This we could dive in to debate about.

This question of "treated in society".

It is one where the words have to be very clearly understood and defined as many too many times those who think they are on the 'nice' side just assume they are on the positive side of those words and I would argue they are not.

Being 'nice' (I'll encapsulate the concept with that word) imo is not just accepting "Most obese people are going to stay obese." and thus removing the things I say I believe Society has a role in re-enforcing such as better outcomes in certain areas.

So if you say you believe society has that role too, then we are not disagreeing.

If you are arguing that being nice is not saying those things as it may make some people (especially those resided to being forever obese and thus not wanting in their face reminders) and thus to be 'nice' we should not say them, I won't agree.

For example I think things like "...depression, stress disorders, anxiety and worse ailments..." exist in larger numbers of more people and are worse BECAUSE there is a growing fat acceptance ('nice') that is leading to the normalization of it and thus why we are heading rapidly to a majority of the populace being obese when a few decades back it was the exception.

Did that singular exception obese person, decades ago feel "...depression, stress disorders, anxiety and worse ailments" about there state, sure, possibly and maybe even likely.

Is the answer to be 'nice' and see the problem balloon to a majority of the populace, but to just silence everyone ('nice') in the hopes it alleviates "...depression, stress disorders, anxiety and worse ailments", no. That would be flawed and faulty advice with far worse outcomes even though you had everyone being 'nice'.

The issue is when putting forth a positive image or story (see billboards upthread) is labelled as shaming or 'feeling bad' and instead they are replaced with 'obesity norming' pictures. That is wrong.

If anyone cannot see the blatant increasing attempt to shame marketing companies to not use positive bodies or stories that show success, and instead use 'real' women (ie obese), they are honestly purposely deluding themselves.

But i agree with you that a big part of the obesity norming is also by the fashion industry and they have stated that. They see it is a expanding market, literally, and want obese people (mainly women) to spend tons of money on fashion too and thus need them to feel their bodies are fine just the way they are.

Fair enough, but that's how you come off. If is not what you want to convey, you should perhaps consider that.

I have no idea why she was cancelled, as I take little interest in drama in social media. But speaking broadly, exactly what is she asking about an excuse for?

Other than that, someone wearing professional makeup, who seems to have all her pores removed in post-edit and looks like she dropped water-weight before the shoot is not someone I look towards for a recipe on life. She can do her, by all means, and if people like her, good for them. For me, it seems overly complicated.

Also, biology and impacts of birth being a thing and a thing that doesn't always hit equally, the message is a little off. A lot of women feel shame about completely natural effects on their bodies.

Obesity norming or acceptance has all the same roots as the failed "Self Esteem Movement" or "Everyone gets a Trophy" phase that went thru schools.

It is always well meaning individuals who time and again refuse to understand the caution intended by the age old proverb 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.


Might a child who strives for and fails to medal and comes in fifth feel it is 'better', 'nicer' if everyone gets a medal? Sure. So 'lets be nice then' right? No.

No, because it impacts how vastly more people perceive and pursue accomplishments.

You make one person feel better while unwittingly damaging hundreds more who you then will just be 'nice' to, as well.

Being 'nice' is doing the tough work and some times confrontational work to help shrink the numbers of alcoholics, drug addicts, under performing kids in school, obesity issues, etc and not just 'accepting' them and trying to shield them from the stresses of 'expectations' or pressures of 'seeing what a positive outcome looks like'.

Yes i understand that the person who fails, may indeed feel worse seeing a positive role model of success. It can be hard to see the valedictorian with straight A's you know worked 1/10th as hard as you succeed when you could not, and it hard seeing a person fit when you fail every diet. But the answer to that is not remove positive re-enforcement to try and make them feel better.

Normalizing obesity is no different than normalizing smoking or drinking except that its health consequences and corollary cost to society are worse than for smoking (drinking is a major contributor to obesity).

Fair enough.

I can certainly be self reflecting enough to recognize that people I generally agree with, often take issue with me, and when we dig down it is not over the content but the perceived presentation. That i have to put on me.

The woman in that ad was attacked mostly over her use of the word "excuse" as many suggested it was shaming others who have 'valid reasons' for not getting back to shape or health issues that prevent it.

The claim being she was casually dismissing others. I argue the latter take is the dishonest one. Her message is absolutely fine.

It applied to males as well though in a sense. Bloated merchants etc(vs manual labor class) was definitely a sign of wealth/access to excess--and being fat was essentially showing it off. Also basically why the gout was called the rich man's disease for ages I've heard it said a number of times over the years--that if you want to hone in on the wealth in a room--go where the girth is Not a rule obv but there's still some truth in it.

Obesity is normal. Sorry to burst the bubble, but that's just a fact. Treating it as if isn't is rather silly.

It's also true that weight loss have very low success, which has nothing to do with "willpower" or "perseverance", but comes to the brain being a bit of an ******* (as it often is).

Making people feel bad about themselves lowers this chance of success, it doesn't increase it. it does make them buy health products and programs, however.

There is a fair bit of that. I suffer from it as well. But you almost miss the genuine disagreement between us and take the substantal agreement as some weird sort of victory for you.

and 'excuse' is a small problem that does merit a little light '**** off'. It's not an excuse to not want to make her choices and she doesn't have some gospel on the best way to live a life - I doubt she has even read much philosophy about an examined life - what's her excuse?

Sure it is hard to be over weight historically when you were struggling to buy anything or survive.

Today fast food and changed attitudes re obesity has largely ended that dynamic and flipped it on its head. If today you 'honed in on the girth' you would be far more likely to be in a room of poorer people.

I will always take umbrage with being misrepresented and that will immediately change the tone and way i engage. I find you do that, on this topic anyway, as almost a default.

If that is due to my not being clear enough at the start, fair enough. I am generally happy to clarify if engaged for such. But it is when I do try to clarify but the same misrepresentation is repeated as if accurate and my position that I go nuclear.

Obesity as we are discussing is a very complex issue with more than one root cause and many issues. There is no, one size fits all messaging or addressing of this issue.

As such, certainly there is and HAS TO BE room in this discussion for the 'segment' where it is an 'excuse'. And many do admit and say out loud constantly they 'just need to stop making excuses and eat better and work out more.' I would say that is actually the majority of people over weight today.

That message may not speak to you chez, as you take a position of embracing obesity and its consequences as preferable to what you think you would lose in pursuing a path of better diet and fitness (and i have no issue with that at the individual level) but it is absolutely wrong to tell her to **** off over that message as if the people who it does not resonate with should be shielded from seeing it or hearing it, because that message is not for them.

That massage with the hard tone and language is exactly what many others do want to hear. They want that push and reminder and some with money hire personal trainers and dieticians to provide just that.

So again this is an area where we would disagree as i think such segmented messages are needed and necessary and good, even if chez gets frustrated having to read it.

Which is why I started by saying it's a -relatively- recent development. Things have definitely been changing in the last say 40/50yrs but there are still plenty of fat/wealthy people around these days too.

wow that is such a critique of yourself. Look in the mirror mate - holy cow!

You can believe that. I don't agree but that is neither here nor there. Your perception... your right.

it changes nothing in what I said and what I will take umbrage with.

Yes most people know that if they eat less/exercise more than will lose weight.

It's not a question of embracing obesity. It's an optimisation issue and I embrace that. I disagree that she doesn't merit a light **** off. Not because I disagre with her message for myself - that's a strawman.

That's fine. Some do like being told what to do. No doubt a few of them even do get physically fitter who otherwise wouldn't.

I dont get frustrated about it at all - that's a strawman.

Yes it is something we disagree about - good that you've noticed and that it doesn't prevent all those things we do agree on. You'll just have to live with those of us who think it merits a light **** off. Personally I think a far better message would be about what is beign offered and maybe a more realistic picture of the customers rather than, a quite likely over flattering, picture of someone who works in fitness all day.

as long as you dont expect it right back at you. I converge on speaking to people like they speak to me. I wont take umbrage though.

I think, no one, on this forum offers the 'we can agree to disagree' more than i do and that is my way to try and take things down a notch and acknowledge we disagree over opinion and not fact and i always respect opinions are what they are.

That said, I absolutely think it is a problem when images such as the 'beach' body or women such as the 'what's your excuse' are shouted down in an attempt to silence. I think your '**** off' type reflexive reply is exactly the problem.

She absolutely has every right to speak to HER audience and those who take motivation, or other from her, and she should not fear that someone sitting on the sidelines who she is not speaking to is such a snowflake (sorry) that they are offended by merely seeing her message to her target audience.

Again obesity is not a singular issue with a singular answer creating a bar that messaging has to fit everyone or '**** off' ends up just being a way of trying to silence any and all comments.

It is the same pretense as to why the 'beach body' is offensive. That imagery would definitely appeal to some (and many) but because a few have decided they will never achieve that or do not desire to (fair enough) they then want that message ended for all to see and replaced with something more 'comfortable' and 'less pressuring' to them.

That is very wrong. Society needs to reject that.

I'm happy with that as well. Just drop the strawmanning.

On this topic we agreed on a lot and if you're now able to reconcile that with us disagreeing on some key point then hopefully we can understand each other.

and obviously we disagree, it's not reflexive though. I assure you my body is 'beach ready' - in a non-covid world it might well be basking by the swimming pool preparing for a solid shift of eating and drinking as we speak.

I'm not remotely offended - that is a strawman. I do think it's damaging, misleading arrogant and illfounded.

Nah people have to be able to cope with a litle light being told to ****off when they act that way. It's not the end of the world.

We disagree and there's no pretense

Ii's not about offensive (although that's often the word we use as a sort of heuristic). It's partly about anorexia and partly about the way society pushes a fantasy image of women that is based on outliners with every trick (cosmetic, photoshopping etc) used to make them ever more extreme outliners.

Agreeing to disagree is pretty much all we can do here. I have said my points and stand by them with regards to 'What is your Excuse!' and 'Beach Body Ready' and other such 'targeted messaging', as positive and necessary and good re-enforcement i hope is not bullied out of the public square and I am sure you feel the same re your points on same, and the gulf between seems not reconcilable.

Grunching: It's way more convenient on a daily basis to lead a life that results in obesity vs one that promotes healthy weight.

A lot of people say it's cheaper, and I think that's mostly bullshit. At best you maybe win that argument on a technicality with regard to dollars per calorie consumed, but that's not the real issue. You can eat a healthy diet for as much or less than whatever your average fat person is spending on their food. However, that $3 bag of Doritos just happens to have 2500 calories in it and it's WAY less work to crack open that bag than it is to make an omelette. The bag of chips won't be the only thing they eat that day, and a total lack of self control is what gets them in the end. They spend the same or more money as a healthy eater, but they end up with far more calories in their gut by the end of the day.

Packaged foods that are objectively terrible for you aren't that cheap. Fast food isn't cheap, either.

The drinking of calories is another one that probably hits America harder than many other countries, but I could be wrong there.

Food that's bad for you is also just plain tastier.

I'm very familiar with this on a personal level, and am currently on my way back to fatsville riding on the back of a convenience train. I certainly could make myself lunch at work, and in fact have a full professional kitchen with which to do it if I so choose, but it's way less of a pain in the dick to just call the Chinese food man and stuff more Sesame Chicken in my face. The lunch I didn't make myself would've been a lot less than the $18 delivery I just paid for.

Not sure why anyone would care about "shaming" marketing companies. It's a marketing company's job to appeal to people anyway. I'd rather spend my time shaming advertisers than every day folk.

At least on this point we have fair idea what were disgreeing about. I dont see disagreement as a bad thing in itself.

Some gentle ribbing aside I'm not fan of any bullying. I'd hope you might understand that I dont object in anyway to your choices and actually support facilitating them as much as possible for everyone. So the bullying seems to me to me to be on the other foot when those who make your choice tell others that we are wrong about our choices.

I also think you seem to dismiss the problem of the way women are judged and pressured to look like they are 'supposed to' too easily. Most probably you dont but it's sort of intruding on the main focus.

While I very much agree that convenience is probably a very big factor, taste matters as well. While fast food is not a what we would call a refined taste experience, it delivers sugar, fat and salt in spades, all things which we are genetically predisposed to crave. Fast food companies know this, and it's cheap stuff to use, so the math on that one is simple.

But a lot is habit.
- If you like chicken, order it in a healthier form and portion. It's one of the healthiest meats already.
- Mixing some eggs, throwing it in a pan and tossing some tomatoes and pepper over it takes very little time, the time spent waiting for it to finish can be used to browse Netflix, quarrel with someone here or finish small tasks. Simple cooking and learning to use oven heat properly equals something that doesn't require much attention.
- Soda can be be replaced with water when eating.

But the kicker is that even the simple steps above are tough to do, at least over time. Eating habits alone are extremely tough habits to break. It doesn't matter that the routines are simple, it's not just about muscle movement, but about motivation and habit. Add weight loss to that, and it gets even tougher. Doesn't mean it is impossible, but it's nice to know what one is in for.

As for the larger point about the US (expanding on the Soda thing), my anecdotal experience is that the US was a bit wild with portion sizes, red meat, white bread, and sugar use. Of course, if I experienced my own country as a visitor I'd probably see an unhealthier diet than I was used to... still, it was noticeable.

US soda pops are a scourge.



I am all for government and society using pressure campaigns, education, shaming and other means to try and deter their consumption. Also slap a massive sin tax on them comparable to gasoline.