When I was young, I constantly thought about how disappointing it was that the United States was the most overweight country in the world. We were the first country to put a man on the moon, we dominate the Olympics, and can claim numerous new medicines as our own. Nevertheless, we were an incredibly unhealthy country, and that disappointed me.

Then, when Mexico took the title from us in 2013, I was pretty ecstatic that we had shaken the obesity crown. This is not to say that I was happy Mexico got more obese, but I wanted my country to be in better shape and continually get healthier. Never once did I view my desire for a healthier country and world as an imperfect one.

Throughout my life I have always been healthy and active, I have been playing sports since I was five years old and I play lacrosse at UCF. I have not had a year without a sport since I was that young. My parents both ran marathons up until I was about twelve and their bones just could not hold up for that kind of running any longer.

My Aunt and I ran a Turkey Trot together and she has run the Boston Marathon before. I was a two sport athlete from seventh through twelfth grade and now go to the gym along with playing lacrosse. Health and fitness have always been a priority to me and the people around me. My friends in high school were mainly fellow cross country runners. An active and healthy lifestyle is how I will always aim to live.

However, an extreme sect of third wave feminism and self-proclaimed social justice warriors have created a narrative that being morbidly obese is normal. Let me be clear, I do not discriminate against overweight people. My most basic political belief is that of freedom. This is America, and as Ron Swanson said, “if you want to balloon up to 600 pounds and die of a heart attack at 43, you can.”

However, for the sake of the people that love you, you should not. Even more so, you should not go around proclaiming that it is perfectly fine to be obese. That lifestyle simply is not. Going against gender roles is trendy in today’s day and age, and some feminists have taken it upon themselves to absolutely murder the skinny woman role.

Nevertheless, this is a dangerous trend that can have catastrophic societal impacts.

Buzzfeed in particular has become one of the worst perpetrators of this celebration of obesity. One of their articles was a list with 23 images of different women with different size levels posing with positive messages about being obese. The messages, riddled with grammatical errors, painted obesity as some sort of uprising against society. Buzzfeed has been celebrating obesity for a long time and is one of the most liberal sites on the internet right now. This article could have gone so many other ways that could have had a better impact on society. Instead of having people tell you it is okay to be unhealthy, these people should be encouraging one another to exercise and try to lose some weight. Despite popular thinking, being obese is absolutely unhealthy.

Kaye Toal from Buzzfeed wrote about how she dealt with being obese. I read the article multiple times and something, in particular, struck me as odd. I immediately noticed that none of her suggestions referenced actually making an aimed attempt at losing weight, and again painted being fat as some sort of cool trend. She mentioned exercise once, but immediately after contradicted her previous advice and went right back to celebrating an unhealthy lifestyle. The problem with articles like this is not that these people have accepted their weight or are comfortable with their bodies. I truly see nothing wrong with being a happy person.

Nevertheless, they are doing more than just promoting being “happy,” they are encouraging an unhealthy lifestyle that plagues many Americans. These articles and writers are celebrating something that devastates American families. This is where I draw the line, rallying around obesity is a detrimental idea that should not be tolerated and is a disservice to society.

I was accustomed to Buzzfeed doing things I find absurd, their site has articles on which Spongebob Squarepants characters you should sleep with, so respecting them as an actual news source is a pretty outrageous idea that had long left my mind. However, the trend is catching on with multitudes of social justice warriors online and this scares me. Not only have uninformed keyboard warriors started defending obesity as “normal” and “beautiful,”but WebMD even got in on the action a few years ago. People seem to think that ignoring the problem of obesity and allowing people to live their lives with a “positive body image’ is not going to be a detriment to society.

The most absurd example of this new culture that is accepting obesity and screaming about "fat shaming" came when the soap company Lush posted pictures on their Instagram in late April to encourage people to see the new What the Health film. The backlash was intense, people were outraged that a soap company had the audacity to post about a film that was doing nothing wrong but promoting a healthier society.

Lush then issued an apology on their Instagram about how offensive what they had done was. I do not blame Lush necessarily for apologizing, it is a smart business decision due to the amount of blatantly ignorant consumers there are. Pandering to the people that ignore basic facts like those is a smart decision in a capitalist economy. However, if anyone had a backbone they would not have had to say sorry for promoting a healthy lifestyle because that is what we should all be doing to try and ensure the longevity of our community and our loved ones.

The idea of “body positivity” and “health in all sizes” has become increasingly popular in the more socially liberal and feminist corners of the internet. The Huffington Post recently published this article about a woman’s story to becoming comfortable with her body and loving herself. The article goes into detail about her mental journey to accepting her body. At no point did she mention that she was going to try and lose the weight or become a healthier person. In fact, the woman is quoted in saying that “being healthy doesn’t mean losing weight and being skinny.”

This is not an opinion that she holds; this is an incorrect statement backed up by much scientific research that proves the opposite. Being obese is unhealthy because the epidemic is so prevalent in the United States there has been plenty of research done. Being overweight can literally be the reason you die. Yet, different people and groups have continued to normalize this detrimental way of life.

This “obesity is okay” narrative is incredibly false. Obesity is a serious problem in our country and should not be accepted as normal. Obesity impacts 36.5% of U.S. adults, according to the Center for Disease Control. Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States.Overweight people have a significantly higher chance of heart disease, and a celebration of this is akin to celebrating someone’s cigarette addiction. We do not celebrate normally unhealthy lifestyles, normally, so why has obesity caught on as something trendy?

Being obese should not be accepted as normal in our society, and it certainly should not be something that teenagers feeling rebellious take on. Being obese comes with more than just social issues. Obesity entails future health problems and restricts you from being able to do certain types of activities, and can lead to Diabetes.

Instead of worrying so much about “fat-shaming”, we should be encouraging one another to get to a gym, go for a run, or get outside and go for a hike. Sadly, I do not see an end in sight for this battle to normalize obesity to coddle the feelings of those that are overweight.

People of our generation are too concerned about feelings rather than facts, and want everyone to feel good about themselves. That sounds good and well on the surface, but as political icon Ben Shapiro puts it, “facts don’t care about your feelings." Accepting obesity as normal could have repercussions such as an increase in heart disease and lower life expectancy across the board. I am begging for people to stop this trend of normalizing obesity.

No, you do not need to be mean to overweight people. But we as a society need to inspire one another to exercise and be healthy. Happy is not always healthy, and we as a people need to encourage a healthy lifestyle to our friends and loved ones.