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Famed political commentator and conservative, Steven Crowder, pulled off a masterful move to unmask and expose the decadence of academic institutions.
Crowder, who has millions of followers on his social networks, severely criticized the “fat pride movement” with a joke that went unnoticed in an academic talk organized by the long-lived Massey University (New Zealand), founded in 1927.
The commentator organized an audiovisual production that consisted of making a female character, Sea Matheson — an “independent academic and fat pride activist” from Austin, Texas — who wrote an article titled Embracing Fatness as Self-Care in the Era of Trump and got a talk about it at an annual academic conference dedicated to obesity acceptance at New Zealand’s Massey University.
To do so, Steven Crowder not only created an online profile, but dressed up as an obese woman, wearing full makeup and prosthetics, and prepared an exaggerated story of why his character, Matheson, decided to become an obese woman as a form of self-defense.
In the opening chat, which was performed in 2020 but posted a week ago on Steven Crowder’s YouTube channel, the Matheson character introduced herself as non-binary and obese whose past activism includes organizing the Women’s March, the March for Our Lives and the Global Climate Strikes in Austin. At the outset, she criticized former U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Because of our current leader’s bigotry: fatness I will argue, acts as a distancing mechanism from the President, as well as his supporters, producing both physical and ideological space that can insulate the individual from intolerant, bigoted, or violent ideology,” Crowder said as Matheson. “It’s widely acknowledged of course that the 2016 election of President Donald Trump was evident of America’s (some would argue) underlying racist, xenophobic, homophobic and transphobic attitudes.”
To portray Trump as a “fatphobe,” Steven Crowder as Matheson recalled that the former president called North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “fat and short,” “affecting” U.S. foreign policy.
To justify her made-up weight status, Matheson said that as a child she had suffered sexual harassment that included groping and that is why she decided to gain weight, to avoid similar future assaults since being obese would make it “harder” for someone to touch her genitals.
“Embracing a fat identity, ensuring one is always already perceived as a fat individual, these actions become performative acts of resistance,” Sea Matheson proudly stated during the presentation.
Steven Crowder as Matheson was not only welcomed, he also was also praised
It’s surreal enough that a long-running and important university has opened its doors to a character who was satirically created to criticize a movement that seeks to accept a physical condition that harms people: obesity. However, Steven Crowder was not only accepted and welcomed to give a talk with open arms, but was praised by progressive intellectuals who witnessed his lecture, as he showed in the published video of more than 17 minutes.
“You did a great job presenting Trump’s fatphobia, and how fatphobia has been promoted by both his supporters and his detractors,” read one of the messages received by Steven Crowder.
“Embracing fatness is an act of resistance and can be part of how we fight against rape culture,” read another.
These messages from those who attended Steven Crowder’s talk are extremely worrying.
With the normalization of obesity, people are being encouraged to forget the risks of not having a healthy body. In other words, people are being encouraged to contract or suffer from diseases that affect them physically and emotionally, considerably shortening their life expectancy.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as weight increases to overweight and obesity levels, the risks of suffering from diseases or conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cancer (endometrial, breast and colon), hypertension (high blood pressure), dyslipidemia, stroke, among others, increase.
In fact, the CDC website states: “Overweight and obesity are associated with increased risk of 13 types of cancer. These cancers account for about 40 percent of all cancers diagnosed.” Of those cases, about 2 in 3 occurred in adults 50- to 74-years-old and, furthermore, “increased by 7 percent between 2005 and 2014.”
There is another alarming figure, according to the CDC: “A majority of American adults weigh more than recommended – and being overweight or obese put people at higher risk for a number of cancers.”
This is where the “fat pride movement” does harm to society and to individuals because by normalizing being overweight, it somehow encourages people to believe that it is okay to have unhealthy bodies and not do anything about it to improve their health. By doing so, they directly put not only the lives of others at risk, but their own, as sadly happened to academic and fat pride activist Cat Pausé, who, in her early 30s, died in her natural sleep, according to family members.
Pausé was, incidentally, a researcher at the very Massey University that Crowder managed to outwit. There she devoted part of her “studies” to fight against the supposed stigmatization of obesity in society and medicine, sacrificing her own health and, eventually, her life.
Of course, everyone is free to choose what to do with their bodies, but to promote the acceptance of a medical condition that can considerably damage the lives of millions of people is irresponsible, to say the least.
Therein lies the main value of Steven Crowder’s work: to unmask the absurdity and danger of the movement that seeks to normalize obesity and to expose the decay of academic institutions and universities, which unquestioningly accept such ideas, even without verifying the identity of their speakers.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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