Adding to that, you see the health trend because again we look at the woke fat body positive peirced tiktok activists and we just don't want that. We don't want to end up like the millenials, who still don't seem to have their shit together. That's why we've become more pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-sober, "pro-shame".
It’s interesting you mention shame as a social tool for health benefit. By and large the fat people that disgust you do feel deeply and profoundly ashamed of being fat, and are often in a spiral of shame and self loathing that encourages behaviours that you find personally abhorrent, primarily around binging or not seeking medical advice and assistance. This creates a negative feedback loop over time.
Shame doesn’t assist them in losing weight and becoming more palatable to you, but it is a great way to ensure that your relationship with your body will always be negative regardless of your external looks. This becomes more problematic as you age and have to reckon with your looks not being something that exists entirely within your personal locus of control.
“Eat less and move more” is a reduction of concepts which work well in practise but lack nuance and a greater relationship to how we’ve ended up this way societally. Fat women who you think are annoying and ugly are not your enemy, they’re just amplified on social media because you find them annoying and ugly and hateful and our current system rewards negative engagement experiences. Your enemy should be the entire system of the food industry, not your own body or others’.
Edit: also, you see the health trend in part because it’s another great way of selling you stuff you don’t actually need. The beauty industry is just responding to trend so they can monetise self loathing as much as possible. And why shouldn’t they? It’s working. The power combo of wearing makeup and then having a skincare routine to offset the issues caused by regularly wearing makeup means they get to cash out in two directions at once!
I have to admit there is definitely a lot of fear around aging. There is a bit of self criticism too. I'm a perfectionist so I get stuck in the mirror finding things to work on. However, the main idea is to simply not be fat. We have fat people trying to normalize it because they don't have the courage to admit it's a problem. In a sense it's already normalized because it's what you normally see here everyday in America. It's not a human issue, it's an America issue. It's natural to not have the most beautiful or shapely body, but it's a completely different thing to be overweight. And I mean really overweight. It's completely un natural. It violates our design. When humans violate natural design, it's ugly. You can see it with things that aren't the human body. You can see it in what they build, and how they destroy nature. It's ugly. Excess fat is unnatural. And unnatural is ugly. And ugly is unattractive. And unattractive is unfuckable. And unfuckable translates to unlovable when it comes to marriage. That's why gen z, the "single generation" and the generation that "doesn't have sex" is so against and fearful of fat. As we mature, and as we marry and grow old, we will realize that we will still be loved no matter what we look like. But right now our main objective is to be as attractive as possible so we can find a desirable partner and have good sex. I wonder if millenials are just jealous because they missed their window due to partying and unhealthy lifestyles.
I don't know I don't agree with that either 😭. That's why I don't intend to get botox or fillers anytime soon… but the older you get the more tempting it is.
Irl I’m a teacher, and one of my favourite things is the passion and the drive that my students have as older teens. Corralling that sense of conviction and driving it forward in a direction which is meaningful and inspiring leads to incredible outcomes. That’s why I want to break down your comment and try to show you where I feel you could be putting that passion to use in slightly different ways.
[I have to admit there is definitely a lot of fear…I'm a perfectionist so I get stuck in the mirror finding things to work on.]
That sounds rough. You don’t have to apply this, but I’d love you to think for a moment of a world where all of that energy and time that you currently put into regular negative self-talk (which is an existing precursor to developing mental health disorders!) goes into making your community, family or the world a better place OR goes into your own academic and social interests. Ones that aren’t predicated on how you look or how others look, but on how you feel. Try not to immediately respond to that with “I feel good when I look good and I can do it all!” Just give it a sec. It’s extraordinarily hard to challenge your own methods of thought, but this sense of shame actually affects our cognitive functioning day to day. It’s not a useful tool in these quantities.
[We have fat people trying to normalize it because they don't have the courage to admit it's a problem.]
As I said above, a large proportion of this is the culture of shaming fat people. If it was less shameful to discuss being fat, weirdly, you’d find people performing less abnormal behaviours around eating because both education around how they can change and discussion of the system that benefits from their pain would become normalised. If we want people to be less fat, we have to be kinder, not meaner.
[It's not a human issue, it's an America issue.]
Actually, it’s a first world problem :D see also: corporations benefiting from putting salt and sugar in your food in quantities that are absolutely jaw dropping, because then you eat and drink more.
[it's a completely different thing to be overweight. And I mean really overweight.]
I guess how fat are we talking? Hard to qualify this one and harder still to discuss a point if we are both imagining different topics.
[It's completely un natural. It violates our design. When humans violate natural design, it's ugly. You can see it with things that aren't the human body.]
You can also argue that the following things violate natural design: organ implants, amputees, implants, people who are “too” thin, Botox, weird colours of hair, wheelchair users, guys who only work out the top half of their body so they look like a triangle, the list goes on :) but personally none of these, including fat people, actually affect me personally.
[You can see it in what they build, and how they destroy nature.]
I think this is verging on hyperbolic, but I will make one last point about something which I think isn’t discussed enough:
Morbid obesity - the kind I *think* you’re visualising when you are writing this, please feel free to correct me! - is a mental disorder. Eating disorders come in many shapes and sizes. Binge eating and anorexia are both disordered relationships with food. I would like you to imagine a world where you wrote about someone like Eugenia Cooney with as much passion and insight as you have done in your other comments, but then imagine extrapolating that criticism to any and all people struggling with anorexia. Do you think an anorexic would read “You’re disgusting and unnatural” and feel motivated to change who they were and how they used food as a tool of control in their own lives? If not, how do you expect it to work for other people with disordered eating?
[It's ugly. Excess fat is unnatural. And unnatural is ugly. And ugly is unattractive. And unattractive is unfuckable. And unfuckable translates to unlovable when it comes to marriage.]
I think one of my most favourite things about getting older is seeing how many people will truly fuck anything and anyone, and how many of those people have ended up in relationships with some level of looks disparity simply because they actually like the other person’s vibes. Also even in this world you’re describing, fat people would be equally unlovable, so you could just let them pair off with each other :D
[That's why gen z, the "single generation" and the generation that "doesn't have sex" is so against and fearful of fat. As we mature, and as we marry and grow old, we will realize that we will still be loved no matter what we look like.]
Sounds like you’re assuming you’ll end up agreeing with my viewpoint anyway. Why not speed run it and enjoy more of your life earlier?
I think you’re also underestimating just how repulsed previous generations were by fatties. Look up Kate Moss and heroin chic for more on the experiences that millennial girlies had, for example, or the Cosmo white wine diet for 1970s housewives zooted on tranquillisers. It’s all different, but it’s all the same. Over and over.
[But right now our main objective is to be as attractive as possible so we can find a desirable partner and have good sex.]
Great plan, love that for you. I’d also say that from experience your sex will be unbelievably, extraordinarily better if you don’t feel gross and ugly in certain positions or aren’t thinking about your stomach when you’re moving a certain way or your boobs when you’re bent over. In this, being body-conscious in the traditional sense really works against you for a good experience, because you can’t get out of your brain enough to experience what your body is feeling.
[I wonder if millenials are just jealous because they missed their window due to partying and unhealthy lifestyles.]
I don’t know which millennials you know, but the vast majority of us (yes, ewww, I’m one!) did NOT have the funds to go partying and live it up during our “peak years” because there was a global financial crisis and we were all underemployed, haha. Also you definitely don’t get fat from partying too hard, mainly because of the stimulants.
By and large (pun intended), I think your goal is laudable and we should be a healthier society. I don’t, however, agree with you that vitriol and disgust is actually a way of creating effective change. I encourage you to seek out more information on disordered eating in general in the form of studies and research rather than hot takes that lack any nuance from both camps on socials, and to treat your own body and others with the grace we all deserve in navigating this current hellscape we live in. We all deserve joy. Let’s find a way to get there together
Well, I agree with you on some parts. You're right about letting fat people pair up and that's exactly my attitude. My original comment was just the way I explain the rise in gen z wellness culture. Overall, you were pretty on point, but the one part you might want to look back over is when you said morbid obesity is a mental disorders. No it is not. It objectively having too much fat in your body. It can be caused be mental disorders, for sure, but being fat is not equivalent to binge eating.
Being thin, married, a mom, or into wellness doesn’t automatically make someone successful or put together.
It’s naïve to equate appearance with values. If your identity is so fragile that you need to define yourself against fat, pierced, mentally ill TikTokers just to feel like you have your life together, maybe it’s not the ring on your finger or the collagen in your coffee that’s grounding you, it’s judgment, disguised as virtue.
You're right, I know a ton of people with those attributes who don't have their life together. But didn't you know that being thin, married, and a parent are good things that we aspire for? Sorry for wanting that? I'd rather be thin that fat, I'd rather be married than single, and I'd rather have kids than not. It's human nature to want to feel good, to want to have a partner, and to want to have kids. If for some reason you don't want those things, whatever. You have the freedom to be fat, single, and childless. But the rest of us don't want that so don't make it seem like a problem in society that we need to be concerned about. You know what we do need to be concerned about? The obesity crisis. The loneliness epidemic. The worldwide declining birth rates which are sure to bring problems on what generation? Ours. That's why we are trying to fix it by having kids. We acknowledge kids are the future and one day we will need them to take care of us.
Wanting to be thin, married, and a parent is completely valid. No one’s telling you not to want those things. The problem is when you turn those personal goals into a moral hierarchy, when you imply that people who don’t look like you, live like you, or parent like you are less righteous, wrong, broken or unworthy. Someone’s appearance, generational title, or marital status tells you nothing about the depth of their convictions, or their worth.
There are societal issues like obesity, loneliness, and declining birth rates. But those aren't caused by fat people, single people, or childless people existing. They’re symptoms of much bigger systems like economic instability, lack of healthcare, climate anxiety, and yes, outdated gender expectations, including putting pressure on women to “fix” the world by having babies.
Plenty of thin, young married moms are also deeply unwell, lonely, or unsupported. So none of this is as simple as “just do the opposite of the millennials”
I support your right to live the life you want. (That's the feminist in me) What I won’t support is the idea that someone else’s different life, whether it’s loud, fat, pierced, single, childless, or deeply unconventional, is a threat that needs fixing. That mindset isn’t about helping society. It’s about maintaining control.
"Look feminine not like a feminist" even though this is not something I would say in public or on social media, it's something that I think it's something me and my generation quietly internalize. We just don't want to look like millenial femcels.
Yeah but we're talking about internet people against internet people here. There's the internet healthy people, and the internet "fat woke people". I'm saying the healthy people look at the fat internet fanfic reading people and we don't want to be like that. In the real world though, because millenials are keeping up with gen z style and fitting in, it's hard to tell between a fat gen z and a fat millenial. It's hard to look at a healthy person and tell whether they are gen z or millienial, because they are both so close in age that they look pretty similar. However if you want to talk about real world statistics: gen z is rejecting fat acceptance right? And America has a statistical obesity problem right? Well don't you think there might be a correlation? Gen z is growing up and we are wisening up to the older generations' surprise. Maybe we're smarter than you think and we've just collectively decoded we're not gonna continue accepting the bad health status quo.
Second link (NYPost) is broken!
Adding to that, you see the health trend because again we look at the woke fat body positive peirced tiktok activists and we just don't want that. We don't want to end up like the millenials, who still don't seem to have their shit together. That's why we've become more pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-sober, "pro-shame".
Touching on just one aspect of your discussion:
It’s interesting you mention shame as a social tool for health benefit. By and large the fat people that disgust you do feel deeply and profoundly ashamed of being fat, and are often in a spiral of shame and self loathing that encourages behaviours that you find personally abhorrent, primarily around binging or not seeking medical advice and assistance. This creates a negative feedback loop over time.
Shame doesn’t assist them in losing weight and becoming more palatable to you, but it is a great way to ensure that your relationship with your body will always be negative regardless of your external looks. This becomes more problematic as you age and have to reckon with your looks not being something that exists entirely within your personal locus of control.
“Eat less and move more” is a reduction of concepts which work well in practise but lack nuance and a greater relationship to how we’ve ended up this way societally. Fat women who you think are annoying and ugly are not your enemy, they’re just amplified on social media because you find them annoying and ugly and hateful and our current system rewards negative engagement experiences. Your enemy should be the entire system of the food industry, not your own body or others’.
Edit: also, you see the health trend in part because it’s another great way of selling you stuff you don’t actually need. The beauty industry is just responding to trend so they can monetise self loathing as much as possible. And why shouldn’t they? It’s working. The power combo of wearing makeup and then having a skincare routine to offset the issues caused by regularly wearing makeup means they get to cash out in two directions at once!
I have to admit there is definitely a lot of fear around aging. There is a bit of self criticism too. I'm a perfectionist so I get stuck in the mirror finding things to work on. However, the main idea is to simply not be fat. We have fat people trying to normalize it because they don't have the courage to admit it's a problem. In a sense it's already normalized because it's what you normally see here everyday in America. It's not a human issue, it's an America issue. It's natural to not have the most beautiful or shapely body, but it's a completely different thing to be overweight. And I mean really overweight. It's completely un natural. It violates our design. When humans violate natural design, it's ugly. You can see it with things that aren't the human body. You can see it in what they build, and how they destroy nature. It's ugly. Excess fat is unnatural. And unnatural is ugly. And ugly is unattractive. And unattractive is unfuckable. And unfuckable translates to unlovable when it comes to marriage. That's why gen z, the "single generation" and the generation that "doesn't have sex" is so against and fearful of fat. As we mature, and as we marry and grow old, we will realize that we will still be loved no matter what we look like. But right now our main objective is to be as attractive as possible so we can find a desirable partner and have good sex. I wonder if millenials are just jealous because they missed their window due to partying and unhealthy lifestyles.
"unnatural is ugly" then explain all the botox and fillers on my FYP...
I don't know I don't agree with that either 😭. That's why I don't intend to get botox or fillers anytime soon… but the older you get the more tempting it is.
Irl I’m a teacher, and one of my favourite things is the passion and the drive that my students have as older teens. Corralling that sense of conviction and driving it forward in a direction which is meaningful and inspiring leads to incredible outcomes. That’s why I want to break down your comment and try to show you where I feel you could be putting that passion to use in slightly different ways.
[I have to admit there is definitely a lot of fear…I'm a perfectionist so I get stuck in the mirror finding things to work on.]
That sounds rough. You don’t have to apply this, but I’d love you to think for a moment of a world where all of that energy and time that you currently put into regular negative self-talk (which is an existing precursor to developing mental health disorders!) goes into making your community, family or the world a better place OR goes into your own academic and social interests. Ones that aren’t predicated on how you look or how others look, but on how you feel. Try not to immediately respond to that with “I feel good when I look good and I can do it all!” Just give it a sec. It’s extraordinarily hard to challenge your own methods of thought, but this sense of shame actually affects our cognitive functioning day to day. It’s not a useful tool in these quantities.
[We have fat people trying to normalize it because they don't have the courage to admit it's a problem.]
As I said above, a large proportion of this is the culture of shaming fat people. If it was less shameful to discuss being fat, weirdly, you’d find people performing less abnormal behaviours around eating because both education around how they can change and discussion of the system that benefits from their pain would become normalised. If we want people to be less fat, we have to be kinder, not meaner.
[It's not a human issue, it's an America issue.]
Actually, it’s a first world problem :D see also: corporations benefiting from putting salt and sugar in your food in quantities that are absolutely jaw dropping, because then you eat and drink more.
[it's a completely different thing to be overweight. And I mean really overweight.]
I guess how fat are we talking? Hard to qualify this one and harder still to discuss a point if we are both imagining different topics.
[It's completely un natural. It violates our design. When humans violate natural design, it's ugly. You can see it with things that aren't the human body.]
You can also argue that the following things violate natural design: organ implants, amputees, implants, people who are “too” thin, Botox, weird colours of hair, wheelchair users, guys who only work out the top half of their body so they look like a triangle, the list goes on :) but personally none of these, including fat people, actually affect me personally.
[You can see it in what they build, and how they destroy nature.]
I think this is verging on hyperbolic, but I will make one last point about something which I think isn’t discussed enough:
Morbid obesity - the kind I *think* you’re visualising when you are writing this, please feel free to correct me! - is a mental disorder. Eating disorders come in many shapes and sizes. Binge eating and anorexia are both disordered relationships with food. I would like you to imagine a world where you wrote about someone like Eugenia Cooney with as much passion and insight as you have done in your other comments, but then imagine extrapolating that criticism to any and all people struggling with anorexia. Do you think an anorexic would read “You’re disgusting and unnatural” and feel motivated to change who they were and how they used food as a tool of control in their own lives? If not, how do you expect it to work for other people with disordered eating?
[It's ugly. Excess fat is unnatural. And unnatural is ugly. And ugly is unattractive. And unattractive is unfuckable. And unfuckable translates to unlovable when it comes to marriage.]
I think one of my most favourite things about getting older is seeing how many people will truly fuck anything and anyone, and how many of those people have ended up in relationships with some level of looks disparity simply because they actually like the other person’s vibes. Also even in this world you’re describing, fat people would be equally unlovable, so you could just let them pair off with each other :D
[That's why gen z, the "single generation" and the generation that "doesn't have sex" is so against and fearful of fat. As we mature, and as we marry and grow old, we will realize that we will still be loved no matter what we look like.]
Sounds like you’re assuming you’ll end up agreeing with my viewpoint anyway. Why not speed run it and enjoy more of your life earlier?
I think you’re also underestimating just how repulsed previous generations were by fatties. Look up Kate Moss and heroin chic for more on the experiences that millennial girlies had, for example, or the Cosmo white wine diet for 1970s housewives zooted on tranquillisers. It’s all different, but it’s all the same. Over and over.
[But right now our main objective is to be as attractive as possible so we can find a desirable partner and have good sex.]
Great plan, love that for you. I’d also say that from experience your sex will be unbelievably, extraordinarily better if you don’t feel gross and ugly in certain positions or aren’t thinking about your stomach when you’re moving a certain way or your boobs when you’re bent over. In this, being body-conscious in the traditional sense really works against you for a good experience, because you can’t get out of your brain enough to experience what your body is feeling.
[I wonder if millenials are just jealous because they missed their window due to partying and unhealthy lifestyles.]
I don’t know which millennials you know, but the vast majority of us (yes, ewww, I’m one!) did NOT have the funds to go partying and live it up during our “peak years” because there was a global financial crisis and we were all underemployed, haha. Also you definitely don’t get fat from partying too hard, mainly because of the stimulants.
By and large (pun intended), I think your goal is laudable and we should be a healthier society. I don’t, however, agree with you that vitriol and disgust is actually a way of creating effective change. I encourage you to seek out more information on disordered eating in general in the form of studies and research rather than hot takes that lack any nuance from both camps on socials, and to treat your own body and others with the grace we all deserve in navigating this current hellscape we live in. We all deserve joy. Let’s find a way to get there together
Well, I agree with you on some parts. You're right about letting fat people pair up and that's exactly my attitude. My original comment was just the way I explain the rise in gen z wellness culture. Overall, you were pretty on point, but the one part you might want to look back over is when you said morbid obesity is a mental disorders. No it is not. It objectively having too much fat in your body. It can be caused be mental disorders, for sure, but being fat is not equivalent to binge eating.
Being thin, married, a mom, or into wellness doesn’t automatically make someone successful or put together.
It’s naïve to equate appearance with values. If your identity is so fragile that you need to define yourself against fat, pierced, mentally ill TikTokers just to feel like you have your life together, maybe it’s not the ring on your finger or the collagen in your coffee that’s grounding you, it’s judgment, disguised as virtue.
You're right, I know a ton of people with those attributes who don't have their life together. But didn't you know that being thin, married, and a parent are good things that we aspire for? Sorry for wanting that? I'd rather be thin that fat, I'd rather be married than single, and I'd rather have kids than not. It's human nature to want to feel good, to want to have a partner, and to want to have kids. If for some reason you don't want those things, whatever. You have the freedom to be fat, single, and childless. But the rest of us don't want that so don't make it seem like a problem in society that we need to be concerned about. You know what we do need to be concerned about? The obesity crisis. The loneliness epidemic. The worldwide declining birth rates which are sure to bring problems on what generation? Ours. That's why we are trying to fix it by having kids. We acknowledge kids are the future and one day we will need them to take care of us.
Wanting to be thin, married, and a parent is completely valid. No one’s telling you not to want those things. The problem is when you turn those personal goals into a moral hierarchy, when you imply that people who don’t look like you, live like you, or parent like you are less righteous, wrong, broken or unworthy. Someone’s appearance, generational title, or marital status tells you nothing about the depth of their convictions, or their worth.
There are societal issues like obesity, loneliness, and declining birth rates. But those aren't caused by fat people, single people, or childless people existing. They’re symptoms of much bigger systems like economic instability, lack of healthcare, climate anxiety, and yes, outdated gender expectations, including putting pressure on women to “fix” the world by having babies.
Plenty of thin, young married moms are also deeply unwell, lonely, or unsupported. So none of this is as simple as “just do the opposite of the millennials”
I support your right to live the life you want. (That's the feminist in me) What I won’t support is the idea that someone else’s different life, whether it’s loud, fat, pierced, single, childless, or deeply unconventional, is a threat that needs fixing. That mindset isn’t about helping society. It’s about maintaining control.
"Look feminine not like a feminist" even though this is not something I would say in public or on social media, it's something that I think it's something me and my generation quietly internalize. We just don't want to look like millenial femcels.
This is such an odd fear given that millennial women are the least single generation at 17-19% depending on the study you read. 32% of Gen Z and 29% of Gen X women are single. It’s about half of boomer women. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/
Yeah but we're talking about internet people against internet people here. There's the internet healthy people, and the internet "fat woke people". I'm saying the healthy people look at the fat internet fanfic reading people and we don't want to be like that. In the real world though, because millenials are keeping up with gen z style and fitting in, it's hard to tell between a fat gen z and a fat millenial. It's hard to look at a healthy person and tell whether they are gen z or millienial, because they are both so close in age that they look pretty similar. However if you want to talk about real world statistics: gen z is rejecting fat acceptance right? And America has a statistical obesity problem right? Well don't you think there might be a correlation? Gen z is growing up and we are wisening up to the older generations' surprise. Maybe we're smarter than you think and we've just collectively decoded we're not gonna continue accepting the bad health status quo.