So there was a recent post of some right wingers standing next to a ballot box to intimidate voters. This is clearly bad. They also made questionable aesthetic choices, like wearing dad cargo-shorts and growing goatees. This is also clearly bad.

So, what did Chapeau.Chat focus on? The weight of these men of course!

Let's start with the basics:

--Everyone has a range of weights their body is comfortable at. If you try to go too low or too high in this range, your body will start sending your hunger and satiety signals to keep you within that range. While you can go higher or lower in that range by manipulating Calories-in-calories-out, this range is fairly fixed without medical intervention. In other words, some people are just fat.

--There are other uncontrollable factors that effect weight. In Texas, for example, there are fewer walk-able neighborhoods and more access to fast food than here in Portland where there are more new-seasons than mcDonalds or Manhattan where it's easier to take the train than to drive.

--Socially, weight is co-constructed with fitness and self-control. In the protestant value system (the dominant one in the U.S. even among atheists), self control is one of the most important virtues. Fat implies unfit implies poor self control. Thin implies fit implies good self control.

Protestant morality is, here, at odds with reality. Weight here is co-produced by environment, hormones, eating habits and movement habits. All of those things are only partially under our control, and a Portlander is always going to have an easier time being thin than an Austintonian. Moralizing weight the way this community did celebrates protestant morality over basic reality.

As communists, we are better than that.

Call them fascists, make fun of their ugly beards, offer to shoplift them better shorts, but don't fat-shame them.

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Unless you're defining "sugar" as a pollutant (which is not totally inaccurate lmao) I don't think there's much to that as a cause of the obesity epidemic. Much more heavily polluted areas than the US and Europe are much skinnier, and obesity most closely tracks with the prevalence of processed and sugary foods.

    • Eris235 [undecided]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's posited that the pollutants are in the water, which is why some of the highest % obesity areas are around river deltas, I.E. Alabama and Louisiana in the US, where the water has collected run off from lots of other cities, farmlands, and/or mining, while areas who's water is closer to the source have less obesity, like how Colorado is the lowest obesity state, and the west coast in general has less obesity, along with countries like Japan.