I have long stopped commenting about appearances entirely. It’s not interesting to me and I prefer to focus on other aspects of people.
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Fat shaming goes well beyond just commenting on appearance. It’s about not having equipment to fit larger bodies. It’s about medical professionals refusing treatment to people until they lose weight or simply diagnosing people as “fat” when they come in with other complaints. It’s about not being believed about what one consumes or how much one exercises. It’s about recommending treatments whose side-effects are deleterious to health (or unknown at the time. It’s about living in a world where multiple conversations and comment threads (including many on HO) indicate that people think it would be a better world without people like you in it. It’s about being pathologised at a glance. It’s about so much that is so structural, and so incessant.
If it were only mean comments about appearance, that would be almost a blessing. What people in larger bodies go through is so awful and so damaging. And really, there’s just no knowing anything based on what someone looks like (think about the number of fat people with anorexia who go untreated because doctors think that their behaviour and intense restrictions are good simply because they are fat).
Sorry, anti-fat bias is just so exhausting and so denied in the world I tend to go off… (Not saying you are, but I wanted to take fat-shaming beyond the mean-spirited comments zone.)
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I agree with everything you said.
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Perhaps I am misunderstanding but are you saying that even doctors shouldn’t talk at all about weight, health risks etc ?
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Honkman, yep. But also, you’re presuming there are automatic health risks to weight when there are better indicators of a person’s health. Moreover, just telling a person to lose weight and not tending to the whole person (which is frequent) contributes to avoidance of the doctors, stress, and other issues which exacerbate more health issues than weight likely does. Moreover, who on the planet hasn’t heard that they should lose weight? The messages are so omnipresent that people aren’t entering the space not knowing this is the first bit of advice.
Fundamentally, if the claim is that you actually care about a person’s health, maybe do things that don’t actively cause harm?
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When a doctor does a physical, which should be annual, they should be taking blood and urine samples. There are systems in place that tells the doctor when a value is abnormally low or high or puts the patient at risk.
The doctor should then explain the ramifications of those numbers and what the patient can do about it.
The “you need to lose weight” advice is not helpful as it is very possible it won’t actually address the needs of the patient.
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A nurse recently asked me if I was “familiar with the BMI.” I laughed and laughed and said yes.
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I agree that just saying to lose weight isn’t really helpful and you have to look at the “whole” patient. At the same time I disagree that excessive weight isn’t strongly associated with different health risk. There are enough studies. clinical biomarkers etc. which show these correlations - that has nothing to do with fat-shaming but is science-based. Ignoring science is also just closing your eyes and doesn’t help patients.
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Just because it is oft-repeated, doesn’t mean it’s not true. Or not effective.
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Actually, there is a lot of proof that ti is not effective, and even harmful, as evidenced upthread.
The best policy is not to talk to people about their appearance, good or bad.
That may or may not be the best policy, but reality is just not so.
People judge others by their appearance, even if they don’t verbalize it.
Overweight people do not get as many promotions as non-overweight people. Same with height and appearance. Society is just that way. Life sucks like that. But it is what it is.
Here is a real life story, and not some scientific study on PubMed.
My cousin’s best friend was medically diagnosed as clinically obese. (I’ll spare you and not give out her vitals.) She was diabetic (already had three toes amputated because of her diabetes) and suffered from chronic hypertension with routine blood pressure readings of 190/150 even on meds. Without a family intervention telling her she was “fat” she would not be with us today. Today she is recovering on her way to a more healthy lifestyle, and a thinner one at that too.
Anecdotal? Sure.
But no one can convince me that the “best” policy is never to talk to people about their appearances. It is a policy, but certainly not the best one.
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Not about their appearance but there has to be a point if somebody is for example morbidly obese where somebody (preferably family, close friends, thoughtful doctor) has to talk to this person about their very high likelihood of getting very serious health problems and how to start to address those and what kind of support this person needs. Mot talking at all would be very counterproductive
This is a graphic post for all of those who have posted here and think it’s simple, that overweight people should be penalized, be denied medical care, or be charged more it, not be insured, and/or be shamed.
I adopted my son from foster care when he was 7 and I was 51. Everyone who did not experience what my son did is lucky. This is all documented in the foster care files. It was probably a lot worse.
He went through long periods of food deprivation as an infant and toddler before he was taken into foster care at age 4. Before foster care, he had hot salsa forced into his mouth as punishment and he choked on it. Then he was given meager food in a bowl on the floor and forced to eat it like a dog. When his sister, who was older by 3 years, dropped food on the floor, she was forced to eat it from the floor. When she choked on it and vomited, she was forced to eat her vomit. When the drug dealers came into his house with guns to buy drugs from his mother’s boyfriend, my son remembers that the buyers told the drug dealer boyfriend to be nice to the 4 young children and give them food. The boyfriend would allow them food for a few days and then cut off food for days at a time. He remembers that his 3 older siblings would steal what food he, the youngest, was given. He doesn’t blame them; they were also children deprived of food.
The foster home was better than some; was not loving and he also went through many periods of prolonged food deprivation then. He was forced to sit a table for hours upon hours as a 4, 5, and 6 year old with congealing, cold food he could not eat for taste sensitivity and texture and previous food trauma. Then he was thrown into bed without food of any knd.
Once adopted, because of his trauma and abuse and neglect symptoms, he was forced by medical professionals to take atypical anti-psychotics, which are well documented to change metabolic rates in some and also to cause food cravings. We adoptive parents were threatened with having him put back into foster care if we did not agree to the medications. Food trauma/food deprivation are also well documented to cause sometimes permanent metabolic changes, so that even those who like my son at older ages restrict their caloric intake, the weight gain does not disappear.
My son did not choose his preadoptive childhood, and I did not enable his obesity.
If compassion is beyond reach, perhaps education could help understanding that there are many situations less extreme than my son’s that lead to obesity.
He understands the issue as does his doctor. It’s talked about. He’s motivated. He exercises. He reduces caloric intake.
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I think noone is saying that every situation isn’t unique and has to be evaluated independently from all other cases. At the same time as some say here nobody should ever raise this topic with anybody doesn’t help also anybody as, again, every person has to be assessed independently of any other case as all are unique.
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You make a good point. Dealing with kids 4-21, I’ve noticed a frightening uptick in weight issues in younger kids, and a some increase in obesity in middle school, too. Obviously, I’m not going to shame a kid; rather, have some straight forward conversations about activity and what they do with their free time and their diets. Most kids with weight issues are painfully aware of their situations, and sure as hell don’t need snide reminders. Most kids want the same thing: normal. They don’t wanna look like Beyonce or Taylor Swift, they want to look like the best versions themselves and don’t know how to get there. Sometimes I have to wait until a little vanity sets in on their lives and they start to care more and more about their appearance. That’s when I strike when the iron’s hot and start talking some morning cardio lab time and maybe going out for a sport or two. So, it’s not their appearance I’m worried about. I’m worried about them being contented adults; but they worry about their appearances and one can use that to spawn greater activity and focus on dietary consumption. Some kids are raised with screens as their babysitters. Gotta bust that screen time up and do real things. Real kids, who do real things, develop real skills and see real results in their physicality and behavioral well being. We’re even seeing screen time afflict vision. Gotta get out and do the real. Fun to get kids out to some unique nature spots in our area. When you combine exercise with curiosity, you get a kid easily addicted to exploring more. Part of my job is to say the quiet part out loud, but to do it in a way that preserves their integrity and decency. If you want to see decency in kids, you better model it. Just my take from the “working with youth” perspective. I sure can’t sit by idly as some of these kids fall into that pit in the couch and rot with the rest of the potatoes.
What you describe here doesn’t sound like a redundant asshole’s attempt at , what they might call, helping. Being an asshole doesn’t help. Being a caring friend can help. Most have had quite enough of assholes calling them fat. They don’t need a reminder, they need to learn how to get out of the couch pit. Then, when you see them as healthy young adults, you remind them them what it took, and let your pride in them flow. So many times they’re taught these lardass habits at home. If neither mom nor dad ever do anything, I doubt the kid will, save for what we can offer at school. Once they’re hooked, though, they usually stick with healthy/happy over "fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. "
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It’s almost like some people here think fat people don’t know they’re fat unless someone tells them.
Thank goodness they’re so kind about it.
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And that they haven’t been getting advice from multiple people over and over.
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