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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.]
no subject
So how come you are entitled to make such decisions but encouraging someone twice your size to make their own decisions based on their own values and limitations (rather than perceived pressure from others) is wrong?
Fat people die more.
No.
Unhealthy people die more. Some of them are fat. Some of them are also underweight or even 'normal' according to BMI and societal standards.
It is possible to be fat and generally have good health. It may not be the case in many people but it is possible, and being judged to have an unhealthy lifestyle based solely upon one's appearance is ridiculous.
In cases where obesity is a genuine health problem it can be a side-effect of metabolic illness than a direct cause, although in some cases (ie adult-onset diabetes) there is a nasty positive feedback effect.
Also I like your concept of dying 'more'. I personally only intend to do it once, but I am curious as to how fat people do it more often than that.
But the attempt to shoehorn science to fit a political objective (and we see plenty of it across all sorts of behaviours people don't want to change) is just like pro-anorexia sites.
I don't see a parallel here, to be honest. I'll grant that some people with serious obesity-related health problems may use the fat-acceptance banner to avoid taking action to reduce their size, but I think that's closer to anorexics using mainstream 'being thin is good' "science" to justify starving themselves. I don't think this means being thin or all dieting/exercise sites are necessarily bad, and I don't think this means being fat or fat acceptance sites are necessarily bad. Fat acceptance sites are not necessarily "stuff yourself until you cannot leave your house" sites, just as slimming sites are not necessarily pro-anorexia sites.
Encourage them to stay fat if they can stop being, and you're helping them die younger.
I don't think fat-acceptance is about encouraging people to stay fat, I think it's about awareness that one cannot always judge someone's health or worth or value to society by their appearance. Body size is only one aspect of this, of course.
no subject
It largely comes back to my philosophical positivism, and belief that liberalism has made us stray into the worldview that just because we should be morally neutral regarding things which are different but both fine, we should start being morally neutral between things which are and are not fine.
Also I like your concept of dying 'more'. I personally only intend to do it once, but I am curious as to how fat people do it more often than that.
OK. Fat people die more as a proportion of their statistical cohort. I do receive feedback from others (as well as my scales) on my varying weight, and some of that is normative as well as descriptive. I accept that, and I'm very glad I don't live in a fat-positive society such as the USA, or I would probably just keep ballooning until I couldn't leave the house. Certainly that's pretty much what's happened to my cousin, who was brought up by my food-positive and quite probably fat-positive grandmother.
no subject
If you'll accept six foot three and 27 stone as a suitable approximation, then I can assure you that getting out of bed, up and down the stairs, and out and about in a normal social life is perfectly possible.
I think part of the problem with fatphobia is that people see the "half a ton" immobile people on the TV, and assume they're the norm rather than extreme outliers.
no subject
Still, I suppose if it's all muscle.
no subject
I don't think anyone's implying that unhealthy people are all fat. I personally believe that fat people are more likely to be unhealthy, die young etc, because my understanding is that simple population statistics support this view. Obviously population statistics don't necessarily apply to the individual.
It is possible to be fat and generally have good health. It may not be the case in many people but it is possible, and being judged to have an unhealthy lifestyle based solely upon one's appearance is ridiculous.
I don't think it's appropriate for individuals to tell one another what weight they should be. I do think it's appropriate for governments and other societal institutions to issue advice to the population on sensible weight ranges, sensible diets, sensible amounts of exercise and so forth, where "sensible" is based on the best contemporary scientific advice with the caveat that scientific understanding and hence advice changes with time.
Having said that, if someone I trusted (friend/SO/doctor/relative) thought that my weight was likely to have negative health consequences, I would want them to tell me.
no subject
Are these population statistics controlled for confounders? High BMI, smoking, and early death are all associated with low socioeconomic status.