TRIGGER WARNING: My assessment of the weightloss Industry, being as unremittingly negative as it is, may be slightly depressing.

Hello, friends: guess what I’m disproportionately angry about today! That’s right- it’s the weightloss industry that’s got my ire up this time. However did you guess? You just cheated and read the title title didn’t you?

Anyway, I’ve berated the weightloss industry as part of my Fat Acceptance rants before- I’ve even discussed it’s origins in Victorian Capitalism (click here to see that, by the way), but I’m not certain I’ve ever sat down and fully elaborated on my contempt for said industry. Well, brace your bad selves, motherfuckers, ‘cause that’s about to change, Big-Time Stylee! Wait, sorry: I don’t know what happened there- I just went all gangsta for a minute. That’s the last time I’m playing Saints Row right before writing one these things!

Anyway, back to my point. It’s not just the fact that the weightloss industry’s mere existence and pervasiveness in our society is constantly sending a message that people’s bodies aren’t good enough unless they conform to a specific shape (although, that idea alone is more than sufficient to piss me off). My revulsion runs a little deeper than that. Part of it, too, is the sense of a whole industry profiteering from other folks’ insecurities. But again, that’s only part of it.

What really twists my dick (I have no idea what orifice I pulled that expression from) about it is how grim and, as I already said, bloody pervasive it is. Open a magazine and there’s an advert trying to sell you a new diet pill or diet plan. Go on the internet, and there’s a a pop-up offering “one easy tip for weightloss” (which is almost certainly either fictional, a computer virus or both). Walk down a street, and there’s a gym, inviting you to “get in shape” with a faux-friendly little picture attached.

Actually, let’s just pause for a moment in this larger rant to indulge in a little sub-rant, shall we? Why? Because gyms have a special place in hatred and ire. Like the adverts and diet-plans and so-on-and-so-on, their basically arseing great monoliths to body-fascism. The difference is that they also actually take up physical space on a high-street. Space that could be used for cafes or bookshops or comic-book stores or videogame emporiums or statues of Irish Revolutionary James Connolly or chocolate shops or anything except a bloody gym, basically. Aside from being wastes of space, there’s something about them that I find visually offensive: it’s not just that they’re usually housed in ugly modern buildings, it’s the visual language of them: the twee, approachable facade that belies their real nature, that whispers “you’re not good enough” while pretending to be your friend.

Come to that, that point is one that can be applied to the whole weight-loss industry as a whole. I might first have realised it in connection with gyms, but having typed that last paragraph, I just realised that they whole cocking industry does this. Not only does it bully and cajole and try to convince you that you’ll only be acceptable when you fit a certain, ephemeral ideal, but all the time it’s doing this, it’s pretending to be on your side.

It’s not just the weight-loss industry, either, come to think of it. It’s the whole “beauty industry”- all those products that say they can help you “fight the seven signs of aging” or “improve the appearance of your skin” or any one of a hundred other weaseling catcheisms, that seek to imply that something which is perfectly natural is something you should feel revulsion at.

And this is what sickens me: the ubiquity of an industry that is, ultimately, not merely bad for the public psyche, but also two-faced and manipulative. The weight-loss industry, the beauty industry, gyms: they tell you they can help you with problems that they invented, they take your money in return for this paradoxical “service”, and they have the cheek to smile while they do it.