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galvanizing support for government intervention into personal consumption (e.g., alcohol, cigarette, or drug consumption) has historically required, among other things, that a behavior be mentally connected to “demon users,” that is poor, immigrant, or otherwise socially marginal populations. 73 British sociologist Stanley Cohen coined the term moral panic to speak of an exaggerated concern over an issue that involves an alleged breakdown in public morality and folk devil to speak of the people who are blamed. 74 In discussions of obesity, the folk devils (or demon users) are portrayed as fat people themselves, who are seen as bringing obesity on themselves through bad personal choices, thereby creating problems for society as a whole. (One could call them “fat devils.”)
    A satirical cartoon published in The New York Times , and shown below in image 1.2, entitled “How Obese People Are Responsible for Everything Bad,” pokes fun at the idea that fat people are scapegoated, while obscuring how this often reinforces other forms of inequality based on class, race and gender. 75 It shows a sequence in which: 1. Obese person [depicted as white male of unknown class background] eats cake, causing 2. a button to pop from shirt, turning on a propane torch, 3.which causes global warming and 4. heats water, killing endangered species . 5. Condensed water causes flower to grow, 6. tipping box containing nuclear secrets, 7. which fall into a spy’s hands, causing nuclear proliferation . 8. Spy runs away on a treadmill, which turns a buzz saw that, 9. cuts down a Brazilian rain forest . While this cartoon is satirical, real news stories present similar arguments. “If Americans continue to pack on pounds, obesity will cost the USA about $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018, eating up about 21 percent of health-care spending,” a 2009 USA Today article claims. 76 “America’s growing waistlines are hurting the bottom lines of airline companies as the extra pounds on passengers are causing a drag on planes,” according to a 2004 USA Today article, concluding, in the words of a spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America, “Passengers gain weight, but airlines are the ones that go on a diet.” 77 “The extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact,” this article notes, “as an estimated 3.8 million extra tons of carbon dioxide were released into the air, according to the study.” 78 A 2009 CNN article notes: “Another reason to stay in shape: Thinner people contribute less to global warming, according to a new study.” This article cites research claiming “because of food production and transportation factors, a population of heavier people contributes more harmful gases to the planet than a population of thin people. Given that it takes more energy to move heavier people, transportation of heavier people requires more fuel, which creates more greenhouse gas emissions, the authors write.” 79

    Image 1.2: A satirical rendition of the scapegoating of fat people. Credit: Ron Barrett.

    Such accounts obscure the fact that wealthier people tend both to be thinner and to fly more on average than the less affluent. Accounting for these patterns would complicate the claim that fat people contribute more to global warming than do thinner people. In contexts in which food is scarce, being fat signals access to limited resources. Yet in the contemporary rich nations, in which there is an abundance of cheap sources of calories, the wealthiest—who still consume far more per capita than average citizens—are now often the thinnest. Despite this, fat bodies continue to be read as the embodiment of greed and over-consumption. In fact, fat people’s relative lack of power (both because they are less likely to be wealthy and because fatness is independently stigmatizing) makes them an easy target.
    Cohen argues that, in order for a moral panic to emerge, there must be a consensus that the beliefs or