“But fat is, in our minds, a visual manifestation of a moral shortcoming. And because it’s such an immediately identifiable moral failure, all the rest of us project our anxiety and our guilt onto the overweight.”

I’ve ranted this many times, but you’ve said it much more succinctly as well as being a rather prominent feminist icon in the blogosphere. (And a guy, but that’s another rant altogether.)

And oh, the searing irony, that it’s progressives who tend to stress that “moral failure” most. I think in a lot of otherwise progressive minds, SUV gas consumption tends to conflate with excess Red State Cheeto and Dorito consumption.

(And then there are Professor Campos’ theories on the implications drawn from correlations between fat and poverty, but that’s a much longer rant than there’s room for here.)

Everyone must have been studying for finals. I thought you would have been flooded with posts. Perhaps it was the no-fat-bashing edict.

One of the things that makes this complicated, as you intimated, is that the “food industry” flat out LIES frequently about what’s in our food, so even if you are a compulsive label-reader (I try to keep it under control so no one hates shopping with me), you still can’t interpret them accurately unless you have an additional graduate biochemistry degree.

I do believe part of the thinness obsession has to do with the conflation of women’s fear of not being “loved”/being alone (and that can do also with employment and general social alliances, not just romantic relationships), mens’ (GENERALLY, now, people) fear of being ridiculed by their peers if their companions don’t “measure up” — you know, the “no man respects a man who has a fat wife” types — and the patriarchal apologist women who “enforce the standard” that these men purport to “require”.

I’d pay — and I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one — pretty rabid attention to any thoughts you posted on that, Professor, since the premise might fall within one of your areas of scholarship.

Because fat-shaming isn’t really about health at all, it’s about power and control. You know the stereotypical abusive asshole who’s always telling their perfectly attractive SO “you need to lose weight” or “you should grow your hair” or “you’d be so much more attractive if you did X, Y and Z”? Fat-shaming is the exact same thing.

My uninformed overcaffeinated $0.02: No, weight is not a moral obligation and this ‘health’ crap is just the polite window dressing for fat phobia. That said, I’m a big hypocrite because I am *so* fatphobic about my own body. That said again, I think the body is made to move and can’t be expected to work right without exercise. The North American diet sucks hard and causes a zillion health problems. I think most people would be happier on something closer to the Okinawa diet (or lots of others like it). But a slice of chocolate cheesecake now and then won’t kill you. I don’t know whether getting smarter as a society about food and exercise would kill our weird moral shaming on the subject or not.

Agreed with people in-thread who said that running around a field playing soccer is more fun (or would be for most people) then the treadmill. Maybe more walking/biking and less cars. *sigh* Anyway, ironically, I’m off to the gym now.

The “concern” always kills me, because every person who has a pound or two extra on them “knows” that fat is bad for them. You are not giving them new information. You are being an ass.

Ok. Why?

Or is that troll feeding?

If we could go out and play kickball with a group of other people in a beautiful park on a spring day, THAT might be fun. But running on a treadmill is incredibly dull.

I eat right and go to the gym so I can be healthy, but I don’t particularly enjoy it, except for getting a sense of accomplishment for going through with the process. It’s nice for you that you get an endorphin rush from working out, but I would rather sit in front of the TV, watch The Office and eat some loaded nachos.

yes it is.

“though the jury is still very much out on how many extra pounds that really requires”

are you still referring to obesity? or a few extra pounds above IBW? obesity IS unhealthy.

i have’nt feared being fat. nor have i really cared what others think about me being obese. but given the health risk i.e. pre- hypertensive, pre- diabetic, hyperuricemic, boderline metabolic syndrome that obesity has lead me to, it is time i do something about obesity. i fear the hard work that it will take to lose the weight and get into shape. i currently envy those in better shape that can continue to eat foods i will have to abstain from for awhile.

I gained a lot of weight after having both my children. After the first one, I managed to lost most of it. After the second one, I’ve struggled much more.

However, I try not to worry about it as much as I used to. My husband is rather skinny, and I’m very overweight. It doesn’t make any sense given I’m more physically active (I bellydance and like to train for triathlons) and eat less than him. He was the one who told me to quit beating myself up over it, and I can say that it helped to have someone tell me that it wasn’t “my fault”.

As you said, it’s a lot harder to go to the gym and feel like I’m struggling against my weight than it is to feel passionate about pursuing a goal in something I enjoy. And when I’m doing the latter, it’s a lot easier to stay motivated than in the former case, especially when I found out I haven’t managed to lose any weight with all my extra “exercise”. But it has taken a lot of practice to ignore some of the funny looks I get.

I agree your hypothesis adequately addresses wealth, but I was thinking more along the lines of alcohol. With alcohol, see the opposite trend: instead of medicalization to moralization, you see moralization to medicalization. Yet no one wants to be fat or an alcoholic, right?