Prominent bioethicist suggests "fat shaming" to curb obesity

[TirielWoW]

Ok but when does social pressure turn into "Bullying" since people are soooo soooo sooo against bullying these days, what if you call a fatty out on what they are next day they kill themselves, people call you a bully, put you on trial for pushing them to do it....

Just from your wording I can tell that anything you personally would do would likely amount to bullying. "what if you call a fatty out" because...you know...someone who is overweight isn't really a human being. Not like me anyway. Let's use a degrading label for them.

Seriously, this is why a campaign like this wouldn't work. There's already an unspoken rule that thin, beautiful people are allowed to treat those who are not like "them" badly. There's already severe social pressure against people who are even slightly overweight - look at the bullshit that happened when Jessica Simpson didn't immediately lose the weight she gained while pregnant.

Do you think overweight people don't know they are overweight? Do you think we don't see the size of our clothes? That we don't see how much smaller their chair seems to be compared to someone else? That we don't notice when we work harder to climb the same amount of stairs? Do you think we don't notice how people look at us? How we're judged? Do you think we don't feel the same things you do? The same level of shame, and self-hatred, and despair? Do you think that telling us over and over again that we're fat is giving us some new, heretofore unknown information and suddenly, somehow, the light will click on and we'll magically turn into supermodels or something?

Fat people know they are fat. Fat people do not need you to tell them they're fat - we have plenty of people who tell us we're fat on a day-to-day basis. We do not need you to grind home the point - yet again - that we're worth less than you are. That we're less human than you are. That we're disgusting. That you don't want to see us. That you hate us. We know this.

This campaign will accomplish nothing...except to give more bullies carte blanche to verbally and emotionally abuse people who are already living in absolute despair.

[Wyshbonez]

ok bad choice in wording, i am in no way skinny, im like 6'2 about 300 pounds or w/e got some extra weight around the mid section, high school i was way worse, i was bullied, made fun of all that jazz, the point i was getting at was the fact that people take being bullied way to far these days, AMG I GOT MADE FUN OF LEMME GO KEEL MYSELF!@!#!@#!@!!!!

[Pengalor]

The end, being a reduction in obesity, doesn't justify the means, being an increase in social pressure in advertisements? Are you crazy?

I feel like you need to be educated on the effects obesity has on health, so here we go:

1) Obesity is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide.

2) In the United States obesity is estimated to cause 111,909 to 365,000 deaths per year

3) Obesity increases the risk of many physical and mental conditions. These comorbidities are most commonly shown in metabolic syndrome, a combination of medical disorders which includes: diabetes type 2, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and high triglyceride levels.

You're telling me if we can greatly reduce obesity by increasing social pressure through things like advertisements, the end doesn't justify the means? That's absurd.




This isn't my concern. My concern is how their actions are effecting their health, and more importantly the health of their children.

When people start using heroin, we reach out to them and try to help them. Not because we are concerned about how they are living their life, but because we are concerned for their health and well being. We are a compassionate species. We are constantly trying to help strangers, we seek cures for diseases, because we don't like seeing people suffer when they don't have to. This has nothing to do with wanting to control someones life, and has everything to do with helping those that need help.

Uh, I know the health complications related with obesity. again, I am obese, I'm well-versed not only from my own experience but from every time some self-righteous jackass thinks they need to tell me how badly I'm fucking up my life (hmm, sounds familiar...). It also seems that, for someone who seems to be getting frustrated that people 'haven't read the article' you don't seem to have read it yourself: "But can there be social pressure that does not lead to outright discrimination—a kind of stigmatization lite? That will, I concede, be a diffcult line to walk, but it is worth a try". In other words, he's willing to risk an entire shift in societal perception to one EVEN HE agrees is negative just to try a method that may make some difference to SOME obese people. For an ethicist, that seems pretty damn short-sighted to me.

---------- Post added 2013-02-06 at 01:00 PM ----------

ok bad choice in wording, i am in no way skinny, im like 6'2 about 300 pounds or w/e got some extra weight around the mid section, high school i was way worse, i was bullied, made fun of all that jazz, the point i was getting at was the fact that people take being bullied way to far these days, AMG I GOT MADE FUN OF LEMME GO KEEL MYSELF!@!#!@#!@!!!!

Wow, you have no idea what it's like to feel depressed enough to want to kill yourself, thanks for making that abundantly clear.

[kakihara]

Well i havent read most of the thread but ill state my opinion on the the matter nontheless.
I lost 40 kg in about a year and im still overweight, but its getting ok. People called me fat for so many years and it did exactly nothing. If u dont want to chance you CANT change. I got no idea how hard or easy it is to lose weight. I just saw those diet ads on tv that told me that i need to eat some vegtable the whole day for some weeks and boom i lose 20 kg. since i always thought that wont work i didnt even try it.
What did happen is that i thought to myself what i would be willing to give up and could keep at it for the rest of my life. So i changed eating a little bit and compansated the rest with sports. Cycling was my choice because i never wanted to go to the gym or do sports on a scedule or with other people.

There will always be fat people. Some even like to be fat , because they find it attractive. some have medical conditions that make it at least really hard to lose weight, or some people are simply lazy (which i dont even thing is such an evil thing)
So by increasing pressure you will of course force some people to thing about their live and get them to chance something. But there will be people that will avoid social contact because of that and probably some will kill themselves out of shame or self disgust.
Also there will be people that will lose weight because of that, but will also just switch from one eating disorder to another. They will stop eating complety or just develop bulemia because they just dont know how to do it healty or just dont have the willpower.

[Alixie]

There's already plenty of fat shaming on media anyway and it doesnt help any. There's studies done on women from developing countries who are going through a big wave of eating disorders, when it was previously a tiny problem, soon after western media was introduced to them.