Website Defines “Happy” As “Weight Loss”
If you’ve never heard of Happy News, it’s a website devoted to news and lifestyle stories that are meant to be “always positive.” But an anonymous tipster wrote in and pointed out that often on the site, weight loss is equated to “happy,” and fatness is equated to “unhappy.”
Curious, I did a couple of searches myself. I found out weight loss can make you happier if you have hot flashes, and I found stories about how you will be less fat and thus more happy if you eat eggs and get surgery and drink apple cider vinegar and go to the mountains (even though you’ll gain the weight back in a month, of course—yes, the article really admits that). There’s even an article about how weight-loss patches “really work.” I’m not kidding.
I did not find any stories that could be remotely classified as fat positive, with one exception. The link our tipster sent in was this one, an article that contained the tidbit that low social interaction is “twice as harmful as obesity.” Of course this isn’t fat positive on the surface, but I could make a happy headline for that, which would read: Your Friends Are Twice As Important As Your Fat. That’s pretty happy, right?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Diet Talk Warning, Fatism, Media, Weight Loss, WLS
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That does my head in even more than an article in Real Simple for an online plus size clothing outlet that said, in part “So if you wear a size 12 or larger, check it out.”
12? The hell?
*Marilyn Monroe* was a size twelve!
Well in that case, maybe the outlet they were promoting started their sizing at 12? That’s the only way that would make sense to me.
Except a “woman’s” size 12 and a “misses” size 12 are not the same, so most women who identify as wearing a size 12 because they’re familiar with misses sizing will be confused when they try on a 12 from somewhere like Igigi. The whole system is just very strange to me.
As so many of your glorious readers-I am plus sized and have searched endlessly online for clothes and cannot even tell you how many times retails stores have started their xl sizes at 14/16 (bizarre), and how many make a size their largest size 12(Lululemon anyone?). Very frustrating! I haven’t been a size twelve since I was twelve. ‘Nuff said. Anyways, thanks again for bringing this site to the forefront-well done!
I doubt they mentioned low social interaction, is most likely a result of a society that discriminates against fat people.
Unless you’re an introvert! Then you’re just more screwed.