Why we have a problem with the Idea of Healthy Fat People

Why is it so hard to conceive of healthy fat people? Being both healthy and fat cannot be too difficult to imagine. Today, however, the existence of one means that you cannot have the other. There seem to be certain categories of non-behaviour that have resulted in the existence of non-persons.  An example of a non-person is the social smoker. People do smoke on occasions, not regularly or on their own. The idea that there is such a thing of social smoking, however, is a direct challenge to the current orthodoxy on health. The same is true of the healthy fat person.  The current orthodoxy states that we are either addicts to nicotine or we are  not, there can be no in between. 

So why can't we have the healthy fat person?

The healthy fat person certainly exists. One does not have to go back very far in history to see that being fat was seen as healthy. This is the biological purpose of fat. Having substantial fat reserves was seen as healthy and that it could save your life. It was also seen as aestheticly pleasing.  It is only relatively recently that we have come to perceive being fat as problematic. Making fat into a health problem is down to our confusion about what being healthy really means.

As a society, we are very uncritical of the label healthy when it is applied to people, lifestyle, diets and behaviours. We overlook how problematic and vague the term is. The original definition of health was the absence of disease.  Health was a state of being that described the state of a person. In the 20th Century, however, it soon began being applied to things.  Food was the first stuff to be  labelled as healthy or unhealthy. Soon it was applied to activities such as drinking alcohol and exercising. Next came the healthy environment. Finally, it has been applied to groups of  people such as the fat and smokers. This acceptance of the term healthy is often put down to common sense, or as acquiescence to the opinion of experts. Even with only a little probing, the way we now apply the word healthy is very confused.

When looked at from a medical point of view, there is no proof that being overweight is bad for you and therefore unhealthy. There is evidence to suggest that being over weight can contribute to certain conditions. The evidence, however, is far from conclusive and unable to prove that being fat is the major contributor to disease. Weight is far more of a threat to health if you are underweight. In addition, an examination of the studies on obesity show that there is no epidemic of  the condition.

Contrary to the evidence, the Health Industry  presents us with a one size fits all approach; fat is unhealthy. As is typical of modern health scares, the problem of being overweight is presented as getting worse, when it isn't. A flexible and expedient definition of what it means to  be healthy is used as a moral  condemnation of  fat people. For me, the question that needs to be  answered is "Why is  there moral condemnation of the fat and why is it a bad thing?"

Morality and being fat

I would argue that the moral chastisement of  fat people is part of a political trend. Politicians and other state institutions feel powerless and isolated from the public. In order to regain a sense of power, they interfere in people's lives by telling them what to do.  This is done, of course, strictly for the 'good of the public'.  

Poor health is used as a justification for state intervention into people's lives

Instead of  intervening on a medical level, however, we are lectured to and frightened into changing our unhealthy behaviour.  Despite medical evidence to the contrary, being overweight is seen as the consequence of bad behaviour.  Fat people are condemned as being slaves to their passions (greed and laziness) and therefore as being sinful. In a very recent twist, fat people are morally condemned for being a burden on the National Health Service.  At the same time as condemnation, however, we are are told not to call people fat or to stigmatise them.

So, on the one hand, we have the castigation of fat people and on the other we have people springing to their defence. This is the contradiction in our approach to fat people. We are told to mind our language in front of fat people and certainly never call them fat and preferably do not mention anything to do with weight. We would not, after all, wish to offend them. Castigating the fat does not sit very well with a culture that demands that you should be yourself, or  more accurately you should be happy with yourself. In this era of multiculturalism, we are told to accept not  only ourselves but everyone else no matter what shape, colour or creed.  Condemnation and acceptance seem to exist at the same time. So why do we have two diametrically opposed approaches to fat people?  

Condemnation or Compassion?

The two faced nature of our attitude towards fat people is quite breathtaking. On the one hand they are morally weak, on the other they are victims  of  a society that worships the thin.  I would  like to argue, that the defence of fat people has nothing to do with defending fat people. The defence of fat people rests on a cultural narrative that has two assumptions. The first of these assumptions is that fat people are not happy with themselves because they have a negative body image. Second, this negative body image is created by a culture that prizes looking thin and that blames fat people for creating their condition. According to this narrative, we are to blame for the way that fat people feel about themselves.

We are to blame for the way fat people feel about themselves because we are secretly prejudiced. The notion that we are closet fatists is one that has been borrowed from anti-racist and anti-homophobia thinking.  A characteristic of  those in the anti-racist industry is that they attack the supposedly maladjusted psyche of normal people. They seek the hidden racist that supposedly lurks within all of us.  These groups are far more  interested in the racists than the victims of racism.  The same is true of the defence of  fat people.  

What may start as an act of  compassion quickly descends into an attack on the public 

One of the favourite targets of the anti-fatists is language.  In this case how we refer to fat people. Regardless of  whether fat people are present, one should not use the word 'fat'. One should not really mention weight at all.  The next target is the way that fat people are portrayed in the media.  Finally we have the argument that the depiction of thin people marginalises and helps reinforce a  negative body image.  So the defence of fat people is not really a defence, it is an attack on the rest of us 'fatists'.

Why the condemnation of fat people?

 As I have argued above, blaming individual behaviour for society's ills is a political tendancy. Simultaneously, individuals are blamed for being fat by overeating and for causing the negative body image that makes fat people unhappy. It is this circularity that makes the issue of being overweight the ideal one in which to intervene in people's lives. The public is both instigator and perpetrator. To put it another way, the fat people are blamed for being fat and the non-fat people are blamed for making them feel bad about it.  We end up being ruled by thoughts about our weight because fat people want to be thin and thin people don't want to become fat.

We are literally slaves to our passions, prejudices and addictions so we simply cannot be trusted to run our own lives, let alone the lives of our children

As I have argued previously, being overweight is the ideal candidate for intervention into people's lives. This is why we have the current anti-sugar campaign.  Sugar is everywhere and it's excess consumption is held responsible for us being overweight. In terms of intervention, being overweight trounces smoking. There are only a limited number of smokers, who seem to want to give up anyway. There are, however, an unlimited number of those of us who consume sugar and are in imminent danger of weight gain. 

We need to be highly suspicious and far more critical of interventions into our lives that have little or no scientific evidence in their support.  Even where there is evidence  we need to ask ourselves "Is this really a problem?" Instead of accepting the rhetoric of intervention we need to challenge it. Ultimately we need to relax about body weight and not see it as unhealthy or as the fault of the fat person. 

 Please feel free to read some of my previous posts

• Why diet doesn't matter
• Why I am against a tax on sugar
• Why Tiger mums and Competitive Dads need protection
• Smile or Die - A Critique of Positive Thinking 
• In Defence of Cosmetic Surgery
• Business Survival - Competing in an Ant-Heap
•  Compete or Fail?
•  Are Children Born Naughty?
• Lift the limits on Productivity
• Why are we Risk Averse?
• My thanks to Tesco
• Why I hate 'Emotional Intelligence'
• Where have all the writers gone?
• How did everyone become a marathon runner?