The weight loss industry is having a branding crisis. As fat acceptance, body positivity, and the "Health At Every Size" approach have become increasingly favored over the traditional fat-shaming paradigm, the industry has been confronted with a difficult task: how to market a weight loss product without portraying fat as undesirable. Weight Watchers, for instance, has rebranded itself as "WW," or "weightwatchers reimagined." It has de-emphasized weight loss in favor of the more nebulous term "wellness." Lean Cuisine and Atkins have made similar attempts to rebrand in recent years.
Which brings us to an advertisement that I chanced upon this week while watching Joe Rogan talk about UFOs again. The commercial begins with several notably not-fat individuals talking earnestly to the camera about how they "learned to accept myself for who I really am" and "became my best self" (to paraphrase from memory). This mellifluous, if rather vague talk proceeds for several moments before the ad reveals that it's not about fat-acceptance, but rather the weight loss app Noom.
Noom can't have it both ways; it cannot brazenly adopt the language of fat acceptance and body positivity to sell a product that fundamentally depends upon its customer being overweight and unhappy about it. These are mutually exclusive sentiments.
We are in an era of sensitivity to identity, be it race, gender—or weight. The excesses of "identity politics" have been derided elsewhere, and I see no reason to do so here. There is, however, a cognitive dissonance developing in the "fat community" between those who advocate for fat acceptance and those who see fat as undesirable. I think I speak frankly for many overweight people when I say that we alternate from one point of view to the other, or even both at once, to an extent.
My position is that people shouldn't be bullied or shamed for being fat—indeed, they should feel positively about themselves regardless of their weight—but at the same time, we shouldn't deny that being fat is objectively not healthy. (There's a dangerous anti-science streak within the fat acceptance movement that seeks to portray fat people as being equally as healthy as more thin and fit people, when we know this isn't the case.)
Weight loss, I think, should be gently encouraged, and those who do encourage us to lose weight should not be stigmatized as "fat-shamers" who are merely "concern-trolling" us, when in reality their concern is often genuine. Weight loss is grueling, and as a fat person, I welcome all the encouragement I can get. I don't want well-meaning family and friends to feel intimidated into silence.
At the same time, I know the importance of having a positive self-image. As the fat kid who was bullied mercilessly for his weight, it's taken me years to rebuild my self-esteem and to simply not hate myself. Fat people should not be made to feel undesirable, and I stand vigorously opposed to bullying of any sort.
So, where does that leave Noom? I understand that Noom has a product to sell, but its commercial was a sloppy and transparent attempt to be all things to all fat people, and I hope it fails. This is a nuanced and emotionally-fraught subject that doesn't lend itself easily to mass marketing, and Noom, WW, and the others would probably do best to be honest with their customers.