Which version do you think is best? And any other comments are welcome. Except for weight-loss advocacy or WLS advocacy — take that somewhere else, please.
(I’m especially interested in comments and suggestions from other fat-positive and anti-WLS folks.)
VERSION A:
VERSION B:
VERSION C:
Thanks!
I would recommend Version B. Version A makes me a little uncomfortable, because I am close to someone who has had gastric bypass and I don’t really like the idea that she is going to die because she made that decision. Version C has the woman think that her life hasn’t changed all that much, which seems to go against the point of the cartoon.
If you really want to twist the knife in implying that the companies / doctors that promote gastric bypass surgery are evil, go with version A, which implies that they’re still using the testimonial of a past customer in advertising after she’s been killed by their product.
Man, what is this, my designated day to crap on Amp?
There’s no “cycle” with weight loss surgery. You have the surgery, you lose the weight and/or experience the complications, your life is pretty crappy from there on out. It’s like the “cycle” of blowing your brains out; it’s bad but you don’t get to go back to the beginning again after you pull the trigger. So all of your cartoons kind of suck, in that they’re all starting from a broken narrative premise. I (on second and third readings) see that the person in the new ad is the original victim, so you’re alluding to a different cycle, but that doesn’t come through on first reading. (Or it didn’t for me, anyway.)
My wife is one of the earliest victims of the bariatric surgeons. They basically butchered her. So I’m on your side of this argument, lest you interpret this as just the usual Rob contrarianism.
A is the best cartoon for emphasis and drama.
However, a lot of people do survive for extended periods after WLS. Some of them keep a lot of the weight off.
This means that anyone who knows such people and who doesn’t know of anyone who’s been badly hurt by WLS will look at A (or even the milder B or C) and think it’s false.
I’m not sure how you make a vivid cartoon about risks rather than certainties.
Robert, the idea of the cycle is that the (frequently temporary) weight loss from WLS is used to get the next batch of people to get the surgery.
Jeez, Robert, I’m sorry. Thanks for sharing that.
You too, Chris. I also had a friend who got the surgery. Hasn’t dies yet, but has regained all the weight.
Man, now I don’t feel like dissecting Roberts comment. Suffice it to say, I think it’s appropriate to characterize the issue as promoting a cycle: Each patient’s temporary “success story” prompts ever more people to seek the surgery (as illustrated by the poster). If potential patients could see patients that had had the surgery 10 (?) years earlier it would provide better informed consent.
I agree with Chris that Version A creeps me out. But that’s because the morbidity stats are bona fide creepy. Go with it.
Version A packs more punch, and as obesity is constantly framed as this life-or-death issue, it keeps within the theme. Calling it a “cycle”, using the association of it happening to the *same* person, while in fact have it draw in the next person just adds to the oomph.
I’m really not comfortable with version A. Like others, I’m close to someone who elected to have weight loss surgery. Her decision was directly related to having a heart attack in her mid-20s, and I’d hate to have her encounter that cartoon and stress over whether she made the best decision or if she traded one fast-track to an early grave for another.
I think either of the other two versions communicate the point without taunting those who’ve made the decision to have WLS with “Neener, you’re gonna die anyway, sucker!”
I don’t like version B, her saying she’s perpetually malnourished in panel 4 is too close to a restatement of panel 2 and takes me out of the comic. I find version A to be funniest, but maybe a little too morbid. I love the dark humor that her epitaph reads “she was thin once”. Version C I like more than version A, but it feels too much like she gets fat because she’s depressed in stage 4 which I don’t think is the point, but it leads to that because we have stage one causes stage 2 causes stage 3 causes stage 4, but then stage 5 is sort of unrelated, whereas version A has a nice causal string of 1->2->3->4->5 with stage 3 also leading to the new stage 1, which is helped by the placement of panel 3 right above 6.
Regardless which version you go with, I’d add something to panel 3 to indicate that she’s being photographed–I think it’ll make the connection that much clearer to the reader.
I like Version A best. Version C loses me at panel four. It lacks any punch at all. Version B is okay, but doesn’t hit as hard as A.
Version A has macabre humor going for it, which is often my thing. But I think that the thing which really does it for me is the epitaph. It beautifully juxtaposes a temporary thinness with a very permanent consequence of very invasive surgery.
Grace
Ooh, this is tough. I love the “she was thin for a little while” on the tombstone, but I agree that the underlying message is a little overly harsh. I’m not creative enough to come up with any suggestions for getting that message through without it being on an actual tombstone, though…
Regardless of the version, I have to point out that her hair looks unfortunately like a elephant trunk in the “hanging her head” panels.
(otherwise, I like A. No one is looking for subtlety in a comic!)
As I read them
A says WLS will give you what you want and than kill you
B says WLS will give you what you want but you getting what you want won’t make you happy.
C says WLS will give you what you want, but you won’t be happy because you didn’t ‘earn’ it.
I think C reinforces the idea that thin is a moral virtue.
I think B isn’t very effective because you’re not showing that being thin isn’t that big an improvement, you’re just saying it outright. This contradicts the previous panel btw. I do think there’s an opportunity to make a strip that shows being thin isn’t that much better.
So I like A the best and I think you should go with that, but I did read some of the other comments and they do give me pause.
To make it more obvious that the poster on the last panel is the woman of earlier, how about reproducing the YAY! stylised word on the panel earlier in the same way as on the last panel. It took me a little while to notice that the poster had changed, too.
Also…not to get all left-wingy and victim-advocaty on you, but isn’t this cartoon going to end up placing the blame on the people getting the surgery, rather than the weight loss industry pushing it? I was agreeing mentally with @13 and @9 about making it clearer that the patient was the new spokesmodel, for the dimbulbs like me who didn’t get that…and then it occurred to me, where’s the actual bad guy in this cartoon?
It’s not the weight loss gal. She may be a little clueless, but there’s no villainy in wanting to look the way people tell you you ought to want to look. It’s not the doctor, really; he’s giving people what they say they want. Worst case, he’s the prison camp guard: guy doing an evil job, perhaps with as much kindness as he can, perhaps not, but either way not the Prime Evil.
Rather, it’s the industry that tells people that they aren’t good enough. And other than implicitly, the industry is not shown. (That’s obviously because you’re a horrible, probably racist, shill for the WLS industry, Amp.)
I don’t know how to fix this artistically (it’s hard to put an industry in one panel, and there’s no one single gloating mastermind sitting on a pile of money) but it really bothers me. People are going to read this and think “ha, what a dumb fattie to think this was the solution”, not the significantly more nuanced perspective that I think you’re actually going for.
Having been there done that (and it didn’t work), and having lost my best friend because she went there did that, I would combine all the cartoons into one – have Stages 1, 2, & 3 followed by Stage 4B/5B, Stage 4C/5C, and Stage 4A/5A and ending with Stage 1 with a new potential client. Maybe using 3 different people in Stages 1, 2, & 3 with a different one of them for each of the Stages 4/5? That covers all of your possible outcomes, but possibly isn’t as hard-hitting as Version A.
I don’t know, I’m definitely anti-WLS now, and think something like this is very much needed.
I agree with Robert, for perhaps the first time ever.
A is best. As to the argument that weightloss surgery doesn’t kill everyone (or even most people who get it) – a cartoon does not neccesarily covey the “average” case. Death is definitely way too common an outcome for WLS, – so I don’t think there is anything misleading about showing it as the outcome in one case. B & C are halfass in comparison.
Apparently uniquely among your readers, I like C the best.
No, no–I like C the best as well. I think the “If you’re thin life will magically be unicorns” line is a very dominant mis/conception in culture, so maybe more people would relate to that.
But even more than I like C the best, I like A the *least*. The gravestone joke? Yeah, that’s how many people with eating disorders actually think. “Well, maybe I’ll die, but at least I’ll die thin.” It’s a *positive* thing, not a scary, negative one. I know that’s not the subject with which the cartoon deals, and it’s not a huge percentage of your readership, but that panel is a little too close to reality for comfort.
Thanks for everyone’s comments! This is really helpful.
So have I decided how to do the cartoon yet….? Er, no. But I’m still thinking hard about it.
I also liked C the best, and agreed with everything Robert said. In these comments on this thread.
What I’d do:
Take C as base.
Make #1 a bit more subtle. Lose the word ‘ad’, at the very least.
Add something about being hungry in #4. “Apart from being hungry and tired all the time, my life hasn’t …”
Replace #5 with a panel similar to #2 – the patient is in bed, obviously not healthy.
Make panels 3 and 6 even more closely related – the victim should be the same size, in the same place… maybe even place a photographer in #3 where the next victim is in #6.
I think Version C.
Version A is powerful, but a simple reaction could be “sure, the odd person dies from complications, but only 1 in a million, right?” Also, it is a purely health related argument, and the same goes for Version B. Not that health related arguments are bad, because they are very important.
However, Version C has all the health implications, but also has a psychological implication – I became thinner to change my life / be happier, but those things aren’t happening. I think it’s more subtle as well – surgery may not kill you but it’s still pretty damn bad for you, on physical and psychological levels. I like the fact that Version C works against the trope of ‘thinner people are happier people’ in a way that doesn’t rely on OMGDEATHFAT!!!!!!
Awesome cartoons by the way :-)
Z
I agree that the “cycle” is overly optimistic – it’s not really a “cycle” at all for the people undergoing WLS. It’s a cycle for the promoters, and I don’t think that’s clear at all. Additionally, the woman in the third panel is drawn as thin (even though the text is clearly “thinner”) which is rarely the case with WLS.
I agree with the C-ers. I like the message on the tombstone in version A, but think that most people could easily dismiss the whole strip because most people who have had WLS haven’t died that soon after the procedure. I also really appreciate the fourth panel in Version C because it makes the strip more fat-positive and less strictly anti-WLS.
I’d like a version that includes both the tombstone from A and a panel headed “The Glow Fades” as in B and C. I also take the point that regaining the weight may be less common with WLS than with other forms of weight loss because of the extreme limit on the body’s ability to digest food. Maybe a version where “Stage 4: The Glow Fades” from B and “Stage 5: Complications” from B and C are combined into one, showing the still-thin woman from B’s Stage 4, but adding some of the surrounding text from the B/C Stage 5 slide? That would leave room to insert A’s Stage 5 slide.
I also agree with SharonC about making it clearer that the new ad is using the Stage 3 picture.
A couple of things I thought of after commenting yesterday:
1. The “thin” picture is probably over optimistic. Few people who get bariatric surgery make it to “thin”: they loose significant amounts of weight but don’t end up as thin as either of the ads.
2. Would you consider extending the “complications” to more panels. For example, panel 4: the glow fades (I still like C for that the best), panel 5*: character thinking “this diarrhea is really obnoxious…but at least I’m thinner” or something like that. Panel 6: Hematologist talking to main character: “You feel tired all the time because you’re anemic. You’re anemic because you are lacking in every vitamin and mineral needed to make blood” Panel 7: “I’m gaining the weight back: I’d better eat less. But I’m hungry all the time. Maybe more exercise. If only I weren’t so tired and didn’t have muscle cramps so often.” Panel 8: (Pick your favorite “serious” health consequence. Bleeding ulcers, surgeons trying to figure out where the burst appendix is in all that scar tissue, liver failure, whatever.) Panel 9: Step 1.
3. $20,000 is pretty optimistic. My guess is closer to $100,000 in charges. If insurance is covering it they’ll probably pay no more than $20,000 though.
*The art to go with these is your problem. I don’t do art. Not even in concept.
I didn’t have a problem picking up on the “cycle” starting over with a new victim. I liked B the best, because the falling action is less sudden than in A, and C touches on the Fantasy of Being Thin, but that might be too advanced an FA concept for a lot of people.
C is the best. i wish that teh advertising section was beefier somehow and included misleading health messages that would contrast with the later ill health following surgery
Maybe a camera flash in panel 3 could indicate that her image is being used for the poster in panel 6? It wasn’t immediately clear to me, and even knowing it now, I feel it could be clearer.
“Panel 8: (Pick your favorite “serious” health consequence. Bleeding ulcers, surgeons trying to figure out where the burst appendix is in all that scar tissue, liver failure, whatever.)”
Maybe all in a wheel, like a wheel-of-fortune “pick your favorite consequence.”
Then either death canbe on that wheel (which represents risk), or alternately you can have a death panel, and have an asterisk or something next to her name on the headstone, and then maybe a stat about how many people *do* die (x amount w/in one month/we don’t know how many long term).
I think expanding this cartoon is a really good idea.
I like A because it just puts it right out there, which i think the subject matter needs. “She was thin for a little while”. ha!
also, no problem following that it’s the same person in the new poster, because it’s right below the “yay” picture.
But I’m the “choir”.
If I might suggest an alternative layout? Something a bit more like a flowchart or chutes and ladders might work to convey the numerous paths possible here, none of which end particularly well.
As for what’s here, I will echo a comment above and say that I don’t like the way that C suggests that 4 and 5 are causally related (ie, that recognition that life hasn’t changed has somehow caused the side effects.)
I’m amazed by all the personal stories people are have at hand to invoke. It’s sad and scary.
I like version A the best, though I do agree with an above suggestion that the 3rd panel make it seem that she is getting her picture taken.
I had WLS, lost weight, gained half of it back. But, I did go into the surgery knowing I was trading the opportunity to be thinner with a shorter lifespan. Most people do not know they are making that choice, as we are bombarded with the “OMG Teh fat will kill you if you dont have this surgery now. “
The more I think of it the more I like that 5th panel in A. “She was thin for a little while” is such a brilliant piece of dark satire.
From Wikipedia:
So I strongly object to the tombstone panel, as it’s pretty clear from these studies that the surgery doesn’t make you more likely to die.
Junk food science:
and also junk food science:
Further conversation on this subject is off-topic according to the parameters established at the beginning of the thread. If you want to argue it, take it to an open thread.
FWIW, I like C the best but mostly because I have considered WLS in the past but after carefully evaluating things, my biggest worry (and one that I read a lot online from people who had already had WLS) was that I would go through the whole thing and then find out that my problems weren’t due to my weight after all.
I don’t like version A as I know a few people who have had this surgery and they’re not dead and I don’t want to think that they would die from it. It’s too much.
@ 38 illustrates why turning people’s bodies into a disease is a bad idea full stop. It reminds me of a comment on a post a while back about someone who was having GBS. The commentor said that she should think of it as like having a hip replacement.
Yes that’s right, you should think of having most of a healthy organ removed as comparable to having a diseased or severly damaged joint removed. I fully realised then that this was because the fat body is seen as wholly diseased, therefore removal of any part of it, well, reduces the disease, or something.
I know that the job done on people’s minds is hard to grasp in it’s magnitude, however I just wish some people would just try to ask themselves how it is possible for a major organ to be compromised to this extent and for that to improve the health outcome of anyone.
I’d have to say that A is the best one of all, whilst I do understand totally how upsetting it is to think of oneself or one’s loved one’s life being compromised-something that anti obesity types don’t give a damn about when they issue their endless litany of death threats against fat people- if you follow that line, it seems to devalue both the lives and the risks of this surgery.
The problem is that people really want weight loss, I think they should have it if they want it for whatever reasons, but they will not get it from anything that has or could come out of such a bankrupt hypothesis.
All the people on this thread who mentioned those close to them who have had, or maybe considering having this kind of weight loss surgery, should consider petitioning their local representatives and/or others in influence to state firmly that they are aware of the true state of affairs and wish attention to be directed to a viable and healthy method of weight loss for those who want it.
version C seems best. definitely not A, as death seems heavy-handed (and not necessary to your point). C over B just because it adds another point, rather than reiterating the doctor’s line…
I think that getting out awareness that WLS is mostly a scam, and putting people under unecessary risk to acheive a arbitrary ideal is a great idea. I think perhaps more emphasis on how, the person in the comic would have been happier staying fat would be good. Like, a flashback to all the things that person could have done before the surgery vs afterwards.
Hey, I would love If you shared your cartoon at our anti WLS group on Facebook. :)
xx
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-get-weight-loss-surgery/603955909632778