But there is an important nuance. In many if not most cases, obesity is really a behavioral health issue, and feelings of shame make it so much harder to deal with that productively. If overeating is a maladaptive strategy to negative emotions, walking around feeling shame and embarrassment all the time makes that so much harder.
So fat pride isn’t great, but fat acceptance, to one degree or another, may be productive.
It really should be something more like how society is moving to treat depression - an unfortunate thing that happens and requires treatment, but not necessarily a flaw that makes someone a bad person.
The current stigmatization around obese people is that they are seen as stupid, lazy, gross, and generally bad, inferior people. Even as a recovering fat person, who knows it’s wrong, it is hard to overcome the implicit bias.
If you want to feel angry, listen to this Vox Conversations episode: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh...
However, the issue is that a lot of times when someone says "fat acceptance", they mean it in a sense of accepting that being extremely overweight can be totally healthy and fine. With a giant dose of anti-doctor sentiment mixed in, because "i know more than doctors because I use google to find other opinions supporting my current opinion".
If we want "fat acceptance" to be taken seriously, there needs to be a clear line drawn between those two usages of the term. The one you propose (aka the one in my first paragraph) is extremely reasonable and humane, and should be taken seriously. While the one I mentioned in my second paragraph should be separated as far as possible from that term. It just taints the definition you propose and makes people take it less seriously, which slows down the needle of progress that your definition is supposed to accomplish.
If we get a "fat pill" one day like we have for depression I would expect a similar trend
Culturally, the 'pro gender revolution, LGBTQ' movements and the fat pride movement (amongst other movements) are part of the same underlying thrust of our society. The basis is the idea that the individual should be free to be/do whatever they want (especially wrt themselves/bodies), and it's oppressive to have social norms/laws which restrict or even make the individual feel bad for being as they 'truly' are.
To suggest a way of living is not ideal (even with solid utilitarian arguments) for a set of individuals can be considered oppressive, as you are saying who they are is somehow not good enough. The individuals sense of themself and their feelings are tantamount in a culture so centered on the individual.
On a slightly related note, it does seem like our culture is also moving away from believing humans have free will. A lot of maladaptive states (from a utilitarian perspective) that humans can be in are increasingly described as 'unfortunate'/'unlucky' things that 'happen' to them. This relates to the sense of oppression for social norms that would suggest one way of being/living is not good - "How dare you say my current state is bad, I can't control that!"
What's interesting is the question of agency getting tied up with fatness in the first place. There have been times even not that long ago that being fat was considered a sign of success. There were even these "Fat Men's Clubs" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_men%27s_club) of rich and fat businessmen celebrating their weight and eating a lot. But then fatness became bad, marking a lack of agency, and acquired other negative aspects like being greedy (contra magnanimous) and stupid and having 0 sex appeal (contra, say, the Venus of Willendorf, though you don't really need to go back that far), and being unhealthy, and being an overall burden to society whether it comes to airplane seats or healthcare costs.
Since dieting/keeping slim in the face of our modern abundance is now considered a mark of successful exercise of agency, fat acceptance types have to somehow decouple their eating behavior from their weight, if they want to maintain some semblance of agency here. (Despite the way our culture seems to be moving I still think most people want to maintain an idea of agency, even if that's in going against what it means to be agent-y.) So sure the 'fatness' is something that just happens to them, like being tall or short, it's not even unlucky really, and it's pretty much impossible to change in the long term anyway (with even some science backing up the failures of long-term weight loss after dieting). However they can twist it, the goal is to be free from the moral failing/agency failing concern that they're not acting in responsible/good ways. They can still be considered good in other ways.
And now that they're no longer preoccupied with their "exercising agency" failings from fruitless dieting and what have you, they begin to exercise more agency! Check out this cover letter from 1981 by Wilma Kuns on how she was able to start living her life once she accepted her fat: https://naafa.org/s/Nov-Dec_1981.pdf I think it's pretty typical, even today, and sure is reminiscent of other groups' "coming out" expressions of exuberance. Instances of exercising agency can be as simple as throwing out a scale, or a sense of a new-found ability to actually make choices and decisions (the foundation of agency) for things like clothing, sex (either feeling able to pursue it at all without feeling disgusted in themselves/partner, or being able to say 'no' and not just take what they can get), or doing activities or working jobs they wanted to do but were previously afraid of suffering social ridicule for. Having a bit of self-confidence feels like an agency booster, so of course removing this constant "you're fat and unworthy of life/fair treatment/love/health/..." mentality helps, regardless of whether it's rationally backed or not.
But it also gives a sense of agency in another way: exercising resistance, namely to society's (or some segment of society's) ideas of what it means to be healthy and beautiful. There's a lot of this form of agency these days. It's rather amusing that such acts of agency still reinforce the overall societal demand for agency, for distinguishing yourself as an individual making choices and pursuing what you think of as your idea of success.
False dichotomy.
If the stats show that being overweight increases your risk "X-fold", I promise the doctor is suggesting weight loss, which is at least a partial solution.
This is one of the reasons, people are moving away from the term, and using "unhealthy alcohol use" as a term for the condition, and also “a person with an alcohol use disorder” or “a person with a drug use disorder" rather than alcoholic or addict.
so once you are addicted, you'll stay that way, even if your consumption ceases completely (at which point you're an addict who doesn't exhibit problematic consumption). that's why clean alcoholics (or any clean drug addicts) are usually advised to stay teetotal indefinitely: they'll usually bounce back to their old patterns very quickly if they have a fallback.
Alcohol is substantially engrained in culture, country music or top 40 playlists. Today listening to a country playlist, about 70% of songs mention beer, whisky, or tequila.
And you could say, they're talking about a cool beverage every few days; and then you'll see the Social posts normalizing that a bottle or 2 of wine a night is normal, or that "it's 5 o'clock somewhere" as if alcohol every day at 5 is healthy. But then you'll meet a reformed alcoholic who started from these references. And then you'll hang out with "normals" with a person who is sober or even a moderate drinker and realize that the majority of American adults do have a problem with alcohol (they even feel uncomfortable if someone is asks for a water), it's just normalized
Be mad at McDonald’s. Be mad at Family Dollar. Be mad at bullies. And be made about fat pride too, that we as people have created the conditions that have been so toxic to some people that almost by necessity they inoculate themselves from horrible attitudes that have never helped them in the slightest.
Some people think that there are more important values in life than those things, and don’t want to have to fight for their right to live by those other values.
Here, it’s a right to eat and be active in the way they want, for whatever reasons they want, without having to answer to someone else’s concern over their health or longevity.