What do they want us to accept? I’m willing to accept that they exist and should be allowed to be happy, and just like everyone else - that happiness should not come at the others’ expense.
The answer is a little muddy. Some just don’t want to be picked on, some want people to accommodate their size/weight in society. IMO none of these are bad things to want.
Where it gets messy is when people take it too far, where they push being fat not only as a lifestyle choice, but to also argue against obesity being harmful to their health.
I’ve known a few people get into these kind of “fat acceptance” communities, and it never goes well. I don’t go into too many details, but a friend went from a fairly intelligent person to XL modelling and beauty contests (funded by them), weird social dating mixers where they get paired with what I can best describe as “people that like fat people”, and weird online groups where they align on social media messaging, bully beauty contests and model agencies for not accepting XL women, and share links online where they pick on people they seem as “fatphobic”. This woman in particular has a PhD in Human Biology, yet would spend their free time debating online about how she (easily in the high 200 lbs) is healthier than someone of average weight.
Could be the potential extra burden on the healthcare system since obesity is highly correlated with a wide number of illnesses. Of course this applies to smokers and heavy drinkers too.
People who due early are cheap for the healthcare system.
The government in my country won’t ban smoking because of this grim truth. The tobacco taxes income is larger than the cost of healthcare for a few years for smokers.
I’ve been in an 11hr flight in the middle seat between two obese people and I should’ve gotten a partial refund for all the room they took spilling over into my seat
You should have gotten a full refund. I’m disgusted at how miserable every experience on a plane has become. Either pay extra to pick a seat or be jammed in the middle of a narrow row that shrinks every year.
Many HEAS advocates loudly proclaim that losing weight is a personal attack against them, and being on a diet (literally, rejecting cake) is harsh discrimination.
that happiness should not come at the others’ expense.
It’s probably a failure of imagination, but I’ve never really understood this part of anti-acceptance sentiment.
Any valid criticisms I’ve seen largely come down to regular old accessibility failures or capitalism making people believe airline seats should be miserably cramped.
What is the trade off, in a real, not hypothetical sense?
I’ll bite. Airlines are a great example because there are really strong physical constraints on flight, but the basic rules apply to almost every piece of built infrastructure. What does it take to make a plane “accessible” and what standards will it be built to? Are we going to accomodate “small fats” up to 300 lbs or so, or will we continue into the 500 lb range or 700 lb? This matters because aisles, seats, and doorways will all need to built to standard.
If you’ve seen the “Big Johns” in Vegas you’ll know that the washroom alone will take up the entire width of a small passenger jet. That will allow for the oversize toilet, room to turn, the doorway and aisle. That means there will only be one unless we turn them sideways to put in two. But those toilets now remove 6-8 rows of seats. So that’s 18-24 fewer paying passengers. I could go on here but you get the idea.
Widening the aisle would require removing 1-2 seats per row. And the remaining seats become wider so there are now 3-4 people per row instead of six. So the economics really matters here.
These discussions are true for every piece of infrastructure. It’s not just a matter of making things bigger to allow people room to move and sit. Every supporting piece of infrastructure has to match. What does it do to land use if parking spaces need to be 50% wider to accomodate larger vehicle doors that swing fully open?
The built environment is a series of interdependent systems that are built to a set of standards - some tightly regulated and some informal. Changing those to accomodate a larger body size is not a simple task.
When I pay my healthcare premiums or my taxes, individuals who are obese are taking more of that money and raising prices overall (everything else equal, not getting into universal healthcare vs not). That is a trade off of me being okay with the notion that people should be covered, but having to pay more for those people.
So are the old, children, and anyone not within the “best for capitalism” bell curve (which I just made up, but you get the sentiment).
That’s basically a pro-capitalist argument used to justify a system which should not exist in the first place.
If we’re discussing our thoughts of what should be, then I believe healthcare should be a function of government and a human right.
I agree. But weight is a health issue. So providing them health care equally to all other citizens is very different than altering society to accommodate them unduly. If we’re using airplanes as an example, we shouldn’t put “fat rows” into airplanes any more than we should bring back ashtrays on airplanes.
Supporting something as a health issue, and catering to it, are two very different things.
It’s sad that we live in a world where the old show “scared straight” would get sued because it was hurting the kids 'fee-fees. The health care system can’t tell them they’re obese and have to do something about it because it makes them feel bad…fuck that.
Probably hoping people don’t needlessly mock them on the Internet for dumb shit like landscape mode while being judged for somehow affecting others’ happiness by simply asking for some understanding?
Obesity does come at everyone’s expense. Consider that over half of us Americans are obese or simply fat. Imagine the environmental impacts of all that food waste. If you don’t spend time driving the countryside, it’s hard to get your head around how much land and energy use goes into growing our food. Imagine how much pollution goes into growing that food; herbicides, pesticides, gasoline, manufacturing, chicken shit runoff, all that.
Go to the doctor. Almost every person in the waiting room is obese. Isn’t that something? They make a huge impact on our health care system. I can’t find a local doctor taking new patients. The system is locked up and a huge part of that is treating obesity related disease and injury.
Nope, I don’t accept them. I mean come on, a drug addicted person isn’t accepted, too. Everyone would say: “stop it, your lifestyle kills you and makes your family and friends sad.”
And fat people get accepted? Like: “oh it’s okay, eat more till you die, I don’t care.”
This isn’t correct. Blame your fattys and tell them they have to change their life. It’s a slow suicide, and they need help.
Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having. “Goddamn it Otto, you are an alcoholic.” “Goddamn it Otto, you have Lupus.” One of those two doesn’t sound right.
Oh yes, I agree. And it’s only coincidental that I dropped 40 lbs without trying when I got on non-stimulant ADHD meds. Mental health and physical health are unrelated. It’s really just they eat too much and totally within their control.
More than 40% of the USA alone is obese. No where near that many people are obese because they are taking stimulant ADHD meds. It’s great that you lost weight, but a very massive portion of our population is obese because of their eating habits and sedentary lifestyle.
ADHD meds? What are they doing? Lowering the ADHD? Well shit, if I take meds that lowers my “drive” I would get fat, too.
I don’t want to start a discussion about ADHD but maybe it is to decide what could kill you more. They say even Mozart had theoretically ADHD, but they don’t gave him meds, they gave him a Piano.
ADHD causes executive dysfunction. You don’t get to choose what you’re doing.
If that sounds crazy, that’s because it is. That’s why it’s a neurological disorder.
ADHD meds give you more executive function. You get to choose what you do.
Maybe Mozart would’ve been happier if he hyper fixated on harpsichord less and showered more. If he was ADHD, he didn’t get to make that choice.
But regardless, Mozart wouldn’t survive today’s society with a harpsichord fixation. At best he’d be in a mediocre band. At worst he’d be homeless. If you aren’t comfortable with that concept, then maybe we need to fix society.
You have to consider that this is, in some cases, issue of mental health, money, or education.
Garbage foods are the ones most readily available, and health care much less so.
That obviously doesn’t apply to the person going on tv to promote this lifestyle
I feel like casting actions that society views negatively as all the result of trauma is… probably wrong? Like in the case of drugs, sure some people use them as a coping mechanism or whatever, but most people don’t have secret trauma and just think that drugs are fun.
No, you’re getting downvoted because there is no such thing as “genetically fat”. Metabolic disorders are a different beast, but even those can be controlled by diet. The psychological tradeoffs of restrictive diets make them a difficult choice for many people who prefer a pharmaceutical route instead. At the fringe people will deny there is a “lifestyle” intervention option at all.
If your genetics give you an abnormally slow metabolism, this will result in you gaining weight based off calories that a normal person would eat to maintain a healthy weight. It’s hard enough for most people with normal metabolisms to eat a healthy diet so saying “well those people can just control it with diet” is grossly optimistic and again puts the “blame” on these people with metabolic disorders for not eating well enough.
You did mention though that those people may go the pharmaceutical route, however that may not be available to a lot of people due to lack of health insurance, lack of knowledge, etc. also these weight loss drugs that have become all the rage as relatively new, like last few years
So to come full circle, yes, some people are fat because of genetics.
To be fair, this is a very small subset of people we’re talking about.
So like that? Did it work? Are you calmed down yet?
Here I’ll try spewing more abuse at you targeting this hostile emotion you’re clearly addicted to . Maybe that will calm you down. But I dunno, it doesn’t seem like it should be the one and only tool in the toolbox to reach for when talking to people about their issues.
What do they want us to accept? I’m willing to accept that they exist and should be allowed to be happy, and just like everyone else - that happiness should not come at the others’ expense.
The answer is a little muddy. Some just don’t want to be picked on, some want people to accommodate their size/weight in society. IMO none of these are bad things to want.
Where it gets messy is when people take it too far, where they push being fat not only as a lifestyle choice, but to also argue against obesity being harmful to their health.
I’ve known a few people get into these kind of “fat acceptance” communities, and it never goes well. I don’t go into too many details, but a friend went from a fairly intelligent person to XL modelling and beauty contests (funded by them), weird social dating mixers where they get paired with what I can best describe as “people that like fat people”, and weird online groups where they align on social media messaging, bully beauty contests and model agencies for not accepting XL women, and share links online where they pick on people they seem as “fatphobic”. This woman in particular has a PhD in Human Biology, yet would spend their free time debating online about how she (easily in the high 200 lbs) is healthier than someone of average weight.
Wdym by this — do fat people’s existence typically necessitate others’ unhappiness?
Could be the potential extra burden on the healthcare system since obesity is highly correlated with a wide number of illnesses. Of course this applies to smokers and heavy drinkers too.
Also people with adverse childhood experiences
People who due early are cheap for the healthcare system.
The government in my country won’t ban smoking because of this grim truth. The tobacco taxes income is larger than the cost of healthcare for a few years for smokers.
I’ve been in an 11hr flight in the middle seat between two obese people and I should’ve gotten a partial refund for all the room they took spilling over into my seat
You should have gotten a full refund. I’m disgusted at how miserable every experience on a plane has become. Either pay extra to pick a seat or be jammed in the middle of a narrow row that shrinks every year.
Wish we could have high-speed rail.
You ever used public transportation or a plane?
Many HEAS advocates loudly proclaim that losing weight is a personal attack against them, and being on a diet (literally, rejecting cake) is harsh discrimination.
For example, here’s a world famous fat-advocate saying so: https://www.ravishly.com/take-cake-smaller-slice-cake
It’s probably a failure of imagination, but I’ve never really understood this part of anti-acceptance sentiment.
Any valid criticisms I’ve seen largely come down to regular old accessibility failures or capitalism making people believe airline seats should be miserably cramped.
What is the trade off, in a real, not hypothetical sense?
I’ll bite. Airlines are a great example because there are really strong physical constraints on flight, but the basic rules apply to almost every piece of built infrastructure. What does it take to make a plane “accessible” and what standards will it be built to? Are we going to accomodate “small fats” up to 300 lbs or so, or will we continue into the 500 lb range or 700 lb? This matters because aisles, seats, and doorways will all need to built to standard.
If you’ve seen the “Big Johns” in Vegas you’ll know that the washroom alone will take up the entire width of a small passenger jet. That will allow for the oversize toilet, room to turn, the doorway and aisle. That means there will only be one unless we turn them sideways to put in two. But those toilets now remove 6-8 rows of seats. So that’s 18-24 fewer paying passengers. I could go on here but you get the idea.
Widening the aisle would require removing 1-2 seats per row. And the remaining seats become wider so there are now 3-4 people per row instead of six. So the economics really matters here.
These discussions are true for every piece of infrastructure. It’s not just a matter of making things bigger to allow people room to move and sit. Every supporting piece of infrastructure has to match. What does it do to land use if parking spaces need to be 50% wider to accomodate larger vehicle doors that swing fully open?
The built environment is a series of interdependent systems that are built to a set of standards - some tightly regulated and some informal. Changing those to accomodate a larger body size is not a simple task.
When I pay my healthcare premiums or my taxes, individuals who are obese are taking more of that money and raising prices overall (everything else equal, not getting into universal healthcare vs not). That is a trade off of me being okay with the notion that people should be covered, but having to pay more for those people.
So are the old, children, and anyone not within the “best for capitalism” bell curve (which I just made up, but you get the sentiment).
That’s basically a pro-capitalist argument used to justify a system which should not exist in the first place.
If we’re discussing our thoughts of what should be, then I believe healthcare should be a function of government and a human right.
I agree. But weight is a health issue. So providing them health care equally to all other citizens is very different than altering society to accommodate them unduly. If we’re using airplanes as an example, we shouldn’t put “fat rows” into airplanes any more than we should bring back ashtrays on airplanes.
Supporting something as a health issue, and catering to it, are two very different things.
It’s sad that we live in a world where the old show “scared straight” would get sued because it was hurting the kids 'fee-fees. The health care system can’t tell them they’re obese and have to do something about it because it makes them feel bad…fuck that.
Even with universal nationalized healthcare, in a non capitalist place, the cost is still happening
Health insurance is a scam when it gets to decide what treatment you’re allowed to have.
Probably hoping people don’t needlessly mock them on the Internet for dumb shit like landscape mode while being judged for somehow affecting others’ happiness by simply asking for some understanding?
Just a guess, tho.
deleted by creator
Obesity does come at everyone’s expense. Consider that over half of us Americans are obese or simply fat. Imagine the environmental impacts of all that food waste. If you don’t spend time driving the countryside, it’s hard to get your head around how much land and energy use goes into growing our food. Imagine how much pollution goes into growing that food; herbicides, pesticides, gasoline, manufacturing, chicken shit runoff, all that.
Go to the doctor. Almost every person in the waiting room is obese. Isn’t that something? They make a huge impact on our health care system. I can’t find a local doctor taking new patients. The system is locked up and a huge part of that is treating obesity related disease and injury.
Nope, I don’t accept them. I mean come on, a drug addicted person isn’t accepted, too. Everyone would say: “stop it, your lifestyle kills you and makes your family and friends sad.”
And fat people get accepted? Like: “oh it’s okay, eat more till you die, I don’t care.”
This isn’t correct. Blame your fattys and tell them they have to change their life. It’s a slow suicide, and they need help.
Yes, I also shout at my ADHD friends to pay attention and my depressed friends to just feel better. It works!
- Mitch Hedberg
Both aren’t things that came from uncontrolled misuse of substances or food. Bad examples if you ask me.
Oh yes, I agree. And it’s only coincidental that I dropped 40 lbs without trying when I got on non-stimulant ADHD meds. Mental health and physical health are unrelated. It’s really just they eat too much and totally within their control.
More than 40% of the USA alone is obese. No where near that many people are obese because they are taking stimulant ADHD meds. It’s great that you lost weight, but a very massive portion of our population is obese because of their eating habits and sedentary lifestyle.
Do you think more than 60% of the US has a healthy mental state? In this economy??
Of course they don’t. What do you think you’re proving? I think the world is more complicated than you imagine
That mental health impacts physical health. Follow the conversation, love.
ADHD meds? What are they doing? Lowering the ADHD? Well shit, if I take meds that lowers my “drive” I would get fat, too.
I don’t want to start a discussion about ADHD but maybe it is to decide what could kill you more. They say even Mozart had theoretically ADHD, but they don’t gave him meds, they gave him a Piano.
ADHD causes executive dysfunction. You don’t get to choose what you’re doing.
If that sounds crazy, that’s because it is. That’s why it’s a neurological disorder.
ADHD meds give you more executive function. You get to choose what you do.
Maybe Mozart would’ve been happier if he hyper fixated on harpsichord less and showered more. If he was ADHD, he didn’t get to make that choice.
But regardless, Mozart wouldn’t survive today’s society with a harpsichord fixation. At best he’d be in a mediocre band. At worst he’d be homeless. If you aren’t comfortable with that concept, then maybe we need to fix society.
I would shout at both if they don’t take their meds.
You have to consider that this is, in some cases, issue of mental health, money, or education.
Garbage foods are the ones most readily available, and health care much less so.
That obviously doesn’t apply to the person going on tv to promote this lifestyle
Drug addiction correlates in a similar way though
Overeating, drug addiction, even workaholism and endless accumulation of wealth are all maladaptive coping mechanisms due to unintegrated trauma.
I feel like casting actions that society views negatively as all the result of trauma is… probably wrong? Like in the case of drugs, sure some people use them as a coping mechanism or whatever, but most people don’t have secret trauma and just think that drugs are fun.
Sure, but according to this here memo
ahem
“Fuck the mentally ill”
- every society
It’s more like “fuck telling the mentally ill they’re mentally healthy” -a few people
I’m sorry, I’m not really sure what you mean.
Yes, it’s often education. And that’s something more educated people can help, too.
The promoting person could be some kind of mentally illness. Our brain loves to lie about facts that could hurt us.
Some people are genetically fat though, or have metabolic disorders. Just keep that in mind.
Edit: lol, down voted for stating a proven fact? Interesting… not a great look for Lemmy, is it?
Nobody’s genetically landwhale or ham planet. We’re talking people who need landscape tv coverage, not a few pounds extra.
You are factually wrong sir. I suggest you do some research and reconsider.
Very, very few. Far fewer than the 40% of Americans that’re obese.
You are nearly there… If 40% of any group are anything, that is not an individual problem, it’s a systemic issue.
Ok. My point was just that these people exist. I made no claim about the frequency of occurrence.
No, you’re getting downvoted because there is no such thing as “genetically fat”. Metabolic disorders are a different beast, but even those can be controlled by diet. The psychological tradeoffs of restrictive diets make them a difficult choice for many people who prefer a pharmaceutical route instead. At the fringe people will deny there is a “lifestyle” intervention option at all.
Brotha waattttt?
If your genetics give you an abnormally slow metabolism, this will result in you gaining weight based off calories that a normal person would eat to maintain a healthy weight. It’s hard enough for most people with normal metabolisms to eat a healthy diet so saying “well those people can just control it with diet” is grossly optimistic and again puts the “blame” on these people with metabolic disorders for not eating well enough.
You did mention though that those people may go the pharmaceutical route, however that may not be available to a lot of people due to lack of health insurance, lack of knowledge, etc. also these weight loss drugs that have become all the rage as relatively new, like last few years
So to come full circle, yes, some people are fat because of genetics.
To be fair, this is a very small subset of people we’re talking about.
Some people, maybe. 122 million people just in the US, maybe not
You’re angry. Calm down.
So like that? Did it work? Are you calmed down yet?
Here I’ll try spewing more abuse at you targeting this hostile emotion you’re clearly addicted to . Maybe that will calm you down. But I dunno, it doesn’t seem like it should be the one and only tool in the toolbox to reach for when talking to people about their issues.