Local independent bookstore recommends blaming fat people for poverty

[firecat]

Update January 15: I received an apology from the bookstore owner for this spam. (Visible in the comments.) I am therefore putting the rest of this post under a cut tag.


I just got an email from my local independent bookstore, of which I have been a supporter for many years. I'm not reproducing the exact email here but this is the gist:

---

Kepler's Books & Magazines recommends:
Stop hunger by losing weight

You can transform your over-eating in 8 weeks

Imagine a world in which there is no hunger or poverty.

What began as a trickle of visionary participants became thousands of
over-consuming people donating their money -- usually spent on
over-consuming -- to programs, charities and organizations whose mission
is to end the suffering caused by poverty and hunger.

Pounds for Poverty's?~D? mission is to convert self-indulgence into
service, empty calories into deep meaning and over-consumption into
opportunity for those suffering from poverty.
Mindfulness and Altruism-Based Health Improvement and Weight-Loss
Program

Shedding weight is a common New Year's resolution, and countless diet
plans focus on watching calories. But Pounds for Poverty, a new Palo
Alto-based weight-loss program, is taking a different approach - one
based on the idea that generosity, compassion and mindfulness can lead
to weight-loss success.

Two 8-Week Workshops in Palo Alto start in January
[details omitted]

What you will learn:

· A lifelong health improvement and weight loss strategy
· Tools for training the mind so you make better choices
· A transformative method for turning over-eating into
donations to charities

For free information and registration call (650) 926-9961 or visit
www.poundsforpoverty.com

Get healthy, Give back.


Elad Levinson has been a therapist in Palo Alto and workshop leader in
the field of stress and weight reduction for over 30 years.

---

I have two problems here, just to begin with.

1. The workshop has nothing to do with books. It is not an event sponsored by the bookstore as far as I can tell. So what are they doing recommending it?

2. I am so fucking sick of fat people being blamed for Western overconsumption of world resources.

Does the workshop creator realize that most fat people are poor?

Do they realize that the kind of American/Western world overconsumption that contributes to poverty has very little to do with "overeating" per se?

If they really want to raise a lot of money for anti-poverty programs, why don't they do a workshop called "Stop hunger by giving the money you were going to spend on your plastic surgery to an anti-poverty program"? or "Stop hunger by giving the money you were going to spend on an expensive car to an anti-poverty program"?

Bookstore contact info:
Kepler's
http://www.keplers.com
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park CA, 94025
(650) 324-4321

E-Mail
books@keplers.com

Corporate and Community Sales
bookvalet@keplers.com

This bookstore closed a few years ago because they were losing money but they were brought back to life as a non-profit. I'm surprised they would be feeling so flush in this economic climate as to risk alienate some of
their clientele by sending out such an offensive and non-book-related advertisement.

Comments

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying I think this "Pounds for Poverty" thing is a great idea and will be wildly successful for everyone who participates -- I don't think that. I'm just attempting to explain why I don't find it offensive.

That said, some of the key code words to me are "empty calories" -> junk food, "self-indulgence" -> comfort/non-hunger-driven eating, and "mindfulness" (in this context) -> choosing nutritious foods over junk foods. There are other phrases and factors (like the apparent target audience), too, that give me the sense that this program, which may or may not result in weight loss for any given individual, is about choosing carrots over cookies and such, and probably local/organic carrots at that.

[firecat]

I don't think you need to find it offensive. But I find it offensive for the exact same reason that you don't. I think if it's about choosing carrots over cookies then it should explicitly say that. The title and the URL suggests that it is about losing weight, and therefore target it specifically to people who think they are overweight.

I am just as offended when school lunch programs or food stamp programs start a "fight childhood obesity" campaign even if what they are actually doing is providing more nutritious food choices to everyone.

Why does all this have to be done on the backs of fat people? It's not just fat people, or people who think they are fat, who benefit from eating nutritious foods. So why target only people who think they are fat?

[nolly.livejournal.com]

And I don't think you're wrong to be offended.

I think they're really targeting people with significant disposable income, and they see "think they need to lose weight" as something common to much of their audience, so they've seized on it as a way to motivate people.

[leback.livejournal.com]

But that's the thing -- carrots (especially local/organic ones) cost *more* than cookies. The link between unhealthy eating and spending too much money on self-indulgence just doesn't hold; not in a society where people typically spend more money on being thin than on being fat. So even on your reading, I find it troublesome that they're implying a particular link between junk-food consumption and lack of virtue. I think greed in general, and high levels of spending for personal enjoyment/benefit in particular, are just as characteristic of healthy eating as of unhealthy eating, but I think that saying "Imagine a world in which there is no hunger or poverty" and then talking about eating more healthily as a route to such a world implies otherwise.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Depnds on where you shop and what kind of cookies you buy. :)

But I also think they're targeting people with enough disposable income that it's not actually about saving money. As I said above, I think the weight-loss aspect is mostly an excuse to draw people in, give them another reason to give money while making it still all about them.

[leback.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suspect you're right. I just don't like the cultural memes that it reinforces in the process.

But now I want a cookie. Must go attend to that. :-)