This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! In the column “The Ethicist” in the New York Times, a letter writer was concerned that his friend was fat and, as she had asked him not to talk about her weight, he wanted to know if he should go behind her back to talk with her children.
Wow, the hypocrisy is just dripping off of "The Ethicist." Their use of that moniker is highly unethical, and, frankly, disgusting. They need to stop writing this column now. Thank you so much for calling out this behavior!
Thank you so much for this series! The response to the first letter was cringeworthy enough. I couldn’t believe the hypocrisy with the answer to the second letter! Thank you for being here to call out this BS!
Thank you! I'm really grateful to have found your newsletter--it's helped me to critically examine insidious weight loss culture in a way I never would have actively noticed before subscribing.
#boundariesaresexy. It took me until I turned 49 to learn this lesson. I hope this person sets firm boundaries before her trip. I had a VP once tell me when he and friends went on vacation they made a rule "no discussion about ex wives or their surgeries/aches/pains/bowel movements" Great idea!
I found this part the most problematic for me: “your own various habits of consumption are making similar contributions”. I mean, stay RELEVANT buddy.
If anyone’s asking me, I refuse to compliment people on “weight loss” as I will also refuse to comment when those same people most likely regain the lost weight and then some. As is the case with every form of body size manipulation.
I appreciate how challenging it will be for the letter writer to be immersed in diet culture when she visits her friends. Unfortunately that continues to be the norm for those of us with XX chromosomes.
Boundaries boundaries boundaries.
And this “ethicist” needs to find a new job. Perhaps “sitting on his high horse” is a career path for him to consider instead?
I was surprised to find with this series that the NYT Ethicist is Kwame Anthony Appiah. I have a PhD focused on critiquing western involvement in economic development in Africa and I’ve read two of his books. He has thoughtful things to say on cosmopolitanism and has in the past been a gentle writer with a lot of compassion and humility. In catching up on his career, I’m seeing some other critiques of him that indicate that some of that compassion and humility may have faded. I am appalled that he wrote these columns. It continues to be difficult to situate these columns with his prior work but it does demonstrate how pervasive and unexamined anti-fat bias is.
Wow, the hypocrisy is just dripping off of "The Ethicist." Their use of that moniker is highly unethical, and, frankly, disgusting. They need to stop writing this column now. Thank you so much for calling out this behavior!
Thank you so much for this series! The response to the first letter was cringeworthy enough. I couldn’t believe the hypocrisy with the answer to the second letter! Thank you for being here to call out this BS!
Thank you! I'm really grateful to have found your newsletter--it's helped me to critically examine insidious weight loss culture in a way I never would have actively noticed before subscribing.
#boundariesaresexy. It took me until I turned 49 to learn this lesson. I hope this person sets firm boundaries before her trip. I had a VP once tell me when he and friends went on vacation they made a rule "no discussion about ex wives or their surgeries/aches/pains/bowel movements" Great idea!
I found this part the most problematic for me: “your own various habits of consumption are making similar contributions”. I mean, stay RELEVANT buddy.
If anyone’s asking me, I refuse to compliment people on “weight loss” as I will also refuse to comment when those same people most likely regain the lost weight and then some. As is the case with every form of body size manipulation.
I appreciate how challenging it will be for the letter writer to be immersed in diet culture when she visits her friends. Unfortunately that continues to be the norm for those of us with XX chromosomes.
Boundaries boundaries boundaries.
And this “ethicist” needs to find a new job. Perhaps “sitting on his high horse” is a career path for him to consider instead?
I was surprised to find with this series that the NYT Ethicist is Kwame Anthony Appiah. I have a PhD focused on critiquing western involvement in economic development in Africa and I’ve read two of his books. He has thoughtful things to say on cosmopolitanism and has in the past been a gentle writer with a lot of compassion and humility. In catching up on his career, I’m seeing some other critiques of him that indicate that some of that compassion and humility may have faded. I am appalled that he wrote these columns. It continues to be difficult to situate these columns with his prior work but it does demonstrate how pervasive and unexamined anti-fat bias is.