Look, I’ll be the first to stand up and say that we have a self-confidence problem in our society. It’s evidenced by the social media obsession with carefully curated lives for onlookers and even exacerbated by it to a degree that even its own creators have deemed wildly unhealthy.
I say this because I want to make it clear that I’m all about feeling good about yourself….but…
There does come a point where it goes too far and we start excusing unhealthy lifestyles and body types in an effort to reinforce the idea that you can be beautiful at any size. With it comes the idea that laziness and bad diets are perfectly okay, and that anyone who promotes a healthy lifestyle and good looking figures are bigots.
Lena Dunham has been on that train for a while, and it’s not looking like she’s getting off it anytime soon. Especially given that she posted an Instagram photo of herself nude in order to promote body positivity. Recently, she attempted to start a trend where people pose nude to show off their bodies. Luckily, the trend didn’t really catch on.
“Any negativity that comes your way is just an excuse to love yourself even more, right?” tweeted Dunham.
She then included that she’ll throw in a dollar for every body positivity comment she gets on her Instagram account, and donate it to a women’s charity called the Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, which helps women recovering from drug and alcohol abuse.
My apologies for the following.
Any negativity that comes your way is just an excuse to love yourself even more, right? Comment on my IG post 👇🏻 with a reason you love yourself. For every comment in the next week, I’ll be donating a dollar to @PeggyAlbrechtFH https://t.co/oD8TPcfF1r pic.twitter.com/CfbAY2wC2U
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) May 29, 2019
The body positivity movement goes by other names, chief among them is “fat acceptance.” It’s the idea that being overweight is not only healthy — healthy at any size! — but that others should recognize that big is beautiful. The body positivity movement has done some serious damage to people. In the UK, it’s increased health risks to people and costs for the NHS drastically according to the Guardian:
According to the NHS, we’re in the grip of an obesity epidemic, which has led to increased pressure on the struggling health service. The latest figures reveal that weight-related hospital admissions have risen by 18% in the past year, with more than a quarter (26%) of British adults now classified as obese. Another recent study, which measured the metabolic health of more than 17,000 respondents, showed that overweight people who exercise regularly and consider themselves “fat but fit” still had a 28% increased risk of heart disease, compared to their slimmer counterparts. As well as being linked to diabetes, obesity can also be responsible for osteoarthritis, gout, breathing problems, high blood pressure and other conditions. While being thin won’t automatically grant you a clean bill of health or a long, smug life of squeaky clean arteries, there’s no denying that health risks are higher for obese people.
That heart disease risk mentioned earlier is also one of the biggest killers of humanity, and it pops up regularly in fat people.
“Obesity is probably the only risk factor that has such a global negative impact on so many risk factors for the heart,” says Barry Franklin, Ph.D., the director of the Cardiac Rehab Program and Exercise Laboratories at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.
The entire reason Dunham has to create movements like this is that fat isn’t sexy. It’s a sign of un-health and as such is unattractive to people in general. Doctors have been telling us for ages that being fat is a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle. It even affects mental health. People who break away from the lifestyle report more energy and actual positivity.
What Dunham is promoting is essentially is a march toward early death and unhappiness along the way, which is the general feeling you get when watching her shows.
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