And I feel it's lowkey misogynistic, racist and ableist in the modern day. It disturbing that it's considered leftist. (rant incoming)
For example, the HAES activists stating that the movement was created by fat black queer women, which is blatantly untrue and likely a rumor inspired by the black trans women who threw the first bricks at stonewall to lend credibility. Second, the idea being spread that our culture preferring thinness and preaching about health is eugenics. It's not one spread often, but a lot of the louder voices in the space spread it. Like Splotchmaker, Fatsapphicbro, and Marissa Matthews on tiktok. And then there's the narrative being spread that black women are naturally fat and our culture only promotes thinness because it's 'proximity to whiteness', which is so racist. Not only does it steal language from real world racism/colorism in beauty standards, but it's leeching off of black activism to legitimize itself.
The misogyny I'm seeing stems from the idea that not being viewed as desirable as often as other groups of women is somehow a form of oppression. That plus the frequent underlying competition they have in their heads with other women, and the judgement and anger held towards thin women who work to maintain their thinness. And just in general that being overweight is fine when it quite literally takes your power away. (Reducing your ability to move and run, giving you heart issues, fertility issues, health complications, screwing with your hormonal balance, giving you a higher risk of mental health issues, increasing the risk factors during surgeries, killing you, etc)
The ableist part of the narrative is where they're stealing language from disabled activists. "You aren't owed health" "Not everyone can be healthy" and treating the complications with obesity as a disability, while refusing to acknowledge that obesity leads to a myriad of comorbidities including physical disability and chronic pain. But when their doctors suggest weight loss they get upset and it's considered fatphobia, but what else is the doctor supposes to do? Ignore the cause of these health issues? And it's not as if the doctor gains anything from trying to reason with them, the person will continue coming back and making their clinic more money the more health problems crop up from their condition. Lying to them and ignoring the real issue would make them more money but they still try to help these people, and then it's written off as fatphobia. What do they go to the doctor's for, then? They want to treat the symptoms but not the problem. They say it's genetics but that's also not true, if people were genetically fat and their bodies just decided to store more energy(out of thin air somehow, because fat cells cannot be produced without the calories to store in them) then famines would have never happened, which goes hand in hand with racism because The Holocaust, slavery, and the various famines that happened throughout history would have never killed as many as they did if people's bodies created fat cells from thin air without a sufficient calorie intake to produce them.
Millions of disabled people, including me, wish we could change our disabilities. That we could just recieve a treatment plan and a suggestion from our doctor and our disability/the problem causing it would be erased. But they refuse. They leech off of disabled activism and then continue further disabling themselves when they could just lose weight and change it all. They disable themselves, and are capable of losing it and living healthily, and choose not to.
Fat people are not oppressed. They've never faced genocide, they've never faced slavery, they've never worried about mixed-size relationships being illegal, fat people are not facing legislations against them, fat people are not illegal in other countries. Fat people don't face the death penalty for their size. Sure, they get bullied, they don't fit into a lot of things, and their clothes aren't as easily available. But that's not oppression. Hurt feelings are not oppression. So why do they continually steal language and narratives from legitimate sects of activism??
Their political movement only causes harm. 500,000 people die annually because of obesity. Childhood obesity is on the rise, type two diabetes is on the rise, one in three people are pre-diabetic. Obesity and weight gain exacerbated preexisting health problems, and will only cause further complications the more weight you gain and the longer you stay fat. Being fat doesn't feel good, fat is not neutral tissue. It produces hormones and it screws with you as a result, which is why more overweight people struggle with mental health problems like depression and anxiety. The excess weight damages your joints, especially your knees and back. The visceral fat chokes your organs. Being too overweight will make you lose your period.
It will steal your ability to have children, it will steal your ability to move and run and exist, it will steal your relationship with food, it will steal your mental health, it will steal your life.
How is it healthy? How is it okay? How is it feminist?
I understand that people have issues with food, and I'm so so sorry about that. But if you're in the movement and reading this, telling yourself and others that it's fine and dandy to overeat and be overweight is dangerous. It's not good for you, it's not good for others. You are putting yourself on a bad path, and spreading medical misinformation for an online movement that wouldn't care if you had health complications due to your weight and it killed you. This movement is equivalent to proana, just in an opposite direction. This is not worth sacrificing your health and quality of life. You only have one life, please take good care of it.
