Jurassic Park, an Awesome Action movie or a Negative Subliminal: Comparing Russell Scott Sanders’ “Grub” to Jennifer A. Coleman’s “Discrimination at Large”

 While both passages, Jennifer Coleman’s “Discrimination at Large” and Russell Scott Sanders’, “Grub” agree that Americans have a serious weight gain problem that they may have brought upon themselves, both passages differ in a sense that the authors take a different approach as to what should be the outcome of this weight gain. Sanders argues that in order to remain in shape and appear healthy in the media, Americans need an exercise that corresponds to the amount of food they ingest, “or you eat what you work for”. Coleman on the other hand, argues that not every person that is fat is unhealthy. She indirectly states that Americans have their choice to make and people should respect it regardless, even urging the government to create laws protecting the overweight from discrimination and stereotypes.

In the article “Grub”, Sanders presents the issue of weight gain in American society as a neglect of “equal exercise”. He states, “true farmers have always stoned their food in root cellars and silos, in smoke shacks and on canning shelves, [but] we carry our larders with us on haunches and ribs” (118). According to Sanders, the people of old, which were apparently healthy, ate large portions of the same foods that is being eating today but they remained healthy because they burnt all the calories on the farm, signifying that all the overweight today need to return to the farm (exercise) and make America, in this case Indiana, appear healthy in the papers (media). On the contrary, Coleman completely refutes this argument. She claims that no matter how much exercise fat people do on a daily basis, it is extremely difficult to get rid of the extra skin, thus people will forever tease you as long as you “appear” to be fat (199). She blames this ignorant view of “skinny people” on the media and the corrupt government.  She states that “we learn [this view] through Saturday-morning cartoons, prime-time TV and movies” (200). Furthermore she writes “but the fat kid is taught that she deserves to be mocked. She is not OK….Other kids see the response and incorporate the message [gotten from the media]” (200), concluding that instead of Russell Sanders trying to fix an overweight problem, he should destroy all the Jurassic Park movies he has ever watched.