Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
Documenting the meatiest, juiciest cuts of “fat acceptance” propaganda from corporate and social media.
The standard line from #bodypositive influencers is that being a morbidly obese, gluttonous slob is — in spite of objective reality and grade-school biology — a glorious, aspirational state of self-empowerment to be celebrated, if not worshipped.
Obesity is not, per Social Justice™ dogma, a potentially fatal health condition to be remedied. Such claims, like ones made by researchers using hard data regarding all-cause mortality’s statistical correlation to obesity, is a peculiar form of hatespeech called “fatphobia.”
Related: Obesity Is a ‘Brain Disease,’ Claims ‘Expert’
In reality, of course, no matter how hard they insist to the contrary in their public utterances, “fat acceptance” activists understand they are physically grotesque, and have only adopted the #bodypositive ideology as a collective coping mechanism to console one another in a cult-like insular circle of loving affirmation or whatever.
It’s Diversity™, Equity™, and Inclusion™ for human-whale hybrids, except that none of the members really want to be in the club. They belong to it out of necessity to placate their bruised egos.
“I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.”
-Groucho Marx
So when they see an opportunity to slim down and jump ship — especially if they believe doing so requires no adjustment to their gluttonous lifestyles, as the marketers of Ozempic promise — they take it.
And, just like that, they abandon the so-called “community” they once professed undying fidelity to.
And, if we know anything about how cults operate, there is nothing that stirs the ire of the faithful more than an apostate fleeing the plantation.
Related: How the Obesity-Industrial Complex Keeps Americans Sick, Fat, and Sad
Via Washington Post:
“When Virgie Tovar got an email asking her to promote injectable weight-loss medications on her social media, she thought it was spam.
As an activist, she had spent the last 13 years espousing body positivity and fat acceptance. Why would she promote drugs like Ozempic on her Instagram account?
But the offers to promote companies proffering drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic kept coming in.
And then she saw fellow fat activists posting screenshots of similar emails they had received. They came from a variety of marketing agencies and ‘med spas’ (medical spas) with names like Valhalla Vitality, Toma Skin Therapies and The Hills Beauty Experience, promoting injectable drugs for weight loss.
‘That was when it started to register that this might be something that is very widespread — that’s strategic,’ she said.
Tovar was right. The emails she received were part of an industry-wide strategy to market injectable weight-loss medication via plus-size influencers. Tovar and other activists have started spreading the word on social media and speaking to the press.
As profits explode from sales of its drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, Novo Nordisk has created marketing campaigns that address body-positive communities. WeightWatchers is hyping its new WeightWatchers Clinic, focused on injectable weight-loss drugs, via paid promotions with social media influencers.
This push from the weight-loss industry is creating ideological rifts in body-positivity communities.
Jessie Diaz-Herrera, who is a plus-size certified fitness instructor, posted an Instagram video saying that if she received another partnership offer from a company selling medical injectables she would throw her computer.”
“Plus-size certified fitness instructor”; it’s sort of like being a pregnant man; the terms of the title are mutually exclusive.
Continuing:
“’If some of your favorite fat influencers start doing paid campaigns for this stuff, it’s because they sold themselves into diet culture, period,’ she said in the video, using an expletive.
The new marketing campaigns have raised existential questions for plus-size internet personalities about what constitutes medical autonomy, self-love and self-acceptance.
“There’s a bit of a wasp’s nest going on in the body positivity community online where people have been flooded with invitations to partner with weight loss drug companies,” said Kara Richardson Whitely, the CEO of the GORGEous Agency.
Part of the GORGEous Agency’s business is connecting companies to body-positive influencers. Richardson Whitely said the uptick in partnership opportunities from injectable weight-loss companies has raised red flags for some clients.
“It’s an affront for people who have worked so hard to come to a place of body acceptance or body appreciation and debunk diet culture,” she said.”
I would modestly proposal that if an online marketing campaign promoting a sleazy weight-loss drug is enough to shatter one’s entire #bodypositive worldview, perhaps the problem is with the flimsy foundation, not the metaphorical gust of wind that blows the house over.
Related: Surprise, Surprise, Right in Your Eyes: ‘Miracle’ Weight Loss Drug Not So Miraculous
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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