Millennials called out Senior scientists for body shaming at Fred Med’s Annual Conference on Monetizing Obesity. Below is the transcript of TikTok videos made by a GenY attendee at the conference for the benefit of Boomers who are not yet on the app.
Part 1 Destiny411
Check Your Privilege, Oldsters! #fatshaming #fatphobia #boomerbodyshamers OK, I was just at Fred Med’s Annual Conference on Monetizing Obesity. Fine, there is money to be made off diets and I understand why Fred Med wants to get a big supersized portion of it. Yum. I like that no one was pretending diets or diet products make you thin. It is a university after all, so everyone knows the research shows diets don’t work and often make you gain weight over time. Not going to lie, I also enjoyed the freebie chemical-y so-called diet bars laced with obesogens and hidden calories handed out at every talk. But as pretty much the youngest graduate student there, I was shocked by how much the Boomers engaged in epic body shaming in the form of snide comments, “jokes,” eyerolls, and other micro and macro aggressions. Particularly gross since these are the same Boomers who have benefitted from the Obesity Industry! Boomers, you believe that your thinness is a virtue. You believe that large people are large due to their own poor choices and or moral failures. What you need to understand is that obesity is a social, historical and environmental phenomenon. You were very, very lucky to grow up without contaminated food, the environmental obesogenic poisons, and the epigenetic damage to metabolism that younger generations are suffering from. Your thinness is a reflection of your privilege. Check your privilege at the door to the Cheesecake Factory you old folks love so much. This is going to have to be a four-parter. Check for Part 2.
Part 2 Destiny411
OK Boomers Who Are Proud of Being Thin, Here is What You Need to Know *With Footnotes In the Comments to Respect Your Generational Culture*
- You grew up in a time before our food supply and the environment was compromised by Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) which damage metabolism and cause obesity.1 But your stock portfolios and retirement plans have benefited from those chemicals.
- You do not have the transgenerational epigenetic damage from EDCs that cause obesity. Younger generations are carrying heavy genetic damage you don’t have. We are literally weighed down by the baggage of previous generations.2
- The nutritional value of the food that you ate growing up was statistically better than the food kids eat today3 and it was not contaminated by obesogens including antibiotics. Yes, things were better in your day when your walk to school was uphill both ways.
- You most likely grew up in a time when it was still possible for someone to be home to make you wholesome food. Restaurant meals have dramatically more calories and sodium.4 Few families can afford someone to be home to cook healthy food anymore, everyone has to be busy working for The Man. And The Man is YOU, Boomers.
- You grew up in a time before the architecture of cities was designed to deliver the greatest amount of unhealthy food to the highest number of people.5
- You grew up in a time before school lunches were hijacked by Big Food and began destroying kids’ health.6
Part 3 Destiny411
Hello White Boomers Who Feel Superior for Being Thin This Is What You Need To Know Today
- You grew up in a world where beauty standards and BMI were tied to the appearance of whiteness.7 Know that the cult of thinness originates in the racist ideas of the slave trade. Don’t take it from me, go read: Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings.
- You most likely did not grow up in a segregated, redlined neighborhood with no access to fresh food.8
- You most likely did not grow up in a neighborhood ravaged by environmental racism that poisoned your body with our worst industrial pollutants.9
- As a white Boomer, you are less likely to have experienced the trauma of poverty that is linked to obesity than a BIPOC person, or the generations of genetic damage it can cause.10
- You did not experience the damage to your health caused by racism.11
Part 4 Destiny411
Greetings All Fat Shamers, Listen Up!
- You have no idea why someone is large. Are they taking antidepressants or any of the other many drugs that cause obesity?12 None of your business.
- Is that large person you are making fun of a victim of sexual abuse? A huge number of people with obesity were sexually abused. Back the hell off!13
- Some people are genetically determined to weigh more than the average. This has been true throughout human history. Diversity in human groups aids in group survival.14
- If your mother over-ate while you were in the womb you are predisposed to obesity. Are we baby-blaming now?15
- If your parents and grandparents are large, you are predisposed to be large. Disadvantaged groups are impacted more with each generation. There is a lot of history here you are choosing to ignore.16
- Children who were born by C-section or formula-fed are more likely to be large. No amount of “good old-fashioned restraint” changes that risk factor, so please keep your powdered skim milk to yourself.17, 18
- People with hypothyroidism or leptin resistance are more likely to be large. Do you blame them for these conditions the way you blame them for not fitting into the tiny airplane seat next to you?19
- Your belief in dieting is the result of an industry-funded disinformation campaign. In reality, as much as 97 percent of dieters regain weight within three years.20
Comments Have Been Closed by SchoolNewsToday Editor-in-Chief
**Starred Comment**
BoomerBabe1948 Check YOUR privilege, Millennials! As an aging Boomer, I grew up under the patriarchal surveillance state of diet culture. The emotional abuse I suffered at the hands of the racist diet industry led to an eating disorder that almost took my life. Back in our day (which you seem to think was many generations and millennia ago) we did not have #bodypositive or celebratory images of large sexy women in underwear looming over Times Square. Women were expected to live life in brutally constraining garments to tie down their fatty bodies and hide under a thick, sticky, disgusting mask of makeup. And yes, that makeup was full of carcinogens and neurotoxic lead! In fact, everything we ate, touched or breathed had lead in it back in the day. You think us Boomers are crazy? How about acknowledging we have brain damage from environmental pollutants1 and accepting our “neurodiversity” as you Millenials call it?! Back in those lead-fueled days, it was entirely normal for women and girls to be starved in the name of an unattainable beauty ideal. Women did not even eat in front of men because it was unseemly to have basic needs. There were protests like the book Fat Is A Feminist Issue in 1978. By today’s standards, that book is criminally fat-shaming. And don’t forget that feminists were discredited for being ugly…and fat! In our time, girls and women were seen as disposable. When you aged out of the beauty standard of petite, fragile white girlishness you were nothing. There was no Venessa Williams of Simone Biles modeling strength and longevity. Millennials have classrooms plastered with posters telling them You Are Enough! You can eat in public. When you are body shamed, you take to your phones and fight back. The very fact that so many of you are obese by the standards of our generation represents freedom you have and we did not. Imagine a time long, long ago, when we did not have the privileges you enjoy. Check your privilege at the door of the Cheesecake Factory. We see you there, too.
You Should Also Take A Look At: Racism Is A Medical Error