because you're misunderstanding and also moralizing health. both of these are incredibly problematic and marginalize fat people.
so often we get very entangled in conversations about the “obesity epidemic”, how america has a ”war on obesity”, and ultimately, how we implicitly assume that fat bodies are abject and unhealthy. i reject this notion. we should instead be inclusive of all bodies when we discuss health, and not view it in such a myopic way.
one of the most common methodologies of discussing bodies is through the lens of bmi. we hear the term thrown around a lot, and it’s especially prevalent in spaces of fitness and wellness, but it is entrenched with quite a few flaws that really undermine its legitimacy. a study, led by janet tomimaya, a ucla professor, analyzed the link between bmi and cardiometabolic health using data from the most recent national health & nutrition survey survey. she concluded their study confirms how flawed bmi is as an indicator of health and concludes that there are 54 million Americans whose bmi classes them as overweight and obese are in perfect health according to cardiometabolic measures, while 21 million whose bmi puts them in the normal category are unhealthy. also for the record bmi was created by a belgian STATISTICIAN who only used white male bodies at his disposal. it's been found to be rooted in racism and sexism and there have been many studies done abt how cultural and biological differences make up what a 'healthy' body is, and racialized/gendered bodies do not fit this very flawed metric (see: reuters)
"Both dieting and weight cycling – that is, the process of going on a diet, losing weight, regaining the weight (and sometimes more), then going on another diet, losing weight, regaining the weight, and on and on and on – increase inflammation in the body within organs, muscles, etc. And inflammation itself is actually a major risk factor for many diseases that are typically blamed on “obesity,” like diabetes and heart disease And who do you think is more likely to have lived a life of constant dieting and weight cycling, especially in the climate of today’s “War on Obesity” world? People of size."
a metadata study conducted by the endocrine revealed that 74% of dieters regain their lost weight within five years. in a culture that promotes dieting, this is a very alarming statistic that complicates the relationship between fatness and disease. this underscores the confounding variable of weight cycling that very much so harms fat people.
additionally: "There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests we might want to reevaluate the way we measure an individual’s health — a lower weight doesn’t necessarily equate to better overall health According to a new study of over 100,000 adults in Denmark, researchers from the Copenhagen University Hospital have found that those with an “overweight” body mass index (BMI) were more likely to live longer than those in all of the other BMI categories — “normal,” “underweight,” and “obese.” Through nearly four decades of analysis, from 1976 to 2013, the BMI associated with the lowest risk of death actually shifted from the “normal” weight category to the “overweight” category."
i ask that we question the notion of how we view “health” in the first place. physical health is not the only health at risk when we police bodies. anytime someone is made fun of, policed, ridiculed, or embarrassed, their mental health actually declines, backed up by myriad research by the american center for pediatrics, harvard, and others. when you denigrate a group because of their social condition, that is called bullying folks. there’s research out there to back up the fact that bullying is never a helpful tool. if glorifying obesity is defined as reshaping the landscape of how we critically assess health and being accepting of others, then so be it.
fat aversion is rooted in ableism. ppl may have mental illness, chronic illness, eating disordered, struggling from abuse. many may not be able bodied and that's not anyone's fault. but your judgments abt fat people reify the following.
fat people face social marginalization in areas of: careers, banking, education, adoption, parenting, healthcare, education, fertility treatment, and other areas.
~~~~
"Fat people — especially very fat people, like me — are frequently met with screwed up faces insisting on
health and
concern. Often, we defend ourselves by insisting that concerns about our health are wrongheaded, rooted in faulty and broad assumptions. We rattle off our test results and hospital records, citing proudly that we’ve never had a heart attack, hypertension, diabetes. We proudly recite our gym schedules and the contents of our refrigerators.
Many fat people live free from the complications popularly associated with their bodies. Many fat people don’t have diabetes, just like many fat people do have loving partners, despite common depictions of us. Although we are not thin, we proudly report, we are happy and we are healthy.
We insist on our goodness by relying on our health. But what we mean is that we are tired of automatically being seen as sick. We are exhausted from the work of carrying bodies that can only be seen as doomed. We are tired of being heralded as
dead men walking, undead specters from someone else’s morality tale.
Those defensive assertions about our health aren’t wrong, but they don’t reflect every fat person’s reality. Some of us aren’t healthy or able-bodied. Some of us struggle with chronic illness, mental health issues, eating disorders, disabilities, abuse. Some of us have hypertension, diabetes, heart disease. For those fat people,
happy and healthy is an alienating aspiration, and an unreliable narrator of our bodies.
"
~~~
the fact of the matter is: we shouldn't judge other peoples' bodies. personally, i've had an ED for many many years and have been severely anorexic at many points in my life because i was taught to hate fatness. now i'm a skinny bitch that still hates his body!! body dysmorphia manifests because of the culture we live in, one that disregards fat peoples and deems them abject + inferior. if you believe in body autonomy, humanity, etc, perhaps you would support fat people too! they, in fact, are capable stewards of their bodies too, just as much as anyone else. and if someone isn't [lol!! who's the arbiter??] there is an equally skinny person who is too, and it doesn't matter. but what does matter is that your judgment plays into material issues that DO affect fat people.
we could also talk about the thin ideal that plays in media-- how that glorifies eds, forces ppl into thinking that we have to fit a certain body type, and promotes eating disorders. and we normalize harmful eating habits i.e. diets and restriction that harm thin people too!!! but that's an entirely different post.
also feel free to look up how corporations that sell diet products are the ones that directly/solely fund obesity studies (medical industrial complex!!) and how health is socially constructed e.g. social determinants of health affect ~75% of it, and there is just a shitton more to be talked about, but here's a start.
people take pride in marginalized identities because it's a way to subvert the oppressive, hegemonic powers that isolate them. it creates a sense of community and acts as a way of resistance. who knew?
sources:
https://healthcareinamerica.us/if-youre-right-about-your-fat-friend-s-health-94a3ae1bd0ca
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15652713
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20036858
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2041550
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20368473
https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo201617
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2016/05/17/study-the-healthiest-weight-might-just-be-overweight/