Toddson's question (specifically linked to obnoxious, gym-bag wielding people) was whether there had been a shift in cultural values to advocate Health as a virtue at the expense of other virtues, like Civility.

Yes. That was how I understood her post. I wouldn't have summarised that as:

going to the gym and then riding the bus home automatically makes someone an asshole who hates fat people.

But I guess YMMV.

Oh, and on the gym bag thing, I don't think that is really a symptom of what I am talking about. There are assholes with gym bags, grocery carts, babies and suitcases on the bus. There are assholes without these things. There are polite and nioce people with and without these things, too. Conclusion, some people are assholes.

I don't think health = thin is true, but I think that there is a movement by advertising to equate diets and diet products and clothes that make you look thinner and clothes that are only for thing with health in order to sell products, which is leading to a sometimes unhealthy obsession with weight, especially for women. Obviously this isn't a new thing, it just seems to be more prevalent recently, what with Weight Watchers taking something that is health based (life-style change etc) and using it to market their diet.

I also have this theory that somehow getting rid of corsets and girdles, while seemingly freeing, has somehow lead to us trying to make ourselves into a girdle shape through self control.

I think the gym-bag and stinky clothes people are very much in the same group as anyone else who uses a 'virtue' (parenthood, veganism, religious faith, being a hard worker) as an excuse to act like they're more important or valuable than everyone else around them. ETA: And can therefore get away with ignoring common social niceties.

talking about how disgusting they are for allowing themselves to become a size six or eight. Showing either their "flab" and pinching it so we can see how "disgusting" they are or showing how their clothes are hanging off their bodies but they won't buy new ones until they are the desired size. Mocking themselves by saying they are an impossibly huge size, which happens to be smaller than my size.

I don't know your co-workers, obviously, but I'm inclined to wonder how much of that is fishing for reassurance that they do in fact look fabulous.

The point of a virtue is not to judge people who fail that standard, but to have a standard to reach for.

I disagree. Making a morally neutral choice/activity into a virtue creates a false dichotomy where people who do not make the "virtuous" choice are automatically "bad."

I don't see a single problem with saying: "I should do things that promote my health. It is good to do those things."

Okay, but that statement is not the same thing as saying "Making choices that promote good health is virtuous." And it's also not the same thing as insisting that your choices should be the choices that *everyone* should make.

It's not your place, or my place, or the government's place, to harangue people to "be good" and embrace the virtue of getting off the couch and jogging to the farmer's market where they will buy local, organic, lovingly picked produce that they will then consume only in moderation as part of their high-fiber, low-fat, low-sugar, pizza-avoiding, processed-food-avoiding diet.

If that's how you want to live, or I want to live, then rock the hell on and enjoy your morally superior food. But it's not okay to be the arbiter of other people's lifestyle choices.

But people see someone thin and think Healthy! and they see someone not thin and think Unhealthy!

I really don't think that. If somebody's morbidly obese and they're smoking? Yeah, then I think they're putting too much stress on their heart. If I see somebody smoking who's pregnant? I feel judgmental about that. People who are thin? I don't presume anything about them until I know them.

I've known people who have very high metabolisms naturally. I know people who have eating disorders which are really damaging. I know people who are skinny because they smoke incessantly and take drugs. I've even known distance runners who I didn't think were particularly healthy because the ran until they had shin splints and had an almost anorexic view of their body. And I've known ballet dancers who - despite their obvious athleticism and work - had unhealthy relationships with their body.

And fat bias creeps into it. It does in so many ways.

Maybe, but it's not an intrinsic component of advocating health. And inconsiderate bag wielding is not the end-result of health fiends conspiring to make sedentary people feel bad about themselves.

But it's not okay to be the arbiter of other people's lifestyle choices.

Since you're big on fallacies today, I'll note this is a straw man. Nobody is the arbiter of other people's lifestyle choices. There is no such person or law.

Making a morally neutral choice/activity into a virtue creates a false dichotomy where people who do not make the "virtuous" choice are automatically "bad."

I don't see this as a false dichotomy. I think, "Doing unhealthy things is bad for you" is a true statement. And I think you're failing to make a distinction between judging somebody's behavior to be self-harmful, and calling somebody a bad person because they engage in that behavior.

I don't think rating Health as a virtue condemns unhealthy people as Bad People.

Since you're big on fallacies today

Only yours.

Nobody is the arbiter of other people's lifestyle choices.

Oh, please.

I don't think rating Health as a virtue condemns unhealthy people as Bad People.

How does it not? That's a serious question.

I don't really see the connection between the word "virtue" and moral judgment outside of an explicitly religious context. It simply doesn't ping me that way. Maybe that's why I'm having trouble with this.

I don't really see the connection between the word "virtue" and moral judgment outside of an explicitly religious context.

I didn't even think of it in religious terms, actually, although I know that's where it originated. The definition of "virtue" that I've always used is "moral excellence," or "that which is morally good."

By that definition, the opposite of virtue is "that which is morally bad." The opposite of virtue is not a neutral position.

So if health is virtuous, then not-health is not-virutous, which is morally bad.

That's where I'm coming from, if that helps at all.

Oh, please.

Who is making choices for you Teppy? You are. Nobody else. Not your mom and her weight issues. Not the surgeon general. An arbiter is the person who makes a decision. You are not bound by anybody's decisions but your own. So, unless you've been declared incompetent by a judge, you, as a free adult in America, are the arbiter.

How does it not? That's a serious question.

I'm not sure where the breakdown occurs except around the word "virtue." For me, the noun of it has to do with an abstract concept. The noun is not the thing it is applied to. So, for me being good, or virtuous, is not a state of being. It's a platonic ideal that can never be achieved completely. You're not Good or Bad. You are striving to be More Good.