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Fat acceptance
A friend of mine wrote a (friends' locked) post in which she talked about fat acceptance (Sizeism on Wikipedia is a good place to start reading) and what it means. I'm quite interested in seeing what the skeptics have to say about it/why they think it's wrong.
My starting point with fat acceptance is a liberal/individualistic view point: each of us has autonomy over our own bodies, our appearance/fatness/thinness/weight/BMI is no one else's business. I have no moral or legal right to tell a thin person she ought to gain weight and no one else has the moral or legal right to tell me I ought to lose weight.
Unlike smoking, which can make other people ill, someone's weight/appearance etc does not affect other people's health (even if it does affect their own - and the evidence as to the relationship between weight and health problems is patchy and conflicting).
Following on from this, it's easy for me to agree with statements like:
I'm not better than someone because I'm thinner than them
Someone's appearance is not a good guide to how they choose to eat and exercise
My experience is not universally applicable - what works for some people in terms of the weight/appearance at which they feel comfortable won't be the same for other people.
I don't consider that there's anything virtuous about maintaining a BMI between 18.5-25.
I'm not sure what supportable arguments there are against fat acceptance - anyone care to enlighten me?
[This is a busy kitchen, if you can't stand the heat then go elsewhere. I don't police or stop flame wars - anything goes, though remember that there are a lot of very articulate people reading this journal and if you say something stupid you will be called on it, probably not too kindly.]
My starting point with fat acceptance is a liberal/individualistic view point: each of us has autonomy over our own bodies, our appearance/fatness/thinness/weight/BMI is no one else's business. I have no moral or legal right to tell a thin person she ought to gain weight and no one else has the moral or legal right to tell me I ought to lose weight.
Unlike smoking, which can make other people ill, someone's weight/appearance etc does not affect other people's health (even if it does affect their own - and the evidence as to the relationship between weight and health problems is patchy and conflicting).
Following on from this, it's easy for me to agree with statements like:
I'm not better than someone because I'm thinner than them
Someone's appearance is not a good guide to how they choose to eat and exercise
My experience is not universally applicable - what works for some people in terms of the weight/appearance at which they feel comfortable won't be the same for other people.
I don't consider that there's anything virtuous about maintaining a BMI between 18.5-25.
I'm not sure what supportable arguments there are against fat acceptance - anyone care to enlighten me?
[This is a busy kitchen, if you can't stand the heat then go elsewhere. I don't police or stop flame wars - anything goes, though remember that there are a lot of very articulate people reading this journal and if you say something stupid you will be called on it, probably not too kindly.]
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Personally, I have recently realized that I am chronically undernourished, which has almost certainly been a major contribution to my poor health, but since I stay "normal weight," no medical professional has ever thought to inquire into my eating habits. So fat acceptance is important to me personally, because maybe if people realize that fat doesn't always mean unhealthy and thin doesn't always mean healthy, it will occur to moron doctors to check up that people like me are getting enough to eat.
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Do you have any evidence for this? I'd have thought the opposite, personally.
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