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ShaktiSama -> RE: Are BDSMers better at size acceptance? (5/16/2009 8:41:19 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: hopelessfool
And is Healthful decided for each and every person based on each and every person? No its not, its based on a generalized scale that is off base for most of the people measured on it.
I agree. From the perspective of physical anthropology, there are a lot of problems with the measuring sticks and advice that are promulgated in threads like this.
For one thing, look how many posts we had from a guy with the word "Hollywood" in his name--Hollywood, which is the largest exporter of body dysmorphia, anorexia and mutilation surgeries in the history of the world. The "beautiful people" and elite of the city are monuments to nothing more than bloated capitalism. The ideology they export, where beauty, sex and fitness are concerned, is designed to create PROFIT. Not health, not love or ecstasy, and not happiness. And I have never known anyone from Los Angeles who did not have serious mental health issues where the human body was concerned. It seems to be impossible to live in the city without picking up the madness--just as it is impossible to live in a leper colony without starting to go numb and rot.
Then we have people vomiting up "health advice" and ideals of body type and shape which are based on the fitness and nutritional needs of a very small proportion of the Earth's population. It is not possible for all human beings to look, eat and operate their bodies in the way that is advisable for European Caucasians with a slight endomorphic tendency. Evolution does not design all human beings to live, eat and move the same way. On the contrary, it shapes all human beings to their circumstances. Some people cannot digest certain foods at all. Some people cannot survive a high-sodium diet. Some people cannot become fat and will not, no matter what they eat and how little they exercise. Some people cannot become thin and will not, no matter what they eat and how much they exercise. There are metabolic differences between different populations of people and metabolic differences between sexes as well.
None of these things are taken into account by "one size is correct" ideologies--and there is a reason for that. These ideologies exist to market goods and services, not to achieve health. They want you to buy stuff that will help you fit into the cookie cutter. People spend billions a year on gym fees, medical programs, foods, medicines, surgeries, cosmetics, and clothing; the companies that produce these things spend billions on advertising and mass-marketing the ideals that make their goods and services attractive.
Some of the people who are piping up in these threads to lecture are those whose livelihoods are supported by the Perfection Industry in one way or another. Others are just believers in the ideology. No one who is being stigmatized by this ideology is obligated to drink their Kool-Aid, however, any more than black people were obligated to believe that they were not really human because people of another race could once profit by enslaving them.
Upshot of this is simple: "fat acceptance", in many cases, is also "reality acceptance" and "human diversity acceptance". And even in the cases where people do have health problems and weight problems that need to be addressed by changes in diet and exercise, stigmatizing them and persecuting them is probably not the answer. The lifestyle changes necessary to change your health habits need to be grounded in self-esteem, not self-hatred.
Socially condoned violence and persecution does not create a psychologically or physically healthy society. Americans already have a society saturated with bullying about weight; it creates a lot of self-hatred and neurosis and violence in our school system, but not a higher population of thin or fit people overall. You really want Americans to lose weight on the national level--take away their cars and give them bus routes, subways and trains, and a lifestyle grounded in walking rather than driving. Remove all the escalators and moving walkways from public places and make people walk and climb the stairs for themselves. Forbid the use of elevators to anyone who was not in a wheelchair or using a walker or a cane.
The "obesity epidemic" could probably be solved within ten years without resorting to name-calling and condemnation.
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