News Releases & Announcements
University of Ottawa takes on “Weighty Issues” during Frontiers in Research Lectures
OTTAWA, November 8, 2006 — Stone Age peoples carved obese female figurines. Ancient Greeks built strong and athletic looking statues.
Our modern media—including magazines, movies, music videos, television and video games—reflect a preoccupation with “thin” idealizations. History shows our obsession with body weight has clearly existed as long as we have been a self-aware species.
As obesity reaches epidemic proportions at the same time that the “cult of thin” is exacting tragic tolls in individual lives, the complexity of “weight” deserves attention.
WHAT: Weighty Issues: The 9th Annual uOttawa Frontiers in Research Lectures
WHERE: Tabaret Hall, Room 112 (550 Cumberland Street)
WHEN: November 15, 2006
1:40 p.m. Jeffrey Friedman, The Rockefeller University, United States
Genes, Behaviour and Metabolism: Balancing the Energy Equation (English presentation)
2:20 p.m. Abdul Dulloo, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Weight fluctuations: Impact on metabolic susceptibility to obesity and metabolic syndrome (French presentation)
3:00 p.m. Helga Dittmar, University of Sussex, United Kingdom
Does size matter? The impact of idealized media models on girls’, women’s and men’s body image (English presentation)
4:10 p.m. Le point sur l’obésité
Découverte, Radio-Canada (French screening)
4:30 p.m. Thin
HBO Documentary Film, Directed by Lauren Greenfield (English screening)
6:00 p.m. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Cornell University, United States
Fasting Girls: Then and Now
