#bmi is such bullshit

[tchaikovsgay]

did any other #girlathlete have the experience of being rewarded for putting on muscle while simultaneously criticized for having a high/overweight/obese bmi? yeah. this experience haunts me and has given me irreparable body dysmorphia

[fatliberation]

hi, i'm a fat person who is just starting to learn to love and appreciate my body and i'm very new to the fat community and all that.

i was wondering if you could maybe explain the term ob*se and how it is a slur. i've never heard anything about it being a slur before(like i said, i'm very new here) and was wondering if you could tell me the origin and history of the word or mayy provide links to resources about it? i want to know more about fat history and how to support my community but i'm unsure of how to start

Welcome!

Obesity is recognized as a slur by fat communities because it's a stigmatizing term that medicalizes fat bodies, typically in the absence of disease. Aside from the word literally translating to "having eaten oneself fat" in latin, obesity (as a medical diagnosis) straight up doesn't actually exist. The only measure that we have to diagnose people with obesity is the BMI, which has been widely proven to be an ineffective measure of health.

The BMI was created in the 1800s by a statistician named Adolphe Quetelet, who did NOT sudy medicine, to gather statistics of the average height and weight of ONLY white, european, upper-middle class men to assist the government in allocating resources. It was never intended as a measure of individual body fat, build, or health. 

Quetelet is also credited with founding the field of anthropometry, including the racist pseudoscience of phrenology. Quetelet’s l’homme moyen would be used as a measurement of fitness to parent, and as a scientific justification for eugenics.

Studies have observed that about 30% of so-called "normal weight" people are "unhealthy" whereas about 50% of so-called "overweight" people are “healthy”. Thus, using the BMI as an indicator of health results in the misclassification of some 75 million people in the United States alone. "Healthy" lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index.  

While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national "obesity" rates, the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as "overweight" overnight—to match international guidelines. Articles about the "obesity epidemic" often use this pseudo-statistic to create a false fear mongering rate at which the United States is becoming fatter. Critics have also noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs. Interesting!!!

So... how can you diagnose a person with a disease (and sell them medications) solely based upon an outdated measure that was never meant to indicate health in the first place? Especially when "obesity” has no proven causative role in the onset of any chronic condition?

There is a reason as to why fatness was declared a disease by the NIH in 1998, and some of it had to do with acknowledging fatness as something that is NOT just about a lack of willpower - but that's a very complicated post for another time. You can learn more about it in the two part series of Maintenance Phase titled The Body Mass Index and The Obesity Epidemic.

Aside from being overtly incorrect as a medical tool, the BMI is used to deny certain medical treatments and gender-affirming care, as well insurance coverage. Employers still often offer bonuses to workers who lower their BMI. Although science recognizes the BMI as deeply flawed, it's going to be tough to get rid of. It has been a long standing and effective tool for the oppression of fat people and the profit of the weight loss industry.

More sources and extra reading material:

How the Use of BMI Fetishizes White Embodiment and Racializes Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings

The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI by Aubrey Gordon

The Racist and Problematic History of the Body Mass Index by Adele Jackson-Gibson

What's Wrong With The War on Obesity? by Lily O'Hara, et al.

Fearing The Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings

[lovertm]

stickers by mollyinprogress

[fandomshatefatpeople]

So are you saying obesity is wonderful?

Yes, I am.

All bodies deserve to be celebrated. ALL FUCKING BODIES.

Also, fuck the term "obesity". It's a made-up faux medical word created to other and pathologize a normal part of human life. Just like "overweight". Over what weight? The random number that was chosen with the creation of the BMI as the magic good number in 1985 or the one that it randomly changed to literally overnight in 1998, magically making 29 million more Americans "overweight" and thus eligible for insurance funded medical interventions that neither work nor are needed.

If you aren't just being a troll, check out Yes Virginia, BMI is BS – Dances With Fat Ragen explains it better than I can.

[sualne]

what could've been

[st4rv1ng-onceagain]

the way i call myself an anorexic when my bmi is 19.6... im a fucking joke

[chubbyfeedeefemboi]

Been quiet for a bit cause I've been having a hard time but I apparently accidentally have a bmi over 40 which means I'm morbidly obese which is so hot of me i cant even. And to think I thought I was gonna lose weight during the last little bit lol, 300lbs here I come

[wetslug]

.

[drunken--raccoon]

Having people who are actually underweight tell me that I'm thinspo is.......so bizarre

I'm still 10lbs above the underweight range for my height

[system-of-a-feather]

Dude I hate BMI chapter 40292

Cant get top surgery until my BMI is below 30 and Im like OK I already have a healthy diet and run a mile every other day and have an active work so please tell me what eating disorder I gotta do 😒

Im gonna nuke Arasaka /joking/

But hey look theres a lot of things you can do to better your health, start simple with biking and being active incase running five miles straight every week like you already do is too hard

Try eating healthier when you already fuckin do 😒😒😒😒😒

Strangling strangling strangling strangling

[lousydrawingsforgoodpeople]

early in recovery these labels rly bothered me

[dionysianchub]

Obese is such a turn-on of a word.

To know that I'm not just pudgy or chubby or overweight, but so massively corpulent that they came up with a whole word to describe how medically over-fattened I am just makes me wet between the legs. 💦💦💦

[catsandcaloriis]

my bmi is 19.2 I don’t want to live anymore

[aliosne]

I keep seeing people spout Weird Shit about fat people on this site and im just so fucking tired didnt we litigate this shit back in like 2013

[aropride]

my shirt that says "i don't have an eating disorder" has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt

[sualne]

i kind of want to ramble a bit about being underweight and the way people treated me changed as i socially transitioned and aged.

for quick context i was literally born underweight, i'd been starving to death in the womb and needed to get out early, a doctor even said it was too late, that i was already dead, that was not the case.

anyway for as long as i remember people would always comment on how thin i was, as a kid it didn't mean much but approaching puberty the "you need to eat more" turned into "people would kill to have a body like yours" comments about having a wasp waist among more disturbing ones, i socially transitioned as 16, i was getting those comment at 12. i still got remarks about how i should gain weight but it was always accompanied by this "but not too much, you need to stay thin, thin is good." sentiment so gaining weight was never truly seen as an actual emergency, something that should actually happen, it was more of a reflex sort of comment, people didn't mean it too seriously.

that changed when people started seeing me as a man, suddenly i was not so thin and fragile, so feminine and pretty i was visibly weak and unmanly and that pisses the shit out of other (older) men. now people really meant it when they say i should gain weight but unlike before that vaguely "i'm worried for your health (but you look much better like this anyway so don't change it)" sentiment disappeared, it was all about performing masculinity properly, about becoming a muscular big strong manly man. you see it all the time, thinness being associated with femininity, even trans people who should know better keeps on going "wow so gender" to people who are only just being thin and otherwise pretty damn conforming. obviously a lot of this depends where you live.

now this also the moment i need to mention thinphobia isn't a thing, people don't actually care about the fact that you're thin, it's about failing to meet gender role's standards and looking visibly sick which get people Really uncomfortable, they don't want to be reminded disabled & chronically ill people exist. fatphobia is genuinely and purely about hating the fact that fat people exist, they don't actually give the slightest shit about possible health issues they're just dipshits, those are excuses to pretend it's justified so they can feel better about themselves, it's also systemic and get people killed all the time. doctor might tell me gaining some weight couldn't do me any bad but they've never insisted it was the sole and only reason for every single one of my issues, they usually don't even mention it all.

i don't have a point or conclusion for this.