Part 1: “Irony” and Hypocritical Moralism as a Mask for Sadistic Bullying

A lot of fat-shaming is simply bullying, and giving it a soft word like “shaming” basically just makes it easier for villains to shroud cruelty in a cloak of phony “concern for health.”

For instance, prominent conservative intellectual Milo Yiannopoulos claims “if you are obese, you should hate yourself. At least until you get better. Because fatness is a health problem, and shame works.”

This is from an article he wrote for Breitbart called “Science Proves It: Fat-Shaming Works,” which I recommend to anyone who hasn’t yet fully appreciated the extent of this vacuous assclown’s sneering disdain for what is true.

“If a fatty isn’t shamed immediately,” claims this goddamn hyena, “it’s likely that the hambeast’s self-destructive behavior might spread to its friends.”

Oh, but “It’s not just cruelty. It’s for their benefit, our benefit, and the good of the species.”

Woooow, I guess Milo’s just a humanitarian after all. Of course, this article is obviously, in some sense, a “joke”—it’s “trolling.” Milo claims to present a scientific defense of fat-shaming, but in fact he cites only the Daily Mail, and a few scientific studies that don’t even come close to supporting his thesis.

Now if Milo were privately pressed on this point—you know, that his arguments are too bad to even need debunking and his conclusions are vile and insane—I can imagine him retreating Roosh-like to the implausible defense that this is actually all just satire. But satire of what? Of himself? Of people who get offended by the intentionally offensive things he says?

The “just trolling” defense is commonly used online as a way for misogynist, white supremacist, and other indefensible ideas to evade criticism. See, if I criticize Milo earnestly, I now look like a fool for “feeding the troll.” But if I don’t criticize him at all, I give his real message an easy pass. And there is a real message, isn’t there; in this case that people who don’t strictly conform to an ideal body type deserve nothing but ridicule and scorn.

Other defenses of fat shaming seem to follow this same evasive pattern: first, you acknowledge that what you’re saying of course sounds kind of cruel and heartless; and then you assert that your apparent cruelty is really just tough love with the health and well-being of the hideous lard planets at heart; but then of course the whole argument is peppered with abusive statements that give the lie to the “tough love” defense.

Blaire White’s video on the subject follows this basic blueprint. She spends five minutes laughing at fatties, then she fires off a couple of un-researched, slapdash opinions about how important it is for public health that everyone is constantly reminded how bad and disgusting obesity is, and then she calls it a day. Well done, Blaire! 300,000 views! 194,000 subscribers! I’m not bitter at all, why would you think that?

Of course, anyone with an ounce of perception can see that this so-called “tough love” and “just stating the facts” is obviously just an excuse to upset and humiliate people and get away with it. Fat-shaming is motivated by disgust and disdain, not by compassion and concern. The people who are actually concerned about obesity generally don’t jump at the first opportunity to treat another human being like absolute shit. 

Milo and Blaire and Katie Hopkins seem to be asking the question, “what would have to be true for my bullying behavior to be justified?” And whatever the answer is, that must be true, because otherwise I’d be a bad person, and that’s not an acceptable conclusion so it must be the case that bullying fat people is actually good for society. Checkmate, SJWs!

Whereas people who actually care about what is true and good ask real questions: questions like, what causes obesity in the first place? What percentage of obese people have been obese or overweight since childhood or adolescence? How easy or difficult is it to lose a lot of weight, and keep that weight off? What are the biological and environmental factors that contribute to obesity? How does an obsession with losing weight affect mental health? Is our collective obsession with weight loss really just about health, or is it driving us into the realm of madness? Tell us, Socrates, tell ussss.

Part 2: Wherefore art thou fat?

The pro-bullying camp likes to advocate—or pretend to advocate—the idea that a person’s weight is primarily a matter of self-control and individual responsibility. But let’s take a look at the phenomenon of obesity from an epidemiological standpoint. The prevalence of obesity in the US has risen from 13.4% in 1962 to 35.7% in 2010. What happened over the last few decades to cause the obesity rate to more than double? Did everyone suddenly lose all self-control? Is there some way this can be blamed on feminism?

Well, this really is not how scientists think. Researchers have been studying the causes of obesity for decades, and they’ve identified a huge range of contributing factors, including the prevalence of high-calorie foods, industrial agriculture, long work hours, genetics and epigenetics, hormones, insulin resistance, obesogenic chemicals, and treatment of children with antibiotics. Basically it’s a clusterfuck of causes that no one fully understands. 

But it’s a lot more complicated than “calories in, calories out.” And while it’s true that individuals do have some control over their weight, there’s a lot more going on here than just weakness of the will.

Especially malicious or misinformed is the idea that obese people are just lazy overeaters with no self-control. Despite all the publicity given to inspirational weight-loss journeys, it’s actually extremely difficult for obese people to keep off weight because the human body has evolved to keep weight on to prevent starvation, and it therefore develops adaptations that work to preserve its maximum weight.

The authors of an article in The Lancet go so far as to suggest that obese people who have lost weight still have “obesity in remission,” and advise that “the mere recommendation to avoid calorically dense foods might be no more effective for the typical patient seeking weight reduction than would be a recommendation to avoid sharp objects for someone bleeding profusely.”

And while there are of course some people who make the heroic effort to lose the weight and do manage to keep it off, the reality is that most obese people never will.

So, the proposal that socially reinforced self-loathing is the best solution to obesity is as stupid as it is immoral. Ugh, why am I still arguing with these people. It’s like citing scientific studies to an eighth grader who responds by calling you a faggot. Goddamn. 

It’s just pathetic. Makes me wanna fucking eat.

[big macs]

Four big mac sandwiches, with 2252 calories, 4028mg sodium, and 132g of fat, including 5.2 grams trans fat. Aw yeah, that’s metal as fuuuuuuuck.

Part 3: Fat Acceptance

According to the CDC, more than 70% of American adults are overweight or obese. Since it seems unlikely that two thirds of the population are going to simply hate themselves thin, we need to consider other options.

It makes good sense to me for doctors and educators to emphasize healthy eating and exercise habits. If you eat well and exercise, that’s really the most you can be expected to do, whatever your weight.

But in my opinion, even this view of things sometimes gives a little too sharp a moralizing edge to the idea of health. I don’t think it’s inherently virtuous to be healthy. I mean maybe you think it is if you took the glorious pill, or if you’re a fucking Aristotelian or something, but I don’t think that it’s really any of my business to tell people that they should be healthy. I mean, what do I look like, your fucking doctor?

I also think that self-loathing helps nothing. I don’t really have an overeating problem, but I have been known to drink more than the medically advisable limits once or twice or six times a week. And I know that when someone tries to shame me for that, well, the experience doesn’t generally leave me feeling less like drinking.

A famous study of formerly morbidly obese people who underwent gastric restrictive surgery found that these patients said they would prefer to be normal weight with a major handicap, blindness, or one leg amputated than to be morbidly obese again. Clearly, people really hate being fat as it is. And I know in these discussions a lot of equivocation goes on between overweight, obese, and morbidly obese, and I’m doing it too, but I think it’s clear from the sheer size of the weight-loss industry alone that people really hate being fat.

And it doesn’t help that the culturally ideal body is pretty unobtainable for most people, who won’t look like this no matter how hard they try. If healthy habits are presented as a means to becoming skinny, rather than as valuable for their health benefits regardless of weight, many people may simply give up altogether.

Given that most of the population is deemed overweight by medical and aesthetic standards, and given how difficult it is to reverse endemic obesity, for the sake of general happiness I’d say the thing to do is tone down the shaming and disgust, and open ourselves up to the celebration of a diversity of body types, traumatic though it may be for the weight police.

Part of that is going to involve a symbolic transformation of the meaning of fatness. What I mean by that is things would be better if instead of sanctimoniously associating fatness with the sins of gluttony and sloth, we viewed it as a kind of celebration of excess. Bacchus! Falstaff! David Hume! Bon vivants, and voluptuaries all! Epicureans, wot?

I guess I should have some diversity. Ladies and gentlemen, Hoooooooooowlin’ Wolf.

And it’s a little harder to think of fat role models when it comes to women. Lindy West, one of the best writers on this subject, has a very funny passage where she describes the total lack of fat female role models available to her as a child, and concludes that the most positive of such role models was Baloo the bear dressed as a comely gypsy wench.

I think that’s a problem, and one that people in the media should work to address. And I don’t mean through censorship or some kind of sinister cultural engineering. I just mean it’s good for artists to tell stories about lots of different kinds of people. Maybe even stories about people who actually look like the people who live in America. And I know to some people that in itself looks like sinister cultural engineering. But you know what? Too fucking bad. You’ll be okay. You can go on 4chan and bitch about fatties all you want. But the rest of us are moving on.

Part 4: Lingering Anxiety

There’s one thing that’s still bothering me, and that’s that, while I believe everything I’ve said so far in this video, and I genuinely do think other people’s bodies are none of my goddamn business, when it comes to my own body, I admit that I want to be thin, and I care about being thin. A lot.

I’m afraid of becoming fat. And this is for reasons of vanity, not health. And maybe when I get too old be hot anyway, I’ll go full degenerate and gain a bunch of weight. Absolute decadence. Fuck it, why not.

But in the meantime I acknowledge that, emotionally, I’m just as caught up in thin worship as anyone, despite all of my critiques. And I don’t know how to fix that. I’m trapped. I can’t get out of this. Maybe all critique itself can do is allow you to sketch the bars of your own prison. And if that’s true, god help me. God help us all.