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Feministing posted a… um… different video today about accepting fat people. Here it is:
Here are my thoughts.
The good points in this video are that you should accept people for who they are. You shouldn’t judge someone by what they look like. We don’t all have to look the same. Absolutely correct. The world is filled with very different, unique-looking people, and it makes the world a more beautiful place.
However, I have a point of contention.
While it’s great to have a positive body image, deciding that you’re just going to be happy as a fatso is not a good thing, and for only one reason: IT. ISN’T. HEALTHY. It is so incredibly bad for you to be overweight or obese! No one should hate themselves for it, but let’s be realistic here. The movement to just accept yourself as you are is a little bit defeatist and escapist if you’re a seriously overweight person. No one should lose a lot of weight just because our culture is obsessed with skinniness. They should lose weight for themselves. Being overweight or obese can lead to a much, much higher risk of heart disease, stage 2 diabetes, cancer, and a myriad of other health problems. If you’re an overweight person, it’s simply in your best interest to lose the weight, and there isn’t really an argument otherwise.
Now, let’s say that you don’t care about the health risks. Well, then, that’s fine for you. It’s your choice. Eat it up. My point in all of this is just that pretending that obesity is no big deal is misleading and harmful. It is a big deal, health-wise.
Does this mean I think that everyone should starve themselves and be a size 2? Uh, absolutely not. And I understand that it isn’t always easy to lose weight (I wish), especially as adults. You have a life, responsibilities. Getting to the gym or spending an hour cooking a healthy meal isn’t always easy, or all that appealing. But pretending that being overweight is no big deal is simply lying to yourself.
Yet, you do need to find a way to be happy with yourself regardless of your weight, because if you aren’t, then even as a size 2 you’re likely to be unhappy. The notion that you should just accept your weight, though, as part of “who you are” is dangerous. It’s like saying that being a smoker is “who you are”. It’s not, unless you have a drastic thyroid condition.
I think that part of this ideal concerning weight has a lot to do with the avoidance of responsibility attitude that permeates this country. It’s always someone else’s fault, truth is all relative, and if it makes you feel good, then do it. The whole idealogy is complete horseshit, and believe it or not, there are right and wrong choices, even if many Americans don’t want to admit it.
What an incoherent nonsensical piece of crap. Are there other installments to this I’m missing? Because what I saw made less sense than The Yellow Submarine. The dinosaur begged to meet this asshole skinny person and then the fat girl said okay, since you insist, and then before the skinny person said a single word the dinosaur ate her.
Gee, if the skinny person was allowed to say something asshole-ish before being eaten, I might know what the point of the film was. As it is, it seems to be: Watch out for those fat people, because they talk smack about you, and when fat people tell other fat people things, they believe every single word, so skinny people better be careful because you might end up gobbled and partially digested before you even know what the hell’s happening to you or what all the fuss is about.
Uh, that and Rush Limbaugh was a hundred percent right. You know…feminism is a way for ugly women to get dates (or to be accepted by society’s mainstream).
Now to the NEXT question. What causes people to make films that make absolutely no sense whatsoever? Being fat, being a feminist, or some really strong drugs?
CaptDMO says: Fat, nay, morbidly obese sedentary “intellectual” feminists, can get my appreciation when they demand the extra wide seats, farthest from the emergency exits, OK?
There is a reason no one likes to look at morbidly obese people. We know in our core that it isn’t healthy. We don’t find them attractive because we assume they do not have a strong genetic makeup. I am not saying we should ridicule or belittle them for it, but they shouldn’t be throwing it in the faces of healthy people either. I’ve heard that it is a huge struggle to shed those pounds, but it is a worthwhile one and I admire anyone up to the challenge. Going around and saying that being fat is just fine is an offense to those working so hard to be otherwise. Feminists like to tell us that there are no consequences to our choices. Everything is okay.
In my completely unprofessional, unscientific, and intuition-based opinion… an overweight person who excercises but remains overweight is probably better off in the long term than a person who is the “correct” weight, but sits on their ass all day and never gets any excercise.
The problem with modern bodies is that we rarely use them in the way they were designed to be used anymore.
The whole fat people problem is not so much a body issue as it is a brain issue. With few exceptions, fat people not only have bodies that function differently, but they also have thought processes that function differently. Specifically, fat people are incapable of judging the sizes of food portions.
If you tell a fat person that he/she needs to exercise and lose weight, you are addressing the physical issues. But you cannot address the physical issues without taking into account the mental issues.
The way I call it, society coddles and humors the fatsos too much. This is separate and apart from the issue of idolizing and glorifying the anorectic women on the fashion runways as the model bodies. It is considered a social taboo to even discuss the fact that a given person needs to lose weight. We are supposed to accept people as they are.
And so, there can be no objective productive discussion of matters such as the following:
A. The cost of my healthcare insurance premiums is being driven up by the health consequences of America’s obesity epidemic (whether I am an individual who pays for my own policy, or whether I am an employer, personal or corporate, who must foot the cost of group health insurance for my employees).
B. Ditto for my liability insurance coverage, inasmuch as fat people in a slip and fall situation tend to sustain more costly than normal people.
C. How do two marriage-minded people who are in a serious dating relationship discuss the issue of health insurance and/or life insurance coverage during their prospective marriage?
D. Travel issue: The increase in the average weight of airline passengers has affected the aerodynamics — and fuel costs — of airplanes.
E. Travel issue: Too many fat people are too large for the seats provided on the airplane, or bus, or train. [Your right to overeat ends where my airline seat begins.].
F. On a night flight when the cabin lights were out, I could not fall asleep. And neither could I read, because the reading lamp illumination was obstructed by the big, fat belly of the woman sitting next to me. So all I could do was just stare into space at the seatback monitor next to me. What, if anything, can I say to the passenger in the next seat? What can the flight attendant be expected to do about the situation?
[Disclosure 1: In my case, my options were significantly limited because the big fat woman in the next seat is the woman to whom I have happily been married for 20+ years.].
[Disclosure 2: The book I was trying to read at the time was “The Fattening of America:
How the Economy Makes us Fat, If it Matters, and What to do About It” by Eric A. Finkelstein & Laurie Zuckerman (http://www.fatteningofamerica.com) (ISBN-13: 9780470124666).].
I don’t know what the answers are. But, remembering my grandmother’s 60th birthday, spent while she was hospitalized on account of a heart attack from being so fat, I am extremely frightened over my wife’s health prospects.
Shannon in AZ says: Jennifer – to say “but they shouldn’t be throwing it in the faces of healthy people either.” is irresponsible to claim that is what “they” are doing. I know of very few fat people who like to be in the presence of others with no regard for the size imprint they are making on others. In fact, I personally know of none.
Extrapatriate Owl – an evaluation like that is one of the reasons I hate discussing such stuff with anyone. People claim to know “THE REASON!!!” and don’t know squat. I go to lunch weekly with a few people who like to eat at buffets. Two of them eat about what I eat while the third has cut back in recent years to only 30% more than what I eat while none of them are fat.
The most disgusting thing I know of are people who claim to know the reasons, the causes and want to spout off “you need to do this and that and so on” while they don’t have a clue as to a true healthy way to lose weight. All you have to do is sit down some time and read the wide variety of literature and you’ll find conflicting data, data that makes no sense and unsupported data all over the place.
WHAT I eat at any given time and for the past couple of weeks determines how hungry I will be at a meal. I can eat 3 slices of bacon and 2 eggs in the morning and not be hungry at all until about 12:30 pm. I can eat a large pizza in one sitting and in two hours, be stuffed and yet feel starving again. I can also eat a single rib eye and feel full and stay full for hours. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE tells me that “fat people are incapable of judging the sizes of food portions” is totally off the mark.
I also do not blame others for my condition EXCEPT for this one point: when people start telling me how bad it is to be overweight and how I need to do this and do that or else blah blah, I end up resisting. It’s always provided as a total put down of who I am, invalidative of ME and makes it clear that I am not wanted as an individual in this society.
I am single because I already know fat people are not wanted in this society. I no longer work for someone else because I know fat people are not wanted in jobs. And I have no insurance because fat people (over 300 lbs) can’t get insurance [I was recently told State Farm does insure to over 300 lbs, but unconfirmed and the first I heard of it]. WE have no protection against discrimination in hiring.
How can the overhead reading light get blocked by someone’s “big fat belly” which is below your head?
Shannon in AZ says: “A. The cost of my healthcare insurance premiums is being driven up by the health consequences of America’s obesity epidemic (whether I am an individual who pays for my own policy, or whether I am an employer, personal or corporate, who must foot the cost of group health insurance for my employees).”
BTW, an “obsetity epidemic” is not the same as a “diabetic epidemic”. Diabeties and the high increase is driving health care cost. Of those I personally know that are diabetic, none are or have ever been fat. There are some public figures who are fat that I know are also diabetic.
My EX-doctor kept trying to tell me that being fat causes diabeties. It’s false information like that that helps keep diabeties as a continuing problem.
I posted: “With few exceptions, fat people not only have bodies that function differently, but they also have thought processes that function differently.”
In response, to my post, Shannon posted: “I am single because I already know fat people are not wanted in this society. I no longer work for someone else because I know fat people are not wanted in jobs.”
Shannon, thank you for substantiating my aforestated premise, and several other contentions in my posting.
[I shall not even attempt to argue Shannon’s medical-based contentions because I have precious little expertise in medicine; in my personal life, I usually defer to the big fat woman to whom I am married, who also happens to be a practicing physician. One reason our marriage has flourished and grown and improved with age is our understanding that I don’t practice medicine, and she doesn’t practice law.].
[And, BTW, my successful marriage also debunk’s the validity of Shannon’s attribution of her single status to obesity.].
Shannon in AZ says: “[And, BTW, my successful marriage also debunk’s the validity of Shannon’s attribution of her single status to obesity.].”
Hardly. I’m a male.
BrainFromArous says: 1) Morbidly obese people are not attractive because (A) the extra weight deforms their faces and bodies and (B) GLUTTONY is not attractive regardless of the health considerations.
2) Feminism enters into this mess through one aspect of its dogma: that anything women do is “empowering” as long as it’s “loud and proud.”
3) While some people are born diabetic, the link between prolonged obesity and Type 2 Diabetes is pretty solid. The cold fact is that if you spend years hammering your body chemistry with loads of sugar while getting little or no exercise, there will be consequences. The bill, at some point, will come due.
4) I feel sorry for this girl. She needs friends and family members who will tell her honestly, but without cruelty, just how bad she looks and what she is doing to her body. I have a feeling that conversation is nowhere in her future.
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