In the US it’s both common and legal to discriminate against the obese in hiring, promotion, etc.
Whether it ought to be illegal is a topic for activists.
I think the problem here is an implied equivalency between “fitness” and “thinness.”
Being visibly obese is just one possible way to be unhealthy; it’s just that it is a very obvious one. Subjecting someone to opprobrium for being fat, while ignoring the thin person next to him who has hypertension and high cholesterol, or is a high functioning alcoholic, or clinically depressed, isn’t valuing health. It’s just disliking fat people.
There are two counterpoint to that
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A lot of things affect health. Married men have better health than unmarried. Are we going to start stigmatizing single men under the guise of caring about their health?
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It doesn’t matter if you are healthy or not, lifetime medical expenses are probably about the same. People who do everything right still get sick and die, it just takes a few more years. I think in the US, with the world’s most expensive health system, the average person will spend about half a million dollars on health care between birth and death. It doesn’t matter if you are healthy or not, you won’t save money I don’t think. If anything healthy seniors have higher health costs due to a longer life expectancy. However those healthy seniors may have saved money during middle age so it evens out. Point is healthy or unhealthy I believe lifetime medical bills end up being about the same.
Sorry for the hijack, but is that a whoosh? I’m mean the last phrase is comic exaggeration, but I would have thought twice a day is the absolute minimum for the majority of people. I only skip one when I’m absolutely blind drunk.
Well, um, no, (ew!) the last phrase was (for me) literally true. I went for some eight years without brushing at all. The last four years, I brush once a day…with some skips. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
(Give me some time and I could start a poll…)
Let’s make not judging people on their appearance obligatory first.
Right. I may be fat, but I don’t have high cholesterol, triglycerides or blood sugar. I do have high blood pressure, but it’s more of a familial thing, I think, with my father getting it in his mid-30s just like I did, even though I was actually in ok shape at the time.
The OP is pretty much trying to rationalize/legitimize fat hating. We don’t see him suggesting the same for eating disorders that tend to make people thin, and we don’t see him making exceptions for fat, but fit people (they do exist).
Exactly. And, fat-hating or no, I’m all for discriminating against the obese in matters where it empirically affects the situation. For example, I think airlines should be within their rights to make extremely fat people purchase two seats.
But to see a fat person and penalize them for a host of (real or imagined) health issues just doesn’t stand up to reason.
Exercise, being fit, being thin and being healthy are four different things.
When you think about it, isn’t it stupid for busy people to take time out of their day to do something completely pointless just for the purpose of doing something? What should really be doing is build our society such that you can’t avoid exercising your body.
Of course it’s well established that (remotely reasonable amounts of) exercise alone don’t help with weight loss, you can’t out-exercise a fork.
I don’t know how you can tell if someone doesn’t exercise or eats an unhealthy diet. Would you suggest an accessory, or some kind of monitoring of the populace?
There are skinny people who never exercise and eat junk and have terrible blood pressure or cholesterol levels. There are overweight people who exercise and eat well and have great labs and blood pressure. Many professional athletes would be considered obese because their BMI is too high – are we going to call entire sports teams lazy obese people.
The world is censorious enough as it is. I would not support anything that allows people to be even bigger judgmental assholes than they already are. We do not know everyone’s life circumstances. Just leave it.
… OK. Murderers hurt other people. People who are out of shape aren’t hurting you. I think we should encourage physical fitness as a society, but I don’t think considering fitness “obligatory” helps. It does sound like it would ultimately an excuse for judging people.
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I’m still trying to get what “obligatory” means. Brushing teeth is not obligatory in any sense but it is a social norm. But fitness is the same.
As I grew up health was taught in school, including good hygiene and general fitness. Public schools still require physical education at least through the 10th grade, at least in my area.
So fitness is just as obligatory as brushing teeth, in the sense that everyone is taught the basics and many choose to ignore it with no particular penalty except poor cardiovascular health or gingivitis.
A National program of Social welfare? It seems the democratic enough…
Yes, who can we weed out and pick on to ensure the strong stay strong? Say, maybe we could start them young… send them away to Youth Camps to promote fitness and right-thinking.
I’m just surprised no one has ever thought of this before.
…a great point.
Save money by scrapping HIPPA, have forced marches/climbs? Well, good health is freedom. But using punishment for people who have disabilities like diabetes or high blood pressure as a form of treatment; thats ingenius!
We might even be able to make advances in medicine that way.
But that central data collection point, is that like a government agency or privatized? Imagine: any employee can report bad food choices and be rewarded for it like… secret physical trainers.
In Every workplace, everyone will be watching everyone else… for the good of all. What a way to Maximize Profit!
If only there were places where they could be… re-educated…
Actually, that Really ought to be a topic for the Courts. If only some High Court was in session & still picking out cases…
Shaming people about their bodies is not going to help them. Period.
Truth!
Look at the risk of death in terms of BMI. You have to be deep into the “obese” category before your life expectancy is as poor as a skinny “healthy BMI” person. (Great article here, by the way.)
Outside of a few very huge (or very frail and skeletal) people with clearly demented dietary habits, body size just isn’t an indicator of fitness or health. “Fat-shaming” is still a very ignorant thing to do.
On the other hand, should physical fitness (defined by what you can do, not what you look like) be a higher priority in society? Absolutely.
I remember fitness being encouraged when I was younger. We had to run, do pullups, pushups, etc., in school, and if you couldn’t play a sport or two with some basic proficiency there was definitely something wrong with you. But somewhere in the 90s, after the nerds people used to make fun of became billionaires, it became a little passe to focus on fitness. Sure, there was Body by Jake, and the ab swing/chair/roller/shocker, but those were cheesy gimmicks, and focused on how you looked anyway, not what you could do.
I think brushing your teeth is an excellent analogy. If you have bad breath and scummy teeth, people will notice, and they’ll talk about you behind your back. If you have to brush once a day or once a week to avoid that fate, you’ll do it. But nobody is going to enforce it or come to your house and check.
We shouldn’t focus on body image, but if you can’t walk up a flight or two of stairs without a break, or if you can’t lift a gallon of milk above your head, that should be looked down on, at least a little bit, if you’re not disabled or elderly and frail (and no, 65 isn’t “elderly”). Nobody will follow you home to make sure you’re doing your squats, but strong people are more useful, and weak, less useful people will be apparent. And we’ll all be slightly disappointed in you, even though you’re still our friend. But for everyone’s sake, please lift something heavy once in awhile. Run around. Be active.
Why should I care if a person I am not married to is a “high-functioning” alcoholic? As long as it’s not affecting others (he is not driving drunk, he is doing a good job at work, he’s not going into debt, etc), what business of mine is it if a coworker gets drunk every single night and is pickling his liver?
I’m in my 30s, and a lot of my friends are unhealthy. It makes it hard to do fun activities together when taking a walk around the neighborhood or throwing a ball around the back yard is simply too demanding for them. We’re not elderly, but we might as well be. Our entire friendship consists of sitting places and either talking, eating, or watching something together.
For example, recently I had to ditch a friend at a concert because she wouldn’t leave the table we had been sitting at before the show, but I wanted to actually see the band, and that required walking over to the stage and standing. Standing, for an hour, was too much work. For a woman who wasn’t yet 30! She’s still my friend, but I’m sorry, that should be discouraged.
You’re going go discourage people from disliking the things you like doing? How is that going to work?
The good news is that going from not fit to reasonably fit isn’t that hard, compared to going from fat to not fat. Early last year I would be out of breath walking up two flights of stairs (and I live two floors up so I do that every day). I started eating less and exercising more and after a few months the stairs were no longer a problem (by then I did 20 minute up/down stair walking sessions for exercise) even though I hadn’t lost all that much weight at that point.