Sociologist Has Different View of Obesity Epidemic

Headlines tell us the nation is getting fatter, and that obesity has become an epidemic. But there is more to the story, according to one University of Houston sociologist.

While she acknowledges that there has been a shift in body weight over the years, assistant sociology professor Samantha Kwan looks at obesity from a different perspective.

The term obesity was constructed by the medical community, Kwan says. And the use of the Body Mass Index, which measures obesity, as the main factor to define obesity, has resulted in the media greatly overstating the rise of the condition.

"This epidemic has been constructed to the benefit of the medical industry that has in part medicalized the treatment of obesity over the years," Kwan says. "While there may be a rise in 'obesity,' the BMI is not always accurate. Some scholars describe this epidemic more as a moral panic. While there may be some truths to rising rates, they have been overstated."

Kwan, who has been studying gender and body image since 2001, examines how cultural beauty messages about fat interact with other cultural messages about fat, such as health discourses. This is summarized in her article "Framing the Fat Body: Contested Meanings between Government, Activists and Industry," published in February's Sociological Inquiry.

"I am trying to get students and audiences to understand that there are competing cultural meanings about the fat body," Kwan says. "Fat does not, in itself, signify unhealthy and unattractive. These are cultural constructions. We as a society say what it means to be fat, and right now cultural discourses say it's ugly and unhealthy to be fat. … It's also assumed that the body is a reflection of the psyche, including one’s moral fiber."

Kwan has found that women's self-esteem is more closely tied to weight than men's.

"Women care about their weight and appearance, and I don't want to say that they are being co-opted by cultural messages," Kwan says. "They are not necessarily cultural dupes with false consciousness. They want to lose weight, look good/thin/beautiful, and to conform to body messages because there are rewards to be gained and sanctions to be avoided when one is, or passes, as thin."

Kwan covers this topic more closely in her article "Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender and Questions of Agency," published in February's Sociology Compass. Along with co-author Mary Nell Trautner, of the University at Buffalo, SUNY, Kwan addresses how physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others and higher self-esteem.

"Feeling like they’re unattractive is a big problem women struggle with, and a lot of this has to do with beauty ideals," Kwan says. "Yes, there is a culture out there that says women are supposed to look a certain way. Research shows that promotions and wages are based partly on the way women look, including their weight. Women are preoccupied with losing weight; yet conforming to norms can bring benefits beyond being healthier. You can avoid a lot of the stigma, and we know women are stigmatized for being 'overweight.' "

Again, while Kwan states that she believes the obesity epidemic is overstated and that we need to understand how the fat body and this "epidemic" are socially constructed, she attributes many factors to the rise in weight, including the availability of quick, inexpensive foods and lack of affordable ways to exercise.

"There's a lot of confusion regarding nutrition information, and consumers often get conflicting messages about diet and activity," she says. "There is some evidence that the food industry sometimes uses the same strategies as the tobacco industry to mislead consumers."

Kwan has an article discussing this topic more closely titled "Individual versus Corporate Responsibility: Market Choice, the Food Industry and the Pervasiveness of Moral Models of Fatness," to be published later this year. She also has received a University of Houston Women's Studies Faculty Summer Fellowship to complete a book on contested cultural meanings about body, health and weight.

UH Prof Advances Science in Third-World Countries

A University of Houston professor takes the phrase "pay it forward" to heart in his quest to advance science in Third-World countries.

Once a budding physicist seeking opportunities 30 years ago in his native Panama, Carlos Ordóñez, an associate professor of physics at UH, recruits up-and-coming scientists from Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Brazil and other countries, matching them with UH's top researchers in biology, chemistry and physics for post-doctoral fellowships. During these two-year fellowships, the Latin American students gain valuable experience working with prominent faculty and using state-of-the-art facilities often not available in their home countries.

"Third-World countries are making great efforts to get up to speed on science and technology, and cultivating these collaborative links enhances the human infrastructure in those countries," Ordóñez said. "Most of these UH fellows return home after the program, equipped with new contacts and colleagues to help strengthen scientific partnerships between the United States and Latin America.

Ordóñez is passionate about building these partnerships because he also was the beneficiary of a life-changing opportunity to come to the United States. He graduated from the University of Panama with honors and excelled at physics, yet he had little exposure to research until he came to the University of Texas for doctoral studies.

"Competing in such a distinguished research program forced a sharp learning curve," Ordóñez said. "I was used to solving problems I was given, but now I had to come up with my own questions. Being a student is a passive process, but in research you have to be creative and proactive. The realization that I could go beyond simply acquiring knowledge to actually producing it was an eye-opening experience."

While Ordóñez was an excellent physics student in his homeland, it was the opportunity to study in the United States with world-class researchers that helped launch his accomplished career as a theoretical physicist. He now works to extend those same opportunities to promising young scientists from Latin America.

His efforts earned him the American Physical Society's 2009 John Wheatley Award, which recognizes physicists who have contributed to the development of science in Third-World countries. The selection committee not only noted his extensive contributions to developing physics throughout Latin America, but also his work with World Laboratory to expand exchange and cooperation between the United States and Latin American.

Founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986, World Laboratory is an international organization that promotes science in developing countries, operating on the premise that one of the driving forces behind social progress in a society is scientific discovery. With more than four times as many people living in developing countries as compared to industrialized nations, scientists such as Ordóñez and his World Laboratory colleagues seek to eliminate this gap that separates the two. One way to accomplish this is by giving promising new scientists in Third-World countries the means to confront and resolve their problems through such methods as giving them access to learn in some of the world’s most prestigious laboratories. They can then bring what they learn back to their homelands to help them with innovative scientific and technological projects in their own countries.

Ordóñez' research at UH centers on high-energy theoretical physics, and his work in theoretical nuclear physics is widely cited. He and his collaborators also are engaged in researching quantum field theory, with applications in nuclear, condensed and high-energy physics. His current interests include investigating how our universe works through researching the thermodynamics of black holes, as well as string physics.

"Recently, I started investigating how to apply some of the tools learned in studying these cutting-edge topics in gravity and particle physics to the understanding of cold atoms and molecules and other condensed matter systems," Ordóñez said. "This is a very exciting and recent development to which I hope to make a contribution."

Joining UH in 1997, he also has taught and done research at the University of Texas at Austin, The Rockefeller University, New York University, Vanderbilt University, The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Santa Barbara, as well as having had short-term visits to many other institutions. Ordóñez received his B.S. in physics from the University of Panama in 1979 and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Texas in 1986. He has been a World Laboratory Fellow and a Simon Guggenheim Fellow, is a member of the American Physical Society and a founding member of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists.