This is a big topic. (AYO!) But in all seriousness, I have a problem with the fat acceptance movement and fit shaming and those are the topics of today's rant. I always say something about how much hate I'm going to get for my rants but there's like no way that this isn't going to receive backlash. Right? We'll see.
In my last rant I called out 50 Shades of Grey haters for being pathetically transparent. This time it's the fat acceptance movement. I understand that a lot of people are fat and that we shouldn't necessarily treat them as subhuman. That would be hard anyway since nearly 70% of Americans are overweight or obese. I agree with the idea of fat acceptance since I see living in denial as an even bigger problem. Fat people are real and they are everywhere; don't ever forget it. The problem I have with the movement has to do partially with the rhetoric but mainly with the fact that it's massively apathetic. The idea behind it isn't that it's shallow to have beauty standards and value people based on their appearance (that would require admitting that you are unattractive), an idea that I would be more than happy to not target in a rant; it's that the standard of beauty is in fact them (the fat people). I might have said something about this in a previous rant. (something about Everyone's Perfect?)
No. The reason we have these incredibly fit and attractive models in magazines is the same reason we have fast and exotic sports cars in magazines: we like to look at awesome things that are rare to have but that definitely do exist. That being said, the standard sure is falling. Models from even ten years ago needed WAY less Photoshop to look like the pinnacle of beauty. Nobody is calling out Car and Driver for having pictures of the beautiful cars you dream of someday driving. "What if someone with a crappy car saw that picture and felt sad because they didn't want to work hard enough to someday drive one? That's jalopy shaming!" That's weird. I've never heard that particular line of reasoning. It's almost like fat acceptance is just fat people looking for universal permission to not confront their problems.
Caveat: There are some people who do not value their appearance. I understand and accept this fact. That's fine. You know what, if you really don't value your physical appearance whatsoever, that is perfectly fine with me. Just understand that these people probably make up less than 5% of the population. Okay, I don't have any actual statistics so that's just a guess but I would be very surprised if there were many people who didn't value their appearance.
Most people value their physical appearance. They want to be called beautiful. They want to be attractive. How do I know this? Let's go back to the entire premise of fat acceptance: everyone is beautiful. It's the idea that everyone is entitled to be thought of as beautiful by everyone else. It's the idea that you are not allowed to have an opinion about what is or isn't beautiful because it might hurt someone's feelings. The fat acceptance movement could not exist if people did not widely value their own appearance.
What does the fat acceptance movement represent to me? It represents apathy. It represents defeatism. It represents the rampant entitlement mentality of today's society. (Apathy = being unmotivated. They don't have it but want it. Apathy is what it takes to maintain that disparity. It's the opposite of motivation.) Being fat is like the most straightforward personal issue to resolve. It requires minimal self awareness (understanding that you are fat, that you don't like that you are fat, and that you will remain fat unless you exercise) and minimal intervention. The solutions are there in droves but it all whittles down to one key tenet: absorb less energy than you expend. If you do that, weight loss is absolutely inevitable.
Buckle up everyone; this rant is about to go even deeper than fat people: People don't care anymore; not just about their appearance but about anything. Nobody wants to be or do anything. All that anyone wants to do is stay drunk for two days every week in the hopes that they will forget about the previous five days of the week. "Everybody's working for the weekend." That is abominable. I mean, I get it. Sometimes you have a crappy job and it's nice to just take it easy after work but you don't care enough about yourself to find a job that you can even enjoy?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most fat people are aware of that fact and also dislike that fact that they are fat just like they're aware that their job doesn't suit them and hate their job as a result. What is it that keeps you alive? No, really. I don't understand how you can live with this ideal self in your head of you being all sexy and having an awesome job and whatnot while you consistently fail to put any effort into achieving it. How do you not kill yourself at some point? Don't take this as me saying, "go kill yourself." That's not what I'm saying. It's a genuine question and in fact I would encourage you to do quite the opposite: get motivated and fix your problems. I couldn't not kill myself if the disparity between my ideal self and actual self were that large and I also completely lacked any motivation to ever change that. Do these people somehow believe that they are working on it? Have they duped themselves into believing that things will some day get better spontaneously?
Fit shaming. It's gotten to the point that fat people are so self-conscious about their bodies that they've taken to making fun of people who exercise and care as if they are the ones who have a problem. While it is certainly unusual to care, it's also unusual to find someone who is militantly apathetic. These fit shamers care so little about everything that exists that it's come full circle; they care about not caring and they feel like they're dealing out some twisted sort of justice when they shame fit people. Have you ever seen a pretty girl post a bikini picture on facebook or whatever and ALWAYS there is one person who comments saying, "eat a sandwich," or some variation thereof. Disgusting.
They used to tell me that bullies were just people who felt insecure and so they made fun of people and beat them up to make themselves feel better. That is literally what is happening here. They can't handle looking at a picture of someone who cared enough to achieve something so they have to mouth of and make fun of them. Obviously this isn't quite as widespread as fat acceptance but it's more likely to be damaging to others and is 100% the result of the fat acceptance movement.
All of this being said, I don't condone fat shaming, not because of any sort of moral objection that I have to making people care, but because it's objectively ineffective. Shaming people tends to have the opposite effect of what is intended. So say you go out and shame a fat person, laugh at them, call them names, the whole shebang. The likely result will be that they start identifying more with being fat and subsequently make even less effort. Even if they did start working out because of being shamed, it would be because they're afraid to be shamed even more and fear, while a powerful motivator, isn't very healthy.
If you read this and felt inspired to do something about the apathy epidemic, go out and inspire people. Set goals and follow through. Healthy motivation is all about visualizing the result. After you've achieved something, go find some fatties and mentor them. Coach them on how to do something about the things they care about, not just their appearance but the rest of their life as well.
It's much harder to stop being fat in spirit than physically fat.
Sorry if the truth hurt your feelings.
-Ben
