Rant about weight, fat acceptance, obesity and health

[SteelCurtain]

And there you have the impetus for the entire movement. It is not about saying being obese is healthy, it is about not shaming people because of their bodies.

I think you're wrong about this - While it is true that some people just don't want to be discriminated against, which is fine and I agree with, there are people who actively claim that every weight is equally healthy and that there isn't any health risks associated with being fat - Kinda like race, which you don't pick, being fat or not is just a matter of perspective and everyone is different. Again I ask, why is everyone concerned about shaming but no one really cares that the poor cigarette smoker has to go trough all kinds of restrictions that, if it were possible to apply to fat people, would be considered persecution?

Those people who are claiming there are no health risks to being obese are the outliers. It would be just as dishonest to say that Christians are picketing soldiers' funerals with "God Hates Fags" posters. That's the WBC, and it's not mainstream Christianity. I am immersed in a lot of these social movements, and seriously the first time I'd ever heard of these people saying that you can be healthy when you're morbidly obese was today, in this thread.

It all started with the anti-supermodel lilt. Society is being force fed the perfect ideal for what a female body should look like, and by proxy, what a male should look like. The whole point of the fat acceptance deal was initially if you had love handles to be okay with that. It was taken a little farther, and like every movement, co-opted by the extremes. Yes, you can find examples of people co-opting the movement and saying that you can be perfectly healthy at 450 lbs. That's bullshit. You can't be healthy at 450 lbs, even if you're 7'2". What you can be, is body positive, and get support from your friends rather than derision.

The thing is that people who think that are increasing, specially if you look at America and how it is getting fatter. Honestly, I understand the backlash against super-thin models and anorexia, but if you look at the data there have been successful efforts and even legal impositions in many countries to restrict how thin models can be and eating disorders like anorexia nervosa or bulímia are under control - This is not the case with obesity that has a tendency to grow. Yes, everyone has an ideal body type, and the media promotes a certain image, but I think most people who've been in relationships know real life is not the same as movies or the media - None of this means you can't personally try to be as healthy as possible. I feel bad for smoking, but I try to keep a nice weight and I've been fat for a lot of years - I don't try to look as a supermodel, just as good as I can.

I think you're drawing a little bit of a causal relationship between people getting fatter in America and people believing that being fat is healthy. Americans are getting fatter because there is a Burger King on every corner, we work 51 weeks a year, and we have screens in every room of our house. Believe me, I live in Tennessee. There are more morbidly overweight people here than you can possibly imagine. Yet I still hear them tell me they want to lost weight, their doctor told them they were going to lose their foot to necrosis from diabetes. Not one person has tried to convince me that they were healthy while riding a scooter in WalMart.

To say that fat acceptance supporters want everyone to be fat is the same as saying people who say 'Happy Holidays" want to end Christmas. No. It's about being positive and inclusive. It doesn't mean you have to support a lifestyle that will lead to obesity. It means maybe we don't judge a person's character or literally anything about them based on their outward appearance.

I never said that Steel, but there are people who think that, from a health perspective, being obese should be exactly the same as being average weight, fit or thin - There are people who complain about not getting any dates because of their weight, there are people who complain about paying an extra ticket on an airplane, etc, those cases aren't so rare.

You didn't say that, but someone else in the thread did. I wasn't talking to you specifically, I was responding to the thread. Again, those people are such a fringe. I haven't met anybody who has tried to convince me this was true. I am not saying they don't exist, I just think they are not as representative of this movement as you think they are.

I have struggled with many things in my life. I am hopelessly addicted to caffeine. I know that drinking a .5L of soda a day is terrible for me. (I don't mean to make these two things sound as if they are on the same plane---just drawing a parallel by which I can empathize) It would technically be easy for me to stop drinking pop. Just don't buy the shit any more, right? And I've done, for weeks, sometimes months at a time. But I keep going back. I don't think this is some sort of character flaw on my part. But society has made it just that for obese people. I simply reject that notion, and try to empathize. That, to me in a nutshell, is fat acceptance.

I have unhealthy habits as well, but I recognize they're bad and try to improve whenever possible.

I think that's all some overweight people are trying to do. Or---they just want you to leave them alone if they are happy doing what they're doing, living how they're living.