TIME Magazine argues that Exercise is White Supremacist

This is either a bizarre coincidence or evidence that a Narrative™ decree has gone out.

(No, I don’t think there are actual decrees…mostly).

Yesterday I wrote a piece about Scientific American’s rather odd republishing Through tweet, an article that was originally published in 2020. It was argued by the author that obesity is stigmatized by society and medical institutions because Black women are among the most obese people in America. There are many ways people can be “healthy at any size,” It is racist to focus on obesity as a problem for health.

Time Magazine has published an article arguing that exercise is White supremacist. While two may seem like a coincidence, this is a very rare coincidence. There will be many anti-exercise pieces and fat acceptance articles on the internet in the coming days.

The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise and 6 Other Surprising Facts about the History of U.S. Physical fitnesshttps://t.co/SRwSLRpnCV

— TIMEHistory (@TIMEHistory) December 28, 2022

Your book Fit Nation We start by talking about how fat was something we aspired to and was a sign that we were wealthy and healthy. How did Americans transform from a culture of fat? “fat is good” To “skinny is better?”

One of the things I set out to do in this book is to look at the change in how we think about our bodies and what’s considered attractive. Until the 1920s or so, to be what would be considered today fat or bigger, was actually desirable and actually signified affluence—which is like the polar opposite of today, when so much of the obesity epidemic discourse is connected to socio-economic inequality and to be fat is often to be seen as to be poor.

While this argument seems plausible from the surface, it is generally false. It is false, if only you give it a moment. Consider all cultural artifacts of the 19th or 20th centuries you are familiar with. Cartoons, movies, paintings, whatever. It simply isn’t true that being fat was admired. The bad guys were “fat cats,” The Robber Barons were described as fat. It is correct that wealth and fat were associated, but this wasn’t a good thing. It was symbolic of their gluttony and rapaciousness.

As symbols of wealth, soft hands were not admired.

Politico even has a convenient one-stop shop for viewing political cartoons featuring “fat cats,” and you don’t walk away from it thinking that people in the 19th century associated being fat with being good. The Bible explains that being fat is synonymous with being gluttonous. Although the ideal size for beauty has changed with time and culture, the ideal size is rarely the rotund. They are rare because people can’t find them.

Imagine Uncle Sam, the character that the country adopted as its mascot. Is he fat or not? He is quite the contrary.

It’s a cheap and easy argument to make that well-toned bodies have been admired only recently, but that is actually false. It’s easy to point out the anorexic extremes in 20th-century fashion magazines as evidence that Americans fetishize extreme thinness. But you need to understand that our fashion industry is filled of people so different from the average American that they design stuff such as this.

Since I never see anybody in the real world dressing like this, I suspect that the choice of models made by fashion houses isn’t reflective of American or European tastes in clothing. I’d look more to Bond girls and Playboy models of old to get a sense of what men are more interested in.

Time back:

What’s the most surprising thing you learned in your research?

It was very interesting to see the reflections of fitness lovers in the early 20th-century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. This seems so progressive at first.

Then you keep reading, and they’re saying white women should start building up their strength because we need more white babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is a part of white supremacy. This was a true story. “holy crap” Moment as historian, where deep archive research really reveals these contradictions.

Your book talks about how, at one point, America’s focus was on exercising so we could have a population that was ready to go to war. What does health and fitness culture teach us? How has this expectation changed over time?

During The New Deal [of the 1930s]The Civilian Conservation Corps would hire out-of work or impoverished, scrawny people to go into the forest and take part in public works projects. This was one of their marketing methods. “it puts muscles on your bones.”

This was especially true during the Cold War. Right after World War II, you start to have more concern about Americans getting soft, this idea that the things that made America great—like cars and TV sets—were actually taking a toll on Americans’ bodies. Kennedy and Eisenhower set out to make exercise look healthy and patriotic. They also wanted to shift the focus of exercise to being a citizen and protecting your country.

So exercise is about White Supremacy and colonialism or something….

Here you can see how history is being reframed using an ideological lens. You can also see how staying healthy and fit are just tools to oppress others.

This is such a deviation from reality that there must be an ideological point being made, and it’s clear what it is: the drive to be a healthy weight is a form of oppression.

It is not surprising that fat people make the argument that obesity should be normalized. It’s hard to lose weight and it is a pain. It would be much easier to have everyone around you tell you how beautiful you look.

The real question here is: Why is this movement being led and managed by people who are physically fit and healthy? As the author of this book is being reviewed here.

The new “fat acceptance” If it wasn’t for the elite media movement to normalize it and the existence of a movement within the Elite media, the movement would have no cultural impact.

It’s almost as if they want society divided between a wealthy and healthy class and a fat and (un)happy one.

You can’t die of Covid if you exercise, but exercising is white supremacy. People dying from Covid are white supremacy. But telling people to take care themselves is white supremacy. https://t.co/mEO0EB2GVE

— Kelsey (@JustAMom0610) December 29, 2022