This is a comment by Mike L on the post “I Don’t Have to Explain My Fat to You“.
I’ve heard these things before, and I personally take issue with “fat acceptance” for two reasons.
First, for reasons I do not understand, many members of the fat acceptance movement seem to hate me. I was a student at City College of San Francisco before transferring to a 4-year school, and during my time there I attended a couple of events where Linda Bacon would speak about Fat Acceptance. At every single event someone (and in fairness it was usually an audience comment rather than an academic) would attempt to demonize “thin men” as the source of all of society’s problems.
Even if you wanted to demonize thin people, why were men singled out every time?
Furthermore, my family has a long history of heart disease, so I have little choice but to be proactive about prevention or else face heart disease myself. This means I exercise vigorously six days a week and I’m very careful about what I eat. As a result, I am a thin man. How am I supposed to feel when I hear myself being demonized because of steps that I am reasonably taking to prevent the plight I watched my grandmother suffer through?
If the FA movement wanted an ally, they screwed up.
Second, even if the FA movement wasn’t problematic, the comparison to the LGBT community is preposterous. Homosexuality does not drive up my medicare costs.
Now, are there “healthy” fat people? Sure. Are fat people in America on average “healthy”? No, not by a long shot.
When the author writes:
“There are so many people who can be on board with FA or other fat-positive principles, provided the fat person in question is healthy….F*** That.”
It’s pretty clear that the author is not actually concerned with an ongoing public health crisis in America which affects all of us through insurance premiums, medicare, and medicaid. It’s one thing to argue that we should not stigmatize fat. It’s another to argue that being unhealthy has no societal costs at all.
Photo credit: Flickr / tobyotter
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Your example just goes to show that both men and women can be demonized for their bodies, no matter what they look like. “Skinny bitches” are the body police and gender police, all rolled into one evil, unhuman package. I read on PostSecret last Sunday a secret from a woman with an eating disorder, who although recovered feels a smug satisfaction with having achieved a lower “low weight” than other sufferers of her disease. At first I felt sad for her, and then later, upon reflection, while still feeling compassion for her, I thought she was a bitch, and yeah, I know, that’s a gendered term, but it is also the kind of asshole she was being, thrusting her pain on other women that way. I’m sure they could all see it in her face if they’d impressed her or not lived up (down) to her standard.
Being gay and being fat do have a connection, in the capitalist way we look at bodies. Women are told their bodies have to be sexy to be valuable and to live up to the ideal we have set for women, and men are told our bodies must be strong to be “real men.” In addition, we’re all workers and parents, raising a new generation of workers. Those of us who are seen as taking up too much space, quite literally, or who are seen as having shirked their responsibility to society to raise little citizen-workers, are seen as less valuable for qualities that are seen as a matter of will.
Justin you’ve repeatedly tried to tie capitalism to the way we look at bodies, but I just don’t accept that.
The fact remains that “beauty ideals” exist in virtually all cultures, regardless of whether or not they are capitalist. The ideals change from culture to culture, but less capitalist cultures do not magically begin accepting all body types.
Justin didn’t say that capitalism creates beauty ideals. He suggests that capitalism influences the beauty ideals of western cultures. Other cultures have beauty ideals, certainly, but they are not tied to capitalism…because they are not capitalist.
But that claim doesn’t demonstrate that our beauty ideals ARE capitalist.
Furthermore, different countries have starkly different beauty ideals despite strong commitments to capitalism. It’s difficult to claim that a country like Japan is not deeply capitalist, yet they clearly have a very different beauty ideal than the US does. Likewise, it’s difficult to claim that a country like Finland, the epitome of Scandinavian Welfare, is as capitalist as the US is, and yet Finland has beauty ideals that are remarkably similar to the US (look up Finnish models and see if you can tell the difference).
It just seems like the connections isn’t there.
Firstly, that’s not the way society and culture works. A similar system (say capitalism) won’t have exactly the same result with the way it interacts with other systems (like say valuing the body) across every culture. In part that’s because capitalism is different in different cultures (as are other social systems), and they all interact with each other.
Secondly, as Justin pointed out, he wasn’t talking about ‘beauty ideals’ (it was wrong of me to use that term in my own comment). He was talking about how society places value on the body. Those are two very different things.
I don’t say that beauty ideals are capitalist. I say that capitalism has its own qualifications for what it values in our bodies. Beauty is one, but only in as much as it can be commodified: if your kid is model-cute enough to be photographed for catalogs, or if you have the kind of body that people pay to see, or even if you just fit the Hooters uniform, then it’s worth something in dollars. Otherwise, you just give your loved ones pleasure with your beauty and capitalism doesn’t care. The system wants you to be a valuable worker, whether it’s because your value comes from your appearance, your license or skills, strength, location, willingness to work for $X, or some other quality.
Homosexuality does not drive up my medicare costs.
According to a recent Forbes article, neither does obesity:
Alcohol, Obesity and Smoking Do Not Cost Health Care Systems Money
“Now there is no doubt at all that these unhealthy behaviours do have costs, that’s not at issue. The major cost is of course to the imbiber, smoker or lardbucket in the form of a shorter lifespan.”
“But what about these costs to the health care systems? Well, the clue is in that shortened lifespan. Yes, certainly, there are costs to treating the diseases brought on by too much booze, tobacco or food. But there are costs to treating all diseases, all modes and methods by which we might possibly reach that undoubted destination, the grave.
The question is, are the costs of treating the illnesses and deaths brought on by those three indulgences higher or lower than the costs of treating those who live healthily but still inevitably die?”
Click through for the data and you will find that healthy people are more expensive in terms of medical care over their lifetimes than either obese people or smokers because they live longer.
The peer-reviewed study referenced in the Forbes article may be viewed directly here:
Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
“Despite the higher annual costs of the obese and smoking cohorts, the healthy-living cohort incurs highest lifetime costs, due to its higher life expectancy, as shown in Table 1. Furthermore, the greatest differences in health-care costs are not caused by smoking- and obesity-related diseases, but by the other, unrelated, diseases that occur as life-years are gained (Table 1). Therefore, successful prevention of obesity and smoking would result in lower health-care costs in the short run (assuming no costs of prevention), but in the long run they would result in higher costs.”
“In this study we have shown that, although obese people induce high medical costs during their lives, their lifetime health-care costs are lower than those of healthy-living people but higher than those of smokers. Obesity increases the risk of diseases such as diabetes and coronary heart disease, thereby increasing health-care utilization but decreasing life expectancy. Successful prevention of obesity, in turn, increases life expectancy. Unfortunately, these life-years gained are not lived in full health and come at a price: people suffer from other diseases, which increases health-care costs. Obesity prevention, just like smoking prevention, will not stem the tide of increasing health-care expenditures. The underlying mechanism is that there is a substitution of inexpensive, lethal diseases toward less lethal, and therefore more costly, diseases [9].”
Another myth down the toilet…
“Another myth down the toilet…”
Not quite.
That paper looked at Europe, but I live in the US.
Looking at US costs, the obese do indeed cost more.
“Making the cost impact all the more troubling is the fact that, unlike smokers, obese people tend to live almost as long as those who keep their weight under control. ”Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare” trillions of dollars”, said Duke’s Eric Finkelstein. “But mortality isn’t that much higher among the obese.””
From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-now-costs-americans-more-in-healthcare-costs-than-smoking/
First off, I don’t see anything in that article that says the obese do, indeed, cost more. Certainly the passage that you quoted does not say that. Perhaps there is something on page 2 of the article that says that, but no article text loads for me on that page so I don’t know. But that’s okay. Let’s use your logic on smoking which your article does explicitly say saves Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare trillions of dollars.
Are you a smoker, Mike L? No? If not, you are driving up smokers’ costs in Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare! How dare you!?!? That is hardly fair. You are a burden on the system! What are we going to do with you???
As to your comment that the data is from Europe, not the United States. Okay, by your logic, we must agree that in that area of Europe, thin people should be penalized or obesity should be subsidized because it costs less overall in that location. While New York is busy refusing people giant sodas, perhaps in Europe thin people should be forced to accept a small order of fries with any purchase? Something like that? After all, they’re costing obese people more, and that’s not fair! Right?
And finally, you report trying to have a healthy lifestyle overall, but have you given any consideration to your fellow citizens and how much you are costing them??? This is from the United States:
Another study, this from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, as reported in US News:
The Best Life
Good Health Raises Lifetime Care Costs
“Here are the CRR projections of remaining lifetime health care costs, in 2009 dollars, of couples who reached the indicated ages last year:
Age Healthy Unhealthy
65 $260,000 $220,000
70 $266,000 $241,000
75 $265,000 $236,000
80 $259,000 $220,000
85 $244,000 $202,000
Looking at current health care costs, it turns out that healthier people actually do face lower annual bills than unhealthy people. But as you extend this side-by-side look into the future, the healthy people keep incurring expenses every year. And the unhealthy people? Well, they’re likely to have died.”
Again, with your healthy lifestyle choices, you are the burden on your fellow citizens’ pocketbooks. It’s one thing to argue that we should not stigmatize those trying to live a healthy lifestyle. It’s another to argue that being healthy has no societal costs at all.
That’s an interesting paper, though note in the summary the authors set out several critical conditions related to its validity. Also, it takes a rather dubious approach towards links between risk factors and disease i.e. it assumes independence. The test country used in the model should also be reviewed and compared to other regions where direct patient moneys contribution is different.
Another issue brought up in the commentary is the use of average costs in the formulation. The point made by the critique needs consideration as it will influence outcomes.
It is well understood that 50% of lifetime aggregated health care costs are spent in the last year of life, the remaining spend needs to be validated for correlation with risk profiles. The paper does not do that in its modeling.
“Even if you wanted to demonize thin people, why were men singled out every time?”
For the exact same reason we single out white men when discussing race, rich men when discussing poverty, and middle-aged men when discussing age. To grasp the mantle of victimhood and bask in its moral authority and political power, one must draw as stark a comparison as possible between the experiences of your group and another more privileged group. You’re free to define your group and there group as needed to accomplish this goal.
Now, if we could only find the white, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied, attractive, wealthy, educated, protestant, aged 35-44, healthy, blue-blooded, fully employed, city-dwelling, 3rd generation American man that causes all these problems, I’d give him a piece of mind.
I’m working on it! Give me 12 years and I’ll be the right age =)
Two things: one, issues of gender equality between cismen and ciswomen are very different than class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, equality issues. In those other issues there is a pretty clear divide between privileged group and non-privileged group, whereas with gender it’s more contextual.
Second thing, you’re last, long sentence demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept of privilege. Straight people aren’t to blame; a system which gives straight people privilege is to blame. Able-bodied people aren’t to blame; a system which gives straight people privilege is to blame, etc. Not everyone is able to distinguish between how a social system creates an inequality, and the people that end up privileged because of that inequality.
Respectfully, I think you misunderstood his last sentence, which (in my understanding) was to be read sarcastically.
The problem with privilege arguments is that they never examine the actual strategies executed by the players in the system. Instead, they focus entirely on the “starting points” of the players and then make pretend that this is the whole game. Many of us disagree with this type of analysis, and the sentence was an indication of this sort of disagreement.
Interestingly ties back into that “Easiest Difficulty Setting” article that did the rounds.
Why do you care whether I’m healthy or not? I don’t hear you calling to ban skydiving, motocross, football, or a thousand other choices people make that result in more injury/death and thus higher costs to society?
Pop quiz – which of my activities today is more likely to result in injury/death/healthcare costs going up: a)eating pizza for dinner, b) sustained exposure to high-energy X-rays, or c) catching and restraining sub-adult alligators. All 3 are things is choose to do because they add enjoyment to my life, but if you think option a is the worst, you have an even worse sense or risk evaluation than I do
Death does not actually result in higher costs to society, nor do most injuries. Chronic health problems are another matter.
This is covered in the links posted in comments above.
The idea that fat *people* are driving up your medicare cost, and not the system which makes unhealthy food much much cheaper than healthy food is ridiculous. I have the privilege to be able to afford healthy food, and I exercise. However, I’m still fat- and I’m not driving up anyone’s costs. What is driving them up is gentrification, which pushes poor people into certain neighborhoods with limited food choices, and limited education by doctors on what healthy means. Most people go to the doctors with health issues and are given pills- yes, if they’re fat, that means it’s being funded by medicare. However, those people could be thin and could be eating the same food that makes them unhealthy, yet if someone is genetically predisposed to be thin, they are very rarely scrutinized for the food they eat, no matter what health problems it causes. The cause/effect relationship is flawed.
And it is also a ridiculous way to look at a common government for what *you* are personally getting out of it- *your* taxes are not raised by much at all because of fat people, and if you actually cared about their health and them becoming healthier, you would be happy for the extra small amount your personal taxes go up to cover their medical costs. Taxes are not high because of fat people, but because of misplaced government spending.
And also, the point of the original article was completely missed- other peoples fat is none of your business.
This is a silly argument.
It is entirely possible to subsist on rice and beans. It is not pleasant, but it is possible. You can do this regardless of what income level you have because few things are cheaper than bulk rice and beans.
People who claim that ONLY unhealthy food is cheap have probably no explored actual healthy eating options.
Milk, oatmeal, frozen fruits and vegetables, rice, beans, frozen chicken breast, uncooked pasta, canned vegetables etc. are all healthy foods that are available at very low costs.
I’m sorry, but reality begs to differ with the argument that corporate food is at fault.
“Homosexuality does not drive up my medicare costs.”
Actually, I heard that sentiment thrown out by homophobics during the rise of AIDS–that gay men were driving up medical costs. Seems pretty ignorant now, doesn’t it?
Shame tactics leveled at fat people are more likely to cause fat people to avoid going to the doctor or for the doctor to ignore their health issues (for examples see fathealth.wordpress.com). Less preemptive care = higher costs. If you are really concerned about medical costs, change your bigoted attitude.