Would you mind taking your privilege out of my body image issues?
There's been a backlash (spearheaded, judging by grammar and general intelligence, by teenage boys) against body acceptance activism going on for a while. The thing I've always found most strikingly disingenuous about it is the claim of concern for womens' health. In most cases, the absurdity of this reasoning is obvious (yeah, d00dz, you're so concerned about the health of some random youtube chick who you've never even met), but it's less easy to pick out when it is co-opted by otherwise intelligent, feminist-sympathising men. Nevertheless, it is still there, and still needs to be challenged.
Of course, the most tempting method to use is Godwinning ("So, you're concerned about health and beauty, eh? Like that nerdy moustache guy Hitler?"). But the internet can live without yet another Nazi comparison, so this temptation must be bypassed.
The reason that the argument is generally tolerated more than 'ewww, fatty' style criticisms is that unless one looks only at real medical data, it seems reasonable. Being obese (not overweight, interestingly- recent studies have shown an increased life expectancy in the 'overweight' category of the BMI scale amongst people in western countries) is broadly correlated with health difficulties and early mortality. However, as in most research areas, this information when fed through the filter of general human stupidity public consciousness becomes compromised in value because people are dumb perceptions formed on anecdotal information do not combine well with scientific reasoning. To see how their argument fails, let's look at a hypothetical example.
A couple of days ago, tomatorama linked to the thread on YouTube about this video (pointing out that many of the comments were wank over the alleged fatness of the woman in it):
Now, obviously I can't be arsed with wading through 3000 pages of that crap to find a perfect example, but we can synthesise the trollery thus:
Troll: wth teh bitch iz teh fatt why did u post this
Person: She's not fat. Stop being mean.
Troll: ZOMG bein obese is bad for u retard gtfo
This is pretty typical of the non-sequiterial manner in which health concerns relating to obesity are raised by men. Note that the original, and correct, response, pointing out that the woman in question is certainly within the healthy range of body weight/fat distribution, is completely ignored. The steps in the argument are something like: 1. Assert that someone is fat, without reference to medical criteria, 2. Assert that being fat is unhealthy (consistent with medical evidence), 3. Bitch and whine.
The disconnect going on here is quite deeply embedded in a failure of theory of mind. Yeah, I'm saying if you hate fatties, you're autistic. Lolz. But seriously, the problem with the argument is not in the citation of the correlation between obesity and health problems. Even fat acceptance activists do not deny this (though some ask for less culturally loaded measures of health to be used- such as blood pressure, heart rate, etc, which is valid for some individuals at least in whom BMI and inexpensive measures of body fat are inadequate descriptors of physical condition). The problem is that WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT FATNESS LOOKS LIKE. I demonstrated this quite a while ago on OkC, via the test system. Needless to say, non-scientists got all whiny and tried to pretend that they could alter medical fact by discursive techniques. Lol, hoomanertys kidz and their po5tmodirnizm. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that people were incapable of accurately estimating someone's BMI by visual methods.
What this means is that this woman:
would be bitched at if she posted a video of herself on YouTube. Probably even if she posted a video of herself in her professional capacity as a member of the French national rugby team.
Whereas this chick:
would be greeted with appreciation, despite the fact that she is unhealthy based on objective medical criteria (and on subjective Misfratz criteria involving the fact that she thinks posing in underwear all day somehow counts as a job).
Tell me again that it's all about health?
Of course, one really only needs to point out the gender difference in attempts to enforce social ideals of weight (not medical ideals, that's a different matter) to show the false concern behind this argument. Men don't get bitched at for being 'fat', even though they are more likely to be so, and less likely to be aware of it. Indeed, men are often encouraged to delude themselves by claims that BMI is not valid (maybe for 5% of the population it isn't, dears- and isn't it strange that no one brings up this problem when women are asking to be accepted at above the 'healthy range'?) or that they are 'athletic' and therefore just more muscular, despite this being obvious bullshit.
Of course, then people go on from this to say that they aren't criticising women of healthy weights, it's just that those women are so insecure if they have body image issues at a normal weight. I can't imagine why that would be, but I'd like to offer an open challenge to anyone wishing to argue with me: find a woman with a BMI of 24 (within the healthy range) and a body fat % of 27 (also healthy in women, though men are naturally supposed to have body fat ranges about 10% lower than those of women), and show me that she's happy with all of her body. Actually, if you want to really prove something, get her to post a bikini video on YouTube. If she gets no comments telling her she's fat, then I'll believe you. Until then, I'm afraid you lose this argument.
Bottom line: you can be attracted to skinny chicks all you want. No one actually cares. But unless your favourite chat-up line is 'Hey baby, how's your LDL cholesterol?', do the world a favour and stop pretending it's about health.
Of course, the most tempting method to use is Godwinning ("So, you're concerned about health and beauty, eh? Like that nerdy moustache guy Hitler?"). But the internet can live without yet another Nazi comparison, so this temptation must be bypassed.
The reason that the argument is generally tolerated more than 'ewww, fatty' style criticisms is that unless one looks only at real medical data, it seems reasonable. Being obese (not overweight, interestingly- recent studies have shown an increased life expectancy in the 'overweight' category of the BMI scale amongst people in western countries) is broadly correlated with health difficulties and early mortality. However, as in most research areas, this information when fed through the filter of general human stupidity public consciousness becomes compromised in value because people are dumb perceptions formed on anecdotal information do not combine well with scientific reasoning. To see how their argument fails, let's look at a hypothetical example.
A couple of days ago, tomatorama linked to the thread on YouTube about this video (pointing out that many of the comments were wank over the alleged fatness of the woman in it):
Now, obviously I can't be arsed with wading through 3000 pages of that crap to find a perfect example, but we can synthesise the trollery thus:
Troll: wth teh bitch iz teh fatt why did u post this
Person: She's not fat. Stop being mean.
Troll: ZOMG bein obese is bad for u retard gtfo
This is pretty typical of the non-sequiterial manner in which health concerns relating to obesity are raised by men. Note that the original, and correct, response, pointing out that the woman in question is certainly within the healthy range of body weight/fat distribution, is completely ignored. The steps in the argument are something like: 1. Assert that someone is fat, without reference to medical criteria, 2. Assert that being fat is unhealthy (consistent with medical evidence), 3. Bitch and whine.
The disconnect going on here is quite deeply embedded in a failure of theory of mind. Yeah, I'm saying if you hate fatties, you're autistic. Lolz. But seriously, the problem with the argument is not in the citation of the correlation between obesity and health problems. Even fat acceptance activists do not deny this (though some ask for less culturally loaded measures of health to be used- such as blood pressure, heart rate, etc, which is valid for some individuals at least in whom BMI and inexpensive measures of body fat are inadequate descriptors of physical condition). The problem is that WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT FATNESS LOOKS LIKE. I demonstrated this quite a while ago on OkC, via the test system. Needless to say, non-scientists got all whiny and tried to pretend that they could alter medical fact by discursive techniques. Lol, hoomanertys kidz and their po5tmodirnizm. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that people were incapable of accurately estimating someone's BMI by visual methods.
What this means is that this woman:
would be bitched at if she posted a video of herself on YouTube. Probably even if she posted a video of herself in her professional capacity as a member of the French national rugby team.
Whereas this chick:
would be greeted with appreciation, despite the fact that she is unhealthy based on objective medical criteria (and on subjective Misfratz criteria involving the fact that she thinks posing in underwear all day somehow counts as a job).
Tell me again that it's all about health?
Of course, one really only needs to point out the gender difference in attempts to enforce social ideals of weight (not medical ideals, that's a different matter) to show the false concern behind this argument. Men don't get bitched at for being 'fat', even though they are more likely to be so, and less likely to be aware of it. Indeed, men are often encouraged to delude themselves by claims that BMI is not valid (maybe for 5% of the population it isn't, dears- and isn't it strange that no one brings up this problem when women are asking to be accepted at above the 'healthy range'?) or that they are 'athletic' and therefore just more muscular, despite this being obvious bullshit.
Of course, then people go on from this to say that they aren't criticising women of healthy weights, it's just that those women are so insecure if they have body image issues at a normal weight. I can't imagine why that would be, but I'd like to offer an open challenge to anyone wishing to argue with me: find a woman with a BMI of 24 (within the healthy range) and a body fat % of 27 (also healthy in women, though men are naturally supposed to have body fat ranges about 10% lower than those of women), and show me that she's happy with all of her body. Actually, if you want to really prove something, get her to post a bikini video on YouTube. If she gets no comments telling her she's fat, then I'll believe you. Until then, I'm afraid you lose this argument.
Bottom line: you can be attracted to skinny chicks all you want. No one actually cares. But unless your favourite chat-up line is 'Hey baby, how's your LDL cholesterol?', do the world a favour and stop pretending it's about health.