A few days ago, I came across a word I hadn’t heard before: healthism. I was curious, so I looked it up. The word describes a kind of philosophy I’ve noticed in recent years. It’s ubiquitous on social media, and it most often rears its head in the form of fat shaming. Healthism refers to several related ideas:
- Health is a virtue in and of itself, something that should be an ultimate goal, rather than a means to other ends;
- To be unhealthy, or to practice unhealthy behaviors or habits, is a character flaw; and
- The state of a person’s health can be determined from their appearance.