Amor Fatty: How An Obesity Cure Will End The Body Positivity Movement

Translate into the Occidental Translate into the Oriental

Amor fati is the general term for taking a positive view of the inevitable, even if the inevitable appears to be bad. It's an attitude that can be justified on philosophical, religious, and mental health grounds. I don't like to write in Latin (or rather I do, but who would read it?), so I'll just stick with the English phrase here: “Love of fate.”

You're probably more familiar with specific instances where we have a psychological tendency to take a positive view of bad but inevitable things. Those who suffer hardship might reflect: “It builds character.” Starving artists like yours truly might praise the benefits of poverty: “It improves my focus.” And people struggling to come to terms with the brevity of human life win the gold medal for the dumbest way of finding the good in something bad: “If humans lived longer, then evil dictators would live longer too, which would be bad (because . . . they kill people!); therefore I'm glad that everyone I love will die on roughly the same schedule as Marcus Aurelius.” Gag me with a spoon, you moron.

I mean, I like to be nice to idiots as much as the next evil vizier, but there's a limit.

I've got news for you boys. Being sick is bad. Being poor is bad. Being ugly is bad. Dying is bad. Bad things are bad.

The love of fate might be a valid principle when applied on a general level. That is, when considering creation as a whole. This is because the badness of certain parts seems to be a condition of possibility for the existence of our world. A love of being therefore implies a positive attitude regarding elements we dislike.

“This is getting too philosophical and boring. I clicked on this article because I wanted to hear you beat up on fat people!”

Sorry, I already get my rocks off beating up Daoists (they bend but don't break, so the fun never ends); I don't need to come for fat people.

I take a nuanced view of obesity in my infamous beauty article. I am, after all, a noted anti-anorexia advocate. In technical, objective language, fat people have a reduced ability to attract mates because there's currently an oversupply of their body type relative to demand. In colloquial shorthand, of course—which naturally I don't endorse at all—they're ugly.

Fatties feel trapped. Is it their fault? Is it caused by a poor diet? Are they just lacking willpower? Would it all go away if they went full carnivore??!! Many people believe so, but that's neither here nor there. Whatever the case, heaps of fatties feel that their condition is inevitable. And quite naturally, as a psychological defense mechanism, the dreaded “specific application of the love of fate” kicks in. In other words, some of them decide that fat(e) is, after all, beautiful, healthy—good.

Don't be too harsh with them: no one wants to waddle around feeling bad about himself all the time. Personally I set aside an hour every day to brainstorm delusions that will raise my self-esteem and make my continued existence more bearable. It's the evil twin of meditation (which I'll leave to Daoists).

Not everyone is capable of this handy psychological trick; some people don't have an extra hour of the day to devote to fooling themselves. But the media lives to serve. There's no lie that some journalist, somewhere, won't tell. To spare you the time and save you the trouble, they're willing to invent the illusions for you. Yeah, many of you know they're not true, but it still kind of gives you warm fuzzies to hear them. Click click click. Cancel dissenters. Click click click. (Easy to fix your faults: just get oedipal on any eyes connected to tongues that dare speak them. Poke poke. I joke, I joke. Not pretending to justify rudeness here, by any means; I'm a civilized slaver with no wish to ask the navyonmada to train their cannons on my casbah.)

Soft scientists get in on the game too, as willing to rationalize scarcity as excess, no correlation too tenuous to pass up a chance at tenure. I'm only, of course, citing the most frivolous such lies—does anyone believe they'd hesitate to obfuscate the murder rate if it hid the crimes of their allies? But I slide too easily into rhyme . . .

So, to stop chewing the fat and summarize the chain of reasoning while you still have your ears:

1. “Obesity is inevitable.”
2. “Negative evaluations of inevitable things cause pointless psychological pain.”
3. “Pointless psychological pain is bad.”
4. “Therefore obesity is good, or at least mostly good, or at least partly good and I'm going to ignore the other parts.”

Immaculate logic which it would be inhumane to refute.

Ok, thus far everything seems to be going swimmingly. We can't make “inevitable” body types popular on the mating market, but at least we can redefine them as good. (If you don't want a recession—just change the definition! Also works for “mistress.”) But what if . . .

What if we suddenly invent a cheap, easy obesity cure. I'm talking really easy. Easier than taking candy from a baby—and eating it. Easier than failing the marshmallow test. Funner than scarfing a ton of Funyuns! (Occidental is my second language, apologies for any grammatical inaccuracies.)

The entire irrefutable chain of logic outlined above would be threatened, because obesity would no longer be—or be perceived as—inevitable. An apparently rock-solid prior would be shattered just as if a billion fat people jumped up and down on it at exactly the same time!

The great and apocalyptic revelation of preferences would be upon us, and the overweight rate would fall from 60% to <1% almost overnight. Suddenly the tiny fraction of men who prefer fatties would struggle to satisfy their urges. A second sexual revolution of human-shaped fortysomethings would tear up Tinder, and there's no predicting what manner of social chaos it would call forth. Shudder, O mortals, for now only the devil hungers.

Miraculously, this will be a double cure. One of the forces propping up the absurdly elevated status of anorexic fashion models is the optical benefit that comes from playing opposite day with losers. Obesity these days tends to disproportionately afflict the poor. In the glory days of Reubens and Titian, the reverse was true: the poor were starving, the rich could afford to import sugar. (Hm, maybe there's a hint there?)

But once the poor and incapable can be as thin as they want to be (I'm already there), rich folk and strivers won't enjoy any extra status benefit from winning at bodyweight opposite day. Their teeth will have to scratch the floor in some other direction. After a transitional period (could be as long as a few decades), this shift will trigger a collapse in the value of skeletal physiques. Suddenly the truth about feminine beauty will become fashionable again. Girls will be crawling over each other to get that monarchiste look. Heiresses will define themselves by the quality of fat transfer they can afford, not the acid damage they've done to their wisdom teeth. A walk down a crowded street will become a dangerous superstimulus for the male mind!

Well—there are new drugs in the pipeline. This miraculous revelation might be nigh. Maybe they won't turn out to work. But the problem isn't inherently beyond our ability to solve. If the FDA got out of the way and let us skip straight to Phase 8 trials (covert experimentation on unwilling human subjects), it would already be solved! One day, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, that great revelation is gonna come.

Go ahead and love fate on a general level. But exercise some caution about seeing the good in bad things. At the very least, don't go so far that you shut the door to fixing them.

Onward and upward, boys. Let's cure everything, all be rich and beautiful, the sky's not the limit but only cause we're going to build a Dyson sphere around Alpha Centauri. We can do it. All we need is evil.

In the meantime, tell fatties you love 'em.

The above was published on July 29, 2022.

The Future of Beauty (addendum 2025)

The basics of feminine beauty stay fairly consistent over time. Historical ideals show a limited range of variation, and there's good reason to believe some of our instinct for beauty is fixed in place by nature. However, that doesn't mean beauty is completely immune to the times and trends. Dispelling Beauty Lies was written to last as long as possible, but I do expect changes in the years to come. Here I'll make some educated guesses about what these changes might be and how they'll alter the beauty advice I've offered at the time of writing (2020-2025).

From 1920 to 2025 there was strong social pressure for women to pursue thin physiques that men never especially liked. This was driven by the fashion industry, feminism, and the obesity crisis. As the average person got fatter, the thin look became higher status. Men weren't completely unaffected by this trend. The most popular look seen in imaginary women circa 2025 is still leaner than the historical norm.

As I discussed a few years ago, the new weight-loss drugs seem likely to end the obesity epidemic. Uptake is slower than I initially expected, so this will probably happen at some point in the middle 21st century rather than imminently. When it does finally end, the game of Opposite Day that's supported the artificially high status of the thin look will end too. Thus, I expect the average male taste to move closer to the historical norm we see in older paintings. Dispelling Beauty Lies has, of course, criticized the ultra-thin look at great length. These criticisms will remain as accurate in the future as they are now, but by the end of the century the insistence on proving them so thoroughly will seem like a strange historical oddity, and my accurate portrayal of fashion industry propaganda an absurd exaggeration.

Another ongoing change is improvement to cosmetic surgery techniques, and fat-transfer in particular. Because an attractive female form is largely about bodyfat distribution, perfecting fat transfer will make it possible for more women to achieve the pronounced hourglass men desire. However, until these procedures can be simplified and automated, or ideally replaced with new therapies that improve the body's innate fat distribution, Baumol's cost disease implies the already high prices will keep going up. The recently developed deep-plane facelifts are particularly expensive. We may therefore see a period of several decades where surgical perfection is culturally recognized as the high-status, “aristocratic” ideal exemplified by wealthy women.

These surgical advances will have further side-effects. They'll make it easier for women to cater to extreme minority tastes that are currently going unsatisfied. Furthermore, as surgical augmentations are normalized, both men's tastes and women's breast, thigh, and butt sizes are likely to creep upward toward anime-girl proportions, albeit without actually reaching them. The baseline recommendations I've given for breast size will eventually seem a few cups too small. Only a minority of men are subject to endless escalation, so I don't expect this to go on forever. Instead median preferences should settle in place after they shift somewhat higher over the course of decades or generations.

Butt size preferences are likely to change the most. I've mentioned that the current equal division between small, medium, and large is historically abnormal. A simple reversion to mean would be enough to increase butt size preferences substantially. It's therefore reasonable to expect a bigger fraction of men will prefer large butts in the future.

As we move further into the future, new and strange possibilities will open up. I've pointed out that men do like purple and especially pink hair in images, but dislike it in reality due to a negative cultural association. Someday this cultural association will fade and pink hair will become popular in reality. Perhaps gene therapies will give us control over hair and eye colors without having to resort to dyes. An even more science-fictional change has to do with ears. Imaginary women are often drawn with unusual ears. Someday in the distant future I expect surgically-produced elf ears in various shapes to become a popular style.

We should all be working as hard as possible to speed the day genuine rejuvenation medicine arrives. Public complacency on this issue is a sad thing with deadly consequences. After full rejuvenation is finally available, we can expect a few changes with respect to feminine beauty.

First, it will become possible for adult women to have the smooth and perfect skin of toddlers, and this will be the standard look for women of the future. Second, a girlish appearance and cute seduction strategy will seem appealing to more women because their limited durability will no longer be an issue. Third, cosmetic surgery will be fully normalized because it will be needed to restore the youthful appearance of taut skin; with everyone getting surgery anyway, few will hesitate to arrange further upgrades. On the way to full rejuvenation there may be an awkward period where most women are stuck with a 40-ish look for an extended period of time. Oddly enough, this will make youth even more valuable. Eventually, however, further improvements to medicine will get over this hump, and most women will settle in to looking between fifteen and twenty five indefinitely. Men's age preferences will likely shift lower, but as women will be able to choose their apparent age, they'll no longer see this as objectionable.

AI girlfriends should arrive in the 2030s, though it's difficult to say how popular they'll be and to what extent they'll replace egirls and models. Perhaps completely, perhaps partially, perhaps not at all. Surprisingly, I expect many AI girlfriends will look understated compared to the AI girls shown in Dispelling Beauty Lies. That's because men seeking the “girlfriend experience” will want their AI girlfriends to seem closer to real women in order to make that experience more convincing. This is an issue I wrote about prior to Dispelling Beauty Lies, in my 2020 short story “Natural Encounters.” Critics will hold up these everyday AI girlfriends as evidence that the beauty ideals I've described are overstated. That criticism is misguided. The everyday look is fairly uncommon in today's imaginary women, but if it were used more extensively, it would actually distort the data. What I've tried to analyze is precisely the ideal, not a compromise with the girl-next-door.

Making detailed fashion predictions about the future is impossible, but we've had a 150-year run of weakening public decency standards, only interrupted by a few brief lurches back toward modesty, the most recent in the 1980s. Unless a cataclysmic, world-historical change in the global economy or some new and scary disease forces us to rediscover more conservative sexual mores, it's reasonable to bet that this long-term trend will continue inexorably.

Since we've maxxed out on tightness, the logical next step is a gradual shift toward transparency. Visible nipple imprints are already acceptable for flat girls in some locations. This will likely become normalized, and the privilege extended to all women and all casual settings. From there increasing degrees of transparency will follow. Weakening decency standards may or may not do social harm, but on a purely aesthetic level, transparency allows many prettier and more interesting fashions than today's tight leggings and unornamented clothes, which are surely the least interesting way to be revealing.

If the long-term trend continues toward its natural endpoint then sometime in the distant future, after transparency has been explored in full, it will give way to a return of the Minoan style, and a new concept of fashion as "decorated nudity." Naturally I don't expect such a change to manifest in daily life anytime soon.

I'd very much like to predict that Dispelling Beauty Lies itself will have an impact, so that thanks to its influence the next generation of women will grow up with more accurate beauty ideals and a better understanding of seduction than their predecessors had. Yet experience has taught me that however low my expectations, they're still always much too high. It's far more likely that Dispelling Beauty Lies will only be recognized as correct retrospectively, after the totally different forces I've described in the paragraphs above pressure society to change. In the meantime I expect the truth about feminine beauty to remain the secret of a few unusually open-minded women.

To track these changes one could periodically update the research on imaginary women I've done for Dispelling Beauty Lies. My best guess is that the claims I've made will remain essentially true, but with differences of degree along the lines I've indicated here. Of course, predictions are hard, especially about the future. The only certain prediction is that dumb new trends pushed by dumb new celebrities will send the masses off in the wrong direction over and over again. There is, of course, a better way, but it involves less stupidity and less trend seeking, which is far too great an expectation for even me to entertain.

Also by J. Sanilac

Memoirs of an Evil Vizier

An Introduction to My Music

Trust Networks – how we actually know things

Ultrahumanism – a middle path through the jungle of modern and future technology

Dispelling Beauty Lies – the truth about feminine beauty, including practical advice for women

101 Ways To Be Prettier, Sexier, and More Seductive - simple tips for fast results

Critique of the Mind-Body Problem – it's not solvable

A Pragmatical Analysis of Religious Beliefs – are pragmatism and belief opposites?

Against Good Taste – aesthetics and harmful social signaling

GIMBY – a movement for low-density housing

The Illusion of Dominance – why the redpill is wrong

End Attached Garages Now – a manifesto

The Computer-Simulation Theory Is Silly – GPWoo

Thirty Favorite Images from Dispelling Beauty Lies - the author's personal selection

Milgram Questions – what they are and how to call them out

How to Seduce a Billionaire – 100% guaranteed* method

Ailom – how AI permanently makes everything less meaningful