Last night on Grey’s Anatomy, one of the leads, Miranda Bailey, was performing surgery on a man with a stomach tumor that was caused by poor eating and lifestyle habits. Bailey, an obese (I’m pretty sure) woman, was so moved by seeing this tumor and hearing the stories from her patient of his reckless health behaviors that she immediately ran her own panel and found both of her cholesterols and blood sugar to be in dangerous ranges.
As a result of the panels, she panicked and began making immediate changes: running, avoiding donuts, and discussing these changes with her husband, Ben. She says to Ben, a very fit-looking man, “I’m such a hypocrite. I spend so much time telling people every day to eat right. And exercise I have to make some changes. Starting now.” Ben responds by laughing it off, but we are left wondering what lifestyle changes are in store for Dr. Bailey in the future.
This episode elicited multiple questions for me. First, what was the motivation for Shonda Rimes, the producer, to create this storyline? Did the actress who plays Bailey, Chandra Wilson herself have a health scare and want to change her weight, and was that consequently written into the storyline to accommodate her impending weight loss? Do overweight characters like Bailey normalize overweight and could her weight loss and the weight loss of other characters in popular television normalize weight loss? Also, what will happen to Bailey as a character and to Wilson as an actress if she does achieve change?
In light of our conversations about campaigns and the Sabido method last week, I’m interested in how eating and diet could be utilized in dramas such as Grey’s Anatomy to affect health behavior changes in the general public. The United States public might not be as enamored with serials whose sole purpose is social or behavior change, but could writers of these shows be convinced to change the way food is portrayed in their shows, or convinced to have characters who are not only “fat,” but also take steps to change their health behaviors and have eventual success?
I believe that the normalizing of healthy eating, such as the normalizing of not smoking in television shows could happen and could affect public health changes. We rarely see smoking characters on television anymore; why can’t we see characters who generally eat healthy food, or at least have conversations about these behaviors as Bailey and Ben did last night? It seems odd that it could be radical to have a character lose weight, but I was completely sidelined by last night’s episode. Normally overweight characters just stay overweight, and their health status is only talked about in a humorous manner. I would like to spend more time in my final paper for this class exploring ways that healthy eating might become more normative in television, and envisioning how this might look in the context of a concrete action plan.
Thanks Jill for putting into words what I could not say the other night in class! I believe in the United States being overweight and obese has become normal. With one-thrid or more (depending on the area of the country you live in) of the individuals we encounter on the day-to-day basis falling into this category it becomes hard to realize and address the issue of obese. I love the idea of using the Sabido campaigns in the United States, but am uncertain about how affective they would actual be in this country. I think the scenario you chose in Grey's Anatomy because it is seen in most hospitals to date. How are medical professionals supposed to give patients advice about diet and exercise when many of them are fighting the same battle? Maybe if doctors could share there success story it would be more impactful, but the reality is that with health the battle is constant and takes many years to win. How would that depiction be made realistic through a television series? Even if producers were able to eloquently convey this, how would we know that people will relate this story into something that they could achieve themselves?
ReplyDeleteThe issue of obesity does not pertain to the United States alone it is becoming an epidemic, a real global health issue. A decade ago especially in Africa, being fat is seeing as a sign of wealth, good living because majority of the people can hardly afford a three square meals a day so being overweight is interpreted as being beautiful/handsome and then eating and living good. This is because HIV/AIDS also plays a role in how a supposed healthy African should look. Being slim/thin or simply losing weight" is a bad sign for many Africans. It could be interpreted as one has HIV/AIDS. Luckily, with national sensitizing campaigns and as more and more people are educated, that mindset is thrown overboard. With the advent of technological devices and fast food joints across many African cities and towns, people have changed their traditional lifestyles , adopted a Western style diets and obesity is looking them in the face and to say the least, is on the rise in Africa. I wonder how Africa is going to deal with this paradoxical situation, malnutrition versus obesity.
ReplyDeleteJill, this is an excellent post! Many of the changes we have talked about in class would require some sort of normalizing-- exercising regularity, eating better, getting whatever thing checked out according to whatever specific guidelines. To play the devil's advocate-- how much of an impact do you think banning smoking characters (or whatever regulation or shaming has occurred) has had on smoking prevalence? Did eliminating that smoking Camel stop people from smoking Camels or any cigarette? I think it can't hurt to attempt to normalize these healthy behaviors, but it is hard to quantify impact. Counterpoint: I know that in one instance of entertainment-education, researchers actually looking at the sale of a specific brand or type of sewing machine to demonstrate or support the contention that elements in the E-E had a measurable impact on society. The main character in this E-E used the specific brand or type (Singer?) and the machine played an integral part in the show.
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