To call out friend on 'body positivity' delusion?

[treesandflowers95]

My bestie (i'll call her 'J') and I have been friends since primary school. She's godmother to my DD and we almost see each other as sisters as friends.

J has always been a curvier girl but as we've gone through our 20s, she's steadily put on more and more weight. She's 5ft 2 and now a size 30. Over the last couple of years its been noticeable how much into the 'body positivity' movement shes got. Her socials are full of shared posts about it, and she'll often bring it up in conversation.

Its not something i've ever really made an issue of with her before as though it worries me for her, i've always been of the view that everybody's body is their own business.

However we were on a hen do a few weeks ago, and honestly it was a real eye opener to just how big she's got and the impact that's starting to have on her health. The first one for me was that she needed a seatbelt extender on the flight and she seemed to think it was hilarious. We stayed in a villa on the edge of a little area with a strip of bars and restaurants. It was 350yds (i put it into Google maps) and slightly downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back, but nothing major. J was struggling to keep up with us on the way there, and on the way back was having to stop at least once because she was so out of breath. Bear in mind this was a group of girls quite a few in heels etc so its not like we were sprinting, and shes sweating and bright red. Aside from that, even basic stuff round the villa like walking upstairs (it was over 3 floors) and she struggled climbing up and down the ladders in and out of the pool. I didnt say anything to her at the time but its played on my mind.

This weekend there were four of us (all close friends) who'd been on the hen do out for drinks in the pub. We were talking about the hen do and i can't remember how it came up, but she started talking about the walk back to the villa and how steep the hill was etc. I said to her something along the lines of 'Oh it wasn't that bad' to which she replied 'Are you joking, it was so steep!' and was basically trying to get the other girls to agree and I just left it.

A bit later in the conversation she was talking about some body positivity stuff and how its about how you look after yourself and not how much you weigh. I've bit my tongue at stuff like this loads of times, but this time i said 'I think that's true to an extent but there's a point where you can't argue that you're healthy'. She didn't look happy and said 'what are you saying?'. I basically said that the fact she thought that walk on holiday was so difficult that she should have struggled with it so much was worrying, and might suggest her health wasn't as good as she seems to think it is. The reality is (and I didn't say this to her) that she eats really badly and drinks quite a lot. She spends loads on hair, make up, nails, etc which she considers as looking after herself.

She got really frosty with me, and has been funny in texts since, not her usual self, so i know i've annoyed her.

Fully accept it may not have been the best way to bring it up especially in front of others (but it wasnt like it was strangers, we're all mates back to primary school) but i just felt like it wasn't a time where i could just say nothing in the moment.

So i guess question is AIBU to have brought this up with her, and any advice on how to handle things next.

The type of food we eat now, particularly ultra processed food, plays a huge part, causing insulin spikes and interfering with our satiety hormones. Some people's bodies are more sensitive to these fluctuations. If we all ate 'clean' food, like people did decades ago, it would be much more difficult to get to that tipping point where obesity occurs. I am not coming at this as someone who avoids UPF's (my cupboard is full of them.) I'm just interested in the science, even though I don't completely understand all of it.

I think that it's fine to be factual and avoid being drawn in to someone's delusion, but it's hard to do that without making it personal.

If the hill was shallow enough that people were easily walking it in heels, that's a fact.

People can become obese in a way that damages their health, even if they are positive about their body image. That's a fact.

Connecting the two statements so that they applied directly to her... that was personal.

Wrong on all points.

1. Read the OP back. Her friend actually did ask for her opinion when she said 'what do you mean'?
2. She wouldn't be 'scrutinising or judging her body'. They could literally have an entire conversation without mentioning the friend's weight at all. This is about OP expressing concern for her friend's health. Full stop.
3. It doesn't matter what anyone 'thinks'. It only matters what the facts are. And the facts are that the majority of morbidly obese people are slowly killing themselves. A good friend shouldn't shy away from that.

The vibe I get from your posts on this and other threads is that you don't like to challenge ANYTHING! I prefer to do what's right... not just what's popular.

Er, well, yes... they all TOTALLY look like they're taking coke twice a week. You can spot it a mile off!

Because the human genome hadn’t even been sequenced.

I guess all those studies linking genetics to ADHD and autism and everything else are wrong too.

In fact who knew that penicillin works - how far back should we go? Educate yourself on some basic epigenetics.

I mean they're not addicts is they're snorting cocaine twice a week. In this comparison they'd be overweight but not obese i guess!

Body positivity is a lie. A size 30 is HUGE and she needs real help before she has a heart attack and dies.

Good Lord.

You come across as mean. It was humiliating what you did and the way you did it too.
you are not being kind and considerate. You feel entitled. I would avoid you in a friendship group. Stop pretending that you’re concerned for her. You are irritated by her, annoyed with her and wanted to let her know that in front of the group. You feel guilty and that’s why you are on here to get approval from this community that what you said was ok , as it was out of ‘concern’ for her. You are actually the worst kind of friend.

I don't think it's quite that black and white even with most addicts.

I do get the point you are trying to make, that the obese person gets constant reminders of what the problem is so doesn't need anyone else to tell her.

Sometimes that is true, but I think in this specific case, and some others, what is going on is the person is in very very serious denial about the situation. And desperately trying to maintain that, in part by creating a situation where her friends feel obligated, for social reasons, to affirm the stories she is telling herself to maintain the denial.

I also very much get the sense that there are a lot of posters on this thread who have no idea about the kind of false information that is being given out now by the body positivity movement. It is actually telling people that there is no correlation between weight - including severe obesity - and poor health. That trying to lose weight is fatphobic and body shaming. The forums for this are also extremely toxic, affirming really dangerous ideas and behaviours around food.

There have been a couple of celebrities from the body positivity movement recently who have dies very very young. A few of them actually started to try and lose weight after years of saying it wasn't necessary, but it turned out to be too late. They were very criticized for trying to lose weight too.

So I don't think we can say that in the case of the OP's friend, of course she really knows how much she is damaging her health. She may very well believe she is not.

how is op gaslighting the friend? she is doing the very opposite of that.

Really glad to hear it!

Please give her all of the cuddles and apologies and if she asks why you said it or if that's really what you think then it's best to be honest but kind.

It's perfectly reasonable for you to love the confidence the Body Positivity Movement gives her but want to check that it doesn't trick her into being unrealistic about her health. It's what any of us would want to be sure of in a loved one.

Hope it goes well.x.

I was reading comments on an instagram post from a woman who i think lives in China, is western and is about a size 12/14 and how often she gets told she's fat by people she knows and strangers who just stop her in the street. Cue lots of others people, Asian and western sharing how yes if they went home or saw older asian relatives and friends and they had put a few pounds on then the comments would be absolutely brutal. All the posters were reporting these comments in a light hearted it's just their culture type of way but it's in very stark contrast to the replies here. I wonder why it is so different. I get some of it is economic and a hangover from terrible times in some areas where they were starving and I know South Korea has a terrible time with - was going to say fat shaming - but it's not being slim enough shaming.

I totally agree with you when she gets older she will pay the price I have always been overweight but I hit 25 stone and a size 32 I could barely walk so I started to lose weight I’m now 14.5 stones and and a size 18 but still losing slowly and maintaining my weight loss , the lose skin is very unpleasant but it’s so much nicer to be able to buy clothes and not have to get the biggest size available, my friends were always nice to me as they knew I hated looking like i did I still call myself fat as I am but I’m much better than I ever thought I could be , I hope your friend wakes up before it’s too late for her health to be saved and decides to sort herself out , try to get her to go to the gym with you or out walking

Speaking as an addict, I don't think it's as simple as saying "shame = always bad". As in, it's obviously horrible to pile shame on someone purely to hurt their feelings but I think there are times when people throw themselves little conversational hooks out into the world to prop up their denial e.g "that hill was so steep" in this case but it could be "I wasn't that bad last night was I?" in my case.

Idk I think you don't have to give unsolicited truth bombs but at the same time you don't have to agree with their delusion IYSWIM.

For me, shame actually was a huge motivation to get clean but not because anyone was deliberately unkind, more because I saw from their reactions the reality of how badly I was behaving. And I sort of harnessed the shame and turned it into motivation.

Saying something was far more likely to have her reaching for the chocolate and gin when she got home than a salad and the gym.

Then comparing someone obese to someone who’s on daily heroin is also a completely irrelevant. You may have or be at higher risk of health issues, but you are most likely a functioning and contributing member of society.

To be honest OP it doesn’t sound like you were being very kind in the way you managed your communication with her. Is she overweight, yes, does she know it, yes, does she hate it, yes. She probably feels like she has gotten to a point where she is frozen and struggling to work out how she is going to lose any weight. It’s probably on her mind all the time and she doesn’t need you judging and speaking unkindly about her. Are you surprised she is frosty with you? Maybe to her it was steep, we don’t always have to view things in the same way do we? Not sure why you thought it was your business to judge because let’s face it, that is what you were doing…..and no I’m not obese before you accuse me of that.

Seatbelt extended on the plane took me out..wth

Shes in denial Im always seeing it on the net obese overweight women claiming they are really healthy you do not get size eating healthy food so their fooling no one but them selfs.

But OP can be critical of the body positivity movement’s ethos without directly criticising her friend’s health and body. Which is what she did. Over a table a pub with other friends there.

I'm not sure how you got there, it's not necessarily about being a contributing member of society, it' sabout the depth of addiction.

Someone snorting cocaine twice a week probably isn't an addict at all, ie, that is social rather than addictive use. It could lead to addiction, but it's not addiction.

A woman at size 30 in her 20s is likely to become unable to function though. But whether or not that is the case there is clearly really disordered eating going on.

She did, and her friend asked her to expand.

You seem pathologically afraid to say anything hard.

It wasn't a random group of friends, it was her closest friends, who she had been away with, and who she initiated the conversation with.

If your close family or intimate friends can't talk to you about a problem you are actively trying to get them to help you hide from yourself who can?

I completely see that you don't mean offence but I would bet she is fully aware of how her size is impacting and trying to boost her own self esteem with body positivity. Calling her out even unintentionally will hurt. Hope your coffee goes well

Over eating is as much an eating disorder as starving yourself. To get this big your friend has been effectively self harming with food for years, and the beauty treatments are a veneer to try to cover the issue. You're right, she's very unhealthy, but it's mostly her mental health that needs support. As difficult as it is, if she's not able to admit she has a problem, she won't be ok with you expressing concern. It's compatible to alcoholism and smoking, she won't stop eating herself to death unless she gets counselling and mental health support.

@TempestTost is right, it doesn’t seem some of you do understand how bad the Bo Po movement has become. They are convincing young women that health is imaginary, you can just imagine what YOU think health looks like, and if that fits you, that’s ok. They are actively telling people not to seek medical help as no one will understand them. It is dangerous. These women are dying before they are 40. They ARE telling people there is no correlation between obesity and poor health by twisting medical facts and science, and one way of doing this is to make everyone afraid to speak up for fear of being seen as fatphobic. There is a whole movement out there who are spreading so much misinformation and it’s super alarming.

Go watch Virgie Tovar on YouTube or TikTok then you will see what we mean. They say a lot of word salad about body positivity but you are not allowed to mention the word health AT ALL. They are literally health deniers. On the surface it’s all about enjoying your body and showing it off, and what it can do but underneath it’s a pit of anger and resentment. They will cast out anyone from their movement who chooses to lose weight even for health reasons, if a doctor has told them to.

Many people are feeding into this by agreeing that you know, obesity is kind of ok, it’s not that bad and even if it is, god forbid you might hurt someone’s feelings. Our young daughters are probably being exposed to these conspiracy theories online