Breakthrough Writer: 1A Lesson Plan for “The Wages of Sin” by Francine Prose (197)

Part One. Lexicon:

One. The Nanny State, paragraphs 1 and 2: people are dumbed-down troglodytes who are so helpless to fend themselves it is necessary for the government to be a Big Nanny that cares for the infantile, incontinent appetites of the people by imposing stringent laws and regulations.

Two. Paternalistic; when someone takes on a parental role. This word often has a negative meaning, for it often suggests someone being presumptuous enough to be an authority over another.

Three. Obesity burden; tax payers have to absorb half the medical costs incurred by obesity-related ailments. Is that fair?

Four. Fat Tax dilemma. If taxing fat people and putting a “fat tax” on “fatty” items were to be effective, people would live longer and old age increase would put a NEW tax burden on tax payer.

Five. Stigma vs. the Nanny State; see page 198: the sense of shame, which is more powerful than any government regulations.

Six. Gluttony: the sin of overeating as a form of self-indulgence

Seven. The moral case against obesity: Gluttony shows a disrespect for the body and an excessive pandering to one’s ego.

Eight. Latent hostility against obese people: See page 198 at bottom: We claim to be compassionate towards the obese but in reality we are not when obesity inconveniences us. Airplane seats, for example.

Nine: The sin of the obese: To impose a burden on others by taking up an unfair amount of space. See 199 top.

Ten. Oversimplification: Attributing complex problem to simple cause: to blame obesity on sin or indulgence or ego is absurd. Obesity may be partly these things, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Eleven. Ubiquity of cheap, calorie-dense food: Ubiquity means “everywhere.”

Twelve. Either/Or Fallacy: to reduce an argument to two possibilities, either/or. For example to address the obesity crisis as either a sin or an illness is absurd. The problem is more complex.

Part Two. New Essay Option: Write a research paper that argues that the obesity crisis is neither a sin or an illness, but a complex problem that cannot be explained by a simple diagnosis. Your 6 mapping statements will explore 6 major causes of obesity. No doubt, a 5 or 6-page essay can’t address all 15 causes. That would require a book.

Part Three: The Two Best Books about Food I’ve Ever Read That Will Change Your Life:

Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Both writers discourage going on a diet. Instead, they encourage eating real foods that we like in moderation. Their information is priceless. Read their books and you will never get “punk-fed” again. Don’t let The Man poison your body or manipulate your eating habits.

Part Four. The 15 Causes of Obesity:

There is an abundance of convenient, cheap, calorie-rich food everywhere we go.
We move less than we did generations ago. Do we chase the animals we eat? No.
Mindless eating; not even knowing the quantity of what we consume every day, much of it done while talking, watching TV, or surfing the Internet, all forms of Mindless Eating. See book of same title by Brian Wansink.
Poverty; there is a relationship between poverty and obesity. This is due to a lack of education combined with reliance on cheap fast food.
Parents. Children eat what their parents eat. If the parents eat a “fat lifestyle,” so will their children.
Friends. We eat and look similar to our friends. We often call this “social eating.”
Eating processed foods instead of real foods and not knowing the difference. Please see In Defense of Eating: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. In short, only shop at the far left and right of supermarkets; avoid the middle; or shop at the Farmer’s Market.
Super-sized portions are marketed as a “good deal.” See the film Super Size Me and read the book Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser
Boredom; stay at home with nothing to do and you’ll overeat
Emotional eating; eating to feel “love” or “self-esteem” or because you feel lonely.
Lack of sleep. The more tired you are, the more you feed your blood sugar to compensate.
Education; knowing how to enjoy good healthy food should be very practical but too few people know how to prepare food for themselves that they both crave and that is good for them.
Learned helplessness
Dieting; it leads to weight gain, splurging, neuroses, and messes up the metabolism which rebels and goes on “shut down.”
Fast food is marketed to children in an aggressive way; see Fast Food Nation.

Part Five. Sample Thesis Statements (all of these are pretty good and take note they contradict each other as they go back and forth):

One: It’s morally wrong to be fat, for even though many are obese because of biological and environmental reasons, the majority of people submit to their fatness because of major character flaws, including __________________________, _______________________, ________________________, and ____________________.

Two: To condemn fat people as immoral is an outrageous oversimplification that ignores the many complex causes behind obesity. These so-called “character flaws” are really a reaction to deeper factors, which include ________________________, _______________________, _______________________, and ____________________________.

Three: To justify obesity as a “complex issue” is to enable fat people to go on with their immoral lives. In other words, justifying fatness is as immoral as fatness itself.

Four: To condemn defenders of the obese by calling these defenders enablers evidences a gross blindness to the deeper root causes of obesity, which these morally unrighteous prigs are determined to ignore. These causes include _______________________, ___________________________, _________________________, and _________________________.

Five: Calling me a “prig” for my stance against fat people does not change the fact that the obese population would be well served to embrace my moral prescription, which will not only alleviate their obesity but make them better, happier, responsible citizens. Thus, I am doing fat people a service, sir, while you, taking the role as paternalistic sympathizer, are actually helping to perpetuate their obese, moribund, morally bankrupt condition. Let us therefore proceed with my salubrious prescription, which entails ________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ___________________________.

An A Paragraph Must Contain:

Topic sentence
Supporting details
Transitions
Passionate distinctive writing voice
Concrete, colorful varied language

Sample Quiz Question: What is Francine Prose’s main point, or thesis, in “The Wages of Sin”? and how does she support it?

Sample A Paragraph Response

Pulpit thumpers decry that religion is dead in America and that a revival must sweep the nation soon lest we suffer the fiery annihilation of Sodom and Gomorra. These doomsday prophets are wrong. Religion is alive and well. As Francine Prose renders in her acute and trenchant essay “The Wages of Sin,” the Supercilious Fat Police and their acolytes who look upon fat people as a breed of bloated sinners have co-opted religious language and metaphor to divide society into two sides: The reedy svelte souls bound for heaven and the scandalously obese souls bound for hell. To reinforce this polarization, the Fat Police, and even self-loathing fat people themselves, assert big government micromanagement of “fat behavior,” so that there are fat taxes imposed on lovers of movie popcorn, colossal burritos, super-sized buckets of ice cream and soda, and other foods that pose a threat to one’s salvation. The Fat Police and their disciples have also proselytized the gospel that moral depravity, “immoral self-indulgence,” is at the root of obesity, so that it is clear that fat people are not helpless victims of the environment or genetic hard-wiring but the result of their own damnable sloth, gluttony, and avarice. Another category that insures fat people suffer the stamp of stigmatization is society’s collective resentment that corpulent fleshy souls are guilty of hogging or usurping other people’s personal space. What kind of wickedness allows the fat person to assert his gargantuan belly into our area when he squeezes next to us on a train, a bus, or an airplane? His rude and selfish sin so egregious that he and his obese brothers and sisters should pay for not one but two airline or bus tickets to accommodate their elephantine rumps. Finally, if fat people can be saved at all, they must resort to a Higher Power: Their countless tons of unwanted flab can only be shed if they throw themselves upon the Alter of God’s Mercy and embrace a variety of spiritual rehabilitations—Twelve Step Programs, revivalist gospel tracts, and other motivational tools rooted in the language of God, the devil, sin, and divine providence.