College Clobbers Anti-Fatness 'Oppression' While the 'Ableist' Practice of Grading Gets Lipoed

Is the future full of Americans who watch their weight? Fat chance -- a southwestern college is poised to prevent it.

For Spring 2024, the University of New Mexico (UNM) is offering a three-credit course on a societal scourge. The ailment: anti-fatness. Evidently, the heavy situation is one of social construction. From the official description, courtesy of Campus Reform:

Welcome to...Introduction to Fat Studies! This course will consider the structural forces that construct fatness as problematic -- as diseased, gross, dirty, lazy, gluttonous, and other negative characteristics -- thereby reinforcing anti-fatness.

Did white people invent our anti-fat fallacy? It seems so:

We will explore the historical development of anti-fatness and its roots in colonialism, (and) discover the ways in which capitalism benefits from anti-fatness...

How might capitalism -- a system based on a free-market economy in which an individual may start his or her own business -- benefit from fatphobia? Perhaps such would involve enterprises aiding in weight loss. Curiously, loads of companies profit off fatness -- for instance, every one of them related to eating. Might the university simply not know the definition of "capitalism"? Bite your tongue.

And trust the experts: UNM isn't only scholarly; it's woke -- so much that it trendily pluralizes words in error...

[The course will] study the impacts anti-fatness has on fat people (and people of all sizes!), and investigate how anti-fatness intersects with other forms of oppression.

Speaking of scholarship:

To reflect the interdisciplinary nature of fat studies, this course will utilize articles, book chapters, online articles, poetry, videos, podcasts, and more from a variety of fields...

Included areas: women and gender studies, black studies, and postcolonial studies.

The class will promote "body positivity" -- that is, "Health at Every Size." Furthermore, it'll teach young adults about "fat liberationist movements and activism."

UNM is admirably keeping with the times; as of late, fatness has seen a whale of advocacy. Society's practically bursting at the seams:

Professor Fights for the 'Freedom of Fat Bodies'

Size Matters: Philly Will Welcome Tons of Attendees to Its First 'FatCon'

Viral Video Rips the Racist Roots of 'Fatphobia'

'Health at Every Size' Group Razes the 'Racism and Healthism' of Physicians Fighting Obesity

Medical School Hosts Seminar on 'Body Terrorism' Against 'Fat LGBTQ+ People'

Plus-Size Model and Fat-Acceptance Activist Comes out as Anorexic

Despite all the benefits of being gigantic, there are potential counters to the buffet of perks. Consider a small serving of increased risk, as shoveled by CDC.gov:

All-causes of death (mortality)
High blood pressure (hypertension)
High LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (dyslipidemia)
Type 2 diabetes
Coronary heart disease
Stroke
Gallbladder disease
Osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint)
Sleep apnea and breathing problems
Many types of cancer
Low quality of life
Mental illness such as clinical depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders
Body pain and difficulty with physical functioning

UNM hopes students will develop empathy for enormity. After all, from the sound of things, people are involuntarily housed in big bodies. From a reported exercise within the course:

If you yourself live in a fat body, try to think about not only how accessible the space is for you, but how accessible it may be for a fat person that is larger than you, a fat person that has less mobility than you do.

One might say anti-fatness is downright criminal; relatedly, the class is listed under the Department of Sociology and Criminology.

And such a course might seem like an easy A; but that isn't at all the case: The Ph.D. student teaching it doesn't believe in grades.

As explained in her syllabus:

You may notice that I am not grading...on participation or attendance. I have chosen not to grade...participation or attendance because I believe that doing so is ableist.

It's a portly point...

All grading is ableist...

America has come a long way -- or, across a vast radius. In times past, fatness might have found itself the butt of a joke. And pounds shed were considered steps toward self-improvement. But claims of social construction are all the contemporary rage, and empowerment is the day's virtue. Colonialism is Public Enemy #1, along with marginalization and onerous expectation. Victimization is bathing in the spotlight, and "plus-sized" is an identity-group plus. Otherwise put: Hello, modern morality; so long, 1986...