Lately I’ve noticed a trend here and there to make it less acceptable to ‘shame fat people’, or to encourage ‘fat acceptance’.
I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but anyone think this might be an astroturfed campaign started by fast food corporations trying to infiltrate the online ‘social justice warrior’ movement?
I mean, who more than McDonald’s or Burger King corporation would love for obesity to be accepted as the new norm, and anyone who doesn’t have a gut the size of a cannon ball considered “anorexic”?
Back in the 70s or so, Phillip Morris and the major cigarette corporations tried to advertise cigarettes as a health or weight loss product before it was cracked down on; if they could I bet many of the major fast food giants would try to advertize their fattening foods as some diet designed for “anorexia prevention” or something, lol
So how many of these ‘fat acceptance’ peeps to you think are actually plants being paid by the McDonald’s or Burger King PR departments?
I wouldn’t be shocked if there is some cynical corporate executive somewhere who might feel that way, but in terms of an organized campaign, I sincerely doubt it. And if there is any campaign to make it “OK to be fat”, I’d say it’s failing spectacularly. People in American society still feel overwhelming amounts of pressure to be thin. If something is changing, it’s just that it’s becoming less acceptable to openly criticize or ridicule people for being overweight (at least in certain circles. Meanwhile, anonymous jerks on the Internet seem to be as bad as ever.) But I can’t really picture anyone rushing out to consume more Big Macs just because they expect more people to judge them silently instead of mocking them openly.
By the way, there’s a huge difference between commenting on whether a particular person’s weight is healthy, vs. commenting on the value of being a healthy weight in general. It’s fine (in my mind) to say (in a context that isn’t about some individual) “Obesity can cause or exacerbate a number of serious health problems.” But commenting on an individual’s possible health issues (whatever they may be), unless (A) you’re their doctor having a private discussion with them, or (B) they actually asked for your input, is incredibly rude.
In other words, it should have never been acceptable to “fat shame” people. You aren’t helping them. They didn’t somehow fail to notice their weight, or somehow miss all the messaging that’s out there about what we ought to weigh. You’re just being a dick.
[In case it’s unclear, “you” in that paragraph is meant to be rhetorically addressing the “anonymous jerks on the internet” who do such things, not meant to refer to the OP.]
I just think it’s part of a bigger social trend. Beyond the ‘anti-fat shaming’ stuff, we of course have people suing fast food chains for “making them fat”, as well as absurd messages being put out there which seem to want to insinuate that obesity is comparable to an inherited or non-curable condition such as asthma, when it’s more comparable to lung cancer from smoking.
I once saw a documentary which was so insipid that it actually tried to argue that people are fat because “it’s cheaper to be fat than be healthy”, which I won’t get into unless asked for more details, but I can easily say is complete nonsense and intellectual dishonesty.
A disturbing trend I see all around the board today is a shift away from personal responsibility and self-empowerment, and a mindset of victimhood and blaming others for one’s lot in life, and the ‘fat acceptance’ movement just seems to be more of the same.
Your experience may differ from mine, but from what I’ve seen, when someone is criticized for “fat shaming” it’s usually a case where the person decided to comment on how unhealthy (or more often, how unattractive) they find some overweight person they don’t even know, who they saw a picture of on the Internet. In my experience only a tiny minority of those who have a problem with “fat shaming” would actually deny that obesity is unhealthy. Many people know perfectly well that obesity is unhealthy, but still think it’s obnoxious (not to mention utterly counterproductive) for someone to try to shame people into being more healthy. Plus, frankly, for most people guilty of this sort of behavior it seems to be more about getting pleasure from making people feel bad. The claim that fat shaming promotes healthy lifestyles is a ridiculously transparent pretense.
Objecting to “fat shaming” isn’t the same as saying people shouldn’t be responsible for themselves. It’s saying you shouldn’t consider it your responsibility to make sure everyone feels every bit as bad about themselves as you think they deserve to.
[Again, rhetorical “you” here – I have no idea whether the OP personally engages in fat shaming.]
I hear you, I’m curious though what an actionable plan to ‘stop internet trolls from saying mean things about fat people’ is’.
Plus outside the internet how often does ‘fat shaming’ actually go on anyway? In my life I’ve never seen someone walk up to an overweight stranger out of the blue and say something like “ew your weight is disgusting”.
So how much of a ‘problem’ is fat shaming to begin with, and what are ways of actually measuring its social prevalence beyond simply pointing out some trolls on 4chan posting nasty memes about fat people?
If nothing else the whole thing just sounds like another dime-a-dozen ‘internet slacktivism’ hype fueled by exaggerated outrage.
Also, as a general point, acknowledging that many problems (whether obesity, or poverty, or whatever) have societal causes that extend beyond just the actions of the individual isn’t the same as “blaming others for one’s lot in life”. If a person who has the problem in question says, “Well, I shouldn’t bother trying to improve my situation, because it’s societies fault”, then sure, they’re abdicating responsibility. But that doesn’t mean that when talking about such problems generally we should pretend that all the other factors don’t exist. Surely any effort to actually reduce obesity rates would be doomed to failure if it were based on pretending that the problem starts and ends with “People need to buck up and take responsibility for themselves.”
Well ultimately, who picks up the hamburger and puts it to their lips? No one holds a gun to anyone’s head and makes them do it.
Sure obesity may have societal influences, such as the junk food corporations, but as far as the individuals themselves are concerned, it’s still their choice to eat that food.
So what are your alternative sources of blame and plans to rectify the situation.
Well, I grant you, people are generally more emboldened to act like jerks on the Internet than face-to-face. But that’s not to say real life cases don’t happen. In my personal experience I’ve seen people comment on a candidate’s weight after they left a job interview (not at my current employer), which is less direct than walking up to their face and saying it but is just as concerning in its own way. (This was not, by the way, a job where physical fitness was any kind of requirement.) If you’re inclined to start an IMHO thread about “What instances of fat shaming have you witnesses in real life?” I’m confident you’d get many examples.
But as for the Internet, bad behavior is unfortunately not limited to known cesspools like 4chan. I don’ t know how to solve the problem of Internet trolls (which is why I’m not on my way to collect my Nobel Prize right now :D), but pushing back before they get a foothold on sites with a non-toxic culture seems to help somewhat. I saw an article on a science news site recently which was accompanied by a picture of the lead researcher, who happened to be a woman who was overweight. One commenter decided to make a snide comment about this, and to their credit the other commenters immediately rebuked him. At least in this case, this seemed more effective at shutting down the behavior than ignoring it would be.
Probably because those that shamed fat people before are now fat themselves. It kind of has that effect ya know. Then you have the bone skinny people that look just as bad physically anyhow.
Acceptance comes from yourself, not caring what others think about you as apposed to thinking others should accept you because no one is born with obligations. Accept yourself because you are the one that has to live your life.
If the goal is to actually reduce obesity, assigning blame is less useful than considering the chain of causation. I’m not denying that the immediate cause of the person gaining weight was “They choose to eat X, which contains more calories than their body needs”. But there are lots of factors that influence the choices people make. If we don’t look at these, then the only thing we can try is to tell people “Make healthier choices”, and this is unlikely to be effective.
For example, it may be the case that someone is more likely to eat unhealthy food as an adult if they ate an unhealthy diet as a child. It might be that a government program to provide low-cost healthy food and educational materials about a healthy diet to families with young children would be effective at getting the parents to feed their kids healthier food, and that this would lead to those kids continuing to eat a healthier diet as adults. I don’t know if such a program would be effective, but it strikes me as the sort of thing that would be reasonable to at least consider trying. (Actually, I’d guess such interventions have already been tried on some scale, although I don’t know what results were achieved.)
My point is that proposing an approach like that isn’t the same as saying “Adults who make unhealthy eating choices should blame their parents”. Assigning blame isn’t actually useful for solving the problem. I think it functions more as a way to help people feel superior or to lessen their feelings of empathy for others. It’s comforting on some level to say “Well, it’s their own fault they’re in this position, and it could never happen to me.” But even if that were entirely true, it wouldn’t be kind to say to the person, nor would it be helpful.
Every time people use “fat” as an insult (“You are a big fat liar!”), they inject “fat shame” into the universe.
I’ve heard stories from the morbidly obese (not from anyone who is just chubby) about how they are given a difficult time whenever they go out in public. From snide comments made under the breath to people coming up to them at the grocery store and judging their purchases. It’s kinda hard to believe, but then against it’s not seeing as how many people were bullies in childhood and adolescence. Old habits die hard.
But in my experience, much of the shaming happens when people think they are being self-deprecating. I’ll be in the breakroom and someone will walk in and see donuts and say something like, “I’m not eating that. I’m fat enough as it is”. Even though someone fatter than they are will be there with a donut in their mouth. I’m probably guilty of saying shit like this too since I’m usually in my own little world, not really thinking about what other people are going through.
Okay, so how often do you think fat people receive negative comments from strangers compared to… midgets (I mean little people, sorry?)
Plus tell me when the term “big fat liar” originated; I have a feeling it’s been around in the English language way before the obesity epidemic began in the 1980s.
Plus for that matter, the words “idiot” and “moron” used to be terms for clinically retarded people, but no one uses them in that literal context today.
So if stopping people from saying “big fat liar” is a priority for you, then eventually you’ll just have to end up trying to get rid of any and every word that might vaguely insinuate some negative reference about some ‘group’.
(Heck, maybe we should just change the name of the “White House” while we’re at it since it might have racist connotations to some people).
Be honest, which is more of an epidemic today, obesity or anorexia?
Apples to oranges. “Accepting yourself” doesn’t mean having no standards or self respect.
A person shouldn’t want to lose weight just because they ‘want others to like them’; but ideally they should do it because they care about their body and want to keep it healthy.
Self-acceptance should ultimately be based on one’s own personal standards rather than just ‘what others want’, but it shouldn’t be blind and apathetic.
I don’t have the statistics right in front of me, but I’m guessing fat people catch more shit than short people because the former is held responsible for their condition. But even if the stigma between the two groups is the same, so what? What would this indicate? That “midget shaming” is a more serious problem?
Your feelings have no place in GD. At any rate, the etymology of “big fat liar” is irrevelant. When people hear “fat” used as a slur, it hurts. This is undeniable. Perhaps you don’t care that it hurts, and that’s your right. But it is irrefutable that it hurts some people.
This is so ridiculous it might as well be a non sequitur. 99.9% of English-speakers use “fat” as both an insult and as a physical descriptor.
I don’t think people should do anything. I don’t think any word should be gotten “rid” of. But you asked for evidence that society outside of the internet stigmitizes fat people, and I gave you some examples. What kind of information were you looking for?
You haven’t been here but a minute and you’re already race-baiting. Nice.
I may be way off, but I perceive this to be mostly a women’s movement. Fat men know they’re fat and either don’t care or deal with it. Women are valued for their looks and are attempting to change what is attractive along many different criteria (age is another), as opposed to changing the root problem of women’s value being their looks. IIRC it started with black women rejecting skinny white beauty culture and instead embracing being big and beautiful, then it seemed to move to rural white culture, e.g. “I’m too much woman for you to handle,” then a couple years ago appeared in progressive politics, perhaps because other avenues of discrimination were increasingly rejected.