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The thing about HAES is that it has always been a wolf in sheep's clothing

The very origins going back to the '60s come from "we aren't happy that we are fat and viewed as unattractive, so lets change what people think is attractive."

Health related concepts were thrown in to legitimize the argument and to act as a convenient red herring.

Yes there is always been a shame reduction aspect, but that shame reduction has been consistently used to enable further self destructive behavior.

It is a highly poisonous mindset that has set back public health by decades.

It's genuinely great to hear that that wasn't the overall goal or intention of the idea.

That said, I think it also does need to be acknowledged that there absolutely were prominent influencers on social media who preached HAES literally - as in, posting videos vehemently declaring the doctors are lying to you and obesity is actually perfectly healthy.

I guess as with many other things, it's a case of the extreme outliers (who in this case, as you say, didn't even get the point) getting the most attention and spoiling things for the sane people.

They chose their slogan really poorly. Because "healthy at every size" makes it seem like there's a healthy way to be fat.

But, like most things, people who didn't understand what was being attempted shit on it endlessly until people stopped trying to do it.

If most come off with the wrong conclusion from a campaign then that's a poorly done campaign.

Then the campaign slogan runs a close second for All Time Stupid, right next to "Defund the Police".

Two great ideas who managed to suicide over idiot slogans.

Few things are as pathetic as preemptively whining about down votes.

I am a formerly obese person who got out of that cycle before HAES hit. I had obese people tell me that HAES meant they are healthy if they could walk up a flight of stairs. Those are the people I am talking about, and they seemed to be people saying HAES the loudest. If there's a public perception problem surrounding HAES that's not on the public, that's on the people who let their message get diluted.

For the record, I made no comment about morality, though I do consider overconsumption to be immoral.

Man what a valuable comment, thanks for sharing it. I had never heard of health at any size but it sounds great. Sad story tho :(

This is a really popular take, but I think quite the opposite has happened actually: most people in media are a normal healthy weight, but they've been demonized as having "impossible" bodies, and I think a major driver of that is people who don't want to admit that their body is unhealthy. If you claim that a BMI of 22 is "ridiculously unhealthy" then you dont have to put any work in to lose weight; after all it's the standard that's wrong!

As far as the Greek statue thing goes, people just need to understand that they are on steroids. You can look like that too, if you want to juice.

What bothers me is that people like you are so focused on what some see as “overcorrection.” Y’all spend more time talking about that then the reason that reaction happened in the first place: ridiculously unhealthy, constantly plastered images of what we “should“ look like

I'm sorry, but this is not the origin of this particular problem. It doesn't help the problem, but it is in fact not the main contributing factor. The data is pretty clear, and if you work in the healthcare industry, you would know that this is endemic and it typically begins at an age before children start adapting to social pressures.

The causative correlation is social economic in nature, it all has to do with the food availability and affordability for lower income families. Poor families in rural communities or poor families in urban food desserts make up the vast majority of bariatric pediatric patients.

Those standards have been far more damaging than “big is beautiful“ comments have ever been.

I mean, I don't think there's a lot of sense in debating which we should be okay with if they are both damaging to people's health. You can be a little overweight and still perfectly healthy, and you can be a little underweight and be perfectly healthy.

How many women have required medical intervention or even died because of unhealthy attempts to make themselves look like a magazine cover?

Again neither is great, but if you want to be accurate...... Dealing with the consequences of being overweight is overwhelmingly a larger healthcare issue than anorexia. 1 in 4 Medicare dollars in the US is currently spent treating diabetes, and that number is expected to climb. The subsequent health factors of obesity is the number one cause of naturally occurring death in the country.

Like with the vast majority of things that affect our health, environment, not an individual control is the root of the problem. I think food corporations and big sugar have spent a lot of money attempting to present obesity as a personal problem instead of a societal one.

What bothers me is that people like you are so focused on what some see as “overcorrection.” Y’all spend more time talking about that then the reason that reaction happened in the first place: ridiculously unhealthy, constantly plastered images of what we “should“ look like that usually involve women being thin as a needle and men looking like a Greek hero.

We focus on the topic at hand. Currently we're discussing fat people. If this post was about some anorexic model or someone who destroyed their face with plastic surgery we would be shitting on the other side of things. Just because HAAS is newer and doesn't have as high of a body count yet doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize those who are using it as an excuse to ignore the very real health problems they are causing for themselves and anyone else who buys into their rhetoric. Maybe it's different in other parts of the world but living in the midwest I see far, far more people killing themselves via obesity than I do underweight people.

How many women have required medical intervention or even died because of unhealthy attempts to make themselves look like a magazine cover?

Adding on to this, I’m type 1 diabetic and was diagnosed when I was very young (type 1 is the one where your immune system just kills off your pancreas, and type 2 is the on most people think where it’s mostly from unhealthy diet and exercise).

Anyways I remember the doctor telling me it’s very important for me to check my blood sugar, of course being young my parents asked the question of what if I go to low or high. The doctor answered with telling us that some girls go into hypoglycemia (dangerously low) to lose weight since your body burns through fat while in hypoglycemic shock [citation needed I was young when I was told this]