I read Wired Magazine, and in the June 2010 issue, there was a frustrating answer to the following question to Mr. Know It All (geeky Dear Abby): “I love my (very) plus-sized body, and so does my darling wife. But my company started a weight-loss program that asks us to wear pedometers, in order to lower our group health insurance premiums. Am I compelled to join in?”

I’ll sum up Mr. Know It All’s response by saying that he said we all have a right to be whatever size we want (not in such nice words - more like, eat all the oreos you want if it makes you happy), but that being thin is about being healthy and as great as it is that this person is happy, he might want to be more concerned about being healthy (i.e. thin).

As you can imagine, I found this really frustrating and I wrote Mr. Know It All the following letter:

Hi, Mr. Know It All:

I’m writing with a response to the way you answered the question about the man loving his plus-sized body in the June 2010 issue. This is a thought I’ve had many times when reading Wired, but I decided to respond to you because your column addressed the issue most directly.

There’s an assumption, “fat = unhealthy,” that is pervasive in our society and culture. However, the relationship between health and weight is not only far more complex than that but more correlative than causal. That is to say that fat does not equal unhealthy and all fat people aren’t stuffing their faces with Double-Stuff Oreos and White Castle.

I know you include things like that to get a laugh, but it’s your second paragraph that insists that it’s more important to live health-wise than happy that’s so disconcerting. Sure, health is important, but it’s not the ultimate arbiter of a person’s value, and no, weight-loss mongers are not doing so out of love - they’re doing it because they haven’t chosen to be educated on the flip side of the coin which shows that pressure to lose weight leads more often to weight cycling (incredibly unhealthy) than long-term sustained weight loss as well as depression and body dissatisfaction.

There are alternatives to this abusive formula: it’s called Health at Every Size. People who practice healthy habits rather than lose weight sustain their habits longer, have healthier vitals, and are happier people - and many of them stay just as fat as they ever were.

In addition, Insurance is the largest industry in America and Pharmaceuticals is the second. Before suggesting that the 50 billion dollar a year weight loss industry, their cohorts and the companies seeking their approval for lowered premiums are right that we should all be thin, perhaps you should consider where their scale for judging such things (BMI) comes from and whether there is more invested in our thinness - or desire for it - than our health.

I just wish that when it came to being fat you did a little more research like you usually do rather than jumping on the obvious and popular weight loss bandwagon believing that thinner is better. I expect more of a magazine like Wired that does so often seek the truth rather than the popular answer. We don’t assume that everyone should biologically have the same hair color or nose size so why do we think they should have the same body shape and size? Fat people can be just as healthy as thin people (and in some cases bigger is healthier), even if your perception is that they are all gluttons.

I recommend you check out sites like More of Me to Love and Health at Every Size (also a book) which embrace these ideals and the scientific research behind them.

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What do you think about my letter and/or Wired’s thoughts? Let me know in the comments. If you want to express your own sentiments to Wired, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

As an historian, Jay understands the degree to which our aesthetic judgments are shaped by our cultural surroundings, and he has studied and written about the importance of rights, respect and acceptance for all people. Jay is a member of the Association for Size Diversity and Health.