Saw a disturbing picture on Facebook today

[eclectic_wench]

@jz78817

being “too thin” is not typically considered a personal and/or moral failing. being thin doesn’t get you derided as a “slob,” or “lazy,” or “stupid.”

Beign underweight can get you derided as mentally ill, a control freak, neurotic. It’s presented as a mental/emotional failing, rather than a moral one the way being overweight is presented, but it’s still used to judge and diminish you as a person.

[Anaamika]

@Guinastasia

I find all the cries about “FAT SHAMING!” amusing, yet nobody seemed to bat an eye about all the catty remarks in this thread. Apparently “obese” is more offensive than terms like “walking skeleton”, or saying, “eat a cheeseburger!” :rolleyes:

I don’t think that’s right either and I make it a point to never make a comment about someone being too skinny, either.

[bump]

@eclectic_wench

What bothers me is that people shrieking ‘Bring back fat-shaming!!!’ don’t seem to see any difference between saying ‘Being obese is unhealthy’ and saying ‘If you’re overweight it’s because you’re a bad person.’ Same for thin-shaming: there’s a huge difference between ‘Being underweight is unhealthy’ and ‘If you’re underweight it’s because there’s something wrong with you as a person.’ The first ones are plain fact, and important, and the one person in the whole world who doesn’t already know those facts should be made aware of them. The second ones are indicative of a societal attitude to weight that is terminally fucked up.

What bothers me isn’t that people are going to be unpleasant about obesity, but rather that there’s a LOT more sympathy for things that are more fucked up, and easier to deal with.

I mean, there are a lot of people out there who are more sympathetic toward chronic smokers, drug addicts and alcoholics, because “they’re highly addictive”, or “it’s a disease”, or because they can’t control it, even though you don’t have to smoke crack or drink booze to live.

Yet they’ll castigate people and say shit like “It’s simple fatso, just put the fucking fork down.”, like somehow smokers, alcoholics and crackheads deserve sympathy for their substance abuse problems, and fat people just lack self control.

That ain’t how it works; how many alcoholics, crackheads or smokers would be successful at quitting, or even cutting back if you said “You HAVE to smoke at least 3 cigarettes per day to stay alive and healthy, but smoking more than 5 per day is unhealthy. And we recommend you smoke special unpleasant cigarettes that are more healthy than the ones you normally smoke.” I’m pretty sure the relapse rate would be right around 100%, and a whole lot of people would just say “fuck it” to quitting at all.

Yet that’s exactly what fat people face with regard to normal eating and weight loss- you can’t quit cold turkey, you have to eat some specific amount, but not what you like, and you can’t eat too much, even though you’ve been conditioned (however that happens) to eat high fat, high calorie food, and sometimes in too large of quantities, or too often, or whatever.

It’s an awfully fucking high bar to jump, if you weren’t conditioned from birth to eat a certain way, and you can exercise as much as you want, and you’re unlikely to actually lose weight, unless your caloric intake is only marginally over what you’d need to lose weight anyway.

[Darryl_Lict]

@usedtobe

Go do an image search for “Rainbow Girls”.

I find this amusing because I recently went to a “Rainbow Girls” concert. They’re a local blues rock band comprised of 4 thin girls. Pretty great, too.

Rainbow Girls (Band)