...So the other day I was at the dentist, and it turns out I need a tooth implant. Basically, the dentist screws a titanium screw into my bone and another dentist slaps a crown on it. It costs a fortune and most insurances pay for none of it, not even the crown, which is exactly like any other crown that they do pay a part of.... But the vagaries of insurance policies is not the main subject of today’s rant.
What insurance policies do pay for, and this really boggles the mind, are elective gastric bypasses. At some other time in the history of the western world one might have marveled at the insane idea of such a procedure, nowadays, it’s so commonplace that even kids know all about them.
Elective gastric bypasses are major surgeries that people elect to do because they are too weak willed to stop over-consuming bad food. Rather than slowing down their food intake, changing their eating habits, and god forbid, exercising a little, they prefer to pay (or rather, have the insurance pay) a doctor to build a deviation in their body cavity that carries the food they will one day again over-consume around most of their stomachs in order to try to lose weight! This is whack.
...So, there I was in the waiting room of the dentist’s office, trying damn hard not to pay attention to the big man speaking loudly on his cell phone about this and that medical test. When he finished his phone conversation, he turned to me and the woman sitting next to me and proudly explained that he was going in for a gastric bypass and that he had been undergoing (insurance-paid) tests since August.
He proceeded to explain how it was that after several days of an insurance-paid hospital stay, he will not be hungry at all and will have to force himself to eat 5 small meals a day until his new unnaturally reduced stomach gets used to taking in food. The obvious question here is, “Why not just eat the 5 small meals and forgo the surgery completely in order to lose weight naturally?” And of course, big mouth that I have, I asked it of him. He laughed and told me that my suggestion was exactly what his father had told him to do; but that nah, he was going ahead with the bypass. I sincerely hope that it works for him; but the idea that this man actually prefers to undergo serious, major, unnatural, invasive surgery rather than simply regulating his food intake is, well, whack.
In America, when one wonders whether or not to eat a questionable food item, the saying goes What doesn’t kill you makes you strong. Not dying and getting strong is positive; and the saying speaks to a certain American cultural attitude of yore where strength, physical and of character, was a goal to be achieved. Under the same circumstances Brazilians say O que num mata engorda, which translates to that which does not kill you makes you fat. On the surface, becoming fat does not seem like such a “good” until one takes into account that 31% of the Brazilian population lives under the poverty level, thus making gaining weight, something wealthy society might view as bad, a good.
These days I’m thinking that we need to change our saying and adopt the Brazilian phrase here in the good US of A. It would be used in a different context of course, one in which obesity runs rampant. And one where, quite literally, that which does not kill you really makes you just fat and not very strong at all.
Grace Park, "Battling Obesity"
Addendum 1
At the time I met Mr. Gastric Bypass, a student of mine was dealing with the phenomenon of obesity in America in her artwork and I couldn’t wait to tell her my story. When I saw her in class again, I told her and she screamed with the kind of glee one feels at encountering common ground. She proceeded to tell me how two of her mother’s female co-workers had the same thing done (!) And moreover, how these women gained back all the weight they lost initially because, well, they did not change their lifestyle and eating habits (!)
How does one justify undergoing an expensive, major, invasive, dangerous surgery that reduces one’s stomach to a tenth of its size, only to make no personal choices at self control after undergoing the procedure? Double whack!
Heironymus Bosch, Gluttony
Addendum 2
Last week I was changing in the dressing room at the gym where I swim when again I was made aware of the over-use of gastric bypasses to ostensibly solve problems of obesity, and in this case, of religious precepts and moral character as well. I was not in the best of moods and was deeply engrossed in narcissistic thoughts about how to get in a better one. Namely, I was involved in thoughts of the logistics of moving away from here. Did I want to go south towards the warmth or north towards culture... The conversation that invaded my hearing space at the time was between two women, one that was married to a Baptist pastor and the other that had a Baptist pastor as a cousin. One of the reasons I hate this place is its zealotry, and at that moment there were two pastors too many in the room making my mood even darker. Its uncanny how much talk of “church” I hear in that damn dressing room.
After showering and before entering the pool, I heard one of the women saying to the other, “The church made my cousin get a gastric bypass. He was too fat to be a pastor and gluttony is a sin, so they wanted him to lose weight.” Heh heh heh heh--- hell, I was in a horrible mood, but I couldn’t help laughing at the irony of what I was hearing.
Now, I really shun organized religion; but I don’t deny that within all scriptures there are good paths that people can truly and honestly follow within an organized church or, better yet, without it. “Sin” is a big word that means very little to me; but yeah, gluttony is not a good thing. However, curing gluttony through the expediency of a gastric bypass does not seem to me to actually take care of the root problem, which is one of character and not physics. It seems to run contrary to what the teachings having to do with sinful behavior are all about. That the elders of this man's church chose to use this solution, ultimately one of marketing, only confirms my utter distrust of organized religion. Triple whack.
O que não mata engorda. Hail hail to the new normal: a culture of quick fixes and the relinquishing of personal responsibility....
Paul Cadmus, Gluttony
Note:
I must admit that Cadmus’ vision of the sin of Gluttony is a little over the top and I’m having serious trouble looking at it. although I love Paul Cadmus, I truly don’t think I could live in the same house as this picture; thank god MOMA owns it. That being said, the other day I was listening to
“Whad’ya Know?” (December 11, 2nd hour) on the radio, and Michael opened the phone lines for calls about what could one visualize in order to stop over-eating. To me, this painting could very well serve as that image....
