Today in Fat Hatred

[Content Note: Fat hatred; eliminationism.]

There is an absolutely breathtaking article in Fortune today, accompanied by an image of Chinese children stretching poolside at a "fat camp," because the pathologization of fat children (who are often merely children about to have a growth spurt) is all the rage these days.

Actual Headline: "Fat-the $2 trillion burden on the world's economy." Note how profoundly othering that is: Fat is a burden on the world. As if we are not part of the world. This is a common rhetorical device I've highlighted before, often in discussions about how "taxpayers' money" is being somehow wasted on fat people, as if fat people ourselves aren't taxpayers.

Actual Lede: "Obesity is now a threat to the world economy to rival war and terrorism, according to a new report published Thursday."

Holy shit.

This is what I'm talking about when I say there is an eliminationist campaign against fat people. We are compared to fucking terrorists.

And that heinous demonization is done on the basis of studies on higher healthcare costs and lost productivity which are total bullshit. They are based on correlations and "obesity related diseases" that not only fat people have, and not all fat people have.

They fail utterly, utterly, to account for prejudice against fat people in medical care: Major illnesses missed because symptoms are misattributed to weight; fat people discouraged from seeking preventative care because of bias. They frequently do not address or control for systemic factors contributing to weight gain.

These numbers are totally cooked, and they're being used to compare us to motherfucking terrorists.

Obesity in and of itself doesn't kill. But fat hatred does. And this, right here, is some rank fat hatred.