OK so say you’re a fatty struggling to “love your body”. Actually you despise it but since doing anything about it would require you to challenge your addiction, you set your sights on thoroughly deluding yourself instead.
You pour over FA, HAES, and body positivity blogs, follow and friend fellow fatties who are also trying to delude themselves, post disgusting selfies for affirmation from the echo chamber, and generally waste all of your efforts on avoiding the consequences of your gluttony.
One day you realize you’ve arrived! You love your “curves”, you flaunt your “style”, you slather on the makeup, ruin your hair color, flaunt ugly body modifications, make unfortunate eyewear choices, and loudly proclaim your fierceness.
Now what? Does society start treating you any differently? Do you fit better in airline seats now? Do clothes look better on you? Did your beetus disappear and your blood pressure return to normal? Do your joints feel better? Do your crushes show more interest in you? Can you climb a flight of stairs without wheezing? Were you able to discard you car’s seatbelt extender? Can you see your own genitals, tie your own shoes, wipe your own ass now?
What exactly have you accomplished by achieving this holy grail of body positivity?
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[–] wahala 1 point 0 points 1 point (+1|-1) ago
I would say a person who has made such declarations as you set forth is suffering from a form of the Dunning Kruger effect. While this isn't 'skills' per se, a fatty's ability to convince themselves that they have made good choices, nay, better choices than experts (the fit), leads me to believe they suffer from a form of this effect.
[–] indignantxcoffee ago
I'm not sure if it's dunning Kruger (but let's face it, the fats by and large (teehee) are the stupidest and thus the loudest) but they DEFINITELY provide perfect, textbook examples of all the cognitive distortions and defense mechanisms since it takes an intricate web of lies and self delusion to even accomplish what OP described.
[–] wahala 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Exactly! I couldn't find anything else that was a better descriptor so I went with Dunning Kruger. You're right - cognitive dissonance probably describes this just as well, probably better.