Post 19 -- Healthism I

These are some random thoughts coming to me late.

"Healthism" is a bullshit statement made by people who are performing mental gymnastics to justify (mostly to themselves) that their empirically demonstrable unhealthy lifestyle has a negative impact on how they are viewed by others. It's another fancy buzzword thrown out into the blogosphere to deflect honest criticism (or maybe concern trolling) away from the issue at hand and transform it into everyone's favourite "oppression".

You feel that you are being "oppressed" because of "healthism"? Well, as a 157cm, 115kg woman, would you be able to perform the necessary duties as a member of a fire and rescue team? The only answer here is "no". Reason? The physical demands of such a job are outside of the scope of this theoretical individual. A mix of her physical composition and her gender results in a lack of cardiovascular capacity and markedly low strength. Is that "healthism"? Is she, as a fat woman, being "oppressed" because she cannot be part of a fire and rescue team? No. She is not.

"Health" is a bit of a nebulous concept. Many experts disagree on what constitutes good health. Consider that you could be continually stressed, get less than ideal amounts of rest, suffer from regular headaches, be unable to run 5 kilometers in less than an hour, have low back pain, and regularly have heartburn, but still be considered "healthy" because you have the correct body mass index (BMI)? Health is a multifaceted concept requiring a mix of empirical standards and personal goals.

Let's draw two examples to see what this means: me and our fictional lady mentioned above. I am 187cm, 84kg, male, and late 20s. This gives me a BMI of 24 (verging on overweight, even with my low body fat percentage). I run between 5 and 7 times a week, between 5km to 8km per session, plus lift weights for the purpose of strength building. I have Celiac Disease, which means I cannot eat gluten (found in wheat, barely, and rye). This greatly impacts my diet: I rarely eat out, I never eat fast food, and extremely high glycemic foods like bread do not factor into my diet at any point. In other words, I eat what most people would say to be very well. On average, I consume between 2400 calories and 3400 calories, with my maintenance calories set to 2850. Where the facade of my health comes apart is the Celiac Disease and a major back injury I sustained in March 2013 that required surgery. I continue to have rather significant nerve pain in my left leg as a result of that injury.

Our hypothetical woman, on the other hand, who weighs 115kg at 157cm (or has a BMI of 46), requires a different amount of calories. Being generous and saying the hypothetical woman has light activity, she would need about 2200 calories to maintain her body weight (and, thus, BMI). Now, 2200 calories is rather close to the daily recommended intake for most major countries' departments of health. However, there's the high and low end of intake to either increase or decrease body weight. For her to lose a kilo a week, she would be limited to 1500 calories (as a reference, that's a Big Mac, large fry, and a diet drink). Conversely, and the telling part of our lady's situation, for her to gain a kilo a week, she would need to consume 3600 calories a day! And, again, that's only a kilo a week. That volume of consumption is probably part of the reason why our late 20s hypothetical woman is the situation she is in. Let us say, though, that she does not have any ailments. She has a regular menstrual cycle, sleeps well, has no unexplained pains, chronic injuries, and does not yet have a metabolism disease.

Do we consider this woman to be of worse, equal, or better health than me? Of course there will be objections here: I'm comparing a man and a woman, I am taking a morbidly obese woman and comparing her to a fit man, or that I should consider what she things to be healthy. Unfortunately, all of those objections are moot. Being as overweight as this woman is is empirically shown to be unhealthy by several factors. While she does not have a metabolic disease yet, she is at extremely high risk of developing type II diabetes. Moreover, the stress on her joints from carrying around that excess weight will result in damage and wear at an earlier age, which effects both her longevity and her quality of life. She will be more likely to have reproductive issues, develop breast or uterine cancer, and to suffer from depression. This is a list of objectively unhealthy attributes linked to her body weight.

Now, the central backlash to the "healthism" bullshit is not actually based around being or not being healthy. Rather, it is focused on beauty. Beauty? Yes, a subjective judging of a person's attractiveness. The claim is that woman of any body size (mostly focused on the larger end) are all beautiful. There are two significant problems with this: firstly, beauty is entirely subjective. What I find attractive in my wife my best friend might not find as attractive. This subjective judging of beauty has many, many influencing factors, such as age, wealth, cultural values, desire for offspring, societal pressures, and spiritual importance. These elements determine an individual's personal preference for mate selection. Well, almost; look back at that list, there are two elements in that list which have little to do with societal or cultural pressures: offspring and age.

This is the second element of what comprises the subjectivity of beauty: interpretation of health. If a man has the desire for offspring at some point in his life, perceived health of a woman is going to greatly impact the man's subjective view of her beauty (in a similar way to how women while ovulating tend to find physically fit men far more attractive, but during menstruation and until next ovulation they find men with resources more attractive). For a man to judge a woman for her ability to provide offspring, the elements considered at things such as age (many woman over 35 will experience some difficulty with conception) and physical fitness. Physical fitness includes a perceived workload capability, adequate body fat for normal hormonal function, and observable secondary sexual characteristics. This is where a woman's shape comes into play: an "hour glass" figure conveys a powerful biological message that the woman is old enough to bare children, a rounded butt along with rounded hips indicates a healthy body weight, along with the size of the woman's breasts. Other factors go into this, too: shiny hair, smooth skin, good posture, and obvious grooming all convey the image of health in a reproductive sense.

When you take our hypothetical woman, where does she not meet the definition for beauty? Obviously the first factor is going to be the subjective preference. Personally, I do not find overweight women attractive, simply because overweight women were unable to keep up with my active lifestyle, and I want to share my life with my wife. Beyond that, what other areas does this woman fail to meet a basic sense of beauty? With her morbid obesity, it will be difficult to assess if she actually is able to bare children either in the present or in the future. Big women do not mean big hips, so this vital piece of information is lost. In fact, many of her secondary sexual characteristics are effected by her body mass, thus causing issues in the processing of her beauty. Simply put, because it is difficult to determine her health, the subjective viewing of this woman's beauty is diminished, unless the viewer has an a priori preference for larger women.

"Healthism" is not anything people should be attempting to understand or fit into their vocabulary. It is a non-event involving people who would rather change the world around them than change themselves. For myself, I never had any desire to go tell all women the world over that beards are sexy on men and if a woman didn't think a beard was sexy she was a "beardist". I recognized that I would either have to shave my beard to attract certain women or I would have to find women who found my beard attractive. It was incumbent upon me to make my situation work, not on the world to adjust to what I wanted. And this is where "healthism" fails. The empirically researched ailments that are linked to obesity are many. This allows the majority of people to say "obesity is unhealthy". If an obese person wishes to remain obese, that is entirely up to them; however, they must recognize there are long term and short term problems with obesity. Demanding the world change to meet your current situation is arrogant and foolish.

This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi