Fat Acceptance

There is apparently this thing going around called "Fat Acceptance" or "Body Positivity" which takes the position that you can be beautiful and healthy at ANY weight.

I first tripped over it indirectly when I encountered a video on YouTube of women breaking their scales with hammers. I say women because the movement appears to be overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, composed of females.

I have to admit that I'm baffled by the very idea.

No, if you're morbidly obese you're not beautiful especially if I have to sit next to you on a plane or at the theater,

But we need to be careful quoting "overweight" statistics based upon the BMI. The BMI has all sorts of issues. For instance how can men and women use the same formula? Men have a larger percentage of muscle and muscle weighs more. I'm 6'1" and 192 pounds. That's a BMI of 25.3 so I'm "overweight, something that no one has ever accused me of.

Some folks argue that this is really a discussion about health rather than appearance.

If you really want to turn the discussion toward health then you have to consider that women, because of how they put on fat, can actually handle being more overweight than men. Similarly as one ages one tends to gain weight as their BMR goes down but it doesn't mean they're unhealthy. These are two more issues with the one size fits all BMI.

The bottom line is that weight and it's correlation with health can be complicated. Obesity on the other hand, a BMI over 30, is bad even with as doubtful a scale as the BMI. Morbid obesity, a BMI over 40, is death walking. There's the real danger in this fat acceptance idea. The absurdity that you can be even morbidly obese without detrimental affects to your health.

I do notice that most of the fat women championing this cause are still pretty young and youth can compensate for a multiplicity of ills.

Life is a lottery. It's like a game of Russian Roulette where it all depends upon the luck of the spin. But if you're morbidly obese, it's like playing with five chambers loaded rather than only one.