'Fat Activists' Have Set Their Sights on a New Enemy: Drugs That Help Them NOT Be Fat

Steve Christo - Corbis. Getty Images.

Dear readers, please allow me to introduce you to acclaimed "Fat Activist" Tigress Osborn:

Barstool? Tigress. Tigress? Barstool. I'd like you two to get better acquainted. 

She has apparently been doing some stellar on behalf of her fellow Americans who are plagued by the health crisis that is obesity, a scourge which has reached pandemic proportions in our once-great nation:

Whoops. Pardon me. Strike that. My bad. 

She's with NAAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Which it seems isn't so much dedicated to making people healthier, as much as it's invested in making being super unhealthy more (to use their own word) acceptable. 

Which sounds nice and all. Generally speaking, acceptance of your fellow human beings is a noble, idealistic goal to have. At least it is when the thing you're accepting is acceptable. When it's something unacceptable like, say, unhealthy behavior that is slowly killing someone, we probably ought to rethink the whole acceptability of it. To be loving and respectful in our approach. To treat them with the (skim) milk of human kindness. But at the same time to acknowledge that they're being self-destructive. I mean, there's no one advocating for chain smokers or Russian Roulette enthusiasts. I've yet to see the X account of an organization called the National Association to Advance Tide Pod Eating Acceptance.

But nevertheless, Tigress Osborn and NAAFA must truly care about people they allege to support, correct? If there was a way to reduce obesity, they'd clearly be in favor of it. After all, if there's no Fat to Accept, then their work here is done. Problem solved, right? 

Wrong, apparently. What they have just come out with is a policy where they're against the most popular treatment among the very people they claim to support:

Source (paywall) -  In the world of fat activism, the “O-words”—overweight and obesity—are expressly verboten. That’s because advocates and “fat studies” scholars want to destigmatize and accommodate fatness—their preferred term—and push back against the view that overweight or obese people are somehow abnormal or diseased. 

Now a third problematic O-word has emerged: Ozempic.

From the perspective of these activists and scholars … to resist a weekly home injection? That can really test peoples’ sympathy.

“Ozempic is 100% making things worse for us,” said Tigress Osborn. …"It’s created an even louder public narrative that you could just solve all your problems by taking this magical drug, and if you don’t take it, well then, you deserve what you get.” …

Patients who lose weight with GLP-1s regularly see their health markers for prediabetes and hypertension improve. They often suffer less from sleep apnea, which allows them to feel better rested and elevates their mood. This can eliminate the need for antidepressants, which can themselves cause weight gain.

Over the past 60 years, obesity rates have tripled in the U.S. due in part to more sedentary lifestyles and changes in diet, including more calorie-dense ultraprocessed foods. …

One side believes it can help people overcome obesity; the other wants to shift the focus from changing their bodies to helping them live in them. 

“People think that if everyone can just take this expensive, dangerous drug, we can get rid of fat people,” said Marilyn Wann, 58, a longtime fat activist in the Bay Area. … "It just creates more work for fat activists.”

Certain facts are indisputable. Four in 10 adults in the U.S. have a body-mass index or BMI over 30. The financial costs are significant. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently estimated that obesity is associated with approximately $385 billion in health spending in 2024. …

These costs correspond with obesity’s significant health consequences, which include osteoarthritis, hyperlipidemia and other chronic diseases. Obesity-related complications include incontinence, asthma, psoriasis, reflux and kidney disease. According to a 2023 paper in the journal Nature, roughly 8% of all medical expenditures in the U.S. are associated with the treatment of obesity.

Fat activists and scholars argue that a causal relationship between obesity and its associated maladies has yet to be definitively established, and that obesity itself is not a disease. In their view, it is inaccurate and unhelpful to stigmatize overweight people as inherently ill. Fat people, they point out, can be just as healthy as thin people. …

Obesity doctors see rejecting the disease framework as counterproductive. “I don’t think we should be using the argument that we don’t know the etiology of obesity to say that it’s not a disease,” said Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “We have incredibly good data showing that excess fat tissue causes inflammation, heart disease and diabetes.” She bristles at efforts to claim that obesity doesn’t raise the risk for complications: “that is simply not the case.” 

It comes down to who you're going to believe. All the medical and financial data about the rise in morbid obesity and the massive costs associated with keeping the fatties alive? Or the "fat activists" saying they're just being stigmatized? Are you going to listen to the co-director of a prestigious hospital department dedicated to making the chubs healthier who says excess weight is bad for you? Or "fat scholars" telling you to forget everything the research tells us and ignore common sense? 

Advertisement

I suppose you could just go by what you're eyes tell you. The next time you're at a nursing home visiting grandma, you can look around, count all the 80-year-olds with a BMI over 30. And if it's a non-zero number, you can make a case that Tigress knows her stuff. If not, I suggest we - to use an expression that went out of favor about five years ago - "follow the science." 

If the "fat scholars" want to question a magical shot that makes all the celebrities look 50 pounds lighter and 20 years younger, that's a good, healthy debate to have. But arguing against an injection that makes them look like that is akin to the American Cancer Society coming out against chemotherapy or the Heart Association trying to ban stints and bypass surgeries. 

Still, this weight loss medicine is now the NAAFA's biggest nemesis since stairs:

Well guess what? Since we're all splitting the healthcare cost tab here, the rest of us get a say as well. It's not the people playing 18 holes every weekend, running the occasional 5K or just taking long walks in the dog park who are racking up all the bills with their osteoarthritis, hyperlipidemia, incontinence, asthma, psoriasis, reflux and kidney disease. That's you, NAAFA tubbies. Put down the spoon and the pint of Chubby Hubby and we can have an adult conversation about "acceptance." It's up to you how this discussion goes. And personally, I'd recommend you lose the weight the way responsible human have been doing it since time first began. But we both know which option most people would rather choose:

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get to the gym.