Should Weight Watchers be a work activity?
I hate it when things bother me and I can't quite put my finger on why. This is one of those things. Weight Watchers has some kind of thingy with workplaces, wherein people who work at a specific company/organization get discounted membership and meetings on site. The library is offering this. And allowing people to flex their meetings - which, effectively, means the meetings are paid work time.
This bothers me.
I realize I'm incredibly privileged in this culture because I am thin. I am thin not through any effort on my part, but because the genetic lottery said that I would be thin. And that may diminish my rights to be disturbed by the huge pressure in this culture to be thin, the conflation of weight with health (despite there being no good science that I'm aware of backing this), and the disturbingly eating disordery edge to the wording of a lot of diet program/product ads. But all of that does bother me.
And, because all of that bothers me, I can't help being disturbed that my workplace is so eager to take advantage of a weight loss program that they've deemed it paid work time. How does this effect anyone who may have (or have recovered from) an eating disorder? How does this effect people who are not thin due to medical reasons? Or simply because their genetics said they would never be a size 6? Hell, how does this effect people who could lose weight but don't wish to?
I guess I just don't feel like a workplace should be saying that only thin is good. This isn't a health program, it's a weight loss program, period. I could understand a workplace wanting their employees to be healthy. But wanting them to be thin creeps me out.
Am I looking at this wrong? Is there some other message I could be taking from this?
This entry was originally posted at http://smurasaki.dreamwidth.org/116080.html.
This bothers me.
I realize I'm incredibly privileged in this culture because I am thin. I am thin not through any effort on my part, but because the genetic lottery said that I would be thin. And that may diminish my rights to be disturbed by the huge pressure in this culture to be thin, the conflation of weight with health (despite there being no good science that I'm aware of backing this), and the disturbingly eating disordery edge to the wording of a lot of diet program/product ads. But all of that does bother me.
And, because all of that bothers me, I can't help being disturbed that my workplace is so eager to take advantage of a weight loss program that they've deemed it paid work time. How does this effect anyone who may have (or have recovered from) an eating disorder? How does this effect people who are not thin due to medical reasons? Or simply because their genetics said they would never be a size 6? Hell, how does this effect people who could lose weight but don't wish to?
I guess I just don't feel like a workplace should be saying that only thin is good. This isn't a health program, it's a weight loss program, period. I could understand a workplace wanting their employees to be healthy. But wanting them to be thin creeps me out.
Am I looking at this wrong? Is there some other message I could be taking from this?
This entry was originally posted at http://smurasaki.dreamwidth.org/116080.html.