The Fat Acceptance Movement

The first group of "fat activism" has more to do with issues of body image in the modern world. There is a strong push to define "healthy" and "at weight" as being extremely thin, especially when talking about women. These definitions do not account for a person being larger because they carry muscle mass, and often cast healthy, but larger people as "overweight" because their bodies do not conform to the maxim that one can never be too rich, nor too thin.

Further, what is a "healthy" weight is often debated, and affected by many other factors of a person's life. A person who is at 33% fat (which is defined by medical science as obese), but who exercises every day for 30 minutes can be just as healthy as a person who is at 22% body fat (normal for men, athletic for women) but who does not exercise daily. Though being overweight, even obese, increases your chances of developing health problems, it does not mean you have health problems or that you will necessarily develop them.

An added myth is that non-medical practitioners think one can diagnose health problems by looking at people's bodies. This is not the case; one cannot know if another person has liver damage, is dehydrated, has high cholesterol, etc., merely by looking at another person's body type. That would make diagnostics a lot easier. Combating these misconceptions is sensible. Though being over weight or obese warrants testing for a variety of conditions, being fat does not automatically mean you have any medical condition, so "sight" diagnoses, or even suggesting a person lose weight, is not necessarily warranted without symptoms of other illness.

Additionally, in some countries (most notably the United States,) body weight is also a classism issue. With current trends in the widening income gap between the upper and working class, lengthening hours, static wages, difficulty of access to safe exercise venues, increasingly limited time or money to buy or prepare healthful food, it may not be possible for many people to maintain the oft-idealized "healthy" weight. For many, poor health and obesity intersects heavily with poverty, food insecurity, and low-wage jobs.

SJG