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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25841 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Health, Fitness, Obesity, and Politics

Something that’s been bouncing around in my head for quite some time is how people relate their politics to their personal health. This story from The Daily Beast on Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde has resurfaced this for me by providing a clear illustration of what I perceive as a current difference between the American left and right on this issue:

“Look, we have an explosion of Type 2 diabetes right now. Explosion. Obesity is off the charts. You know, we’re removing people from being responsible for their own health,” Hovde said.

“If they all of a sudden started to realize that they’re going to pay more for their health care by consuming, you know, by consuming massive amounts of soda every day or fatty foods and not exercising, maybe they would change their behavioral patterns.”

Hovde then claimed obesity was a “personal choice.”

“It’s a personal choice,” he said, “but there should be consequences to those personal choices. Fine, you want to do that, you become obese, your health care is going to cost more. Or, the quality—or not the quality, but the amount of health care may go down, because you may not have the money to afford it.

“You have to force personal responsibility back to people, and also make them smart consumers.”

The Daily Beast helpfully loops in a putative expert on the matter, a professor at NYU:

Jay said that Hovde’s comments singling out obesity as something that should raise people’s insurance rates reveals that “either you’re not understanding or you’re really discriminating against people who have a chronic disease.”

“It’s assuming that obesity is some sort of moral failing that people need to be punished for,” she said. “That’s not true.

She added: “It’s a pretty awful and dangerous thing to say.”

This is the latest spat about these sorts of things and probably lays the dichotomous beliefs out about as clearly as possible. There is a policy angle (some people think insurance should be risk-based, some don’t), but that is comparatively dry relative to the beliefs in personal responsibility and how those views extend into political beliefs. There was an old throwaway post from the dissident right blog Dividuals that stuck with me a decade later because of how clearly it captured something that I felt when I read the left-leaning positions:

One realistic way to parodize liberals / lefties / Progressives / feminists / SJWs etc. would be to present them as narcissistic, solipsistic, self-absorbed people with huge and fragile egos who demand that everything should revolve around themselves.

…

The simple fact that feminists tend to be fat would only make, in itself, a weak joke. But when you find they run around parading their fatness, and make it a political goal to make men somehow adore it – imagine it, human beings making it a political goal that other should have a positive opinion of their own personal fsckups! “I have crap for character, now praise me for it, oppressor!” Imagine programmers making it a political goal to convince people that bugs are actually good!

At the time, I wasn’t particularly right-aligned, so this wasn’t really an ingroup-outgroup thing, but an articulation of a growing frustration I had with people on the left, this absolute refusal to ever tell people to own up to their situations, take responsibility for where they are in life, and fix it. Everything, always, forever is just contingent on circumstances, completely outside of their control. While I could understand the arguments about this sort of thing when it comes to wealth accumulation or crime, to be so extreme as to not grant that people have agency over what they eat was the kind of thing that was just steadily pushing me away from having any inclination to share goals with the economic left.

Since then, there has been a steady (if not particularly large) genre of articles characterizing fitness as a right-wing phenomenon. Some of these are really silly things about how gyms are gateways to far-right extremism, but let’s look at one example that’s a little more self-serious and not obviously ridiculous:

The study found a significant correlation between those men who were heavier and stronger and the belief that some social groups should dominate others. These men were also less likely to support the redistribution of wealth, a typically left wing principle.

Specifically, the researchers found a specific correlation between the number of hours spent in the gym and having less egalitarian socioeconomic beliefs.

Dr Michael Price, a senior lecturer in psychology at the university and the lead author of the study, suggested the findings could come down to three things: The result of the men “calibrating their egalitarianism to their own formidability”, that less egalitarian men strive to become more muscular or there could be a third variable at play.

“Our results suggest that wealthier men who are more formidable physically are more likely to oppose redistribution of wealth,” he said. “Essentially, they seem more motivated to defend their resources. But less wealthy men who are still physically formidable don’t seem more inclined to support redistribution either. They’re not demanding a share of the wealth.

Vice covers the same thing, but with an oddly smug glee:

To all you gym-bro haters amongst us, come, be seated. This one's for you. Science—objective, empirically tested science, the science that tells us that the ice caps are melting—has confirmed what many of us have long suspected: Gym bros are right-wing jerks.

…

Price's findings? That rich muscle dudes are the worst! Under those rock-hard abs lie the rock-hard souls of men who doesn't believe in spreading their riches around. "It's basically your tolerance to the idea that wealth shouldn't be redistributed," Dr. Price explains. "Some people thought it was horrible; some people thought it was fine."

If there was ever a line that called for a YesChad.jpg response, it’s that one. While I am not a particularly big guy, I will self-report that I do believe my work as an endurance athlete has substantially shifted my views against egalitarian perspectives and more towards personal responsibility. Rather than modeling that as being about domination and aggression, I would propose that the mechanism is the personal sense of accomplishment and mastery coupled with knowing how much of it is a direct product of your internal locus of control. I’m not decently fast because of some random freak accident of nature - I wasn’t fast when I started running, I’m much faster now, and I keep getting faster in almost perfect concert with how much work I put into the sport. Others will fare better with less work, such is life, but we all have a great deal of control over our outcomes. So, yeah, I am inclined to believe that pursuing fitness as a hobby will tend to lead one to the right of their current positions.

The belief that fitness is a right-wing thing doesn’t stop with this sort of relatively modest claim about egalitarian tendencies though. The Society for Cultural Anthropology has a weird writeup on Gym Fascism. To go nutpicking a bit, the Manitoba University newspaper has Fitness culture and fatphobia are fascistic - Our obsession with looking the same is culling joy and body diversity:

Prof. Brian Pronger points out that almost everything that we stress about physical education centres around maximizing the body’s performance. It’s the way that we are all expected to structure our lives around our fitness regimens, and those five days a week when we’re supposed to work out must be in service to making ourselves as strong as possible.

Fitness fanaticism constipates our personal growth. Think about what it means to “work on yourself.” It often means to work out, as if your character is tied to your physical strength and muscle tone.

OK, too much nutpicking. Back to a serious journalistic outlet, Time magazine. Just before the New Year, Time published a story that might dissuade people from making an ill-advised resolutions for 2023 titled The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the History of U.S. Physical Fitness:

It was super interesting reading the reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.

Then you keep reading, and they’re saying white women should start building up their strength because we need more white babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is totally part of a white supremacy project. So that was a real “holy crap” moment as a historian, where deep archival research really reveals the contradictions of this moment.

Oh dear.

Anyway, to return to that Hovde story that kicked things off, I find it pretty interesting to think about how these things play with different crowds. Something that’s kind of obvious is that Red Tribe America is not actually very fit at all, while Blue Tribe power centers consistently have quite a few fitness-minded individuals. Nonetheless, when Hovde says that fat people are responsible for their own bodies, it seems to me that most Red Tribers basically agree and accept that they’re fat because they like burgers and beer a little too much, while the Blue Tribers recoil at the suggestion that people are responsible for eating themselves into Type 2 diabetes. This reminds me of how discussions of marriage and morality play out as well - educated elites, regardless of political persuasion, stay married at very high rates and seem to be well aware that this is the correct way to live, but are hesitant to say this about the underclass. They hold standards for themselves that they believe don’t apply to others. As far as electoral politics goes, I doubt this little newscycle item means much of anything, but it does provide a fun case study and litmus test for perspectives on the topic.

The problem with the whole---personal responsibly fat dialog--- is that it seems like it should make sense, but it doesn't.

Whole societies get fat when hyper processed super tasty high calorie food is inserted into a culture that doesn't have a very strong shame based immunity, when you drive everywhere and work at a desk etc..etcc... The experiment has been done in dozens of countries around the world.

When half your country is fat, and as you rightly point out, it isn't the half you would pick based on your culture war write up here, then something else is going on. It isn't a self discipline thing for the most part, it can be, if someone has a high enough level of it, or really enjoys exercise, or will be relentlessly shamed for being fat at all times. But that only works for a very small portion of the people with the propensity to get fat, and it needs to work every single day for the rest of their lives.

Humans are simply not evolved to be in an environment with this much abundance. Luckily the same scientific principles that have provided this abundance are now going to help solve the obesity problem by bringing baseline hunger levels more in line with people who are naturally slim. My buddy got on generic Wegovy and has gone from 260 to 220 in 2 months. It is pretty great that you can now take a pill or a shot to de-fat yourself without white knuckling every bit of food you pass for years on end.

I agree with the statement one of your examples made there, obesity is not some sort of moral failing that people need to be punished for. Fat humans are not made for this level of delicious high calorie food availability. We should give them the opportunity to take a free magic pill that will make them skinny. Now if they refuse to do that, then it is a moral failing/choice to be fat.

Most of these problems have an environmental component to them. Highly processed super-palatable food available for consumption almost everywhere you care to look at very cheap prices does create an environmental that favors obesity. But that’s not the whole thing. You still have at least some choice in the matter. The food doesn’t leap into your mouth and down your throat. And therefore you do have choices. You can remove such food from your environment— you can’t overeat on the cookies that you never bought in the first place. You can choose to not buy or use processed foods, which people doing various specialty diets tend to do, whether it’s keto, paleo, vegan, or carnivore. You can control the portion sizes as well. If you don’t eat double cheeseburgers you eat fewer calories.

I tend to be skeptical of drug induced weight loss simply because we haven’t been doing these trials long term. Nobody knows what these Ozempic and generic brands of ozempic will do long term. FenFen was a popular weight loss drug in the 1990s and 2000s. It turned out to damage the heart. Maybe the new class of drugs is better, but we don’t really have 10-20 years of use.

Perhaps what we need is dram shop / over-serving laws but for food.

If somebody looks visibly inebriated, then serving them more alcohol can get you in trouble.

Similarly, if somebody looks visibly overfed, then it should be illegal to give them fattening foods (most products currently sold would qualify). Eateries would have to have a special menu specifically designed to be filling on low calories for these customers.

Another solution if we're willing to exert as much effort preventing obesity as we did covid: The Anti-Gluttony Door in Portugal's Alcobaça Monastery - can't go to the refectory until you need it.

The "Anti-Gluttony Door" is a myth, it's a serving hatch for trays of food:

https://fakehistoryhunter.net/2021/10/09/not-a-monasterys-anti-gluttony-door/

I still like the concept!

Yet another, I'm wrong, but I like the directionality of the fake news, or it is funny, so I'm not really wrong. I see this in almost every response to being tricked by fake news.

If you don’t eat double cheeseburgers you eat fewer calories.

While this is true, it's not the entire truth. I've been fat all my life, and I can tell you that I've never eaten a double cheeseburger. Indeed, for my early life, I hadn't access to such fast food (apart from chip shop chips, and that was very occasionally).

It is largely my own fault for eating too much and not exercising enough, but there is also the element of being constantly hungry. It's easy to say "oh just put up with being hungry, the feeling will pass after a couple of days" but not when it's at this kind of "I just ate two hours ago, it's impossible that I should be hungry now again, and yet all the signals my body is sending are 'eat eat eat'" level.

I mean yes. It’s not like double cheeseburgers are magically fattening or something. And I understand that for some people it’s harder than others. But at the same time, unless you have no self control at all, some level of self denial is necessary and probably helpful. I think part of the issue is a cultural change that encourages snacking and never let someone feel hungry. In the 1970s and 1980s it was considered fairly normal to eat three meals and a small snack all day. Yes, people probably got hungry in between times, but I think that’s a normal thing. People get hungry or tired and so on and keep going.

Maybe this is just me personally but I find it empowering to some degree to challenge my limits and find out that I’m not a slave to my body. Just because I am tired, that doesn’t mean I can’t go lift weights or run a mile or whatever I need to get done to be healthy. Nor do I have to eat just because food is available or I feel slightly hungry. I can decide to give in or not.

About a quarter of the world practices a religion where for one month a year adherents don’t eat from dawn to dusk.

One way of promoting agency is giving examples of other people that have done the thing that someone has convinced themselves is nearly or truly impossible for them.

Islamic countries have very high obesity rates, though.

It is a lot safer than being fat. Which is pretty much the worst thing for you. So if the options are a tested, approved and proven drug vs certain health problems that choice is clear. You also need to be the kind of person who can make those choices to not overeat or buy cookies etc...if you aren't that person, there is no way to make yourself that person.

Everyone knows what they need to do to be healthy, it isn't a lack of knowledge that makes people fat. Almost all diet and exercise plans fail. This isn't a problem any but a very small percentage of the population of fat people can "will" there way out of, as has been proven by the failure rates of around 95% (Freedhoff, 2014). I Think there just something in certain people that feel like a "magic pill" or drug is cheating somehow and you should have to struggle and go without to achieve fitness.

Diets don't work. A 95% failure rate proves this. America needs the drugs to fix this.

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