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I'm going to put words into the mouth of a New York Times reporter. I'm doing it here and I'm doing it on purpose. The words I made up are in the paragraph below. See if you can identify them. The reporter actually did say all of the other words.
"Adults who have been overweight since high school are more likely to be unemployed or on welfare than those who gained weight gradually during their 20s and 30s, according to a study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology. People who have been persistently overweight since high school are also more likely to help and support their parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors, and have no more than a high school education, compared with those who have gained weight slowly over time, the study showed."
Which phrase did I substitute for the reporter's own words? How did you know?
Here's the original wording. I set in bold the phrase that I replaced in the edited version above.
"Adults who have been overweight since high school are more likely to be unemployed or on welfare than those who gained weight gradually during their 20s and 30s, according to a study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology. People who have been persistently overweight since high school are also more likely to be single at 40 and have no more than a high school education, compared with those who have gained weight slowly over time, the study showed."
What the reporter is doing is collecting all of the presumably bad things that will happen to you if you are fat in high school and stay that way through midlife - by 40, you are more likely to be unemployed, on welfare, and to have attained no more than a high school education. And, you are more likely to be single.
When you read my doctored version, the fake phrase probably stood out because it was a good thing in a sea of gloom. That good thing - being more likely to help and support parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors - actually IS true of people who are single, compared to those who are married.
One three letter word could have rescued the story from its singlism. The word is "but." I'd put it right after the sentence that described the increased likelihood of ending up unemployed or on welfare: "But people who have been persistently overweight since high school are also more likely to be single at 40." The "but" says: "I realize that being single is not the same kind of thing as being unemployed or on welfare." (At the same time, I don't want to suggest that people who are unemployed or on welfare should be stigmatized, either.)
If the reporter wanted to make an accurate and serious point about the link between marital status and obesity, maybe she could have asked what would happen to the girth of those single people if they did marry. An Australian study that followed more than 6000 women for 10 years has an answer: it was the partnered women who got fatter faster.
Oh, one last thing: That claim about how people who have stayed fat since high school are more likely to be single at 40 - it is not quite true. Research scientists have criteria for whether a particular finding is strong enough to be believed (rather than attributable to chance). The finding in question did not meet the criteria, though it was close. It is the sort of finding you might report as a suggestive trend with more research needed. It is not the sort of finding you report as fact in the paper of record.
The Times story is a great example of stealth singlism. It is not an in-your-face blatant and obvious insult. It just happens to mention staying single in the same sentence as being unemployed or on welfare, as if all three were equally undesirable. It doesn't mention what might happen if those single people were to marry. (They'd probably get fatter). And it also doesn't mention that the purported "stay fat, stay single" finding didn't even pass conventional statistical muster. The story is another feather that any given reader might not even notice, until said reader got crushed with a ton of them.
[Thanks to Jeanine for the heads-up about this Times story.]
