Neoliberalism calls for arraying oppressed classes against the core population so as to undermine society. Since no one is really oppressed in the USA, classes of artificial victims must be created. The newest one consists of people whose self-images center on being obese —
I mean fat (
archive):
In the world of fat activism, the “O-words”—overweight and obesity—are expressly verboten. That’s because advocates and “fat studies” scholars want to destigmatize and accommodate fatness—their preferred term—and push back against the view that overweight or obese people are somehow abnormal or diseased.
To be obese is by definition abnormal. Obesity is recognized as a disease by the
American Medical Association. It is associated with many other diseases, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, dyslipidemia, heart attacks, heart failure, stroke, diabetes, osteoarthritis, gallstones, liver problems, endometrial cancer, postmenopausal breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, kidney disease, apnea, asthma, psoriasis, reflux, mood disorders, and incontinence. Consequently, it is correlated with reduced life expectancy.
Now a third problematic O-word has emerged: Ozempic.
Fat activists do not like Ozempic because it helps people lose weight, which from their perspective is counterproductive.
Meanwhile,
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently
estimated that obesity is associated with approximately $385 billion in health spending in 2024. According to a
recent paper in JAMA, employees with obesity have seven times the medical claims costs and 11 times the indemnity claims costs of those with a healthy weight. They file twice as many worker compensation claims. …
According to a 2023 paper
in the journal Nature, roughly 8% of all medical expenditures in the U.S. are associated with the treatment of obesity.
But to acknowledge all this is to commit stigmatization, which academia regards as thoughtcrime.
Fat studies, an interdisciplinary field that arose in the 1990s, focuses on what it calls “weight-based oppression”…
No wonder so many lardass creatures want Democrats to force others to pay off their student loans. It can’t be easy to secure gainful employment with a degree in fat studies.
Like ethnic studies and queer studies,
fat studies was inspired by activism and organized around identity, incorporating aspects of social sciences, the arts and the humanities. In the language of fat studies, to “fatten” an issue means to examine it through the lens of the fat justice movement.
There is no shortage of shitlibs whose heads have undergone fattening.
