Fat

I'm pretty sure I'm getting on this late but FAT ACCEPTANCE HOLY SHIT.

TRIGGER WARNING: [Nouns, opinions]

So fat acceptance. Turns out some people are fat. Actually, a lot of people are fat. Srly. A lot. Some studies point to half the population of developed countries being overweight. Now that's a pretty serious public health issue.

The fat acceptance movement is this thing going on --mostly online-- that preaches there is either nothing wrong with being fat or alternatively that there is nothing that can be done about it and thinking otherwise makes you an asshole. Those are really the two main deals there.

Ok no, let me start over.

There is a thing called fat acceptance. It means that you should not be a dick to people just because they are fat. You should treat everyone with the same respect and observance of basic human dignity, regardless of their weight. So far so good. That is entirely reasonable. It is also ethically correct: after all, even if you hold the (medically validated) opinion that being fat is for the most part pretty bad for you health, you still don't know why the person is fat. Maybe they have emotional problems and cope with them via food, maybe there is something off with their metabolism. Maybe they are fat because they choose to be fat. And, being the liberal self reliance-loving individualist that you are, you just have to respect that even if you disagree with it.

Right?

So you happen to be fat and you think that being made fun of sucks. You are right. And yes, those guys making fun of you are douchebags. No controversy there. Now somehow extrapolating that to the idea that not being able to fit in an airplane seat is the tip of the iceberg of this all-encompasing conspiracy to bully fat people is fucking ridiculous. Airplane seats are not designed to hold 370kg people for the same reason they are not designed to accommodate a 2.5 meter tall guy. It is simply too unusual. It makes no economic sense to design seats for anything but the most common body sizes. You are super short and you take a plane? Congrats, lots of space! You play basketball and measure 217cm? Well shit, you are going to be pretty cramped in there. Deal with it. That's really all the is to it.

A big component of at least part of the fat acceptance movement is the idea that you can be fat and healthy. Well, you can be sorta fat and still be sorta healthy. Sure, we all know this chubby guy or girl that still manages to lead an active life even with a little extra fluff here and there. There is no hard, clear line beyond which you are no longer healthy. But lets be honest here, extra weight correlates with blood pressure, and that alone is meaningful enough to warrant keeping at least some control over you weight. You don't need to be an Olympic athlete to be considered healthy. You don't need to look like a super model or have 0.2% body fat to be healthy. You can live a happy, long life with that beer pot of yours and still be agile and strong enough to not only navigate daily life, but play the occasional football match with friends or partake in one those ever-more-popular 5km runs if you dedicate just a little bit of your time to stay in basic shape.

But if your weight is depriving you from stuff then there is something wrong, and out of self-love and self-respect you ought to do something about it. If it is becoming something that prevents you from operating like a normal person, if it keeps you from doing things you like or going to places you like then you need to look into it and try to fix it.

So no, if you are too fat to move on your own then no, you are probably not healthy.

Now the other, uglier, more toxic approach to the fat acceptance movement is the idea of weight being completely unrelated to habits and life style. These people say (I shit you not) that thermodynamics is somehow a bogus qwack and they stay fat no matter what they do. They will tell you, in all seriousness , that the success rate of weight loss programs is so astronomically low that enduring the heart breaking process of starting a diet only to irremediably fail and regain all or even more weight is just not worth it. But fear not! You don't need to change a thing. EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD. So you don't fit in an airplane seat? The airline is at fault. They give you a special, wide seat specially designed to accommodate larger passengers? They are oppressing you! Having special seats for fat people is somehow just as bad as having separate restrooms for blacks and whites. That's the mentality.

Maybe I'm just biased. I took a dive into tumblr to read about this and the victim complex of these people is mind boggling. Really. It makes it really hard to tell the trolls from the actual, honest bloggers who hold these views. It's like the first time you read about the tenants of scientology. You cannot avoid suspecting that who ever wrote that is fucking with you.

Enter the final component: internet social justice warriors. Yes, the cancer of the modern civilization. These lazy fucks who share a pic of a dead kid in a shore and accompany it with a self-serving, condemning remark. And that is it. They did nothing to help anyone, they just bitch and whine and moan about how “the system” and “the man” is holding them down and how much more sensitive and inclusive and progressive they are-- but then they don't do shit. They think complaining is on itself a form of activism. Like they can do their part to solve the great injustices of the world by sharing shit on facebook, rather than, I dunno, DONATING MONEY TO THE FUCKIN RED CROSS or actually going outside and getting stuff done.

So with the internet social justice warrior comes a barrage of “isms” and “whatever-phobic”. If you believe people should strive for a healthy life, you are guilty of healthism. You think the model on the cover of Bulky Dudes Weekly is more attractive than the morbidly obese guy on the Discovery Channel? You are fatphobic.

You fatphobic fuck.

Also, you need to check your privilege. Yeah, check that privilege you healthist shitlord.

So anyway. I conclude:

-The internet is fucking insane.

-Being fat becomes a problem when it starts taking stuff you care about away from you.

-Losing weight is doable. People who regain weight stopped doing whatever they were doing when they lost it in the first place. So yeah, jumping into fad diets that make you utterly miserable is probably not going to work out in the long run.

-You shape your body with your actions-- unless you were born with some malformation. You have a natural tendency to put on weight? Tough shit. Well, better be careful with food then. Life is not always fair.

-Your shape is not the most important aspect of who you are. People who tell you otherwise are either jerks or are trying to sell you something.

-If magazines make you feel like shit, don't fuckin buy them.

-If you honestly don't give a fuck, get as fat as you want and enjoy them donuts! But bear in mind you will trade in some stuff for it. Namely, you ability to function in an environment with gravity.