Some things you can do right now to help dismantle fatphobia-
Don’t use fat as a negative word or thin as a good one.
Don’t engage in pro-diet talk.
Don’t make assumptions about people based on their weight.
Stop assuming fat people are unhealthy.
Don’t hold up “health” as the be all of everything- esp when it means “not fat”.
Stop using the word “obesity”- size is not a disease.
Don’t concern troll fat people.
Acknowledge that fat people get eating disorders too.
Demand an end the bullying of fat kids- which means an end to the fear mongering around “childhood obesity”.
Demand positive fat representation in media.
Don’t tell fat jokes or laugh at them.
Hold your faves responsible for their fatphobia.
Boost the voices of fat activists.
Support fat artists & creators.
Support & defend the fat women who speak out about fatphobia & get attacked ALL the time.
BELIEVE FAT PEOPLE.
There are things EVERYONE can do to move the needle on fatphobia. You can start doing them NOW.
this needs to be on every fatspo/bopo/fat acceptance blog!
booosting!!
Hahaha no. Absolutely fucking not. This is pure idiocy.
I agree whole heartedly. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t respect fat people, but still, it’s purely idiotic and backwards to go around and act like being fat isn’t unhealthy.
But dare I say it, fat positivity is a cancer in every sense. It isn’t right to go around and advocate a destructive lifestyle that is the root cause of increased risks of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, all of which are among the three top leading causes of death in the United States, with heart disease taking the cake at #1
And I might as well add in the fact that fear mongering child obesity isn’t at all a bad thing, because it deserves all the fear it gets. Obesity accounts for 1 in 7 of all premature deaths in Europe, and 1 in 5 of all premature deaths in America. A parent being fearful of this is completely reasonable; what mother would be okay with raising a child, only to have him die before he reaches old age? Surely a mother would want her child to live a long and fulfilling life, and would do anything to guarantee that, hence, preventing and mitigating obesity to make this possible.
With that said, @ok2befat, why would you push the dillusion that being fat is healthy in the slightest? It’s been proven countless number of times, evident in the links I’ve provided, that being obese isn’t anything to be proud about. It’s a life threatening disease with unappealing long term affects such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. However, it is easily treatable through simple tasks such as eating healthier, watching your calorie intake, and excersising (even if the excersise is really moderate and only lasts 30 minutes, it’s still enough to lose weight)
Now, don’t construe that as me saying that you shouldn’t respect fat people, as I’m far from advocating that idea. You should respect every fat person as you would anyone else, it’s only reasonable to so. The golden rule applies, as it does in every case.
But what you’re doing is far from respectable, and is actually promoting a disservice to the obese. You state very clearly that you don’t support being pro-diet, that being fat isn’t unhealthy, that obesity isn’t a disease. You stongly imply that being fat is okay, that it’s a healthy lifestyle, and they should do nothing to mitigate this condition.
If it isn’t clear, at this point, what disservice you are doing, I’ll put it plainly.
You’re promoting unhealthyness, and encouraging the obese to follow this path which will most likely lead to their death or leave them debilitated througout their life. You preach that they are healthy the way they are, which is obviously not the case. This attitude is what is exactly what is perpetuating the Obesity Epidemic.
Rather than promoting unhealhtyness, denouncing fitness, and calling everyone who doesn’t support this unreasonable dillusion as “fat phobic”, you should instead recognize obesity, and promote healhtyness. Be an advocate of health; don’t put fat people down, but politely give guides on how to lose weight and mitigate the condition for those who want to change themselves for the better. That’s how you actually make progress!
Or you could just let people choose what they do with their bodies because it isn’t yours
Encourage people. Regardless of size or weight. Do it on merit.
Yes, can we please not advocate and normalize obesity though.
Except, yourownpetard, fatphobia actually does the exact opposite of helping obese people.
Multiple studies and multiple anecdotes from doctors show that low self esteem is associated with gaining weight and being unable to lose it. The combination of obesity and low self esteem then leads to depression. And depression can be fatal.
When fat people are mocked for exercising, they stop exercising.
Fat people who are taught to love their bodies and ignore what people say about them are far more likely to successfully get in shape (which is not necessarily the same thing as getting thin).
And those who can’t lose weight don’t deserve to constantly be “given guides on how to lose weight.” Can you imagine how it feels to be told “You just need to exercise” when you’re in so much pain you can’t walk?
To be told you have no willpower when you’ve tried everything under the sun short of surgery?
Oh, and how about being told you can’t have the surgery you need to be able to exercise until you lose the weight that you can’t lose without exercising.
Fat positivity is not about “denouncing fitness” - it’s about helping people learn to love themselves so they have the self esteem they need to lead a better life.
I want to go back to @shibainu-connoisseur‘s post, because it vexes me.
First: unless you are someone’s doctor, you have no business deciding whether or not they’re healthy. Period. That is not your job, it is not your privilege, and you probably don’t even actually have the necessary knowledge and understanding to make the judgment.
That leads into the second point: learning to read and comprehend scientific literature, something that even professionals - even the people writing the papers - sometimes find difficult. There’s a pair of paragraphs in that Lancet article that I want to draw special attention to:
The study also estimated the population-attributable fraction for mortality due to overweight and obesity (PAF) - ie, the reduction in deaths in a population that would occur if a risk factor were eliminated. The authors say that assuming that the associations between high BMI and mortality are largely causal, if those who were overweight or obese had WHO-defined normal levels of BMI, then the proportion of premature deaths that would be avoided would be about one in 7 in Europe and one in 5 in North America.
“Obesity is second only to smoking as a cause of premature death in Europe and North America,” says co-author Professor Sir Richard Peto, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. “Smoking causes about a quarter of all premature deaths in Europe and in North America, and smokers can halve their risk of premature death by stopping. But, overweight and obesity now cause about 1 in 7 of all premature deaths in Europe and 1 in 5 of all premature deaths in North America.”
(Emphasis mine.) Read those paragraphs carefully. This is what’s known as “begging the question”. The co-author is saying “assuming the relationship is causal, this factor is responsible for X deaths. Therefore, this factor causes X deaths.”
We all know (or should) by now that correlation is not causation. That is to say, the fact that two things are associated doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily directly linked, or that one causes the other. A classic example is cigarette lighters and lung cancer: you can observe that people who habitually carry cigarette lighters have greater rates of lung cancer, and thereby, if you believe that correlation is causation, draw the conclusion that cigarette lighters cause lung cancer. (They don’t. It’s smoking cigarettes that does; the mechanism is well-known, don’t argue about this.)
Reading the paper carefully, we can discover two facts:
- The authors don’t know how obesity is associated with premature death, only that this study shows a correlative link; and
- The authors have concluded that obesity is the linked attribute, instead of examining potential co-morbid behaviors and attributes that could provide insight into the mechanism of reducing lifespan.
Like I said, the mechanism by which cigarette smoking causes lung cancer is well-known. The mechanism by which obesity supposedly causes premature death is not. However, since “the obesity epidemic” has been a cause celebré since the 90s, it’s easy to get funding by researching the putative harm obesity does. In cases like this, the scientific method mutates:
- Come up with a hypothesis.
- Convince someone to pay for you to gather observations to support or refute your hypothesis.
- Rejoice when the data supports your hypothesis OR massage the data until it doesn’t refute your hypothesis anymore (or you’ll lose your funding).
- Publish the paper so your department doesn’t fire you.
(Yes, this is a little cynical.)
That means that there’s less incentive to work out other potential factors. A brief sampling of alternate factors that I can think of off the top of my head: is it possible that premature death is experienced by people who, independent of height-to-weight ratio, …
- Live a comparatively sedentary lifestyle, for any reason?
- Consume large amounts of simple sugars?
- Have a diet low in fruits and vegetables?
- Consume large amounts of salt?
- Are less socially-active than the average?
- Experience public shame because of their looks?
The list goes on.
Studies like these are all too common (see “easy to get funding”, above), and the media loves to report on them - and if you’re getting your science information from media reporting, you need to know that you’re not getting the whole story. (For one thing, journal articles like this almost always include a “Limitations” section, which is almost never reported on in media writeups.)
And, tragically, people who want ways to look down on fat folks love to use these studies to back up their disdain and disgust without actually understanding what’s going on. (Not understanding the subject is not a failing. I think it’s safe to say that nobody understands the subject very well, or at least very thoroughly, and in fact there are potential financial incentives to not understanding it. But judging people based on your not-understanding is a failing.)
By the way, if you want to increase your understanding of obesity and its study, the most basic, ground-level question you can ask is: why are the “overweight”/”obese” breakpoints where they are?
(If anyone’s curious, I’ve learned what goes into proposing, funding, and writing papers like these through experience.)
(via joyeuse-noelle)
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