Then I guess I'm delusional in your eyes - as if I really cared.
Not everyone is automatically deserving of respect. Some people are absolute detriments to society and humanity and deserve no respect. Period.
That being said, this movement has the right idea - love you for who you are, ignore the media and popular consensus, inspirational stuff like that.
Oh, just one problem: you're encouraging fat people to stay fat and stay at risk of developing all of the problems obesity causes! You can't recognize that something is a deleterious issue and encourage them to just EMBRACE IT. You should embrace it as far as loving you for you, then you should be taking steps to be healthier. You should at least be TRYING.
I never said anyone was delusional - I was quoting the first post, which said that HAES is "delusion and disrespect." I was saying if you think that HAES is delusion then you have some questionable ethics. You misread a bit.
Criticizing those who are fat and trying to shame them into losing weight does not work -
studies have shown this for years. It makes people feel superior when they do so, but in fact harms the cause they claim to be so passionate for. You know what helps people lose weight? Loving their body. When I was a teenager, I was overweight. I lost weight when I began to love my body, and thus felt more of an urge to take care of it, so I took initiative in monitoring what I ate.
Fat people deserve the same respect that anyone who engages in debatably risky behavior does. They deserve as much respect as people that ride motorcycles. They deserve as much respect as flight attendants that expose themselves to radiation. They deserve as much respect as the person who doesn't know how to swim. The point I'm making here is that everyone engages in some kind of behavior that has a higher risk to kill them than if they did not. We've just decided that this particular behavior is "worse" than the rest and thus the people that engage in it aren't worthy of respect.
e:
I agree that low socio-economic status is a contributor to obesity but not that disagreeing with this HAES thing makes you an evil bastard. We should be pointing out to fat people that their weight is unhealthy because most of the time it is. It's not showing them disrespect, it's attempting to improve their lives, change our culture that produces obesity and minimise the cost to the healthcare system. Being fat does not just effect the individual like Magic Christmas Light claims, society has to pay for it. And to add some emotional blackmail it has a human cost as well, would you like your relatives to die younger because their arteries are clogged with cholesterol? Don't think so.
Every size and every lifestyle is not healthy. I'd agree if the idea was that you can try to do healthy stuff no matter what weight you are but doing physical activity and eating good foods is good for you. If you do a lot of that you should be healthy. Maybe not a stick figure supermodel but healthy.
The picture in the OP about the woman expecting her husband to love her when she gained weight disgusts me. I have a right to not be attracted to fat people. Maybe I don't have the right to discriminate things like employment because of it but yeah, we should not be forcing the idea that being overweight is acceptable.
There are three things that I see are contributing to obesity. 1) Genetics: Not much I can do about that. 2) Our processed food industry. Things like McDonalds need to adhere to dietary guidelines or be put out of business. It's pathetic that our society is ruled by corporations that profit off selling you junk. 3) The sedentary lifestyle that humanity has become due to technology. We no longer have to be physically active as part of our work, making exercise a chore that you have to undertake on the side. The only way I can see this being changed is much more focus on physical activity in schools or a period of military conscription for everyone except those with medical conditions. Not because of strategic survival like in Israel but because it will teach you positive life skills including diet and fitness. Perhaps it doesn't even have to be military, consider exporting youth as humanitarian workers for a year or two in exchange for credits with workplaces or tertiary educational establishments. They do things that keep them physically active and do good things for the world.
HAES works around the problem that obesity is rather than addressing it. It shouldn't be ok to be unhealthy. I disagree with the most severe of fat shaming tactics that label fatties as inhuman but to an extent they do need to be aware that obesity is a health concern, we shouldn't sugar coat what medical experts tell us just to make fat people feel better.
By the way, I'm underweight and do no physical activity and have a mediocre diet but am skinny due to a fast metabolism. Throw the privilege word at me but I want people everyone to be healthy which goes against the "every size" part of this movement. It's not appearance, fat v. thin that is the problem but what poor diet and exercise habits does to your body. Most of the time being overweight is a result of those trends.
To finish up I empathise with people like Oryx who as children had no control over their diet and exercise because they weren't raised in an ideal situation but teaching people to be happy with their bodies when their bodies could lead them to health problems and premature death is not a good thing.
You're making the same mistake as Undertaker, misreading what I said and characterizing it as something else. I never called anyone an evil bastard.
I challenge you to find any overweight person who is not "aware" that carrying extra weight is in general unhealthy. You are not telling anyone anything new when you claim that you need to make people aware that it's a health concern. Everyone is aware. The question you have to ask yourself, knowing that, is: if everyone knows it's unhealthy, why do people do it? And that question has a huge amount of sociological research behind it, involving advertising, prices, government subsidies (high fructose corn syrup for everyone!), and priorities, among other things.
I would be pro a nutrition/exercise class in school though - PE doesn't really work as an exercise class because it's so miserable, and the schools in impoverished areas that need these classes the most can't afford them. I don't think we need to go as far as putting people in the military to teach them about diet and exercise.
A lot of what I previously wrote to Undertaker applies to your post as well.
