I'm asking this question completely honestly: Who's being helped by normalizing a person weighing 400 pounds? Because ultimately, that's the end result of the whole fat acceptance thing. I'm all for Lizzo living in the body she wants to live in--and I do admire her ability to ignore the haters--but making that "acceptable" is bad for the individual and bad for society. I'm sorry, but as an intern, having to send a patient to the Bronx Zoo to get an MRI because s/he couldn't fit in ours, or having to actually kneel on patient's stomach to do CPR because s/he was too big to either reach across the bed or straddle (both true stories), I do not think that is something that should be normalized.
And if your follow-up to that is "Well, I'm not saying normalize THAT" then, where do you draw the line?
Nobody should be told to hate his or her body. I know that better than you can possibly know. But that also doesn't mean that we should consider it "normal" or "acceptable" to put yourself at that kind of risk. Same as we did with smoking.
I hate men a lot of the time, too.
I'm having a crappy week too, although mine is for work-related reasons. FWIW, I hope yours gets better.
Well, I am not talking about 400 lb people. I am talking about 200 lb people. I'm not talking about size 30 women, I'm talking about size 16 women. And, here's the thing....and I know you aren't a woman, so it's hard to explain the female perspective. A size 16 woman can become a size 22 woman can become a size 28 woman pretty easy.
And here's how: she doesn't go to the gym because people there laugh at her. Or, she thinks they will laugh at her. She turns to food for comfort. Men won't date her because of her weight, which she turns to food even more for comfort....and the cycle just goes over and over and over. So this person who was big but not obscenely large has been shamed and embarrassed into a larger size. When just embracing her at a size 16 would have been much better for her.
I know you said where do you draw the line...and I can't answer that. But the perfect is the the enemy of the good. To say that we must shame ALL overweight people because it's hard to draw a line at a weight....so let's just shame them all....I can't get on board with that.
And, I come back to the genuine question of....what is your alternative to normalization? My physical therapist office has a couple of "larger" chairs for people in their waiting room....should they stop manufacturing them? Should they take it out of their waiting room? Make the big people stand? Stop designing fashionable clothes for plus-size people....just let them wear the ugly shapeless clothes that they deserve to wear? Maybe they should have a weight limit on Bumble......bigger people can use BBW Love finder instead. It seems like your suggestion is to make life difficult for overweight people so they feel compelled to lose weight.....or outright body shaming so they lose weight.
There is already a stigma to being overweight. A built-in awareness of the judgement that you will receive. In many cases, there is a hatred for overweight people. Is it not enough that there is a societal stigma to being overweight? You want them to not be treated like a normal human being either? Again, if you have an alternative in mind...something that isn't normalization, but isn't outright meanness, I would be willing to listen. I'm happy to concede a middle ground if there is one.