Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[V-Adore]

But, there is.  Being overweight is more closely related to issues that bear heavily on one's notion of self-worth, and if a person who is overweight feels that people (especially loved ones) are judging him because he is simply unattractive or inconvenient or whatever--well, it's extremely hurtful.  I think the whole fat discrimination thing has been blown way out of proportion recently (especially with that Tyra Banks stunt--I can't wait for the book:  Fat Like Me), and I certainly agree with Dawg in that it is a public health issue that must be addressed.  But it's also one that must be treated in a different manner, I think, than, say, drug addiction.  When telling a fat person that he should lose weight so he can live longer and enjoy a much higher quality of life, it doesn't help at all to remind him that large segments of society find him unattractive or inconvenient.  Or maybe it's not so different.  I imagine that effective drug treatment doesn't include lectures on how unreliable or worthless addicts are.  (To be clear, I don't equate obesity with drug addiction.)

I think you're really hitting the nail on the head re: the comparison to drug addiction. Both of them have such strong moral undertones in the society (and society seems to assume that both drug addiction and obesity are consequences of low willpower or other personal weakness), so "this is a lifestyle that creates health problems, and you need to address that for your own health" inevitably gets conflated with "this proves that you're a less worthwhile person." (The difference, I think, is that drug addiction often is significantly more radical, usually has more direct deleterious effects on personality and behavior, and is a greater risk to others. They're not really comparable aside from the moral-conflation issues.) This is why a lot of us can get very defensive about these things: because "I believe this is a problem" tends to be connected with "... because you're gluttonous/slovenly/weak-willed" and not "... because it's a long-term health risk to you." This is why, in my opinion, it's only a subject best breached to people you know and have a trusting relationship with.

Now, for the mea-culpa part of this: I have also been getting defensive in this thread. I will freely admit that implications that weight disqualifies one for the common consideration others receive in public social situation, or qualifies one to be patronized to and treated as a burden on society even without serious health problems, is a real hair trigger for me. While I stand by what I've said in this thread, I would like to apologize for my delivery and to anyone I may have offended. Honestly, I try to avoid threads that I know are going to do this to me, but... this time, I failed. And I apologize. Maybe I should put myself on double-secret probation and only talk about depressed dogs and a retarded otter for a while.

[AlohaDawg]

I seriously have no idea even where to start.

I'll start by reiterating that I've yet to attack you personally. If you believe you fall into some category to which you'd rather not belong that's your business.

The point was not that overweight people are committing suicide. The point was that a social structure, especially one that expends social resources on health care, has a right to do health interventions, even uninvited ones. The more resources spent, the bigger the responsibility to be a steward of those resources.

This is one major reason why universal health care will never work in America. The pyramid is inverted and the working healthy will be subsidizing those who have lifestyle diseases - smokers, for the worst part and then diabetics who developed diabetes from chronic obesity, poor dietary choices, and sedentary lifestyle. Unfortunately both these groups also wind up with disabilities (emphysema, CPD, Strokes, blindness, amputatations) which generally leave them less able to work.

As for a policy of stopping people as they eat, well, that wasn't something I really mentioned as an option either. I still believe that risk assessment + education + opportunity to demonstrate change + tying health insurance coverage and premiums to (1) risk and (2) demonstrated behavior change to ameliorate risk is probably the strongest possible social policy and IF Universal Health Care were to appear in this form, I would support it. Personal responsibility is a huge problem in the US in all realms of behavior including many many health issues only one of which is weight and activity.

As for the rest, well, I'm still not gonna stoop to the old 'fuck you' but we ain't never gonna agree and we ain't never gonna stop hella yellin' about it so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

<><><>and you posted while I wrote so <><><>

I don't support the marginalization of people based on their appearance. I totally acknowledge its existence, and I admit to having had thoughts of that type. The drug addiction comparison is interesting, all I would add is that you don't need to 'counsel' an addict on his value to society - in most cases, by the time they seek or are sent to treatment, they feel this way already. Possibly the same with people with serious weight problems - but the answer isn't to trick someone into believing their weight is fine and they aren't the ones with the problem. Society has a problem, but so does the person.

V, if you've been discriminated against or treated badly based on your appearance that sucks. I also apologize for going a long way to the right with some of these arguments - never meaning to make you feel like you needed to be defensive - but nothing I've said here is much more than one man's opinion about one topic which means different things to different people. I've never been fat or skinny and I've always had a nice low heart rate and blood pressure. Scoliosis not withstanding, I'm in good shape and that's a blessing I should simply be thankful for.

[AugustWest]

I've purposely avoided becoming involved in this thread.  It hits a little close to home and I like to keep things fun around here.  But I suppose my ethanol content has reached the point where I am compelled to comment.

I'm fat and I have been for about 15 years.  I'm married to a woman who has been fat all her life.  I have a fat daughter.  I have another daughter who works hard not to be fat.

On one hand, I think we are genetically predisposed to gain and retain weight.  I have "the Morgan Thighs" as does my mother, brother and daughter.

The other part is social/psychological/environmental.  We eat.  We like to eat.  We like to eat well and we like to eat a lot.  Eating and cooking gives us a great deal of pleasure.  Drinking too.  Eating is an artform for us.  When narrow-minded people ask me why, as a man, I like to cook, I say "Because I like to eat good."

Rambling here, I know.

I get a little dubious when people start talking about societal costs.  One of the best concepts I learned about in Law School was "Externalities".  As I understand it, externalities are cost that are incurred by your behavior that must be paid by society at large.  In a perfect economy there'd be no such thing -- everyone would pay the costs of their own behavior.  Too bad we aren't there.

AD is arguing that obese people have expensive externalities, and he is pretty much correct.  However, virtually everyone engages in expensive externalities.  Anybody who isn't completely and fully paying for the extended consequences of their actions is engaging in unfunded externalities.

For instance:

Riding w/o a helmet
Driving w/o insurance
Driving an SUV
Burning coal
Smoking
Overbreeding
Eating Hotdogs

If the price you pay to do something doesn't equal or exceed what it costs the world, you're creating externalities.

So yes, being fat is an externality.  It's a burden on society (on some level) for me to be 35 pounds overweight. 

But I dare you to prove to me that your externalities aren't roughly equivalent. 

These things balance out.

Yes, fat people are a problem.  But everybody causes problems to some extent.  A corrolary:  Everybody benefits us to some extent.

What are your externalities?  Should you really be pointing the finger at fat people?  Do you not share their weaknesses?


Please forgive me if this post is incoherent.

[miles]

Not incoherent at all, and the whole externalities thing was exactly at least one point I was trying to make in my post.

And you also share my problem.  For whatever reason, I gain weight more easily than my friends, with many of whom I share similar eating and exercise habits.  On the other hand, it just means that if I wish to keep the weight off, I have to work harder at it, and eat at least a bit less.  It's just that I can't decide whether it's worth it on a daily basis, because I love food and drink so much, and often there isn't enough time to exercise it off.

[V-Adore]

Thank you, August, for once again being significantly more eloquent than I've managed to be.

You pretty much cut to the heart of it with your discussion of externalities. Yes, fat people have a certain degree of externalities -- but so does everyone else, and to be honest I think externality/social cost of fat people is often used to cover up a reaction based on prejudice or aesthetic repulsion. If you're really judging based purely on social cost, are you also levelling similar intensities of reaction on people with similar externalities? If fat people deserve our social scorn, how about un-helmeted motorcyclists?

I think it's about time for me to step out of this thread; there's not much more I can contribute, and like I said earlier, I'm getting overdefensive. However, one last thing, to AD: there's only so far "I'm not talking about/insulting you personally" can go. It's simple ninth-grade logic here: I am a member of Group A, you are expressing the thought that Group A is a social burden and deserving of unsolicited "interventions" from strangers, therefore... QED. With all due respect, I'm not entirely willing to trust in the sincerity of "I would behave and feel this way towards all members of the group except you," especially since I've given you no compelling reason to make an exception in my case.

I think this is the part where I sing. Catch y'all in other threads.

[jough]

Well, I don't have health insurance and collect zippo from the government, have paid into social security and unemployment but have never collected, and I pay school taxes so your idiot kids can go to school, while I have no children (that I kn... you get the idea) so I think society owes me a little blowback.

Anyway, I've lost 80 pounds this year - 40 slowly by eating better, and the other 40 in the past six weeks by being ill (granted, a lot of that is probably muscle mass).  It took years to put on, and I tend to gain a lot of weight if I exercise a lot.  When I was playing tennis every day (for hours a day, during and just after high school) I was healthier than most of my peers, had the pulse rate of a marathon runner, perfect blood pressure, etc., and yet I was about 75lbs. overweight.  I put on about 20 pounds during the spring tennis season my senior year of high school by exercising a lot and working out every day, eating a very strict diet, etc. (okay, granted, a lot of that weight gain was probably muscle mass).

Anyway, for years I have only eaten two meals a day, and I'm now eating about half as much as I used to, and while my recent rapid weight loss sounds good I have never felt so horrible.  Exercise isn't much of an option, because I have trouble breathing (I only have the use of one lung, and it's the smaller of the two) and it's also cold as fuck outside.

As for not taking things people post "in general" personally, your posts on this subject sound to me such as if someone were to write "All people who live in Hawaii are assholes. Oh, but I didn't mean for you to be offended, AlohaDawg!"

Plus, dude, I have seen photos of you, and you are (or were) totally a man of gravity.

[JorgeFabregas]

This is one major reason why universal health care will never work in America.

Ok, I understand that America has a greater obesity problem than most countries, but do you really think the costs of that would skew the scale more than negative population growth does in European countries? Obviously it is your field and you have more expertise, but I have serious reservations about that claim.

AD is arguing that obese people have expensive externalities, and he is pretty much correct.  However, virtually everyone engages in expensive externalities.  Anybody who isn't completely and fully paying for the extended consequences of their actions is engaging in unfunded externalities.

For instance:

Riding w/o a helmet
Driving w/o insurance
Driving an SUV
Burning coal
Smoking
Overbreeding
Eating Hotdogs

If the price you pay to do something doesn't equal or exceed what it costs the world, you're creating externalities.

So yes, being fat is an externality.  It's a burden on society (on some level) for me to be 35 pounds overweight.

But I dare you to prove to me that your externalities aren't roughly equivalent.

Well, personally I am for helmet laws, insurance laws, incentives that discourage SUV use, encourage alternative energies, etc. I don't find the idea that there are many externalities a convincing argument against the assertion that certain externalities are very costly. It would be more convincing if you could show that such externaltiies are spread roughly equally througout the population or that people who are more likely to be overweight are less likely to participate in or be other costly things. [Pat}Aside from living in Illinois where most of the power is from coal, I don't do any of those things. I walk to a lot of places, am a vegetarian, and am formerly fat. I do receive government grants and subsidized loans for my education, but I would like to think that that will have a benefit to society at large, too. I don't really have a point......[/Pat] I guess my point is that obsesity is a problem. I don't think that Americans, as a whole, are predisposed to being obese. I am not willing to say about any problem "Well, there are a lot of problems, so, eh..." and I do think this problem needs to be addressed somehow.  I guess if you are saying that skinny people shouldn't feel superior simply because they are skinny, as they may have other externalities, then I agree with you. Then again, even if some calculus could show that one person did have fewer-than-average externalities, it would be pretty shitty of them to look down on other people.

[Ben-San]

Yes, obesity is a problem. Yes, I am aware of this. I am not Todd T. Squirrel. I didn't wake up one morning and say "Hey, you know what would be totally rad? Premature death from a vast array of weight-related health problems! Holy shit, that would rock my balls!"

It's just.. Jesus. It's a party being fat and crazy. On one side you get people with no fuck*ng idea what it means to actually have an Anxiety Disorder saying "Oh, come on, the phone call won't really hurt you" because, you know, the only reason I don't talk to other human beings is because I had been misinformed as to the potential carcinogenic nature of human voices. And then on the other side you also get people saying implicitly or explicitly "You should not be allowed to exist in public. You take up too much space and I find this offensive". There are skinny dudes on public transportation who will leap across the car to dry-hump the likeliest target, there are guys who sprawl their legs out across the seat next to them and over the seat in front of them while people are cramming in, and when I squish myself into the smallest possible space in which I will fit I still get Looks and Reprimands as if I am deliberately and maliciously engaging in excessive largeness.

This is not a contribution to a helpful and rational conversation. I'm pretty much just bitching here.

[AugustWest]

I guess my point is that obsesity is a problem. I don't think that Americans, as a whole, are predisposed to being obese. I am not willing to say about any problem "Well, there are a lot of problems, so, eh..." and I do think this problem needs to be addressed somehow.  I guess if you are saying that skinny people shouldn't feel superior simply because they are skinny, as they may have other externalities, then I agree with you.

I certainly wasn't trying to suggest that obesity is a good thing.  It's a problem.

Then again, even if some calculus could show that one person did have fewer-than-average externalities, it would be pretty shitty of them to look down on other people.

Exactly.  Even if you are perfect, you're a dick if you treat other people badly.

I mean "you" in the generic sense.  I'm not suggesting that you personally are a dick.

[jough]

For the record, based on his posts here I don't think that AlohaDawg is a douchbag, but he's certainly been playing one in this thread.

There are some subjects that cause certain people to sound like idiots/jerkoffs. Mine is botany.  This is AD's.

[AugustWest]

Botany?  You have strongly held, controversial opinions about botany?

[jough]

Oh, man, don't even get me started, because everyone will just get all pissed off and stuff.

[Ben-San]

Thinking about the possibilities of Jough's Botany Issues fascinates and terrifies me. I almost think it is better to know nothing about them except that he has Botany Issues which must never be unleashed.

[V-Adore]

Thinking about the possibilities of Jough's Botany Issues fascinates and terrifies me. I almost think it is better to know nothing about them except that he has Botany Issues which must never be unleashed.

I second this. I'm deeply enamoured with the idea that everyone has some hot-button issue about which they will be a total douche, and while most people manage to make theirs one generally understood to cause this effect, Jough does botany. You know there is some guy out there whose hot-button is something like the history of soup-can labels.

[AlohaDawg]

Oh, man, don't even get me started, because everyone will just get all pissed off and stuff.

I fuck*ng HATE FAT PLANTS!

I mean, really, for Gods's Sake. I have an unpopular opinion and some of you are getting your sphincters severely puckered over it.

I LIKE YOU GUYS. I LOVE MY WIFE.

Guess what.

My wife is overweight.

Guess what else. I LOVE HER FOR A MILLION OTHER REASONS.

and I like you guys for a million other reasons and if I meet you in person, I am fairly sure the topic of your personal weight won't come up unless you bring it up. The idea that I'm walking around here verbally abusing overweight people and plotting to create programs to round them up into concentration juicebars/gyms is pretty silly, don't you think?

Also, I'm all over the place socially (more conservative than not, usually) so take that wherever you like. Douchebag land is a little far to take it, but hey, you know, to each his own. I have a lot of beliefs y'all don't like. I ain't boohooing about your opionons, internalizing them, fuck-youing you or calliing you douchebags. I seem to recall even having a few agreements here and there.