Fat studies?

[Drake Tungsten]

We'd have already figured out how to solve it.

We do know how to solve it. Diet + exercise...

[Sandman]

This isn't about helping them lose weight, it's about constructing the intellectual foundations of a fat identity, complete with exalted victimhood status and historical figures. It's going to encourage people to get fat and stay fat, to 'resist the mainstream'. Costing the taxpayer money to keep them alive during their short, sickly lives.

[Bill3000]

I'm going to have to agree with Sandman here. Usually identities for disabilities and disorders are a good thing - some of them manage to transform it from a hinderance to an advantage - but this isn't one of these things. Do we have a "smoking studies" major? No, we don't. This isn't a psychological disability. This is a physical disability. There's no need for a friggin' pool of knowledge of how fat people are oppressed because of their poor choice decisions. Psychological reasons for why people stay fat? Sure, that's fine. Implications of being fat in a social context? That's just retarded.

And this is coming from someone who is clinically obese.

[BeBMan]

I'm all for polytubbie studies, and how we're oppressed by the evil mods etc.

[Sandman]

And the first “Fat Studies Reader,” an anthology of scholarly research on fat, is being shopped to university presses. It covers a range of topics, from the intersection of fat, gender, race, age, disability and class to fat heroines in chick lit, the role of fat burlesque dancers and the use of fat suits in film. Chapter titles include “Access to the Sky: Airplane Seat and Fat Bodies as Contested Spaces”: “Jiggle in My Walk: The Iconic Power of the Big Butt in American Pop Culture,” and “The Roseanne Benedict Arnolds: How Fat Women are Betrayed by their Celebrity Icons.”

This is to academia what Power Rangers is to science fiction.

[Bill3000]

There better be a thesis on Fat Bastard.

[Odin]

This fat guy is sick of all this identity politics BS, that's all these Women's/GLBT/Minority Studes crap is all about. Most of those departments are havens for wackos.

[Provost Harrison]

Re: Fat studies?

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
...Christ, this makes me ashamed to have gone to college...

You went to college? Now I never saw that one coming...

[Provost Harrison]

Actually, this thread and the attitudes within it demonstrate exactly why it is being studied...I have noticed the majority of people are completely oblivious to an innate prejudice...

[Caligastia]

Is this the point at which we come up with a derogatory term to describe people who are disgusted with gluttony? How does 'fatist' sound? Or perhaps 'anti-cellulite'?

Sandman hit the nail on the head. This is just a new exalted victim category being marketed to politically correct hand-wringers. How wonderful for them that they have a new reason to flaunt their compassion and moral superiority.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Actually, this thread and the attitudes within it demonstrate exactly why it is being studied...I have noticed the majority of people are completely oblivious to an innate prejudice...

For the most part people who are fat get that way through laziness and poor diet. That's why most people pre-judge fat people as lazy and gluttonous. There's no need to study it, the answer is obvious.

[BeBMan]

I was under the impression that in a free society there's also freedom of science/research/study. Then the "there's no need for this and that" is pretty subjective.....if people want to study that, it's primarily their thing.....funding is a point though.....

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
The government gives grants for studies of all kinds of weird bull****.

"Following 3 years of study, it has been concluded that an apple falling from a tree will hit the ground."

What, they dis-proved Newton's theories? That's major breaktrough! I'm starting to float allready! Wheee!

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

We'd have already figured out how to solve it.

We do know how to solve it. Diet + exercise...

I already addressed that response in the post you responded to. But since you seemed to have missed it...

No, "diet and exercise" is the way to combat obesity on a personal level, not the social level. It is patently obvious that it has failed miserably when used in the manner you are offering it. We know that diet and exercise is important to combat obesity, and yet the problem continues to grow.

Saying all we need to combat obesity is "diet and exercise" ignores reality much the same way as pretending teaching "abstinence only" will solve the STD and unwanted pregnancy issues.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Aeson
While we have answers on the individual level which are rather obvious, such as "eat less, exersize more", as well as some genetic explainations, we have failed miserably at using that information to effect a positive change in our society in regards to health and weight. Why that is so, and how we can change that are not easy questions to answer...

Political choices.

Free market for junk food + unrestricted advertisement toward children and their parents + crappy nutritionary education at school + liberalized lunch times, that result in short lunch times for plenty of employees ==> massive use of junk food.

If you want to change things on a social level, you have:
1. To make the mentalities change, so that people who eat junk food are seen as suckers. Even though it's bad, the massive anti-fat prejudice I'm seeing here might help about that.
2. To regulate the junk food market as any other market that poses a health hazard (tobacco, alcohol, drugs). You can regulate what kind of crap is allowed in processed food and what isn't. You can regulate advertisement. You can actually teach children how to eat properly during the school lunch. You can put the soft-drink drinking age at 21 Things like that.