Stock Footage of Fat Torsos

At least once each day I see this video in a newscast. People walking down the sidewalk, shot between the neck and knees. The camera is focused on one person, or two if a couple of overweight people happen to be walking together. There is usually at least one fanny pack in the series of shots. Women are typically shot walking away from the camera to illustrate what a fat ass would look like, men are generally shot walking toward the camera to illustrate the classic cheeseburger beer gut. Sometimes you may get a bonus "muffin top" shot of a woman in too-tight jeans and a too-short shirt, still shot from behind.

Many different types of stories can be backed with this type of footage. Obviously, any story related to obesity or weight loss, but there are so many more! Any stories about weight-related ailments (cholesterol, diabetes, cancer), stories about the fast food industry, studies of certain prescription drugs and their side effects. Hell, maybe even stories about fat people having fat pets.

Here are just a few reasons I hate the use of the fat torso footage in a newscast:

1) It's boring. Not only is the same type of footage used over and over, but the EXACT same footage is often used over and over.
2) It has no informational value. I'm pretty sure we all know how to identify obesity.
3) It's mean. The people in these videos are being treated as though the only significant thing about them is their weight. As a former fat person (I once weighed 60 lbs more than I do now), I wouldn't want to suffer that humiliation, even if my head was cut out of the shot.
4) It's lazy. No, not the people in the video. The people putting together the news story. Yes, I get that it is easy to fall back on predictable stock footage like this to meet a deadline, certainly in favor of spending time on more relevant stories....but that's the point, isn't it? The stories that include this footage are usually filler material and not terribly newsworthy anyway. We'll see the footage again next week when a new study comes out saying that people who dieted while wearing orange shirts tended to lose 15% more than those who dieted wearing red shirts.

Oh, well. I guess using this tired, irrelevant material in a newscast is preferable to filling time with endless discussions of what the president's dog had for breakfast. Maybe that story could be illustrated with fat dogs shot below the neck. Now that, I would watch.