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.
i posted earlier but i'm here again for the struggle session.
ITT: :brainworms:, not surprising given how much social baggage there is around being fat. Shouting "CICO!" at people isn't productive and you shouldn't do it. Your weight is a combination of environmental factors and habits, and you have the power to change some of the habits though many of them (like driving to work if you live in America) and your environment are outside of your control. Also, being overweight is not a moral failing, but a lot of the weight loss rhetoric that we've been exposed to all our lives treats it as one. Lastly, while changing your eating habits is the most effective thing you can do to lose or gain weight, we need to recognize that it's also about as difficult as quitting heroin.
:doubt:
No one's saying it's easy, but come on.
I don't think he's wrong. Like you could quit heroin entirely and never do it again, that's not really an option with food
Generally about 5% of people who diet are successful in the long term. Generally about 5% of people who quit heroin stay off it. Unless I've misremembered these numbers, it's pretty fukken similar.
Yeah but only for "diets", as in "change your way of eating to some unsustainable bullshit for X Weeks then go back to how you used to eat".
That's set up to fail. If you wanna keep weight off you gotta actually change your diet, as in "what do you eat all the time" and lifestyle.
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Picking up on the heroin metaphor here: pretending like it's biologically impossible to not be addicted to heroin, like OP purported in the much contestet sentence of some people just are fat, is also not a great way to go