About ten years ago, I lost 150 lbs for one reason and only one - my health. The process was excruciating. Then, four years ago, I got COVID. Now, I believe that there was a very large probability that had I not lost the weight, I would not have survived the COVID. I'm still here today and very thankful that I lost the weight, no matter how difficult it was. Keep up the good work, Helen. You are one of my heroes.
Trying to lose weight does not make you fatphobic; it can be a great way to improve quality of life. Still, I'm not sure what to think about the comparison with homophobia.
Being a gay man during the height of the AIDS epidemic really did lower life expectancy. We now know that gay conversion therapy doesn't work, and AIDS is treatable, but that's hindsight. Suppose that we didn't find those treatments (and condoms weren't available), would we still insist that it's OK to be gay?
Now imagine that being obese 50 years from now no longer reduces life expectancy. Will we consider societal pressure to lose weight akin to gay conversion therapy?
Yes, but the greater impact on gay men of the AIDS crisis was not a direct result of them being gay. It was an indirect result of them being men. By this, I mean that men are more open to casual sex than women and gay men not having to accommodate the sexual preferences of women statistically have most sexual partners. Also men are less risk averse. The risk factor was unsafe sex and gay men were statistically more likely to have more of it. A parallel would be that being American makes you statistically more likely to be obese but the risk factor is actually eating too much and American culture producing a lot of fattening food in large portions. The solution would not be to stop being American and take on another national identity. It would be to eat less.
In the same way, the solution to not contracting AIDS was safe sex and if, as in your counterfactual example, condoms were not available, the solution would be for gay men to have forms of sex that involved no exchange of bodily fluids. If conversion therapy worked, then this should be an option for gay men who did not want to be gay, rather than gay men who did not want to contract AIDS.
But yes, if they find a way to remove health risks from obesity. there would be no need to worry about people being obese and they would only need to seek support with losing weight if they didn't like being fat. I already think societal pressure not to be fat is unhelpful.
Can confirm the skinny shaming problem. I've been skinny and I've been fat, and I got far more grief for being skinny (often from fat people, for what it's worth). "Eat a sandwich before you blow away," etc. And I was an avid eater when I was skinny, I was just young and had that kind of metabolism.
About ten years ago, I lost 150 lbs for one reason and only one - my health. The process was excruciating. Then, four years ago, I got COVID. Now, I believe that there was a very large probability that had I not lost the weight, I would not have survived the COVID. I'm still here today and very thankful that I lost the weight, no matter how difficult it was. Keep up the good work, Helen. You are one of my heroes.
Trying to lose weight does not make you fatphobic; it can be a great way to improve quality of life. Still, I'm not sure what to think about the comparison with homophobia.
Being a gay man during the height of the AIDS epidemic really did lower life expectancy. We now know that gay conversion therapy doesn't work, and AIDS is treatable, but that's hindsight. Suppose that we didn't find those treatments (and condoms weren't available), would we still insist that it's OK to be gay?
Now imagine that being obese 50 years from now no longer reduces life expectancy. Will we consider societal pressure to lose weight akin to gay conversion therapy?
Yes, but the greater impact on gay men of the AIDS crisis was not a direct result of them being gay. It was an indirect result of them being men. By this, I mean that men are more open to casual sex than women and gay men not having to accommodate the sexual preferences of women statistically have most sexual partners. Also men are less risk averse. The risk factor was unsafe sex and gay men were statistically more likely to have more of it. A parallel would be that being American makes you statistically more likely to be obese but the risk factor is actually eating too much and American culture producing a lot of fattening food in large portions. The solution would not be to stop being American and take on another national identity. It would be to eat less.
In the same way, the solution to not contracting AIDS was safe sex and if, as in your counterfactual example, condoms were not available, the solution would be for gay men to have forms of sex that involved no exchange of bodily fluids. If conversion therapy worked, then this should be an option for gay men who did not want to be gay, rather than gay men who did not want to contract AIDS.
But yes, if they find a way to remove health risks from obesity. there would be no need to worry about people being obese and they would only need to seek support with losing weight if they didn't like being fat. I already think societal pressure not to be fat is unhelpful.
Can confirm the skinny shaming problem. I've been skinny and I've been fat, and I got far more grief for being skinny (often from fat people, for what it's worth). "Eat a sandwich before you blow away," etc. And I was an avid eater when I was skinny, I was just young and had that kind of metabolism.