Fitness expert Jillian Michaels: We shouldn't 'glamorize' obesity; but are colleges doing it anyway?

Fitness guru Jillian Michaels is speaking out against political correctness, specifically when it comes to others’ body weight and the need to be healthy and in shape.  

During an interview with Women’s Health magazine, Michaels said of the growing culture in which encouraging others to exercise and eat healthy foods is considered “fat-shaming” and thus, politically incorrect,” ‘I think we’re politically correct to the point of endangering people.” 

”Yes, we want to be inclusive of everyone [and respect that] everyone comes in all different shapes and sizes,” Michaels added.

[RELATED: ‘Fat-shaming’ by doctors is ‘physically harmful,’ prof says]

”That nobody should ever be body shamed or fat-shamed or excluded and that everyone is equally deserving and should feel equally valuable. But obesity in itself is not something that should be glamorized,” she said. “We’ve become so politically correct that no one wants to say it.”

Michaels’ comments were published on the magazine’s website and will also be published in print in its January/February 2020 issue. 

Campus Reform has reported on a number of stories in which colleges, their faculties, or guest lecturers have downplayed the severity of obesity. For example, Princeton University offered a course, titled “FAT: The F Word and the Public Body” in which students were assigned to read a book that argues that it’s not actually unhealthy to be overweight, despite scientific medical data to the contrary. 

[RELATED: ‘Fat’ is the new ‘f-word’ at this Ivy League University]

And at Dickinson College, the student newspaper reported that a sign encouraging students to take the stairs rather than the elevator was removed after students complained that it “fat-shamed” certain individuals. Another example occurred at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, which hosted a guest lecturer who compared fitness trainers to “nazis” and childhood dieting to sexual assault. 

More recently, at the University of Colorado-Boulder, students were invited to a “Weight Bias” workshop where they were encouraged to “dismantle the weight-biased beliefs that we all hold.” The vice president of the UC-Boulder College Republicans told Campus Reform that the event did a “disservice” to students because it was “encouraging those unfortunate enough to suffer from obesity to accept their condition, rather than to seek healing for their ailment.”

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