The last time I reviewed an episode of Maintenance Phase (it was the CICO episodes) it was well-received here, so I thought I'd do another review. This one isn't as in-depth as it didn't quite raise my ire the way the CICO episodes did, but this one hits on a few points that I think are important to highlight.
The episode in question: "Glorifying Obesity" And Other Myths About Fat People (link goes to Apple Podcasts - sorry for that, they don't seem to have a neutral episode list on their website).
Their description:
This week, we're talking about Aubrey's new book, "'You Just Need To Lose Weight' and 19 Other Myths About Fat People." And we're yelling about Piers Morgan as a little treat.
In short, it's a publicity piece for Aubrey's new book, but they do actually talk about some things of substance rather than a fluff piece promoting the book, which I appreciate! Immediate positive points for doing that.
Overall, I think it was a good episode. Aubrey and Michael engage in a reasonably good discussion about some of the issues and concerns a lot of fat people experience, and they promote healthy discussion about these things. Most importantly, one of the best nuggets I took out of their discussion was suggesting that one look at the questions they ask and determine why they ask a specific question, to examine the biases they are applying to certain things.
That in itself is something everyone should be doing most of the time anyway, not just surrounding the discussion of weight loss and fat people (their emphasis in this episode is on "fat people" and not necessarily weight loss, so I'm just sticking with that term). In general, too, I think Aubrey does a good job illustrating that the "Fat Advocate" side of the Internet is probably a very loud, vocal minority, and that most of the time, fat people are reasonable, sensible people that are trying to go about their lives and not get ostracized for being fat. This to me is a reasonable expectation.
The sticking points though is when Michael jumps in occasionally and throws in things like "set weight point" (which is absolutely not a thing) and there's no refuting that. I wish I could have provided notes and time stamps, but I was shoveling snow while listening, so I'm doing my best here. Throughout the episode there were little things like that from both of the hosts where they throw shade at CICO, while promoting similar HAES talking points to the idea of a set weight point.
But since the focus of the episode is on Aubrey's book, I am not really surprised they didn't go in-depth into a lot of topics like that. The bulk of the discussion is about the very real side effects of how bigger people are treated in society and online. Aubrey refers to an incident earlier in her life when she posted a picture of her in a new bathing suit, and was immediately subjected to some ugly comments on her public LiveJournal page. Also discussed was the notion that people are "glorifying being fat by simply posting a picture online" - I agree that this isn't really what's going on - Lizzo wasn't glorifying being fat by showing up on a scoreboard at a basketball game, she was just attending a basketball game.
At the same time, there is that loud vocal minority out there subverting the HAES movement that ARE trying to glorify fatness that was not addressed at all in this episode. I doubt that there is much content in Aubrey's book about it.
I'm sorry for the lack of cohesion in this review, I am going off the top of my head rather than notes as I did the last time I reviewed an episode of their show.
If I were to rate this out of 5, I'd give them a 3.5. Definitely a better discussion than their CICO episodes, but missing the point on a few things. If this was your introduction to myths around weight loss and fat people, it's not the best starting point in terms of debunking these myths. Discussions about examining biases (like why some people think they need to be thin to succeed in their career - which is a real thing) was the strong point of this episode.
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/Mz4V8jF
No comments:
Post a Comment