I think that’s a good message. I certainly feel badly for obese people because, however they got there, they’re going to have a hell of a time getting back to a healthy body size.
I do agree that many people lose that key part of the message when they pass it on.
Then it becomes (well, became) the next taboo that nobody wants to touch with a 10 feet pole since its playing with a PR suicide.
And so we have the world we have, and we reached it step by step by exactly this logic. Simple thing is, fat people need help from society just like drug addicts, yet everybody desperately tries to avoid this framing, and thus help is often not deemed necessary/worth the risk of offending. Thus people die needlessly just that somebody doesn't have hurt feelings.
I deal with chronic pain and I’m at the hospital or clinic frequently, often multiple times per week. As someone who is in that environment quite a bit, I can assure you that the dangers of obesity are very clearly and openly discussed; frankly, you can’t walk two steps in a hospital without seeing some sort of PSA about the dangers of obesity.
Your mental model just doesn’t track with what I’ve seen again and again in reality.
The people being told to shut up about it are usually abusing strangers or enemies, and feel very abused and targeted for being criticized for targeting and abusing people. If you were talking about being fat with someone you obviously care about and cares about you, they'd take it in that spirit. If you shamed them for it, they'd hopefully end that fucked up abusive relationship. The only thing I would ever shame a loved one for is their abuse of other people. Otherwise, I want to lift them up, not tear them down.
Feeling bad about your weight is a good motivator to lose weight. It might be bad for your mental health and it could do absolutely nothing for some people but the vast majority of people who keep their weight in check and/or are motivated to lose weight do so more for social reasons than they do for health reasons.
Compared to something like alcoholism, being overweight (which can be similarly deadly) is treated much differently. For alcoholism, the attitude has been changing from "alcoholics are degenerates with weak wills" to "alcoholism is a disease and these people need help" where the attitude toward obesity is going from "fat people are disgusting people who have no self control" to "big is beautiful".
The difference is with alcoholism the message goes from disdain to support but he solution remains the same, a great deal of personal work to solve the problem. With obesity, the message goes from disdain to acceptance and the solution is to just not bring it up.
Only if you think you have realistic chances of loosing that weight.
Otherwise that bad feeling will ... get eaten up.
Be anxious, not too much. Mostly over things within your control.
Educationalist here, actually it isn't :) For many people, this just makes you feel bad - and that's it. For that feeling to result in meaningful action a bunch of conditions have to be met, e.g. the absence of eating disorders (including things like stress eating etc.), a concept of self-efficacy (the idea that one actually is able to change out of one's own will), impulse control, knowledge about food and dieting, the time and money to eat healthier and so on. Often people are perfectly aware that their behaviour is unhealthy, but they lack one or more of those conditions. It therefore is better to focus on providing people the actual means to change (knowledge, methods, better food in school and at work, a supportive environment, taxation to make unhealthy food/drugs more expensive (a thing in the EU)).
Note that I'm fully in support of emphasizing the unhealthy aspects of obesity, though. Providing the facts often just isn't enough.
Are you just asking overweight people or are you asking all people? The people who are overweight today are obviously the group of people for which social pressure is ineffective. I'm talking about all people including the people who are successfully at a healthy weight.
They also gave us insight into the mind of the gay anti-gay politician.
So even though shame might not work to get fat people to lose weight, it could still work to keep people from ever getting fat. Getting shamed for a few pounds means that you can fix the source of shame by dieting for a few weeks, very doable for average people.
I think it's important to not lose sight of the fact that maintaining a healthy weight is a challenge for nearly everyone and undermine what is currently working for those who are not overweight.
Furthermore, I think obesity has somehow found it's way to be more in line with the LGBT style movements of acceptance/tolerance instead of the changing view of addictions as disease instead of character flaws when it clearly should be much more like the latter.