Look maligning people for their weight is wrong. However pretending that being overweight cannot be overcome through personal discipline is just not true, it can be, it’s very very hard but it’s possible. To suggest otherwise is untruthful. One of very short stature cannot change their habits and become tall. Someone paralyzed in a chair cannot stop drinking soda and in time get out of the chair. However difficult it is at least possible to loose and manage weight… I feel for those who struggle with obesity I just cannot accept a lie expedient or otherwise…
Also a stinky dog t**d, for those who identify as canine excrement. #BornThisWay #PuppyPoopismIsAlsoAPersonalChoice
Aphrodite Rises
17 days ago
Interestingly, Rebel Wilson (the actress in the photo who was a poster girl for body positivity) has now lost all her excess weight yet continues her support for body positivity. She received a lot of backlash for her weight loss and was seen as a traitor to the movement.
My “moderate” fatness is entirely my fault, and not the fault of countless breweries, distilleries, bakeries, and butcher shops. Delicious villainy!
Green vegetables exist, as does ice water. The former are unappealing, the latter is tolerable, so long as it’s cut with whisky. Exercise is bothersome and boring.
But I’m also well aware that skinny, sexy, healthy people – in other periods of my life I’ve joined their ranks, albeit temporarily – do in fact eat these strange food stuffs that grow directly from the ground.
And they also do attend gymnasiums, or engage in mindless and strenuous activities called “sports,” or at least occasionally eschew motorized transport (I far prefer my Mercedes) for walking.
Which is why they’re skinny, sexy, and healthy.
Graham Stull
17 days ago
BMI is not arbitrary. It is anything but arbitrary. It is an objective benchmark.
Like all benchmarks, it is crude and fails to take into account individual factors like bone density, muscle mass, etc. but it is still a useful shorthand for understanding deviations from the norm.
Then it is being used in an ignorant, uneducated way. I used to be obese according to BMI because I had a lot of muscle, and was told to diet. Now it is because I really am fat.
But objective truth does not exist anymore in the West. If a man can claim he is a woman, and enter a woman’s sporting event, despite being a biological man, what better evidence is there? By the way, BMI is probably a construct of the white, privileged patriarchy. 🙂
McLovin
17 days ago
This article has been accompanied on my screen by an ad for a 75 day fasting programme! Either way this is big business.
I would assume that someone who fasts for 75 days is either a masochist of remarkable endurance, or some sort of religious fanatic. To charge money for it must require truly masterful salesmanship.
Jeff Cunningham
17 days ago
Up until around the nineteenth century the only people who could afford to be fat were the upper-class. There wasn’t junk food and many people might not have been starving but weren’t getting enough to get fat. Sugar was a luxury only people with money could afford up until they figured out how to grow it pretty much everywhere (beets, especially). But high caloric diets in general were also out of reach of all but the upper-class. At that time fatness was a sign of wealth and being in a certain class (along with clothing, speaking French, and elaborate table manners). After the industrial revolution succeeded in raising everyone’s standard of living (in the West), the lower classes started getting fat too. Especially when they figured out how to make cheap junk food out of starches, salt and sugar. After the turn of the twentieth century the upper classes switched their aesthetic to leanness to more easily distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi.
So I guess you could say – in a sense – that this aesthetic (either way it goes) is a form of luxury belief.
Not bad. Pretty much on the money. Too deep for what passes for most of journalism these days though.
Howard S.
17 days ago
Freddy Mercury and Queen had it right decades ago: “Fat bottom girls make the rocking world go round.” You people should never be forgiven for giving the world Twiggy and turning a generation of teen-age girls into anorexics.
M. Jamieson
17 days ago
I think a good deal of what has make the fat positivity movement seem plausible comes from real failings in beauty culture and the diet industry.
It’s true that the ideals of thin beauty set out in the media are often quite unhealthy. It’s true that skinny people may be quite unhealthy, and people who are not so skinny, up to a point, can be, if they are active and eat mainly healthy foods.
It’s true that diets don’t usually work, and make people fatter, and a lot of them are actually quite bad for your health even if they do make you lose weight.
It’s also true that losing weight once you are fat is often not as simple as just eating what a regular person does.
People who are struggling with their weight run up against these problems again and again, and they become very cynical about what mainstream culture is telling them. The fat positivity movement takes advantage of that to feed them bizzare lies.
Jerry Carroll
17 days ago
Sports Illustrated’s fate was sealed when it began running cover photos of gargantuan women in bathing suits. A number of fashion magazines tried the same stunt. Newstand sales tumbled.
To their credit, they at least selected a convincing transsexual when they apparently had to go that route. A fair few of the ones you occasionally see in public nowadays really aren’t fooling anyone, poor sad creatures.
Really, it would be best if these agendas weren’t regularly shoved in one’s face. Yes, I’m a fairly portly gentleman. No, I don’t want to see flabby yet inexplicably well dressed people in clothing catalogs. I’ve long lost my youthful good looks, and am happily married, but no, I certainly don’t want to see a surgically altered man in place of an attractive young woman in the Swimsuit Edition.
Gargantuan women & men in swimwear is never a good look.
Jerry Carroll
17 days ago
Sports Illustrated’s fate was sealed when it began running cover photos of gargantuan women in bathing suits with plenty more inside to turn the stomach. A number of fashion magazines tried the same stunt and newsstand sales fell like stones.
Simon James
15 days ago
‘If fat activism can claim one success, it’s in expunging the idea that a fat person is an individual moral failure’
Has that actually happened?
Look maligning people for their weight is wrong. However pretending that being overweight cannot be overcome through personal discipline is just not true, it can be, it’s very very hard but it’s possible. To suggest otherwise is untruthful. One of very short stature cannot change their habits and become tall. Someone paralyzed in a chair cannot stop drinking soda and in time get out of the chair. However difficult it is at least possible to loose and manage weight… I feel for those who struggle with obesity I just cannot accept a lie expedient or otherwise…
It’s an uncomfortable truth many fat people have a hard time swallowing.
Naughty!
In the interests of justice for all, the rainbow flag should henceforth be round rather than rectangular and incorporate a cake slice.
Also a stinky dog t**d, for those who identify as canine excrement. #BornThisWay #PuppyPoopismIsAlsoAPersonalChoice
Interestingly, Rebel Wilson (the actress in the photo who was a poster girl for body positivity) has now lost all her excess weight yet continues her support for body positivity. She received a lot of backlash for her weight loss and was seen as a traitor to the movement.
She’s a defatsitioner!!
A recovering salad dodger.
“A politics of wishful thinking is not politics at all: it is simply an advertising slogan.”
Universal.
So long as it’s always someone else’s fault, and not your own …..
How dare you push ‘personal responsibility’. Brute!
My “moderate” fatness is entirely my fault, and not the fault of countless breweries, distilleries, bakeries, and butcher shops. Delicious villainy!
Green vegetables exist, as does ice water. The former are unappealing, the latter is tolerable, so long as it’s cut with whisky. Exercise is bothersome and boring.
But I’m also well aware that skinny, sexy, healthy people – in other periods of my life I’ve joined their ranks, albeit temporarily – do in fact eat these strange food stuffs that grow directly from the ground.
And they also do attend gymnasiums, or engage in mindless and strenuous activities called “sports,” or at least occasionally eschew motorized transport (I far prefer my Mercedes) for walking.
Which is why they’re skinny, sexy, and healthy.
BMI is not arbitrary. It is anything but arbitrary. It is an objective benchmark.
Like all benchmarks, it is crude and fails to take into account individual factors like bone density, muscle mass, etc. but it is still a useful shorthand for understanding deviations from the norm.
Then it is being used in an ignorant, uneducated way. I used to be obese according to BMI because I had a lot of muscle, and was told to diet. Now it is because I really am fat.
But objective truth does not exist anymore in the West. If a man can claim he is a woman, and enter a woman’s sporting event, despite being a biological man, what better evidence is there? By the way, BMI is probably a construct of the white, privileged patriarchy. 🙂
This article has been accompanied on my screen by an ad for a 75 day fasting programme! Either way this is big business.
I would assume that someone who fasts for 75 days is either a masochist of remarkable endurance, or some sort of religious fanatic. To charge money for it must require truly masterful salesmanship.
Up until around the nineteenth century the only people who could afford to be fat were the upper-class. There wasn’t junk food and many people might not have been starving but weren’t getting enough to get fat. Sugar was a luxury only people with money could afford up until they figured out how to grow it pretty much everywhere (beets, especially). But high caloric diets in general were also out of reach of all but the upper-class. At that time fatness was a sign of wealth and being in a certain class (along with clothing, speaking French, and elaborate table manners). After the industrial revolution succeeded in raising everyone’s standard of living (in the West), the lower classes started getting fat too. Especially when they figured out how to make cheap junk food out of starches, salt and sugar. After the turn of the twentieth century the upper classes switched their aesthetic to leanness to more easily distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi.
So I guess you could say – in a sense – that this aesthetic (either way it goes) is a form of luxury belief.
Not bad. Pretty much on the money. Too deep for what passes for most of journalism these days though.
Freddy Mercury and Queen had it right decades ago: “Fat bottom girls make the rocking world go round.” You people should never be forgiven for giving the world Twiggy and turning a generation of teen-age girls into anorexics.
I think a good deal of what has make the fat positivity movement seem plausible comes from real failings in beauty culture and the diet industry.
It’s true that the ideals of thin beauty set out in the media are often quite unhealthy. It’s true that skinny people may be quite unhealthy, and people who are not so skinny, up to a point, can be, if they are active and eat mainly healthy foods.
It’s true that diets don’t usually work, and make people fatter, and a lot of them are actually quite bad for your health even if they do make you lose weight.
It’s also true that losing weight once you are fat is often not as simple as just eating what a regular person does.
People who are struggling with their weight run up against these problems again and again, and they become very cynical about what mainstream culture is telling them. The fat positivity movement takes advantage of that to feed them bizzare lies.
Sports Illustrated’s fate was sealed when it began running cover photos of gargantuan women in bathing suits. A number of fashion magazines tried the same stunt. Newstand sales tumbled.
To their credit, they at least selected a convincing transsexual when they apparently had to go that route. A fair few of the ones you occasionally see in public nowadays really aren’t fooling anyone, poor sad creatures.
Really, it would be best if these agendas weren’t regularly shoved in one’s face. Yes, I’m a fairly portly gentleman. No, I don’t want to see flabby yet inexplicably well dressed people in clothing catalogs. I’ve long lost my youthful good looks, and am happily married, but no, I certainly don’t want to see a surgically altered man in place of an attractive young woman in the Swimsuit Edition.
Gargantuan women & men in swimwear is never a good look.
Sports Illustrated’s fate was sealed when it began running cover photos of gargantuan women in bathing suits with plenty more inside to turn the stomach. A number of fashion magazines tried the same stunt and newsstand sales fell like stones.
‘If fat activism can claim one success, it’s in expunging the idea that a fat person is an individual moral failure’
Has that actually happened?
It’s a lack of arm control.