Bond: Skinny jeans, fat delusions

Kids like to express themselves nowadays by becoming fans of things on Facebook. It’s… Kids like to express themselves nowadays by becoming fans of things on Facebook. It’s equally lame as wearing your opinion on a T-shirt, but unfortunately no one goes outside anymore.

Therefore, Facebook it is.

I have one fook, or friend on Facebook — I made up the word fook and am going to continue to unnecessarily mush words together from now on — who is a fan of more than 500 pages. I’m a fan of only three, one of them being the group “I hate when I’m a making a milkshake and boys just show up in my yard.”

You might have seen a Facebook acquaintance — oh, excuse me, a “fence,” become of a fan of the page “There should be a weight limit on leggings and skinny jeans.”

Pictures of the author of definatalie.com were submitted to the foup (Facebook group). The blogger responded with a post titled “You can’t bully me out of my skinny jeans,” along with a photo of herself in the jeans with the statement “Just so you know, I look amazing.”

I admire her confidence, but part of me is worried, and no, I’m not worried about the fashion choices of the overweight. If people want to dress unflatteringly for their figure, they have that right. I mean, look at the Olsen twins. My concern instead is that people are settling and accepting an unhealthy standard.

I’m not for humiliating people of a certain size. I’ve been there, and it sucks.Overweight people are human beings and don’t deserve to be degraded. But at the same time, the “It’s OK to be fat” movement has got to end.

It’s not that overweight people can’t be beautiful. I’m saying they can’t be healthy, and healthy doesn’t need to be a size 2 or even a size 8. It just has to be the size you are when you’re living a balanced, healthy and active lifestyle.

What makes matters worse is the new evidence that shows slightly overweight people might be better off than those with average weights. Women’s Health reports that people with overweight body mass index (BMI) scores have a lower risk of mortality, lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, anemia and osteoporosis.

The problem with this, besides the fact that confounding variables could exist, is that it depends on where the extra weight lies on the body — something that we don’t get to choose. Extra weight on the midsection can be deadly, while extra weight on the thighs or butt, not so much. Perhaps that’s why fat-bottomed, not fat-bellied, girls make the rockin’ world go round.

In addition, a high BMI score doesn’t always indicate a high percentage of body fat. BMI doesn’t distinguish between fat and muscle. For example, most professional sports athletes would be considered overweight on a BMI scale. This could explain at least some of the reasons people with a high BMI score appear healthier.

Even if the evidence for high BMI scores is accurate, it seems being overweight just allows you to switch from one disease to another. That’s because there are diseases that are definitely associated with a high percentage of body fat, like Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease. Because these types of diet-related diseases are linked to the Western lifestyle, they’ve picked up the name Western diseases, or I suppose I’ll have to call them “Weases.” Thanks to globalization, other countries around the world are adopting the Western diet and lifestyle, which is spreading the “Weases.” Instead of trying to combat them, we’ve decided to spread the ugly rumor that it’s OK to be fat.

Despite the gazillion dollar diet industry, two-thirds of Americans are still overweight according to cbsnews.com.

The reasoning is beyond the point of this column but can simply be associated with the fact that it is an industry and looking to profit, not to actually improve our health.

The fat acceptance movement is America’s laziness, like usual. Instead of actually working to solve the obesity epidemic, we’re looking for reasons we shouldn’t change, instead of doing the hard thing and, well, changing. That’s even lamer than becoming a fan of more than 500 pages on Facebook.

E-mail Lexie at lexluthorbond@gmail.com.