Fatcon is Trying to Turn Being Overweight into a Virtue

You shouldn't celebrate being overweight

We live in a world where many people no longer have a deep knowledge of topics, but mistakenly think they’re well-informed because they’ve seen a meme, two tweets, and a heavily biased article about a topic. This leads to a lot of heavily skewed, Manichean, black-and-white thinking. Now, combine that with the fact that people have learned that in a vast, global marketplace with an infinite number of opinions in it, there is a lot of marketing value in moving to the extremes. This can lead to a lot of ludicrous positions being normalized.

We can certainly see this whole process playing out with overweight Americans.

On one end of that extreme spectrum, there are people who’re into “fat shaming.” They will tell you they’re trying “help” fat people, but of course, that’s bullsh*t. These people almost always seem to be malevolent, insecure, or have low self-esteem and they seem to be desperately trying to make themselves feel better and get attention by putting other people down in an area they have dialed in.    

The other side of the extreme? That would be “Fatcon.”

What is Fatcon?

Temple University plans to host a conference "for fat people, by fat people" this fall.

Philly FatCon will run from October 28-29. Philadelphia's first-ever fat-focused conference will host “fat speakers, influencers, performers” and more.

The keynote speaker, Sonalee Rashatwar, a.k.a. The Fat Sex Therapist, defines “thinness as a white supremacist beauty ideal” and focuses on offering “fat positive sexual healthcare” to patients.

Rashatwar has previously hosted workshops on topics such as “Understanding the White Supremacist Origins of Fatphobia” and “the intersection of fatness and gender on queer bodies” as stated online.

The conference organizers, Adrinanne Ray, Kenyetta Harris, and Donelle Jaggman, each own plus-size clothing or lingerie stores in the Philadelphia area. “This is such a dream!” Ray posted to Instagram, “to have a space for the fat community where fatphobia doesn’t exist.”

The mission of Philly FatCon is to guide individuals through “this fatphobic world and society in a different way,” co-organizer Ray said, and to acknowledge heavy people who may “often [be] overlooked because of their size."

First of all, Sonalee Rashatwar is absolutely out of her mind. This is a woman who has compared children dieting to “sexual assault,” blamed society’s “sex negativity” for Bill Cosby raping women and has essentially said fitness trainers are Nazis. There cannot be a lot of professional therapists on earth who have less business treating patients for ANYTHING than she does… and that is the KEYNOTE speaker for this event.

You might be thinking, “Well, maybe not all of it is that crazy. Maybe the rest of it is just “Don’t hate yourself for being overweight, body positivity.”

Well, looking at their Instagram page, some of it definitely seems to fall into that category and there’s nothing wrong with that. Absolutely no one should hate themselves for being overweight: 

If the message started and even finished here, saying something akin to, “It is hard to lose weight and whether you succeed, fail at it, or decide not to do it at all, you shouldn’t hate yourself,” that would be a respectable message. However, we don’t do sane, respectable messages in America anymore. We go to extremes and what’s the equivalent of “fat shaming” if you go to an extreme on the other side? It’s something akin to, “Being overweight isn’t bad for you at all. To the contrary, it should be celebrated!”

The way this is done can seem innocuous at first. For example…

Fatphobia? No one wants to be afraid of fat people, right? Except, this is the same thing liberals always do. They take a reasonable phrase and then stretch the meaning of it to insane lengths. This excerpt, from an article at CNET, gives you a good idea of what people like this mean when they say, “Fatphobia”:

Fatphobia is the fear and hatred of body fat, also called weight stigma, sizeism, or antifat bias. In the US, it's such a constant force that it's easy to forget that it's even there. It's present in almost every sphere of public life: waiting room chairs that only fit thinner people and clothing stores that only stock up to a certain size. We see it in harmful jokes about people with larger bodies on TV, in ad copy for gyms and diet programs, and in unhelpful comments at the doctor's office about how losing weight is the answer to any number of health concerns. Research shows that fat people (a reclaimed term) face harmful discrimination at work, in dating, and in health care.

Look at what we’re talking about here. All clothing stores need to carry the largest sizes of clothing anyone could wear, gyms and diet programs shouldn’t imply it’s good to lose weight, doctors should stop telling people the undeniable truth, which is that being overweight is bad for your health and by the end we’re even essentially moving towards, “Men preferring women that are in shape is discrimination.”

Of course, the more you get into it, the worse the messaging gets:

This is a horrible message to give to ANYONE, including people that aren’t overweight, because so much of the food available in the supermarket is terrible for you. Not only can the food you eat add on pounds, but it is also inarguable that it can dramatically increase your chances of having a heart attack or type 2 diabetes. Right now, I know people that have raging, out-of-control type 2 diabetes that could conceivably kill them. Is there anyone in their right mind that thinks, “Eat whatever the hell you want!” is a good message to send to that person?

Now, look at this one:

Here we have a deluded Christian woman trying to convince people that gluttony doesn’t have anything to do with “overeating” or “eating whatever you want.” Of course, that’s exactly what gluttony is and the reason she’s trying to redefine it is that she wants to be a glutton, but wants to change the meaning of the word so she won’t feel back about her gluttony.

How about this?

Everything is not about you, Karen. In fact, if you were so inclined, you could fairly call this, “health shaming.”

This whole thing is dysfunctional in so many ways. It encourages people to do things that are going to harm their health. It could even fairly be called “anti-healthy” or “anti-fitness.” It’s also a broken way of thinking that encourages people to try to ignore reality, pretend to be victims, and lean into the decline. Fatcon is essentially trying to profit off of being a little devil on people’s shoulders going, “It sure is hard to lose weight! Not only should you give up on it, it’s BETTER if you give up on it! Go eat that pizza! Have that ice cream! Go grab some Twinkies and film yourself eating them for TikTok! You tell people that eating 5 double-cheeseburgers on air is actually striking a blow against ‘fatphobia!’ Yeah, it’ll be empowering!”

Maybe the most disgusting thing about this is that it’s just the latest way liberals have of trying to turn people against each other. Oh, you’re against gay marriage? Well, it must be because you hate gay Americans! You’re not going to disrespect the flag and don’t want to defund the police? Well, you must hate black Americans! You don’t think fitness is for Nazis and you think it’s actually unhealthy to be overweight? Well, then you have to hate fat people!

It’s not about hating anyone or tearing them down, it’s about the truth. Don’t take people that are struggling with their weight and lie to them. That’s not helping people. That’s not doing the right thing. Given the trouble we have with obesity in this country, we’re obviously doing a lot of things wrong systemically, but convincing people to celebrate being overweight for money, clicks, and clout is not the way to address it.

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