IJE Advance Access originally published online on June 7, 2008
International Journal of Epidemiology 2008 37(5):963-965; doi:10.1093/ije/dyn095
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2008; all rights reserved.
Generation XL
Felicia Webb
Corresponding author. 64 Kensington Gardens Square, London W2 4DG. E-mail: felicia{at}feliciawebb.co.uk
Accepted 24 April 2008
As a documentary photographer, I aim to use my work to highlight social issues in a humanistic and sensitive, yet powerful way. I try to get behind the headlines and inside the statistics. How is obesity shaping people's lives? Which illnesses are obese children prone to and how do they cope? What do families think about the medical pressure to lose weight and what are the challenges they face? Do they experience stigma? In my work I want to let them speak for themselves, so the captions are their own words. My goal is for people to see this issue through their eyes—and to empathize with their struggles.
By 2003, I had already spent 3 years working with sufferers of anorexia and bulimia. They were the clinical tip of a culture that worships thinness. I noticed that while much of the world was obsessed with being thin, obesity was also becoming a major health problem. Our relationship with food has become complex, often divorced from what nature intended, and our bodies have become a battleground. I started to consider what part the influential—and multi-billion pound—fashion, diet, pharmaceutical and food industries play in this. Fashion and the media, despot-like, dictate a silhouette more befitting an adolescent, trapping ever more victims in a net of dieting and distress. Meanwhile we are deluged by calorie-rich fast food, bombarded by advertising urging us to eat more, to try yet another new snack or the latest sugar-laden fizzy drink. They are usually cheap and always readily available—often indeed inescapable. Most of us earn our living by sitting still. We drive everywhere (in some cities there is little choice), there is less sport in schools, and we are getting out of the habit of exerting ourselves physically.
One of the most alarming rises in obesity-related problems has been in children—our future. Over the course of 2 years, I spent time with families in Houston, Philadelphia and California. Their views and concerns illuminated many of the threads that form this issue—they are psychological, medical, economic, cultural, political and global.
View larger version (134K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 1 Jonathan, 14, and his sister Yomara, 9, at an all-you-can-eat buffet, Houston. Both Jonathan and Yomara have fatty liver disease. ‘I asked the doctors is there anything you can do instead of just telling them what they can and can't eat? Jonathan is in a dangerous zone, they already talked to him and it doesn't seem to work’. Martha, their mother
|
|
View larger version (139K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 2 Jonathan, 14, has obstructive sleep apnoea. Excess fat around the throat and the weight of his chest make breathing difficult, causing a chronic lack of oxygen, which can damage the heart and lungs. He sleeps with a BIPAP mask to force oxygen into his lungs
|
|
View larger version (127K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 3 John Jr recovers after a liver biopsy revealed he has obesity-related fatty liver disease. ‘He's only 14 and we're noticing all kinds of health problems that are weight related, every time we turn around it's something different. It's not a matter of if he becomes diabetic too, it's a matter of when. He'll tell you his weight bothers him and he wants to lose it. It affects his self-esteem, his peer relations, feeling he doesn't fit in because he's bigger’. Angela, his mother
|
|
View larger version (127K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 4 ‘My diabetes is already worse and I worry about that all the time. I'm so lazy, when I think that for the rest of my life I'll have to exercise and eat in a certain way, it just seems so much work. Being overweight, food is your comfort and you turn to it because you're lonely inside. I guess everyone has their crutch and food is mine’. Summer, 17
|
|
View larger version (137K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 5 ‘Here at home we never fry, we do portion control, bla bla, but at school it's pizza and chocolate cake. She's a 6 year old overweight child, how can you say to her "you can't have that" when the children next to her are all eating it?’ Melanie with her daughter Sheyenne
|
|
View larger version (128K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 6 Sheyenne and Noel Gonzalez, her psychotherapist at the Weigh of Life clinic at the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Sheyenne attends the 15-week course weekly to try to help her lose weight and learn new patterns of behaviour around food and exercise
|
|
View larger version (135K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 7 Western children watch about 3 h of TV a day—one and a half months of the year. Cash-strapped schools have compounded the problem by abandoning sport. ‘Shamia will beg me to go outside and play, but I work two jobs and need to sleep so I say "later". That's my fault. But it's not safe for them to be outside alone so what can I do?’ Stephanie, Shamia's mother, Philadelphia
|
|
View larger version (117K):
[in this window]
[in a new window]
[Download PowerPoint slide]
|
Photo 8 ‘I've always used food to deal with my emotions. I've done Weight Watchers, Atkins, nutritionists – you lose it, gain it back and then some. It sucks. Nothing about this can be changed overnight or even in 6 months. It's a forever changing process’. Jaimie, 18, right
|
|
 |
Acknowledgements
|
|---|
 Top
 Acknowledgements
|
|---|
This project was produced with the help of Dr William Klish
and his team at the Texas Children's Hospital, Dr Nicolas Stettler
at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Academy of
the Sierras in California. It has been published all over the
world in magazines such as the Independent Magazine, Men's Health,
New Scientist and Newsweek. It won a Winston Churchill Travelling
Fellowship, a World Press Photo award, a Visions of Science
award and the NPPA/Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant. F.W.'s
work can be seen at
www.feliciawebb.co.uk.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
