I'm not sure if this has been brought up already, and I'm not feeling up to reading every post of the last 8 pages. The phrase 'fat acceptance' has been used in two different ways in my experience, and they tend to get conflated.
1) The folks who really do think that being obese is just a-okay health-wise and that everyone (including doctors) should keep their mouth shut and any suggestion of negative effects or health problems is akin to a personal attack. These are the nutty folks that a lot of the comments in this thread are directed towards, and I agree 100% with those comments.
2) People who are advocating not for 'obese is healthy', but that you shouldn't treat obese people like shit for being obese. And I mean, as ridiculous as it is for the people in #1 to suggest that obese = healthy, there is some real vitriol directed against obese people that views them as almost sub-human. Just think about a cell-phone picture of an obese person on the treadmill at the gym with an insulting caption (instead of a supportive caption since they're at the gym in the first place). Those kinds of things are a dime a dozen online.
If all we're talking about is #1 above, then yes, they're fucking looney-toons, and in some cases directly harmful in the ideas they're pushing. But #2 is something I can get behind completely - don't treat people like shit in general. I mean, I've struggled with my weight in the past (note: my username), but at no point did I think I was being healthy at my previous weight... I just really didn't want people to keep making fun/insulting me over it.
1) The folks who really do think that being obese is just a-okay health-wise and that everyone (including doctors) should keep their mouth shut and any suggestion of negative effects or health problems is akin to a personal attack. These are the nutty folks that a lot of the comments in this thread are directed towards, and I agree 100% with those comments.
2) People who are advocating not for 'obese is healthy', but that you shouldn't treat obese people like shit for being obese. And I mean, as ridiculous as it is for the people in #1 to suggest that obese = healthy, there is some real vitriol directed against obese people that views them as almost sub-human. Just think about a cell-phone picture of an obese person on the treadmill at the gym with an insulting caption (instead of a supportive caption since they're at the gym in the first place). Those kinds of things are a dime a dozen online.
If all we're talking about is #1 above, then yes, they're fucking looney-toons, and in some cases directly harmful in the ideas they're pushing. But #2 is something I can get behind completely - don't treat people like shit in general. I mean, I've struggled with my weight in the past (note: my username), but at no point did I think I was being healthy at my previous weight... I just really didn't want people to keep making fun/insulting me over it.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
- Thomas Jefferson
