Fat Shaming: Truth or Feelings?

I disagree. They can be, but skinny people can be all three of those things too. Plus, I love Chris Farley. And I miss him.

AND IIIMMM IN PAINNNNNN, the truth hurts like a bed of naaaiilllllzzzzzzz letting denial eat me up insideeeeee the truth hurts and it bleeds me drrryyyy.

I actually dislike bullet for my valentine however I found an opportunity for adding song lyricsl

@flappinit respect for serving in the marines, I don’t know what Hirohito has against you but he doesn’t seem to be found of you. I will add this rebuttal about his argument though. He said you lack social interaction because your read time is 3x his. I frequently accidentally leave my device open on this website, the result has occasionally been ABSURD reading time stats, so that doesn’t really mean anything.

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Good - not that we weren’t constantly training but you could go out and enjoy the town. Couple things - one, sushi and ramen are nothing like we think they are. Two, tattoos can be offensive in Japenese culture - I was asked to leave a place for having my arm tattoos showing. I think it’s Yakuza-related. Three, do not get in trouble. Respect their laws. You get in trouble with the police over there and you’re on your own, apology is huge in their culture and we’re still technically an occupying force.

Thanks for the tips. I don’t have any visible tattoos (chest and shoulder, cant tell with a T-Shirt), so that should not be much of an issue. Big, big sushi guy so that sounds promising haha. Staying out of trouble is probably always a good idea…

Pro tip: supermarket sushi might suck here, but it was bomb and totally fresh there. Got like 50-piece platters for cheap and was amazing. And yes, staying out of trouble is a given but lots of times, the military can intervene and impose its own punishment on you if you’re in the right place. When you’re in a foreign country, you’re subject to their laws, and the government could give a shit if some kid fucks stuff up for himself. We spent a lot of time around Asian countries - China, Korea, Philippines - and being extorted or scammed was common, but retaliation could get you thrown in jail in a foreign country for years.

Just as a general rule, it pretty rare that honesty will get someone’s back up - honesty is a very likable trait. More often, it is unpleasantness, meanness or negativity that urks people - an “honest” assessment just being the delivery mechanism used to bring the unpleasantness.

I do understand that if I was not likeable, it would be easier to pin it on other people being unable to handle my honesty. It’s hard to tell yourself that you’re a nasty person and it’s easy to convince yourself you’re just being honest.

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I was fat when I hit puberty. I mean really fat. And the explanation was pretty simple - parents (understandably) ignorant about nutrition, carb rich foods due to a dire financial situation (pasta and beans, pasta and cheese…), negative behavior patterns (hey, let’s spend evenings watching TV and sipping cheap sugary drinks), cultural factors (eating food that was historicall used to fuel farmworkers or eaten only during festivities once a year) and lack of physical exercise.

However, and that’s a big however, let’s not deny agency - being morbidly obese required effort. You simply have to invest some serious time and effort into gorging yourself on shitty food to become really fat.

My grandfather looked me in the eye and calmly explained that I’ll never experience sexual intercourse unless I lose weight. I cannot imagine anything more motivating for a 15 year old kid. By the time I was 17 I was already winning judo tournaments in a weight class 45lbs lighter that my fat weight.

Had someone hugged me and explained that it’s not my fault (arguably it wasn’t) and that society puts undue pressure on teenagers to look like unrealistically fit models, well, chances are I’d still be fat.

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Had the same experience in Morocco. Police Officer’s would stop us and demand we pay our “ticket” to them in cash

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@loppar and @anon96032531 provide some interesting counter arguments here. Are there instances of this working with women? I could see the handling of this being split down gender lines, for sure.

Dude: it sounds like you REALLY wanted to have sex with your grandfather.

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Actually it was my priest who complained I was too old, too fat and too unattractive.

Boom tiss

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I agree about the importance of agency and part of growing up is taking responsibility for our lives, but adults have a lot more of it than kids, so it is the adults who create the world kids grow up in that should be ashamed if they don’t like how we turn out.

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It also comes down purely to whether the person, regardless of gender if they want too change
And I’m sure many obese people blow smoke up their rear end and claim they are happy when they’re not, but there is the chance they actually are, and if they’re in a position that they really don’t care for whatever reasons then all power to them
Personally, I’m an athletic person, would fall into the category of a fit human and I’m no where near happy about where I’m at, I’m constantly striving to look better
If someone is obese and happy, good on them

If they arnt however, then regardless of how they got there or who they can blame, there’s only one way to change it, and that’s by doing something.
Yes, unfortunately sometimes it can be from dietary restrictions (I too grew up on carb rich, generally unhealthy sugary foods and was chubby) but by the time your mind matures and you understand that you can change whatever you’re unhappy about, any chance to blame someone else for your short comings should stop
Not to the extent of that fuck knuckle above us saying he don’t give a fuck about any of us, but in an essence there is a point that is made

More people have changed and have been driven to change from tough love, or uncompromising intensity towards a goal they wanted to reach, then people who were coddled and told that it’s okay to be a victim, or wrapped in cotton wool and were told that everything will be okay
Again, there is a right and wrong way, it just comes down to finding that fair line

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I have trouble seeing how they would be such a burden (compared to those obese) on society since if they’re fit older people, won’t they be fit healthy people. For the most part they’ll be out and about not in a hospital bed draining resources.

You bring up a good point that I didn’t think of before.

I’m behind and haven’t finished the article but this stuck out to me…

Plus, rather obviously, smoking is a behavior; being fat is not.

Then, when she’s alone, she eats all the leftovers by herself, in the dark.

“It’s always hidden,” she says. “I buy a package of ice cream, then eat it all. Then I have to go to the store to buy it again. For a week my family thinks there’s a thing of ice cream in the fridge—but it’s actually five different ones.”

How is being fat not a behavior? Binge eating in private isn’t a behavior? If being fat isn’t a behavior problem then how can it be fixed? I think it is a behavior but that’s a good thing! Behaviors can be modified which means a person has control over their future.

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This is similar to my whole “I hate training, but I like being big and strong” thing. The being isn’t the behavior, but the behavior CREATES the being.

Having cancer isn’t a behavior. Smoking is a behavior, and it’s a behavior the leads to cancer. Being fat isn’t a behavior, but eating ice cream is, and it leads to being fat. Fixing the behavior changes the being.

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It seems that obese people have routines just like us. The choices they make lead to their results.

My wife’s routine is to be vegan and run…a lot. She’s recently grown fond of ultra marathons after completing her first 50k race. When we met in college she was strong and lean from her training as a heptathlete. Unfortunately for me, she’s now thinner and has much less muscle (go figure - - vegan and cardio!). She has literally run her ass off.

Dude, we’ve reached a point where referring to someone with breasts and a vagina as “she” is offensive. God help us.

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For certain. Freedom is absolutely terrifying to most people, and they’d much sooner sell themselves into slavery than face it.

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Agreed. I definitely initially disagreed with the articles implied stance of “if you’re fat, there’s nothing to do but accept it and be happy”. Total BS there. I just think we’ve gotten into the mindset that you either have to shit all over someone or coddle them like a baby, as if there are no in-betweens that involve motivation and a case-by-case analysis of the situation, that’s all. I personally respond pretty well to harsh criticism. But I know people who don’t take it well, or who react the opposite way that I do.

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I found the article to be almost incoherent in its various assertions.

The author acknowledges that obesity rates have risen sharply of late, but dismisses the notion that it’s due to increased caloric intake, the proof being:
a) at least some obese people eat vastly less than do non-obese people (a claim that has been debunked over and over and over again, and which even the author himself belies via anecdote); and
b) a single study from 2015 that asserts caloric intake dropped after peaking in 2003 (never mind that this timeframe is far too short to impact population-level data in a way that permits such a broad, counterintuitive assertion).

Instead, the obesity problem is due to “poison” in the food supply–that being fructose, along with “additives” that are “injected” into foods. These poisons somehow alter human metabolism so that a calorie is no longer a calorie.

But all of this is water under the bridge, because (per the author) once you’re obese there’s nothing that can be done about it, as “diets do not work.”

Except for doctors that is, most of whom are “fit” despite having spent “more than a decade of their lives in the high-stakes, high-stress bubble of medical schools.” (Stress causes other people to gain weight, but not doctors.) Apparently, doctors are the exception because they exercise a lot and don’t eat very much. But the author admonishes that doctors are out of line if they share such simple tidbits–‘eat less, exercise more’-- with obese pts. Doctors are taken to task for not providing specific diet tips–but remember, per the author diets don’t work, so I am at a loss as to why such tips should be given in the first place.

But setting all that aside, per the author being obese is really not a big deal from a health perspective, so it doesn’t even matter.

Anyway. I suspect fat-shaming has a very poor track record as an intervention. This is not surprising, because being an effective intervention is not the point of fat-shaming–expressing disgust is. That is, when people engage in fat shaming, it’s not because they think to themselves ‘I need to do something to help that fat guy improve his health;’ rather, they blurt out a shame-inducing statement because they (the shamer) experience visceral disgust and contempt at the sight of the fat person, and giving voice to these feelings discharges those intense emotions.

It’s like spanking one’s kid. Think about all the times you’ve seen a parent lash out at a misbehaving child at the mall, on a playground, etc. That parent didn’t strike their child because they (the parent) had reasoned it was the best way to modify the child’s behavior; clearly, such spankings are initiated out of impulse. Rather, they hit the child because they (again, the parent) were pissed off and frustrated, and we (humans) will often hit someone who pisses us off (if we think we can get away with it). So let’s not kid ourselves that fat shaming is done for the recipient’s benefit.

Apologies for the wall of text.

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