Are people prejudiced towards fat people?

One core characteristic about the modern far left is that they will take a sociocultural phenomenon that's arguably not so good and could benefit from some improvement and then, using the excuse of "fixing" that problem, take it to an absolutely ridiculous extreme (with the primary goal of gaining power and control in society).

One very good example of this is the general prejudiced attitude that society has had for quite a long time towards obese people. Well, at least some people in society. Taking this phenomenon the far left has, obviously, taken it to the absolutely ridiculous extreme of what they call "body positivity" and "healthy at any size", which they have been trying very hard to push into society, where the most extreme cases outright claim that being obese is actually not in any way unhealthy and that (as incredible as that might sound) there are literally no medical studies that would show otherwise (quite clearly a blatant lie because you can easily find metric tons of such studies).

Given the extremes that the concept has been pushed, and how hard they are trying to shove their ideas down your throat and force them into society, it's very easy to get the temptation to think that it's based on absolutely nothing, that even the basics of it, the origin of the idea, is non-existent and false.

But in fairness it's actually not completely false. There is, and has been for quite a long time, certain prejudices against fat people. Of course it depends very strongly on the situation and person (both the one who is obese and the one who is being prejudiced), and in many situations there is literally no prejudice of any kind. However, in other situations there are.

There's a quite good example of this. The actor Vincent D'Onofrio is most well known for his role as Private Gomer Pyle in the movie Full Metal Jacket. He gained 32 kg (70 lbs) for the role, making him quite overweight, in a very short period of time. Before the role he was quite fit.

 

He recounts how he immediately noticed a change in attitude from people, based purely on his appearance. He noticed that while previously women in parties and other such situations would easily flock around him would now very clearly avoid him. He noticed how people would often talk slower to him and repeat the same things twice, apparently because they thought that he was dimwitted, based purely on his outwards appearance, something that was not the case before.

While this happened in the early 1980's, it's not something that was purely restricted to those times. Such attitudes have existed long before, and to some degree still exist to this day. People instinctively treat other people differently, and make assumptions about them, based purely on their outwards fitness or obesity.

Of course the interesting question is what could be done about this (or even if something should be done at all. After all, trying to social engineer people into changing their behavior has its own moral problems.)

But it's quite clear that what the far left is doing at the moment is most certainly not the correct way. Even if something ought to be done against such prejudice, this is not it.