Dr. Regina Benjamin: The Problem of Weight and Image

Who cares if the surgeon general is about 40 pounds overweight, as is the case with Regina Benjamin—President Obama’s nominee for the position?  There is a perfectly good sense in which it should not matter, just so long as she can do her job well.  And the job of the surgeon general is not about skinny dipping or doing high-fashion runway performances. Unfortunately, there is a perfectly good sense in which it does matter—or so does in the present times.  In a culture in which people make all sorts of excuses for themselves, a overweight surgeon general may very facilitate just that sort of thing.

I can hear it now: “I don’t see why I should have to lose weight.  Look, the Surgeon General Benjamin is overweight; and her extra weight did not get in the way of her success”.  Of course, no one should think like that.  Alas, it is a sign of the times that people will think like that.

After all, this is the culture when, on the one hand, everyone insists that have the right to do as they please and, on the other, everyone is claiming to be addicted to whatever it is they do more than they should do.  It is stunning the pitiful excuses make for their own negligent and unhealthy behavior.

There was surely a time when any number of people might have noted that Regina Benjamin is about 40 pounds overweight, would have deemed this unfortunate about her, and then they would have been exhibited a certain determination that no such would ever happen to them.  Far from using the fact that she is overweight as an excuse to be indifferent to their own weight, they would have used this fact about her as a source of inspiration, if you will, not to become like her.  What is more, they would have attended more to the fact that she is intellectually very talented than to the fact that she is overweight.  Alas, that was back in the day when people had what goes by the name of commonsense.

There was the time when the most unschooled person could be counted to have a considerable amount of commonsense.  Nowadays, par contrast, there seems to be no correlation at all between commonsense and being well-educated.  To hear the way in which some who hold professional degrees reason about matters, one would think that they were enduring perpetual brain fart.

Some say it is irrelevant that Dr. Regina Benjamin is overweight.  Others say that it is absolutely relevant.  The fact of the matter is that they both have point.

It should not take too much commonsense to see that.  And that, of course, is just the problem.

When self-discipline generally had a purchase upon people’s lives and people actually thought before they acted and so forth: Those who say that Dr. Benjamin’s weight is irrelevant are perfectly right.  There was also a time when images did far less work in society.  It is absolutely undeniable that nowadays, though, that images do a lot of work.  Indeed, images often do more work than the words accompanying the images.

In a culture that is image-driven, it is fare to ask what kind of impact will Dr. Regina Benjamin’s image have upon others?  I wish that I could say that it will not have a negative impact.  Alas, there is little, if any, reason to think that this is so.  I have indicated above a line of reasoning above that any number of people might employ to excuse the fact that they are overweight.  And that, unfortunately, is a very serious problem.  This is not how things should go.  However, there is very little reason to think that things will not proceed in the way.  Suddenly, Dr. Benjamin has become the poster-child for the idea that a little extra weight is good for you.  After all, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has already weighed in support of Regina Benjamin.  So the poster-child point that was just made is hardly ridiculous.

This is also leads me to question the thoughtfulness of President Obama.  How could a man who understands the impact of images as well as he does be so obtuse the very real problems that Dr. Benjamin’s image may cause?  Let us concede for the sake of argument that it is absolutely wonderful that she is a black person.  None of this undercuts the point that I have been making.  In fact, things might be exacerbate with her having the position, since it might undercut the motivation of blacks to maintain their weight, which is a very significant matter given the prevalence of high-blood pressure among blacks.  This is known as a Pyrrhic victory.  The delight that many will take in a black holding the office will be offset by the damage that will occur to the health of many black people who used Dr. Regina Benjamin’s image as an overweight person to excuse their failing to maintain their weight.

Of course, I could be terribly wrong; and I very much hope that I am, since I imagine that Dr. Benjamin will be confirmed.  What is true, though, is that we live in a society in which people feel entitled to given into their feelings and in which the self-examination of our feelings is viewed as a burden.  This contributes to our being a society that is driven by images.  Against, this backdrop it would seem that the odds of me being wrong are rather like the odds of surviving a plane crash.  It happens.  Just so, no one in her or his right mind would count upon surviving a plane crash.

In a reasonable society in which self-discipline and commonsense prevailed and, furthermore, people are not driven by images or strongly disposed to make excuses for themselves, nothing would be more irrelevant than the fact that Dr. Regina Benjamin is about 40 pounds overweight.  That society is manifestly not the American one.  And that fact makes it utterly disingenuous to say that weight is not a relevant factor.