In the comments, Mr Muldoon steers us to this item of possible interest:
As the fat-positivity movement has gained momentum, so, too, have debates around how fat folks should lead healthy lives. [Sonalee] Rashatwar, though, considers how sizeism is affected by racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, and she counsels people against intentional weight loss.
Well, we mustn’t be practical. That wouldn’t be woke. And regaining viable proportions, such that one’s health is not at risk and one’s lifespan needlessly shortened, sounds way too much like work and responsibility. Instead, attention is displaced to a more theoretical, and conveniently improbable, project:
Rashatwar traces contemporary fatphobia to colonial brutality and how enslaved people were treated. Citing researcher-advocate Caleb Luna, Rashatwar said curing anti-fatness would mean dismantling society’s foundation: “I love to talk about undoing Western civilisation because it’s just so romantic to me.”
Hm. Lose weight, or topple Western civilisation? It’s the fat person’s eternal dilemma.
Ms Rashatwar is a “community organiser” and “Instagram therapist,” a self-styled healer and woman of insight, and is therefore not at all grandiose, self-excusing or pathologically unrealistic. And so, her therapeutic endeavours include posting “really, really political and radical content” about how terrible capitalism is, how terrible the police are, and how righteous it is to be obese and consequently to live with needless limitations and increasing discomfort.
Ms Rashatwar has chosen to blame her own health issues, including high blood pressure, on “weight stigma” and “white supremacy,” rather than on her size and prodigious eating habits. When not equating routine health advice with eugenics and “Nazi science,” Ms Rashatwar, a self-described “donut queen,” claims that “diet culture and fat phobia are forms of sexual violence.”
The being named Caleb Luna, mentioned above, has cropped up here before. Readers are welcome to ponder said being’s credibility as a “researcher-advocate,” an authority to cite.
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