I don’t think it can be taboo, because there are many people who don’t value fitness or exercise to the extent that you think they should. All that will happen is that you set yourself up to get into arguments with them. You can taboo people or shun people or disapprove or comment or say anything you want, but you aren’t going to change the minds of people who already have their own reasons for their behaviour, which you are not addressing at all. Many people just aren’t going to agree with you and you don’t have the power to change that and you don’t have the numbers to enforce your social goals.
Personally, I think people should make their own decisions about what is important to them, and no, it shouldn’t be taboo for them to do so.
That’s none of your business. You are free to find friends who share your values.
You have no idea what the relevant factors are for any individual.
You have no idea how long “fitness” will or won’t prolong a specific person’s life.
You have no way to judge whether sitting around for two hours every day for a week at age 30 is more or less valuable than having an extra four weeks to sit around at age 80.
Not being able to sit around for two hours every night might negatively affect a person’s quality of life who values sitting around on a daily basis.
Oh, it’s another one of those “Why isn’t it okay for me to be even more openly bigoted than I already am in making people who are already socially disadvantaged feel even worse about themselves?” Essays.
There are no ‘shoulds’ with taboos, and people who are visibly out of shape are stigmatized. The question is what you believe a taboo accomplishes.
We already went over this. Do you actually want to do anything to help people be healthy, or do you just want to judge them if they aren’t? I think I know your answer at this point.
As it is out of shape people are discriminated against in jobseekers, they are disadvantaged in social situations and in personal relationships, they are assumed to be lazy it unintelligent, if they express their sexuality it is treated as a joke or repulsive, fat women are treated as invisible or worse.
You know what’s the best way to convince people you’ve found the key to success? Living your life successfully. Christians who talk about how much God has changed their lives aren’t nearly as compelling as the ones who let their positive changes speak for themselves. People with happy marriages aren’t going around talking about how happy their marriages are. You can just see the happiness on their faces and know that they’ve got something good happening at home.
Everywhere I go, I see people exercising. I know I can’t be the only one seeing all the joggers and runners and walkers and muscle-bound men all over the place. If a person isn’t compelled to get up and move by this kind of passive peer pressure, then no amount of eye-brow raising from me will do the trick. And anyway, why should I care what someone does to their body? Yes, I realize that being physically unhealthy has negative effects on society, but it’s not like society would be picture perfect if everyone was just like me. If I’m not prepared to change myself to be the most healthy person I can possibly be, then I am in no position to judge anyone.
Can you provide a little detail on exactly what I should be doing differently than I’m doing right now? What specific actions do you think I should be taking that I’m not taking right now?
Does society have a vested interest in the health of its members? Yes. That vested interest does not trump everything else but it exists. Hence we pay for PSAs and use taxation to discourage certain behaviors. We do not allow cigarette ads on television and mandate seatbelt use. So on. The position that what someone does visavis their health is no one else’s business is inconsistent with reality in America as the reference norm.
Is fitness (or minimally the lack of unfitness) highly correlated with health outcomes? Yes, arguably to a much greater extent than fatness. It also is much more achievable to reverse unfitness than to reverse fatness. Is it a certainty that fitness will lead to better quality of life and longer life for any specific individual? Of course not. Just as it is not a certainty that a seatbelt will save any specific person’s life or that smoking will shorten it. It is however highly probable.
Does shaming work? IMHO rarely, even if the “targets” could be easily identified. But we do know that there are actions society takes for other items related to individual behavioral choices with statistically significant impacts on probabilities of various health outcomes that do wrk to varying degrees.
With all those under consideration, should society take some greater action to discourage unfitness and encourage some modest level fitness than it currently does? If there was data (and I have no idea if there is or is not) that demonstrated that those actions would be cost-effective would that influece the choice? How and why is unfitness qualitatively different than smoking or not wearing seatbelts? Or is it? I’ll decline to offer any answer myself at this point in time but do wonder what other posters think.
Minor quibble: it depends on what you mean by “work.” If you mean encourage people to get healthier, no, it’s not very effective. If you mean it gives people a sense of superiority over people who are less fit, then it works very well. The second is its true purpose as far as I’m concerned.
Okay, I’ll qualify that for the purpose of my post I mean the former not the latter: Does it work as means to facilitate change to healthier behaviors?
Given that, any constuctive contribution to the discussion as I have attempted to reframe it?
Oh as to the requested rebuttal -
It is based on a false premise as established by many in this thread. It is not “okay to be fat” in America. If anything it is okay to make fun of and discriminate against the fat more than many other classes of people.
It is simplistic in its portrayal that people who are fat are fat because they are lazy or have poor self control. But we’ve had multiple long winded threads about this before. Brief as possible - a) the vast majority of the world did not suddenly become lazy and weak-willed in one generation yet the obesity epidemic has spread globally. Why? b) One fat person could have just gained 30 pounds, be exercising not at all and be very unhealthy at high risk for obesity related complications, while another person with the same exact percent body fat and weight, may have just lost 30 pounds (10 to 15% of their body mass) and be exercising vigorously every day and be at fairly low risk for obesity related complications. Another person my have a “normal BMI” but not be exercising, have a high fraction of the fat they do have centrally located with low lean body mass, have very little self control along with being lazy while not being fat, and be at high risk of metabolic dysfunction. You cannot tell who is who and what their current behaviors and risks are by just looking at them or knowing the BMI in isolation of other information.
Really recapping that last part: it is wrong to imply that fat is automatically unhealthy and that “not fat” is healthy.
It is a stupid ad for weight loss “supplements” - not anything with any substance.
Just that I don’t think (and didn’t think) you were trying to justify shaming anybody. I do think it deserves to be emphasized that when people engage in fat-shaming and say they’re just doing it to encourage others to be healthy, they’re full of it. That to one side, I think you’re right on the broader points here.
No, the question is should neglecting your health be a taboo. At no point have I made any claim about a taboos efficacy.
Again, I’ve not said anything about helping or not helping people. That’s not why I started this thread. I started it because the knee jerk condemnation of anybody who rightly calls purposeful neglect of one’s health a failing.
