Is “Body Positivity” a Scam?
Before you accuse someone of “fat-shaming,” be sure you aren’t promoting a corporate agenda
The roots of the contemporary body positivity movement can be traced back the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance in 1969. In its current form, “body positivity”means “accepting the body you have as well as the changes in shape, size, and ability it may undergo due to nature, age, or your own personal choices throughout your lifetime,” says Mallorie Dunn, founder of the body positive fashion line SmartGlamour.*
That seems all well and good. Our bodies do change as we age, though I am slightly uncomfortable with Ms. Dunn’s lumping in “personal choices,” as if no choices we make with respect to our bodies could be better or worse than any others. But still, insofar as body positivity discourages bullying, shaming, and discrimination against people on the basis of their weight, I think that’s a good thing. The problem with the body positivity movement lies farther below the surface.
Ask yourself why the body positivity movement was started, and has always been led, by Americans. At over thirty-six percent, the United States has the highest obesity rate in the OECD, a club of thirty-eight developed countries around the world. For comparison, the obesity rate in France is less than twenty percent, and in Japan it’s only four percent.
Why is the United States such an outlier? The answer has to do with how our government subsidizes the production of certain agricultural commodities, particularly corn and soybeans. In 2020, government subsidies accounted for about thirty-nine percent of farm income, which may be why fifty-nine percent of U.S. farmland is given over to subsidized crops like corn, and only two percent is used to cultivate fruits and vegetables.
These choices we make as a society have consequences. “Between 1970 and 2000, the average per person consumption of added fats increased by 38%, whereas that of sugars increased by 20%. The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) alone increased more than 1000% between 1970 and 1990, and today accounts for more than 40% of caloric sweeteners added to food and beverages.”**
In other words, Americans are fatter, at least in part, because we make fatty foods cheap and crowd healthy foods off our farmland. But that isn’t the whole story. A healthy diet is essential to maintaining a healthy body, but so is getting adequate exercise, and higher rates of poverty and less leisure time make it harder for Americans to get the exercise they need. The average workweek in America is longer than in most other OECD countries, and Americans have fewer vacation days each year. Increasingly, “fitness” has become a lifestyle perk of the affluent classes rather than an integral part of every citizen’s life, as it should be.
So how have we responded to this state of affairs? Some state and local officials have proposed taxes on fatty and sugary foods and drinks. And though these proposals have often elicited groans of disapproval from the public, in reality they would hardly make unhealthy food as expensive as it would be in the absence of subsidies.
But by and large we haven’t really responded to the obesity epidemic by rebelling against those who are making us unhealthy. Instead, we’ve done what we as Americans always seem to do. When faced with a systemic crisis, we try to make it all about the individual. Without the ability to see this issue through the lens of social justice, we are forced either to acknowledge that obesity is unhealthy, and shame and blame fat individuals for their bad choices, or else we have to redefine obesity as perfectly healthy, as one of many “diverse” body types.
But all body types are not equally healthy. The three leading causes of death in the United States are heart disease, cancer, and stroke, and all are made more likely by being overweight. Obesity is also a major cause of type two diabetes. The health care costs to the nation, and to the individuals who suffer from these diseases, is staggering.
I understand. Changing the policies that have gotten us to this point will be hard, and we’ll be up against very powerful, well-funded and en
trenched interests. It will take time, and in the meantime we will be tempted to opt for the easier road, to say that actually there is no problem. All we need is to have a better attitude, to be more accepting, etc. Particularly for those of us on the left, our humanistic instincts will drive us to adopt the discourse of body positivity as a way of showing our compassion and our desire not to unfairly discriminate. But where is the compassion in providing cover for an economic system that is literally killing us?
*https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2813%2900320-6/fulltext