Jacob Riis Beach hosts the day of body positivity and fun, in the city at the heart of the fat acceptance movement
Fat Beach Day events are springing up across the US in an effort to fight back against fat-phobia, reclaim safe spaces for the community and honor plus-size culture. Today, one of these celebrations is being held to coincide with Pride month at Jacob Riis Beach in New York, a location deeply ensconced in the city’s activism space.
A lot of people seem to think that you can shame people out of obesity, which is nonsense. We live in a country where processed foods are cheap and easy when people barely have enough time to relax, let alone cook. Those processed foods are also designed by everything from scientists specializing in creating new flavors to psychologists to get people to buy them, so they do. We also live in a country where a lot of people are expected to just sit in a chair for eight hours with maybe a couple of short breaks and a lot of them end up doing regular overtime (and that doesn’t count commuting time, when they are also likely sitting).
Of course there’s an obesity epidemic. Why wouldn’t there be? But shaming people for being fat when they don’t have time to cook or the energy to exercise and are forced to spend large portions of their lives sedentary is not the solution. You need to attack the problem at the source, not the terminus.
That’s also without going into how shaming someone can easily send them into a spiral where it’s even harder for them to motivate themselves to improve (this isn’t just regarding fat people, but rather shaming anyone for something that requires lifestyle changes to remedy)
Happy people tend to make less self-destructive life choices
Well said, and thank you. I agree that shaming doesn’t work. Fat people have the unfortunate disadvantage that their personal problem is so visible to others. The social dynamics would radically change if other types of problems were equally visible. Say you have a gambling problem and your skin turns green, or you cheated on your spouse and you grow a third eye on your forehead. Things like that. People love to judge and not be judged.
The amount of refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup that the U.S. allows in our foodstuffs is so much that it’d carry criminal penalties in European countries. That shit can be just as addictive as heroin, and is in EVERYTHING. It’s also been shown that sweet but sugar free substances that let your body taste sweet without receiving any glucose, increases your craving for the real thing. So while eating sugar free stuff can help satisfy a sweet craving, it can also exacerbate it.
When I see an overweight person, I don’t think “oh what a lazy POS,” I think “There is someone in the throes of addiction.”
There’s a reason Jenny Craig modeled her weight watchers club after AA.
There are many reasons that someone could be overweight and that is definitely a big one. We shouldn’t assume anything. We shouldn’t even assume someone is overweight.
I didn’t want to make this personal until now, but I was overweight and I’ve lost a ton of weight due to an illness, so I’m actually at the average weight for my height now. But I still have a big belly, which will probably never go away. So I look fat, but I’m of average weight.
I’m sure plenty of people would not have a second thought about telling me I need to eat less and exercise more even though this illness means I literally can’t eat and haven’t for almost a year now and I am getting most of my calories and nutrition from Ensure and V8. I cannot possibly eat less.
[Please no medical advice or suggestions. I already have doctors.]
I hate this line. “Processed foods are cheap and easy.”
Theyre easy, but they’re not cheap.
You can eat much more cheaply if you spend a little bit of time cooking. There’s no fast food meal that beats the price of a simple pasta with some chicken, or rice and beans with bacon, or a beef stew. You can get per serving portions of those for less than $2 USD and all of them use meat. You can get vegetarian dishes down to less than a dollar per portion.
None of those require anything more than a single pot and pan, and a half hour of actual cooking.
Besides, the vast majority of obese people are drinking 1000+ calories a day. Thats not about cheap or easy, water is the cheapest and easiest drink available. They just choose not to.
I say this as someone who drinks coke every single day, and has a BMI under 20. Weight is about portion control. Health is about nutritional balance and exercise.
Now, the lack of education around cooking and nutrition, that’s a problem.
I’m not someone deep in the throes of poverty, I’m decently middle class and I work an office job but 12 hours of my day is dedicated in service of my job. My alarm goes off at 6 so I get up, washed, and dressed in the morning, leave by 7 for about an hour drive to work, I have an 8 hour work day with an unpaid hour for work, and an hour drive back home which brings me to about 6 pm. I’m already tired from the day and by the time I’ve made dinner, eaten and cleaned up it’s easily close to 8:00. Before I’m too tired to go much further past 9:00 or 10:00.
And before you say, “why not move closer to your job” Gee I wish I thought of that but I live at home with my parents because homeownership is quite a bit beyond my economic ability at the present moment and rent is even more expensive than having a mortgage.
I had this problem. How I solved it was signing up for the planet fitness near the office. I was always too tired after the commute to work out at home, but found that if I go straight from work to the gym, I could get an hour workout in, while also skipping some of the heaviest traffic. Even if you show up, put on your gym clothes, and free-spin on an exercise bike for 30 minutes, it’s more than you’re doing now, and will add up.
I’m lucky enough that I don’t have a huge weight problem, and the bit of pudge I do have would probably be pretty easily solved by drinking less sugary drinks. But I’m also speaking from a place of empathy because I get that there are basically no options that cover the healthy, quick, and cheap requirements people want from their food.
Empathy in all things, friend! When I originally posted my comments, I was all full of piss and vinegar. I was fresh from my city’s pride parade festival, and as per usual, there were a bunch of protestors, hucksters, and others trying to scream at, ridicule, and scam everyone in attendance. What should be a safe space, gets turned into something else. I guess that’s what happens when you try to be extra inclusive, you end up welcoming everyone who would also try to ruin the event. It upset me. Particularly this article, where it seems like now even just being overweight gives people the entitlement to steamroll what should be a celebration of gay culture.
That being said, I do have empathy for people addicted to sugar and carbs. When I’m extra sad, I let myself splurge on calories because it’s better than the two alternatives, booze and suicide. And when I’m sad for long enough, I gain weight, and then that becomes another thing to be sad about. It usually culminates in my becoming so upset that I say “EFF IT” and start working out/eating better. Losing weight ALWAYS helps me feel better again. The process of taking control of what I eat and how/when I exercise is fundamental to tackling my depression.
and one of the best tips you can give to someone just starting out, is how to find fast food that’s healthy. Pro-tip, get the wheat bread at subway. The Sweet-onion chicken teriyaki sandwich is only 360 calories and tastes amazing.
I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds. Indeed, we are all ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.
Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.
Since you cut critics off before they could tell you to move closer to your job, let’s see if they move on to “get a better job.”
“Work from home”
Fuck I’d love that if I could WFH at a restaurant job.
I already have a hybrid schedule, so the days that I am worming room home gives me so much time back, but that also still doesn’t help me budget my way out of living with my parents.
You could probably take a 50% pay cut and still be better off if you took a job that can work from home (or much closer)
You may want to run the actual math and think outside the box for options.
I already have a hybrid schedule, so the days that I am working room home gives me so much time back, but that also still doesn’t particularly help me budget my way out of living with my parents.
I addressed this already. Many people barely have enough time to relax and de-stress from their horrible job possibly plus their horrible commute. Expecting everyone to be able to have the psychological fortitude to take the time to cook a meal regularly is asking a lot of a lot of people. Ingredients for cooking may be cheap. Energy for cooking is not a purchasable commodity.
They’re also compeltely ignoring food deserts
This can’t be overstated enough. There are huge swathes of the USA where the only stores within half an hour are dollar general or gas station convenience stores. You literally can’t eat healthy on those sources, and the nearest actual grocery store could be an hour or even more away.
Kinda hard to eat well when just getting the ingredients would take half a days time.
Hell, I’m in a city and if I didn’t have a car my only options in walking distance are a convenience store and a couple fast food places. Nearest grocery store is a 12 minute drive or a 3 hour bus ride if the bus even shows up.
All of that can be true (and is) and it still doesn’t mean you can’t stop dinner before the fries are gone or cut your sandwich into pieces to eat and then don’t eat them all.
If you’re eating to destress you’re choosing your psychological health over physical health and that’s it’s own problem to address.
And, again, body shaming causes stress, which will result in stress eating, which is why one day a year fat people can go to one of the eight public beaches in New York City without being body shamed is not a bad thing.
I didn’t think anybody is arguing it’s a bad thing to avoid / reduce body shaming. Instead, the argument is that overeating is not predestined and out of people’s control and it’s also not a blameless activity.
By all means go to the beach every day, and fuck anybody that says anything negative. Not everybody has to like the look of your skeleton or your furry suit or the look of you spilling out of your bathing suit though: that’s preference not shame.
What people are arguing is that this one day a year shouldn’t happen, while ignoring the issue that fat people, especially fat women, face a lot of body shaming when they’re at the beach. Many fat women can tell you stories.
Also, on top of just random people giving them shit, they also have to deal with things like this when not even near a beach, which make them not want to go to the beach at all because of the shame being forced on them.
So, again, I think giving them one day a year on one beach in one city with eight beaches where they don’t have to walk around in a bathing suit and getting shamed for it is a good thing.
Treating a fat person poorly is just not going to do anything about the obesity epidemic. I am seeing a bunch of posts here talking about reasons why people are fat and what they should do to not be fat, but they are fat right now even if they are now taking that advice and losing weight, so maybe a little compassion is needed.
All fine and good, and agreed on all fronts.
I still don’t think it’s a great perspective to normalize or justify obesity because people cope poorly with stress / only have access to fast food / really like French fries / have a back injury / etc. It’s not (generally) an unchangeable destiny, and everyone at every moment is the caretaker of their own bodies.
I don’t see any normalizing of obesity. I see a lot of empathy for people whose circumstances have led them to this point. I see a lot of explaining why someone may actively choose foregoing physical health for another reason.
You can support people who are in a position, even by “their own hand” without saying it’s cool, or normal, or anything. You can give just a little back to these people, to hopefully help move them back towards an actual normal living without saying where they are now is good or healthy. That’s what I’m seeing.
I don’t think I was normalizing or justifying it. I was saying that people are living in a country that actively encourages it and that is where things need to be attacked if we want to solve the issue, just like you’re never going to end smoking while tobacco is still being sold.
I’m just arguing that it’s not BOTH cheap and easy. It’s only one of those.
Also, don’t cook every meal. I cook 10 portions at a time for my family every time I make dinner and put leftovers in the fridge (or freezer) which reduces the total time to cook per week quite significantly. It barely takes longer to cook 10 portions compared to 2 portions, which drops the per portion cook time down to single digit minutes.
If you think it is easy to have the mental and physical fortitude to cook, you are not working a job that grinds you into the dirt like so many others.
The biggest problem is the lack of planning. If you come home after working and don’t know what you have or what you’re going to make of course it’s going to feel difficult.
So spend 15 minutes on the weekend making a plan for all your meals for the week. Do a single grocery shop for everything you need to reduce trips to the store.
The when you get home on Wednesday, you already know you’re going to cook up some grilled cheese with soup (that’s in your freezer from last week when you made 5 portions) and you can pull it together while you watch an episode of your favorite tv show on the tablet you prop up on your counter.
No, the biggest problem is, as I keep saying, the lack of energy. You can plan to do whatever you want before work. By the time work is over, you won’t have the energy to do it. That’s why I at my last job I got up at 5:30 am to exercise, because as tired as I was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it after work no matter what sort of exercise I was planning to do.
If your job is so physically demanding as to make it impossible to stand, cut, and stir things, then why the fuck are you working out on top of that? Not to mention how much harder it should be to get fat in the first place…
You can eat ultra processed meals at that point, just don’t have four potions of them per meal and you won’t gain weight.
You seem to think mental weariness isn’t a problem when it’s a huge problem. Maybe your job doesn’t wear your out psychologically. Many people can’t say the same.
Time is a cost too. When people say processed foods are cheaper, time is part of that. If you spend an hour grocery shopping, you can buy a processed meal for each day of the week, and take whatever time it is to microwave it. That’s a lot less than the 30 minutes minimum to make a meal from ingredients. That time becomes important when you have obligations past the ‘regular’ 40 hours a week job.
When we say cheaper we mean dollars. The easier part of the statement covers the time.
If it takes you 30 minutes to make a single meal, it takes you 35 minutes to make 5-10 portions and freeze them. Then you can do the same as the processed meals and pull a different one out each day.