They have made the same amazing discovery yet again! Scientists are gob smacked that another study has shown that you can have a big fat ass and still be healthy! How astounding!
Why is this always a surprise?
It all boils down to the fact that scientists are as influenced by culture as everyone else, and because the current sociocultural climate equates fat with ill health (and thus justifying the fat-hate poured down on people who are not slender) the scientists are bewildered when fat people are healthy. How can that be when everyone *knows* fat is unhealthy?
Look at the way the doctors labeled the healthy, but fat, individuals in the study. They called them “metabolically healthy obese people”. They couldn’t just call them healthy. God forbid. They had to make sure the qualified it some way, and still go in the crucial word “obese” so everyone would remember that they weren’t quite like the real healthy people. It is the flip side of calling slender people who are unhealthy “metabolically obese”. People cannot just be healthy or unhealthy … fat has GOT to play a role in the discourse somewhere.
Then there are the health specialists who are called in to do the obligatory fat shaming anyway. In this case it was Amy Thompson, who apparently works for the British Heart Foundation. She was quoted as saying, “In the majority of cases, obesity is an undeniable risk factor for developing coronary heart disease. However, these studies remind us that it is not always your weight that’s important, but where you carry fat and also how it affects your health and fitness.”
So, she has to reiterate that fat is a squishy layer of death (Thin people live forever, then? ) and try to find a “reason” why some people who are fat can be healthy. It can’t just be that they exercise. Nope. I has to be that they have the fat in special magic thigh pouches of non-death. Otherwise people would just think they could move around a lot and be healthy and not be “motivated” to become thin oh noes!
To make sure people totally understand the real reason you should exercise, Thompson goes on to say “Maintaining a healthy diet with lots of physical activity can help to slim you down as well as reduce your risk of heart health problems.” In short, you should always keep the eye on the prize, which is to have smaller upper arms! Health is just a secondary issue, compared to the glory and wonder of size 6 jeans.
Of course her statement is contrary to the medical research into obesity, which all indicates that exercise will make you healthy but slimming down has more than a 98% failure rate over the course of a few years. However, we shouldn’t let a little thing like reality color our fat-hate fat-shaming bullshit, now should we?
*seethe*
I may be 300 lbs, but other than the Crohn’s and Fibromyalgia (yeah, I know those are big exceptions), I’m disgustingly healthy. My blood sugar and blood pressure are excellent. My last gyno was a little bitty Asian lady, and it really chapped her ass that my blood pressure was better than hers. The Fibro would probably be easier to cope with if I didn’t have so much weight putting pressure on my joints and muscles. But none of my health problems were caused by the weight.
“However, we shouldn’t let a little thing like reality color our fat-hate fat-shaming bullshit, now should we?”
Well no. Especially if we want to maintain the billion dollar industry that bilks people out of money trying to convince them they must and can lose weight.
I’m not sure if you read your comments but can you please write something about whats going on in my home state…
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/07/13732488-sex-assault-victim-groped-by-off-duty-cop-wants-apology-from-arizona-judge?lite
I do indeed read my comments and I have this on the pipe for Monday. So much to rant about, so little spare time. (WTF was going through Hatch’s mind? Besides collusion with the patriarchy, that is.)
Yep. Every single doctor or nurse who has checked my blood pressure since I became bigger than the accepted norm, has been shocked that it is normal, and my cholesterol is fine too. One doctor here in Ecuador, when I had to get a physical for my visa renewal, was adamant that my blood pressure was too high, but every single time he checked, it came out normal. He was so angry that he started baiting me, trying to make me angry so it would rise when he checked it for the FOURTH time (because the first three didn’t conform to his expectations), but the joke was on him- years of therapy and meditation have given me the ability to immediately lower my pressure even when stressed. But he couldn’t leave it at that and accept the truth, so my medical report for my visa, which is only supposed to check for communicable diseases and specific chronic issues that might cost the state money to treat, said “Except for obesity, the patient is healthy.”