I stumbled upon this thread and found it very interesting. It showcased a lot of the debate about fat shaming, body image, etc.
It got me to thinking, should at least a minimal amount of attention to personal fitness be considered obligatory? Obligatory in the same way our culture deems brushing your teeth or supporting oneself if at all possible to be obligatory.*
Personally, I think it should. I know people of all different backgrounds, and I can count on one hand the number of people who honestly can’t help being out of shape.
*No, I’m not being to be paid to use the word “obligatory.”
I like the comparison to brushing your teeth. Some degree of fitness should be a social or cultural ideal, but also one that everyone kind of expects there to be some lapses in.
Some people actually do brush their teeth after every meal. Others of us try for once a day, and sort of make it. Yet others just scrape the tartar off with a fingernail when it builds up too thickly.
Being out of shape should, I think, bring the same very mild social odium that accompanies smoking cigarettes, or not bathing often enough, or chewing with one’s mouth open. It isn’t something you’d necessarily mention to the person, directly, but it might come up in conversation (gossip.)
(“Did you see poor Jack? He was red and puffing after climbing only half a flight of stairs. I feel pretty sorry for him…”)
(ETA: can you put me in touch with the organizations that pay people to use certain vocabulary words?)
A lot of things are unhealthy. Loneliness and social isolation are as dangerous (if not more) than lack of activity, obesity and/or poor diet. So are things like poor quality sleep or out of control stress.
So where do you draw the line? The line is drawn at using health as an excuse to enforce pre-existing social beliefs. People who have high stress and poor sleep if anything are held in high esteem socially. They are considered productive and hard working so the health risks of those behaviors are ignored. On the other hand fat people and people who don’t exercise or eat a spartan diet are considered slothful and gluttonous so the health risks of those behaviors are exaggerated.
Point is, this isn’t about health it is about the social police enforcing morals. There are a lot of behaviors that affect health, but only the ones that trigger our underlying social morality undergo these judgments.
People who attend religious services tend to have better health than those who do not. The reasons aren’t known (it could be the social interaction, or the feeling that you control your destiny, I don’t know). In a society where believers were considered morally superior to non-believers then 90% of public health info would be about trying to convert people to religion the same way 90% of public health messages in our society are about diet, exercise and obesity in a society where thin people are considered morally superior to fat people.
That seems like a red herring to me. Any full developed system of physical culture tends to be holistic, so things like stress level and adequate sleep are not overlooked.
Hell, sleeping more than 8 hours a night and taking naps have become bragging points among certain groups of fitness enthusiasts. It’s an example of how hardcore a person is, as odd as it may seem to refer to sleeping as “hardcore”.
I mean, there are (in my estimation justifiable) taboos associated with certain deficiencies in our society, e.g. not brushing teeth, being illiterate, etc.
Should making no time for exercise and/or eating a primarily unhealthy diet be included in this list?
It is, at least to an extent. Since that probably describes a majority of the U.S. population at this point maybe the stigma overall isn’t too harsh, so it’s reserved for people who are in very bad shape. They do get that kind of judgment. I don’t think it encourages people to eat better or get in shape, so what’s the point?
In what world do you live that this doesn’t happen already? I mean, the OP started with a link to a thread about fat-shaming. Far from a mild social odium, being fat is anathema except to other fat people.
Anyway, you are all free to feel as much odium as you please about the unfit (and I’m sure you already do), and when you get tired of judging them, you can go judge other people that you don’t like (as I’m sure you already do).
Maybe some small measure of MYOFB should also be obligatory, obligatory, obligatory.
And…who knows? Society’s at-large disdain for murders may, in fact, have saved large numbers of lives.
Dueling was once accepted by society; now it isn’t. That change, alone, has saved at least a few lives.
A societal disdain for unhealthy life-styles might increase our average life-span by some non-trivial degree.
If “friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” why not act (without being too intrusive) not to let them be horribly unhealthy. It can come in the form of positive support, just as many people who are severely depressed are spared from suicide by the care and support of their friends. It doesn’t have to come in the form of disapproval; it could be expressed by companionship in exercise routines. (It’s a lot easier to exercise with a friend than to go it alone!)
I think we’re blurring lines here. I’m saying there are certain things that we deem to be a matter of personal taste (like music), and there are other areas, brushing teeth being the example used a lot, that are deemed necessary.
IMHO, fitness belongs in the second category. I’m not advocating stigmatizing people.
Take literacy. I’ve volunteered teaching English to immigrants. I didn’t look down on them, but I also thought fluency in the tongue of your chosen home belonged in the second category.
I disagree. The link wasn’t about fat shaming at all. It was about a woman dispelling one of the most common excuses for being unfit, parenthood, and a ton of people consequently getting incriminatingly bent out of shape about it.
Actually, once society starts paying for healthcare, maybe you could make a slightly stronger statement than obligatory. The obese person with multiple healthcare issues is directly consuming more social resources than a fit person because of their lifestyle.