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The Problematic Arrival of Anti-Obesity Drugs
Fat activists say they’re tools of coercion. Celebrities are taking them to get slim. Is this really the road people want to go down?
www.wired.com
The success—and mushrooming popularity—of these drugs brings us to a crossroads. We can make bigger bodies smaller with them, but does that mean we should? They promise to help people whose weight poses a health risk. And by shedding more light on what drives obesity, they could also chip away at harmful stereotypes that being overweight is simply a personal failing. At the same time, framing fatness as a disease to be done away with could lead to even greater stigma—as well as turbocharging society’s obsession with thinness.
The activists fear that fat people may feel pressured to take these medications in order to access the same rights as their non-fat counterparts, rather than out of any desire to improve their health. “Is it really about health improvement when a person is experiencing daily weight stigma and feeling shamed and blamed and is looking for a solution to decrease the influence of that in their life?” says Sarah Nutter, a psychologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who specializes in weight stigma and body image.
To go through life in a fat body means you are less likely to be hired for a job and will be paid less than non-fat people. The effects of weight discrimination—which can include poorer medical treatment, loneliness, psychological distress, and increased stress—may actually be cutting short the lives of fat people.
Deciding whether to take the drugs becomes a “devil’s choice,” says Osborn. “Assert that I have the right to be as I am right now—or exchange that right for significantly more rights and privileges in the culture.” The fat acceptance movement instead pushes for fat people to be afforded the same rights as everybody else, regardless of size.
Based on the tone of the article, it would seem as if there are people wanting it both ways here.
For a long time, some have suggested that obesity is out of a person's control and can't be prevented or corrected through lifestyle choices alone, some have even gone further and categorized it as a mental disorder or brain disease. (including one of the doctors selected to run the new dietary guidelines committee)
Now they've introduced medicines that seem to address some of that without relying solely on the person's own will power (which you'd think would be considered a big win), and they're seemingly taking issue with that out of fear that "fat people may feel pressured to take the new drugs". It would seem as if certain folks are unwilling to entertain any plan other than "pretend it's okay to be 100+ pounds overweight, and have everyone else put on blinders and pretend people can be healthy at any size" and "everyone else has to accept me just the way I am and no changes of any kind should be required on my part"