However, the issue is that a lot of times when someone says "fat acceptance", they mean it in a sense of accepting that being extremely overweight can be totally healthy and fine. With a giant dose of anti-doctor sentiment mixed in, because "i know more than doctors because I use google to find other opinions supporting my current opinion".
If we want "fat acceptance" to be taken seriously, there needs to be a clear line drawn between those two usages of the term. The one you propose (aka the one in my first paragraph) is extremely reasonable and humane, and should be taken seriously. While the one I mentioned in my second paragraph should be separated as far as possible from that term. It just taints the definition you propose and makes people take it less seriously, which slows down the needle of progress that your definition is supposed to accomplish.
If we get a "fat pill" one day like we have for depression I would expect a similar trend
Also, please recognize that “hard to overcome” implies an effort to overcome and recognize that that thinking is wrong.
If I had to justify it, I would say that I have been conditioned over the course of 20+ years and continue to be conditioned to see non-fat people as desirable and fatness as gross. And to some degree it is rational - fat people are more likely to die young, experience health issues, struggle with hygiene or everyday activities; all things you don’t want in yourself, your partner, or people you rely on. It’s also clearly a mental health issue, which comes with its own stigmas. It takes time to overcome and unlearn all of that.
But there is an important nuance. In many if not most cases, obesity is really a behavioral health issue, and feelings of shame make it so much harder to deal with that productively. If overeating is a maladaptive strategy to negative emotions, walking around feeling shame and embarrassment all the time makes that so much harder.
So fat pride isn’t great, but fat acceptance, to one degree or another, may be productive.
It really should be something more like how society is moving to treat depression - an unfortunate thing that happens and requires treatment, but not necessarily a flaw that makes someone a bad person.
The current stigmatization around obese people is that they are seen as stupid, lazy, gross, and generally bad, inferior people. Even as a recovering fat person, who knows it’s wrong, it is hard to overcome the implicit bias.
If you want to feel angry, listen to this Vox Conversations episode: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh...