obesity is also related to the causes of some cancers, such as colon, rectum, ovary and prostate. [5]Given the increasing prevalence of these diseases and the enormous growing social and economic costs of obesity, a part of the national budget needs to be set aside to provide educational and advocacy programs to help people and communities deal with this problem.

The diet industries participate actively in reducing obesity by promoting the use of diet pills, low-fat recipes, surgical treatments to reduce fat, and topically applied creams. Even though obesity is often the result of an unhealthy lifestyle, the media have chosen to tackle the problem by promoting the quick fixes mentioned above, instead of by challenging the exercise and food choice habits that promote obesity. Advertising campaings about weight reduction send messages to the public through the media. To fully convince the public of the value of modern quick fixes, the media help shape our culture in a way that, over time, seeps through every layer of society: only a thin body is acceptable, people should work for thinness whether through surgery or exercise, thin models or body builders should be our heroes, and people should welcome ready-made lifestyles-fixing magic such as therapy.

To analyze how the media help to shape the values of our culture, I chose advertisements and articles on weight reduction which appeared in the magazines People Weekly, Working Woman, and Prevention. The ad in Working Woman entitled “Now, I Believe in Miracles!” focuses on the diet pill called Xenadrine. The ad features a young woman who lost 84 pounds in 12 weeks using Xenadrine. She is pictured both before and after using the drug. The ad claims that Xenadrine, the #1 diet supplement in America, is clinically proven to increase fat loss an extraordinary 38.6 times more than will diet and exercise alone; it also claims that one can feel the results immediately.[6] The second work I examined is People Magazine’s article on a surgical treatment performed on Carnie Wilson, a musician, who lost 150 pounds after having surgery to remove excess skin and shrink an enlarged stomach. In the article, the authors applaud her ability to make such a brave decision.[7] The third work is Prevention ad; it is about weight-loss herbs that help people overcome obstacles to diet and exercise. It is an eight-paged article-type ad, which describes different kinds of herbs that, the author claims, safely work to reduce weight.[8]

Both these ads and the article convey the same underlying message: the dramatic change their products will provide to people unhappy with their bodies. Half the lines in the ad from Working Woman are about the story of the woman who lost 84 pounds, and the entire article in People Weekly focuses on Wilson and the marvelous surgical treatment that changed her life. The ad in Prevention publicizes eight different herbal medicines with detailed instructions or recipes. All the information is based on personal stories and experience; the ads also give data on how many people have tried the method and what the success rate is. In the Working Woman ad, a line with the smallest font on the page says that the above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. The messages also highlight that thinness is the ideal of beauty, and people should make good use of new advances in medicine and technology to meet this standard of popular culture. Therefore, all these messages advocate weight loss, implying that the treatments—pills, surgery or herbal therapy—will benefit people’s health.

In terms of credibility, ads can be misleading, and may not inform readers adequately about side effects. In Working Woman ad, no explicit warnings appear in the Prevention article, while the authors in People Weekly do mention possible adverse effects of surgical treatment, but close the paragraph with the remark from a surgeon saying “[surgical treatment] is a positive trade-off,” since patients find that their health improved after surgery. Again, the messages of these ads and the article induce readers to accept the products; the authors of these messages claim that consumers should reduce their weight and adopt a healthier life style through faster means. None of the ads or the article explicitly warns readers to use the products with caution, and this practice reveals the cooperative nature of the media; they aim to make a greater market for more money instead of sharing accurate and reliable information with the general public.

Based on the material described in the ads and the article, it is apparent that authors do not expect the reader to have any prior scientific knowledge of these issues. Instead authors and producers of the ads and article want a reader to be a passive, so that no argument will be made against their messages. Indeed, the more unaware people are of the downsides of these products, the greater advantages the diet industries can have. The fact that most ads appear in non-academic magazines aimed at working class people demonstrates that the diet industries are targeting working adults who probably do not have the resources, such as money, time and information, to adopt a more healthy way of living by eating a well-balanced diet and enrolling in a gym to work out. These products are quick fixes targeting people already moving at a fast pace just to make ends meet.

As far as words and images are concerned, the authors are not just sending out their primary message of urging the reader to use the product and advocating their definition of beauty equals thinness, but they are also implicitly conveying any information that pharmaceutical companies want to convey. If the surface meaning is “use Xenadrine, the best pill in America, to lose weight,” the underlying message is that you do not need to inconvenience yourself by restricting your diet and doing exercises. This meaning reinforces the importance of consuming diet pills and undergoing surgical procedures, since one does not need to invest much time and energy in order to improve health. That is, a ready-made life style will give a better quality of life with the help offered by the products of advanced biomedical technology. This underlying message inundates a reader via claims such as “Xenadrine works 38.6 times more than diet and exercise alone,” and “experience for yourself the breakthrough weight-loss technology.” Theses messages are so strong that the obese reader will feel like a “loser” if he or she does not grasp the opportunity to use the product.

Research has shown that obesity is the combined result of genetic, environmental and psychological factors. The environmental factor, however, is the key one which contributes the most to the cause of obesity. What a person eats, and how he or she eats, is mostly learned from his or her family diet and life style habits. The level of physical activity is also developed as a habit based on the environment. The widespread American culture of prioritizing taste and convenience of food to nutrition, and of eating more in response to negative emotions such as boredom, are the leading causes of obesity, and all the obese share the symptoms of a lack of perfection according to the standards of contemporary American culture.[9] Life has evolved to move quickly, social bonds between people have weakened, and most people are left to resolve their emotional problems alone. A fast life style has advantages in many ways, but where obesity is concerned, people need to challenge their lifestyles. They need to take time to think about what they eat, prepare healthy, well balanced meals, and exercise regularly.

To gain benefits of long-term weight reduction, one must challenge the use of quick fixes by adopting more sustainable habits, since quick fixes such as diet pills often lead to binge eating, which is a dangerous behavior with the potential to cause depression and low self-esteem. To adopt the elements of a healthier lifestyle such as eating healthier food, exercising regularly, and maintaining good emotional health by being involved in activities, one must start by taking the first step of challenging one's values. The ultimate reward for an individual will be a more peaceful and healthier life—physically, mentally, and emotionally. If this movement happens not just on the individual level, but on a broader level, one which includes families and whole communities, the resulting collective movement will be a powerful tool to help resolve public health problems as well as social problems.

Works Cited

[1] Dam, Julie K.L., and Wihlborg, Ulrica, Weigh to go!, People Weekly, January 15, 2001. back

[2] Stunkard AJ, Wadden TA. (Editors) Obesity: Theory and Therapy, Second Edition. New York: Raven Press, 1993. back

[3] Center for Disease Control. HHS Issues Report on Community Health in Rural, Urban Areas. retrieved on October 10, 2001. back

[4] Center for Disease Control. Obesity and Overweigh. retrieved on November 14, 2001. back

[5] A Public Health Epidemic. back

[6] Working Woman, September 2001, Special Anniversary Issue. back

[7] Dam, Julie K.L., and Wihlborg, Ulrica, Weigh to go!, People Weekly, January 15, 2001.back

[8] Weight Loss herbs: That Work and they’re SAFE! Prevention, August 2001. back

[9] Understanding Adult Obesity. November 14, 2001. back

If you have any questions or comments, email Tharaphi Than.