Maintenance Phase : Pointing the finger at fat-shaming

‘Weight is the primary motive children are bullied at college. And it’s usually one thing that we settle for,” journalist Michael Hobbes explains in What’s Our Deal, the primary episode of Maintenance Phase. Every different Tuesday, Maintenance Phase (subscribe through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or Spotify) strides to the highest of the excessive dive and launches itself into the poisonous sludge of weight bias and fat-shaming.

rom the outset, Hobbes and co-host “fats woman about city” Aubrey Gordon make it clear that weight and well being are two distinct ideas that typically overlap, however typically don’t. Rather than make use of a scientific description or coy euphemism, ‘fats’ is their phrase of selection, utilized in good religion.

In What’s Our Deal, Gordon notes that within the US, one-third of overweight individuals have regular well being markers and 1 / 4 of thin individuals have threat markers, but society has collectively collapsed our definition of well being into our visible evaluation of weight. And for ‘well being’, learn ‘not fats’. She has been weight-reduction plan irregularly since she was a teen.

“The similar factor at all times occurred; I might lose just a little little bit of weight after which I might reliably acquire it again after which some. The solely clarification obtainable to me is that it was a private failure. That’s the one message we ever get. That if a fats individual is fats it have to be their fault. If persons are shitty to you, sorry: that’s simply what occurs to fats individuals.”

The challenges that fats individuals face don’t come from a phrase, they arrive from the way in which we deal with them. Decades of merciless and reductive stereotypes has painstakingly created cartoonish depictions of lazy bumblers and grasping guzzlers devoid of willpower. Hobbes and Gordon aren’t making an attempt to switch the stigma, however as an alternative take away what they describe because the “blameiness”. Ireland has one of many highest ranges of weight problems in Europe, so whereas we might not have the identical ethical panic about weight right here as within the US (the place the present relies), the problems it highlights are however related to our society and tradition.

In the US, weight reduction is a $71bn trade. It is the serpent that eats is personal tail: research present that 95pc of diets fail, so the demand for protein shakes, tailor-made meal plans and costly cleanses won’t ever finish. With 19 episodes underneath its whatever-notch-you’re-having-yourself belt, Maintenance Phase is a gleefully opinionated, good-humoured and well-researched present that blends tutorial analysis and popular culture to debunk the junk science behind well being and wellness trade fads. One zinger episode drops after one other. My favourites embody The Wellness to QAnon Pipeline, which explores how the highway to wellness could be a slippery on-ramp to conspiracy theories; and the reveals about Goop, Dr Oz and Oprah Winfrey.

According to the State Of Mobile 2021 report, greater than 71,000 new well being and health apps had been launched in 2020. Unlike most food plan apps, this podcast genuinely can change a facet of your life: your understanding of fatness and anti-fat bias.

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