There's a big ol' problem skulking around social media and petition websites that is frankly just irritating the living hell out of me and I've decided to do the usual thing, yep, you guessed it - go onto to social media and join the skulking problem.
It's the fat and skinny debate. Where is the line in terms of 'political correctness?'
Recently there was a huge attack on this advertising campaign.
I agree with the anti-campaign. This sort of advertisement is wrong and potentially damaging and for the most part - irresponsible.
Here's what I don't agree with - the idolisation of the morbidly obese and massively under-weight under the guise of body confidence.
The problem I find with so many of the social media rants about this debate is that there is just no realistic element to it. To put it bluntly, some people are slightly bigger, some are slightly smaller, some are average. The people that are out of that spectrum, (being either very fat or very skinny) are just not healthy human beings. That is fact, not opinion, that is fact.
It worries me deeply that while we are reporting huge increases in obese children and how obesity is becoming such a widespread problem thanks to the holier-than-thou food industry, whilst simultaneously campaigning for body confidence (which is a good thing) and the idolisation of obese models (that's not a good thing). That's a conflicting dialogue that the Western community is having with itself, and it's more damaging than obesity itself.
I could be incredibly narrow-minded (it's possible, I know) but I can't understand why it is that an obese model or, equally, an incredibly skinny model could be considered a healthy human being. We can't promote healthy living and extreme weight conditions at the same damn time. That's like telling your teenage kids not to do drugs as you inject heroin into your veins. It can't work and it's doomed to fail and have deeper consequences.
What also isn't being properly tackled like it should be, is the food industry. The food industry is behaving now in the way that Tobacco companies did during the Tobacco boom. I can't walk down a road now without seeing the latest re-invention of food into processed fast food in various fonts and colours splashed across every billboard, poster and street corner. I personally don't give a flying fuck if KFC have managed to find a way of making the cheapest, most processed 'version' of a burrito I've ever seen. Capitalism is good, I love Capitalism; but the sort of aggressive capitalism that is funnelling it's way in through the food industry is destroying our western culture and causing us to bicker about whether being morbidly obese or very skinny is good or not? It isn't. It isn't healthy. It causes health problems - and big ones.
Whilst all of that is fact, here's another thing that's a huge problem. Shaming people because of their weight conditions. This is all being written by me, a slightly overweight guy, and I've witnessed and seen the effects that shaming because of weight has had. I am not proud to say either that I have both been the perpetrator and the victim on varied different times growing up, and the worst part is that because of the huge social pressure as a result of advertising campaigns such as the one previously mentioned - it is just unavoidable sometimes, especially in children.
Young girls and boys should NOT ever be made to feel they need to look like someone they aren't.
Adult women and men should NOT ever be made to feel they need to look like someone they aren't.
No one on this planet should be made to feel like they have achieved something by being the same weight as a half-naked man or woman on a billboard. But neither should an unhealthy lifestyle be promoted, surely? Men and women alike should have an environment surrounding them that engages them as individual people, with individual shapes and sizes and variations which is perfectly natural. I realise of course, please don't think I am avoiding the topic of health and mental conditions which lead to dramatic weight conditions, because that is a different debate. Some people can't help being very large, nor very small. Like I said, this is not to be shamed but supported.
Maybe I'm onto something here. MAYBE I'm a huge twat?
... We'll never know.
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