Banking Academy of Vietnam

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High quality BA Training Program in Financial Management cooperated between Banking Academy of Vietnam and City University of Seattle

Critical Thinking

Inference Essay

Tutor:  Kathy Johanson

Student

• Hieu Vu Thai                Class :BC301_09_ED        ID :30110576

Hanoi, 4/2016

According to WHO, there was more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight and over 600 million of them were obese in 2007. Additionally, this research also showed that South East Asia which includes Vietnam had the lowest percentage of overweight and obese people (14% overweight in both sexes and 3% obese).Based on this result, as a Vietnamese 21 years old overweight student, I found being fat in Vietnam will makes you face with a lot of negative assumptions equalor even more than being fat in America where two-thirds of population are overweight and obese. It is an incongruity for me when I experienced myself that in my 10th grade at high school, anyone in my class was treated equal by my teacher, unless they were overweight. This problem was clinging on my mind, I could not get over it until I found out the answer that satisfy me. After thinking a lot, I believe those negative assumptions which automatically apply by almost everybody in our society, based on a very wrong conception and finally these don’t help fat people at all.

Normally, fat people are automatic considered as lazy, greed, unruly and stupid. Those gloomy assumptions are just primary inferences which were not proved by any experts or scientists, moreover, we all know that we should not judge a person just base on their appearance. But the worst thing is more than 60% of people got no problem at all about fat shaming overweight people (Gardner, 2012). Furthermore, in our civilization world, stigma based on skin color, sex, religion and age is completely illegal in most countries, however there is no such law to protect people who got discriminated based on their weight. That means there is an unspoken rule that people’s weight is the only thing can make a person becomes different. For insurance, in a lawsuit, defendants who are overweight people are most likely convicted as guilty (Neporent, 2013). Another article points out, there were about 52% of fat people admit that they’ve been discriminated against by employer as well as their boss at work (Gardner, 2012). Additionally, stigma based on a person’s weight is not only happen with adults but also with children, a research by the University of Leeds shows that fat prejudice begins at a young age, they prove that children at 4 usually tend to refuse to make friends with overweight children (Miller, 2013).

Undoubtedly, prejudice about overweight people is just an illogical inference without careful observation and critical thinking.One of the reason to blame for this prejudice is media, according to an obesity researcher in Yale University, online magazine websites in purpose of increasing audiences’ malevolence, often use distorted images of overweight people such as they are voraciously food or their clothes are not fit with them anymore or even worse in stories about obesity (Song, 2011). As a result, people in general tend to keep negative assumptions about obesity such as being fat is an individual’s mistake while they are ignoring about scientific results that proved the opposite, after decades of researching. For example, an online poll shows that more than 60% of respondents believe that personal choices about food rations and routine activities have to take responsibilities about being fat (Beglay, 2012) while there is a research proves that many causes of being fat are beyond the capacity of an individual such as genetics, economy, changing environment, fast food, etc. (Rebecca & Chelsea, 2010).

Finally, fat shamming is hurting fat people emotionally and mentally instead of motivating these people to lose weight like some people would argue for their purpose of overweight stigma “For their own good”. If fat shamming is really effective, the numbers of overweight people would decrease instead of rising quickly through the years (WHO, 2007). Furthermore, a currently research shows that overweight individuals who suffer from weight discrimination were over 2.5 times to become obese and those individuals who already are obese were 3 times remain obese by the end of their study (Sutin&Terracciano, 2013).  Additionally, we also know that, shamming someone’s appearance could make an individual more fragile, it also might lead to some serious problems such as depressions, body anxiety, etc. As the matter of fact, there is a research in Manchester University points out that the damage of body shamming is massive, even after the victims have lost weight successfully they still cannot get over it (Latner, Ebneter&O'Brien, 2012).

We cannot deny that overweight and obesity which classified as a disease (Pollack, 2013) are involved to some serious medical conditions, but as an overweight person I found out that scare statistics, body shamming as well as weight discriminations are not a key to solve overweight and obesity puzzle. Those actions should be condemned by everybody not only because they are based on illogical inferences but also they are hurting people more than helping them.

Reference

Andrew Pollack.(2013). A.M.A. Recognizes Obesity as a Disease. Retrieved from:<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/business/ama-recognizes-obesity-as-a-disease.html?_r=1>