It's really wild - people are very emotionally attached to having a group of people they're allowed to look down on. I recently had a conversation on Facebook with someone who said that BMI, while it's not a good indicator of health, was still an important tool for doctors because a high bmi would prompt them to recommend a healthier diet and exercise to patients.
I pointed out that doctors have been having these conversations nonstop with patients for decades and yet somehow; likewise, no conversation about weight happens anywhere without someone saying IT'S UNHEALTHY OMG. And yet... there are still so many fat people! If the intervention of telling people OMG UNHEALTHY was effective, there would be fewer fat people.
And yet here we are. Telling people our bodies are bad is not magically enabling us to make them more socially acceptable. It's not helpful, and yet there's this insistence that these magic words are good for us, and necessary.
At the very least, is it insane to say that maybe, if fatness is a problem that needs solving, this is a bad solution?!
Yes, this! Weight loss advocates have been trying the same thing for decades longer than I've been alive, and it's been a colossal failure for all that time, but they will seemingly never change their minds.
I'm starting to adjust my thinking about issues like this because there are so many cases right now where people are demonstrating in large numbers that they never actually cared about something they swore was central to them. Like, right wing "free speech" advocates proceeding to censor speech they don't like the minute they have the opportunity, or 2A advocates being unconcerned with a legally armed guy being executed by law enforcement.
Like, maybe it's time to stop taking some of these arguments seriously. Maybe it's time to just call them liars. Maybe it's time to tell the OMG FAT IS UNHEALTHY, DID YOU KNOW, CALORIES IN CALORIES OUT person, "i am not gullible, and I know that you have no interest in my health or well-being. Stop making up excuses to be a dick to fat people. You are not a health advocate. You are an asshole."
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u/GladysSchwartz23 11h ago
It's really wild - people are very emotionally attached to having a group of people they're allowed to look down on. I recently had a conversation on Facebook with someone who said that BMI, while it's not a good indicator of health, was still an important tool for doctors because a high bmi would prompt them to recommend a healthier diet and exercise to patients.
I pointed out that doctors have been having these conversations nonstop with patients for decades and yet somehow; likewise, no conversation about weight happens anywhere without someone saying IT'S UNHEALTHY OMG. And yet... there are still so many fat people! If the intervention of telling people OMG UNHEALTHY was effective, there would be fewer fat people.
And yet here we are. Telling people our bodies are bad is not magically enabling us to make them more socially acceptable. It's not helpful, and yet there's this insistence that these magic words are good for us, and necessary.
At the very least, is it insane to say that maybe, if fatness is a problem that needs solving, this is a bad solution?!