This afternoon I was bored at home and with nothing else to do, I turned on the TV and watched The Doctors. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an hour-long show featuring a team of medical professionals who respond to themed health concerns such as diabetes or flu prevention or healthy foods.
Usually these guys are pretty reasonable and accurate with their advice (at least in my opinion). But today’s show, which was focused on weight loss (“Six Ways to Weigh Less;” I’ll critique this theme in a minute), opened with an overweight young man talking about how his partner always cooked for him. This wouldn’t be a bad thing, he said, except for the fact that the foods she cooked were always high in calories and fat and she made him feel like he “had” to eat everything she prepared for him. He felt like he had pressure to finish everything she made for him and therefore felt like she was pressuring him into being overweight.

Yeah, okay, I can respect his concerns. However, I did have issues with how the doctors interpreted the situation following the clip.
They basically said that the sole reason a partner/spouse would “make” or “keep” their significant other overweight is due to insecurity. Basically, they make their significant other overweight and thus decrease their desirability to others, insuring the already existing relationship against possible outside threats.

Really?

Really?

I have multiple problems with this statement. Actually, I have several problems with this episode. Bullet time!

• The Doctors emphasize multiple times that the episode is focused on making people healthier, and yet it is explicitly titled and referred to as “Six Ways to Weigh Less.” Because we all know that weighing less = increased health. Always. Totally. Except it doesn’t. YES, for those people carrying about a significant amount of weight, the loss of this weight can improve overall health. But it has been shown in several studies that people who are slightly heavier than “average” using the BMI as a gauge (which is screwy anyway) actually live longer than those of low or average weight. But since we’ve all been told that weighing less = being healthier no matter what, I guess that’s what we’ll have to believe.
• I don’t like the implication that the woman who is supposedly over-feeding her partner is doing so deliberately. Maybe she’s of a background where food = caring. Maybe she is positively reinforced when her partner finishes her large/calorie-heavy meals and therefore continues to make them large/calorie-heavy. Maybe she just likes to cook. Who knows? I think it’s pretty bad to assume she has some sort of ulterior motive here.
• Speaking of the idea of an ulterior motive, how about that idea that the motive is as sinister as keeping her partner “unattractive” to others in order to preserve their relationship? I think jumping to this conclusion puts every fat admirer (or FA, or anyone else who doesn’t have a problem with large people) in a bad light. Most of us who like heavier people do not have this insecurity-driven reason for our preferences. If I had a partner, I wouldn’t want him to be  heavy unless he wanted to be heavy and was accepting of all the pros and cons surrounding being of a certain size. I certainly wouldn’t want to purposely make him fat with the intention of making him “unappealing” to others in order to preserve our relationship. That’s depressing and totally not representative, in my opinion, of the attitudes of most FAs.
• Oh, and one last point relating to the previous one: FAT != UNATTRACTIVE. STOP REINFORCING THIS ASLDFJDLGKAVEAFIFJANDFAJGHH.

Okay I’m done.

30-Day Meme – Day 13: How do you think others view you?
Haha, who knows after reading the above rant. I think other people think I’m weird, I really do. I’m short, I wear weird stuff, I’m quiet unless you get me all riled up about something (see above), I like stats, and I’m a band geek. Weirdness is my forte.
Though I could be completely wrong.