Reddit HATES fat people unless they are actively and visibly losing weight. In many respects it has become an echochamber for these ideas, but it is always interesting to see how they pull in social science concepts to make their arguments. Case in point this recent thread which argues that

fat privilege is being born in a place and time where food is so abundant that you can gorge while others starve, all the while complaining of the social inconveniences that you suffer as a consequence of your choices.

OK so it is true that having regular access to more calories than you need PLUS regular access to the internet likely indicates some kind of privilege. But fat is actually much more complex than this and does not necessarily point to wealth or other forms of privilege. I'd like to unpack the idea of fat a little taking a cue from Cultural Anthropology's recent pieces on the subject (see: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/681-fat-integration).

First, there is something sociologists and people who study nutritional issues often call the obesity-poverty complex or paradox. In short, often the cheapest foods available are high in simple carbs and sugars and low in fiber, protein, and other nutrients. Add to this the difficulty in cooking for families that are living below the poverty line due to time and resource constraints. Plus, low educational levels often mean people don't realize what they are eating is a poor diet. And just basic satiation issues - you get filled up on a $1.50 bag of potato chips in a way that a $5 salad doesn't. Lastly, food deserts (areas without easy access to grocery stores with competitive prices for fresh produce) create burdens on access.

Over and over again studies show that the highest rates of obesity and related issues like type 2 diabetes are correlated with poverty and education levels. This is not to say that rich or well educated people cannot be overweight. But rather, as a larger societal trend fat is actually a sign that someone lacks privilege rather than having an abundance of it. I'll add a few citations below for those who are interested and try to include some sources for this issue outside the US because it is not a uniquely American phenomenon. But I also want to quote this article because I think it does a good job summarizing what I'm trying to say:

As incomes drop, energy-dense foods that are nutrient poor become the best way to provide daily calories at an affordable cost. By contrast, nutrient-rich foods and high-quality diets not only cost more but are consumed by more affluent groups. This article discusses obesity as an economic phenomenon. Obesity is the toxic consequence of economic insecurity and a failing economic environment.

• Drewnowski, Adam. "Obesity, diets, and social inequalities." Nutrition reviews 67.suppl 1 (2009): S36-S39.

Second, fat is of course desirable in certain societies. Often brought up in these discussions is the claim that if men liked fat women then why are most porn stars skinny? They suggest that the few outliers that feature in specialized fetish porn do not negate the trend. Further, there is often a biological argument made for what men desire. However, I'd argue that they are looking at it from a very ethnocentric lens which biases their perspective to make them think their society = all humanity which = biology. But anthropologists know full well that body type ideals vary cross-culturally. For example, in Jamaica women should have broad bottoms and thick thighs. Skinny women indicate no one likes them. If you go to someone's home the first thing they should do if they like you is offer food. Sociable likeable women therefore have lots of social engagements, which means lots of eating, which means they are somewhat plump and rounded. Therefore, fat indicates a desirable mate and girls go to great lengths to change body shapes to reflect this even consuming chicken feed to plump up. In Niger we find a similar attitude towards fat women as beautiful and desirable. And in Belize women should be "Coca-Cola shaped" (like the glass bottles.) Fiji in the 1980s too. Really we could go on and on about cultural relativity of body shape ideals, waist to hip ratios, and attitudes towards fat. But it is relative and that's my point. As far as I know no society holds up the extremely obese body as a sexual ideal (though I could be wrong), but certainly have been societies that see bodies in the obese BMI as sexually ideal.

However, what we see is a global shift due to media and medicalization of the body towards a shaming of fatness that is interesting to examine. Becker's work in Fiji is a great example because they did a follow up study in the early 2000s that showed a significant change.

Over just one decade, Becker found young women had completely transformed their identities in relation to their bodies; following the introduction of television, young women adopted slimmer-body ideals tied to increased use of individual body presentation as an identity anchor and supplanting an identity tied to community, such as through nurturing others.

• Brewis, Alexandra A., et al. "Body norms and fat stigma in global perspective." Current Anthropology 52.2 (2011): 269-276.

In the same study which summarizes Becker's work, they conducted a cross-cultural survey and found that in 25 countries today only Tanzania seems to be neutral about the issue (worth noting that they did not do any research in Asia.) The impact of media and globalization is quite powerful in shifting our ideas about the body. The culturally normal and ideal body exists along a gradient of features and each society marks off slightly different areas of this for their own perspectives but they are changeable.

So what about the honor-shame dynamic? Well here is where someone tries to bring in Benedict's ideas about honor shame societies into fat:

I like this line of thinking. Perhaps that's why in many "shame" societies like in East Asia, there are fewer planets than in "guilt" societies like the New World. Everyone has enough self-awareness to feel shame and use it to better themselves. That's why we need more shitlords in the West, to force shame down the fatties' throats.

Obviously, as indicated in the work in Taiwan I cite below, there are obese people in Asia. In fact, obesity has been called an epidemic in Asia and China & India have the largest numbers of people with type 2 diabetes in the world (helped by their huge populations of course). Let me cite a recent article in the Lancet:

The proportions of people with type 2 diabetes and obesity have increased throughout Asia, and the rate of increase shows no sign of slowing. People in Asia tend to develop diabetes with a lesser degree of obesity at younger ages, suffer longer with complications of diabetes, and die sooner than people in other regions. Childhood obesity has increased substantially and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has now reached epidemic levels in Asia....The pronounced differences in the Asian population include the high proportion of body fat and prominent abdominal obesity in Asian people compared with those of European origin with similar BMI values.

• Yoon, Kun-Ho, et al. "Epidemic obesity and type 2 diabetes in Asia." The Lancet 368.9548 (2006): 1681-1688.

Now there are less obese people per capita but it is still an epidemic because people in these regions tend to genetically have more difficulty with insulin resistance and therefore can develop type 2 diabetes at lower BMIs because of the quote above. But what about a breakdown? In the US 34% are overweight, in Thailand 28.3% are, in Korea 27.3 are, and in China 25% are overweight. Now way more are obese in the US but the issue of obesity is growing in Asia and their "shame" culture doesn't seem to be doing much to stop it.

But to a larger point honor-shame is not about shaming individuals. It is about a collectively held honor and shaming the individual shames the entire group. So you bear the burden of not just your own honor being tarnished but that of your entire clan (or whatever unit is appropriate). Whether fat is stigmatized depends on your cultural perspective. In medieval Japan it was stigmatized as evidence of a karmic moral failing. In contrast, in medieval China numerous writings about the female body and health indicate medications to help the woman become fat and plump and thereby healthy and fertile. Asia is not one culturally homogenous space. But this comment is also in reference to an earlier one about how you should feel shame about being fat. What they are really talking about is guilt in the Western sense. You should feel guilt for being fat. Unless they are trying to argue that an entire family line should be ostracized for having a fat member.

Lastly, shaming in the more vernacular use of the term does not make people lose weight. In fact, it does just the opposite according to studies on the issue. If these groups actually cared about changing the average BMI in America they wouldn't participate in such subs. See:

• Tomiyama, A. Janet, and Traci Mann. "If shaming reduced obesity, there would be no fat people." Hastings Center Report 43.3 (2013): 4-5.

• Jackson, Sarah E., Rebecca J. Beeken, and Jane Wardle. "Perceived weight discrimination and changes in weight, waist circumference, and weight status." Obesity 22.12 (2014): 2485-2488.

Fat Beauty or Shame is Culturally Relative

• Sobo, E. 1994. The sweetness of fat: health, procreation, and sociability in rural Jamaica. In Many mirrors: body image and social meaning. N. Sault, ed. Pp. 132–154. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

• Popenoe, R. 2004. Feeding desire: fatness, beauty, and sexuality among a Saharan people. London: Routledge.

• Anderson-Fye, E. P. 2004. A “Coca-Cola” shape: cultural change, body image, and eating disorders in San Andrés, Belize. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28(4):561–595.

• Becker, A. E. 1995. Body, self, and society: the view from Fiji. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

• Stunkard, Albert J., W. R. LaFleur, and Thomas A. Wadden. "Stigmatization of obesity in medieval times: Asia and Europe." International Journal of Obesity 22 (1998): 1141-1144.

• Wilms, Sabine. "The female body in medieval China. A translation and interpretation of the" Women's Recipes" in Sun Simiao's" Beiji qianjinyaofang"." (2002).

Hunger Obesity Paradox:

• Burns, Cate. "A review of the literature describing the link between poverty, food insecurity and obesity with specific reference to Australia." Melbourne: Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (2004).

• Wen, Tzai-Hung, Duan-Rung Chen, and Meng-Ju Tsai. "Identifying geographical variations in poverty-obesity relationships: empirical evidence from Taiwan." Geospatial health 4.2 (2010): 257-265.

• Tanumihardjo, Sherry A., et al. "Poverty, obesity, and malnutrition: an international perspective recognizing the paradox." Journal of the American Dietetic Association 107.11 (2007): 1966-1972.