Every once in a while, I get an email asking if I would host a guest blogger or if I would be interested in this infographic. Usually the blogger or infographic is completely inappropriate for my blog such as the evils of obesity, or has nothing to do with fatness at all. Depending on mood I will ignore or engage. When I engage, my response is usually "Have you even read my blog?" or "Why would I want your fat hating infographic?" Usually I never hear anything again and I assume this was spam. A mass email hoping that a few bloggers will post whatever product they are selling. When I got the last one (from a plastic surgeon service no less) I wrote back "Are you a spammer or an idiot?" expecting not to hear anything back.
I got a message not three hours later.
I am a spammer nor an idiot… (I think this was a Freudian slip.)
Obviously you are bitter though and not as optimistic about your disease as your blog leaves one to believe.
Best of luck with that shining attitude in the future.
The issue here is not this idiot or spammer (or both). But this damage the AMA just did to fat people by labeling all fatness as a disease. Even this moron thinks I have a disease. There is nothing wrong with getting help to fat people with diseases, but to just tell someone they have a disease when they are perfectly healthy is ridiculous.
The New York Times seems to think this is a good idea because it "supposedly" reduces body shame.
On the positive side, we found that the obesity-as-disease message increased body satisfaction among obese individuals, probably because it removed the shame of obesity as a moral failing.
However...
Suggesting that one’s weight is a fixed state — like a long-term disease — made attempts at weight management seem futile, and thus undermined the importance that obese individuals placed on health-focused dieting and concern for weight.
The gist is, calling fatness a disease meant that people felt less ashamed because they had a disease rather than a moral failing. However since the cure for this disease is the same shit they've been touting for 50 years, people give up on any kind of weight management.
I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist but since "Obesity experts" use correlation with causality, let's try it with the diet industry. Even though the diet industry still makes a good 20 billion, that shift is moving away from commercial dieting to Do it Yourself. DIY breaks up that massive pie in to tiny pieces. Meaning the big companies are not getting the money they once did. Weight Loss Drugs have been failing miserably for the last 10 years. Weight Loss Surgery is making a lot of doctors wealthy. So calling Fatness a disease means new money comes into these "Cures". Cures that I might add don't work for most people in the long wrong and can cause more harm than good.
Health at Every Size has no real profit margin and helped try to improve quality of life. It works to help people of all sizes enjoy eating, moving, and loving their body again. Nothing in HAES calls you a disease or says you have a moral failing if you didn't get a chance to exercise.
The best thing I ever did to reduce body shame and to work on my health was to stop trying to be thin.
And if any young fat activist wants to do a guest blog, I’m okay with that. If you want to sell your “Fat is bad product”. Go fuck yourself.
Comments