Reply to Is People Magazine glorifying obesity or celebrating diversity?

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[quote=Anonymous]Glorifying obesity - seriously? Does anyone actually think that one magazine with an obese person on the cover - among the thousands of magazines with thin people on the covers - is going to make people aspire to obesity? I promise it won't. It won't even make people think that &quot;obesity is OK,&quot; although people should think that, actually.

Obesity is not a lifestyle or a behavior or a moral failure, it's a body size. With few exceptions (none that I know of), obese people have suffered for their weight, do not want to look as they do, and have lost weight with varying degrees of success. Yet public debate about obesity assumes that fat people spend all their time binge-eating, don't care about their health or are too stupid to know how to be healthy, and are happy with how they look. Psychological research on willpower shows that it's not actually the magic key to weight loss; fat people do not score lower on self-control. It's very, very complicated biologically. Yes, the calories in &lt; calories out equation is technically correct (absent medical issues), but it's just not that easy 95% of the time. (95%, btw, is the long-term failure rate of attempts to lose weight.)

We all have our struggles and our flaws. Maybe yours is your weight. Maybe it's something else not so good for your health - smoking, drinking too much, abusing prescription meds, driving aggressively, starving yourself, being sexually promiscuous. Maybe it's something not health-related - spending too much money, gossiping, yelling too much, cheating on your spouse, trolling online, generally being a shitty human being.

Anyway, obesity is &quot;OK.&quot; It's as OK as any human imperfection. And I don't think that only people who can &quot;pass&quot; for perfect based on physical appearance deserve to be seen in public or celebrated for their accomplishments. No one is obligated to attempt to meet anyone else's definition of beauty. No one is entitled to be shielded from seeing people they consider ugly.

And honestly, if you do believe that people become obese because they've actively chosen a binge-eating, no exercise &quot;lifestyle,&quot; so what? It's a free country and I can choose that if I want to. You are certainly free to choose differently and to teach your children differently. Exposure to someone with different values will not change your kids' values, any more than seeing a magazine with the Pope on the cover will make them convert to Catholicism.[/quote]

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