Oh wait, you consider young obese women to be part of the Coalition of the Ascendant so they can propagate whatever harmful disinformation they like and make mad stacks of cash off telling people how to commit slow-motion suicide.
These four social media influencers were swept up by a movement that claims obesity is perfectly healthy... The tragic truth is they have all died under the age of 45
Last week MoS investigated America's Fat Pride culture war 'battleground'
Influencers such as 31-stone Brittany Sauer have tragically lost their lives
By Jo Macfarlane
The final videos posted to Brittany Sauer's TikTok page make for upsetting viewing. Speaking tearfully to the camera, the 31-stone social media star, who often posted defiantly 'body-positive' content about how 'hot' she felt in certain outfits, admitted with shocking candour that she had 'ruined her life' with food and binge eating.
And it had left her, aged just 28, full of regrets.
Brittany had been a virtual prisoner in her own home for two years, dealing with type 2 diabetes and repeated bouts of the skin infection cellulitis which had caused a growth in her pelvis weighing more than two stone. She had even been forced to ask someone else to cut her toenails, as it left her 'too breathless'.
Yet she hoped, desperately, that it wasn't too late to save herself. 'I'm scared I'm going to end up in a bad place that my body can't recover from,' she said to her half-a-million TikTok followers. 'I want you to know it's not worth it -- food isn't worth your life.'
Within a week of posting the film last December, Brittany was dead.
Her death turns a spotlight on the controversial body positivity and 'fat acceptance' movements that have seduced Brittany and millions of vulnerable young people like her.
The past decade has seen extraordinary momentum building around a central argument that being obese doesn't have to mean unhealthy. In other words, you can be fat and fit.
Branded Health At Every Size, or HAES, the philosophy has, at its heart, laudable goals. It aims to counter the multi-billion-dollar diet industry -- which has a poor record when it comes to long-term, sustainable weight loss -- and act as an antidote to the stigma encountered by people struggling with their weight....
The US edition of Cosmopolitan magazine was criticised for running covers featuring plus-size women in yoga poses under the headline: 'This is healthy.' As part of a drive to challenge beauty stereotypes, it also featured US plus-size model Tess Holliday -- who at 5ft 3in and 300lb has a BMI of 53, more than double the healthy range -- a decision condemned 'as dangerous and misguided'.
Self-styled 'fat activists', meanwhile, not only promote larger bodies as healthy but reject decades of science which prove the dangers of excess body fat, encouraging devotees to ignore doctors who recommend they lose weight....
One organisation, HAES UK, described weight-loss surgery as 'mutilating body parts' and 'not compatible with loving your body as it is'. And those who criticise it are labelled 'fat-phobic' or 'anti-woke'.
Sucking out excess fat is mutilating your body but lopping off your penis or breasts is just "affirming who you really are."
Little wonder that experts have described the movement as a 'cult'. Some say this so-called 'body positive' approach is also putting vulnerable young people at risk by failing to point out the unpalatable scientific truth: that obesity dramatically increases the risk of a wide range of chronic and life-limiting diseases.
In some cases, they say, it could prove attractive to those with binge eating disorders, like US-born Brittany. After all, she is not the only one to lose her life.
The article lists two other fat influencers who died very young.
And then:
A well-known activist, professor of 'fat studies' Dr Cat Pausé, who questioned the links between weight and health, lost her life aged 42. Based at Massey University in New Zealand, she also presented a 'fat positive' radio show.
She had said: 'The science isn't quite as clear cut as we'd like to believe and there's not really quite a consensus yet about the relationship between weight and health.
'Obese people, and even morbidly obese people, have just as good health or better health than someone in the normal weight range.' She died in March 2022 from causes which have not been made public.
...
Fat Pride has become a central new battle ground in America's culture war[.]
Ms Le Brocq [an obesity researcher] says her encounters with activists have been 'quite cultish -- everyone seems to think and speak the same way, as if they've got a handbook to recite from', adding. 'There's this idea that if you're big you should stay that way, whatever the cost.'
For obesity specialist Professor Naveed Sattar, from the University of Glasgow, the science around health and obesity is irrefutable.
'Ample evidence shows obesity can promote or accelerate over 200 diseases, such as diabetes, strokes, many cancers, diseases that impact movement such as arthritis, and mental health,' he says.
...
Dr Asher Larmie, a GP based in Hertfordshire and one of the UK's more public proponents of HAES, believes doctors should not recommend weight loss.
Posting to his 14,000 followers on Instagram as @thefatdoctor, he uses slogans such as 'fat and thriving' and 'you do not need to lose weight to improve your health'. However, Dr Larmie does concede that 'people who are fat are more likely to have certain conditions', although he says the evidence does not prove excess fat is the cause.
He explains: 'What is more important in driving illness is chronic stress, the impact of repeated dieting, and weight stigma and discrimination which means fat people receive far poorer care.
Everything but the fat. It's not the fat that drives obesity related diseases -- it's the stress of society shaming people for being fat, and the metabolic stress of dieting.
Oh, and fat people are discriminated against (doctors tell them they should lose weight!) so the fact they get sick and die young is really just due to outdated ideas held by the White Supremacist medical industry.
...
Dr Larmie's approach is not to mention weight or diets at all, and instead find out what might improve an individual's overall wellbeing.
'I find what activity makes them happy and ask them to incorporate more of it in their daily lives, whether that's walking on the beach, gardening or cleaning the house. If they enjoy it, it's sustainable and will keep them moving in the longer term. I'll look at someone's daily diet and work out ways of eating better, but without restrictions.
What makes fat people happy is often overeating. Should they do more of that, "Doctor"?
One thing the HAES cultists do is vigorously monitor their fellow cultists' behavior and shame and bully them if they become non-HAES compliant. Some girls in these social media groups, and some "fat acceptance" influencers, announce that they've been feeling unwell and so they're going to try to shed a bit of weight. Not a lot; few of the people in the "fat acceptance" movement want to be thin (or will admit it, if they do).
These girls are immediately #Cancelled by the cultists and attacked with as much body-shaming harshness as any fat person has received for being fat.
They're always claiming they're "healthy," and the proof they offer for that is that these very obese girls have high hip and leg flexibility. Some can even do splits.
And they go: "Look, I'm healthy."
Of course, most women have high hip and leg flexibility and most can do a split if they work at it for a few months. So this doesn't prove they're healthy; it merely proves they are biological women with women's open-ish hip attachments.
It would be like obese guys saying "Look, I'm healthy, I can bench press 100 pounds." Uh, yes. Virtually anyone can, if not just automatically with no training, then in three or four weeks, tops.
But you know -- healthy at any size.