Political Correctness: Incorrect ✅ (Part I)

This post includes an original song-video that playfully reflects it.

While doing research for MIND: YOUR PERSONAL ENEMY (NOT), Zverce asked ChatGPT for more information about “depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses.” The reply suggested using the term “mental challenges” instead of “mental illnesses.” That’s when Zverce realized: even AI is not immune to incorrect political correctness – hence the urgent need for this article.

Since the world is facing a growing mental-health crisis, let’s begin with the difference between “mental challenges” and “mental illnesses,” and why using “politically correct terms” in this context can be extremely dangerous. When someone suffers from depression, for example, that condition becomes their living reality. Depression is an abnormal state of the psyche that affects nearly every aspect of life, and at that point it is not a choice – and “choice” is the key word here.

When life challenges you in any way, it means you’re being presented with options. You have a choice in how to respond. For example, when you’re tempted to eat sweets, you can choose whether to eat them or not. If you give in, your body and mind will be affected in one way; if you choose to resist, they’ll be affected in another. A challenge offers multiple possible responses: you can rise above it, or you can give in.

But when someone has cancer, they have no choice in whether they have cancer or not. It is their reality. From there, they can choose how to approach treatment, but the illness itself is not optional. Cancer is a disease, not a challenge, and if you treat it like a mere challenge  you will be finished soon. Same with depression → challenge = sayonara.

This means that a challenge is a state or phase that comes before a disease. Mixing up the two – regardless of one’s good intention – can lead people with mental illnesses into delusion about whether they are actually ill. If someone suffers from depression, that is a fact, not an option. Instead of telling them, “This is only a challenge, you can get over it,” they should be encouraged to acknowledge it as an illness so that real recovery can begin. Ultimately, you recover from illnesses and diseases – not from challenges.

Another way to understand this is that a challenge represents an option, while a disease is the result of the chosen option. If you choose to eat sweets with every meal, that will eventually lead to disorders or diseases such as irritability, fatigue, inflammation, diabetes, or obesity. And while that list could continue, let’s pause at obesity – the white people’s N word.

Although every demographic group is affected by this medical condition, the idea of treating the terms “fat” and “obesity” as politically incorrect grew largely from certain strands of white feminist activism between the 1960s and 1990s. While it is only one aspect of what is now promoted as “body positivity,” the fact remains that obesity is a modern disease that creates fertile ground for many other illnesses and disorders. Therefore we should look into this negative body positive sentiment, which can subtly discourage people from acknowledging or addressing real health risks.

Now that we understand the difference between challenges and diseases – and that an illness is an illness, not a challenge – we should be clear that obesity is one such disease, not a challenge or something one should simply accept as “the way they were born” or any other explanation that prevents them from addressing it. Yes, the modern world has seen the rise of fat acceptance movements, something that would have been considered unusual just a century ago. But instead of looking only a century back, let’s go back several millennia to ancient India and its traditional medical system, Ayurveda.

Ayurveda classifies people according to three primary body types, called doshas. These are not just physical categories – they reflect body constitution, metabolism, mental tendencies, and personality traits. For our purposes, we’ll focus on the physical aspects:

• Vata Dosha: thin frame, light build, fast metabolism, quick movements, variable appetite.
• Pitta Dosha: medium build, strong muscles, warm body, sharp features, good appetite.
• Kapha Dosha: heavier build, solid bones, soft skin, slower metabolism, prone to weight gain and congestion.

Although everyone has all three doshas, usually one or two dominate. From this principle, modern body-type theory emerged, describing three basic types:

• Ectomorph (Vata): lean, slender build with long limbs, narrow shoulders, and a small bone structure; fast metabolism that makes weight or muscle gain difficult.
• Mesomorph (Pitta): athletic and muscular build with a medium bone structure, broad shoulders, and a narrow waist; efficient metabolism, making muscle gain and fat loss easier.
• Endomorph (Kapha): rounder, softer physique with a wider waist and hips, and a larger bone structure; slower metabolism and a tendency to gain and store fat easily.

These categories describe natural predispositions, though people rarely fit perfectly into just one. Usually, one type dominates, combined with traits from the others. The third type is the one relevant to our discussion.

People with a dominant Kapha Dosha, also known as endomorphs, have a higher risk of becoming overweight or obese during their lives, and often struggle to maintain their desired weight. Because of this ongoing challenge, some repeatedly work to improve their habits and health. Others, however, may feel overwhelmed or lose a sense of control, eventually accepting the situation as unchangeable. Over time, excess weight can progress into obesity, and instead of adjusting lifestyle habits, some may shift focus toward changing how society views and labels them – something that feels easier to do from the comfort of the armchair life than making difficult personal changes.

There’s only one catch: being obese is not inherently positive, and it never will be. This isn’t just Zverce’s opinion – it’s what your body tells you. It’s what both medical science and traditional medicine confirm. It’s not about conforming to beauty standards or fitting into “plus-size” categories. It’s about recognizing that when a simple act like walking or standing becomes a strain on your knees or ankles, your body is signaling a real health risk. No amount of convincing yourself – or others – can change that reality.

To justify this, some have introduced the term “body shaming” to limit honest discussion about health. Instead of focusing on discrimination, the movement sometimes ends up restricting open conversation about what constitutes a healthy body – not based on opinion, but based on biology and natural design. When advocacy ignores these biological facts, it risks promoting ideas that are ultimately harmful while trying to censor free speech. 

The movement’s premise is inherently contradictory: society allegedly discriminates against larger bodies, so the response is often to limit how others speak about bodies. This is like those guys who are insecure about their masculinity that they squeeze everyone’s hand during a handshake just to prove their manhood. It’s a paradox. A man who doesn’t need validation or reassurance, who is centred in himself, becomes loving and caring – not harmful or aggressive. When he is aware of both his mental and physical strength, he uses it to protect others, not to dominate them in an arm-wrestling finals. A similar paradox exists in these movements, if anyone says something considered insulting about body shapes or sizes, it can lead to being “marked” or “cancelled.”

This focus often extends to thin people and conventional beauty standards. True unity in society cannot be built by constantly dividing people into “us” and “them.” Education and awareness are crucial, but they must come through inclusiveness and truth, not censorship. Promoting obesity as a healthy lifestyle is simply not consistent with biology.

One noticeable way overweight and obesity have become normalized in modern culture is through advertising and marketing campaigns that use plus-size or obese models. Instead of promoting inclusiveness, it is nothing but misleading when it sends the message that obesity itself is healthy. What we should understand is that celebrating people is not the same as celebrating a disease. No one should be shamed for their body, but it is equally important not to portray a medical condition as harmless.

To illustrate this, imagine a health campaign featuring a cancer patient saying, “It’s great to have cancer – everyone should get it.” That would be unthinkable. Yet with obesity, which is medically classified as a disease, we send a similar message by treating it as something neutral or even desirable. Instead of educating youth and adults about the reality – obesity is the mother of all diseases that increases the risk of many other chronic diseases – some campaigns (unintentionally) promote the idea that it carries no consequences.

This kind of messaging shapes public perception, and over the past 50-70 years, worldwide rates of overweight and especially obesity have risen dramatically – in some regions more than sixfold compared with mid-20th-century levels. As a result, health-care systems have shifted from treating mostly acute, short-term problems (like infections or injuries) to long-term chronic conditions linked to excess weight, leading to ongoing costs, long-term treatments, and a heavier load on hospitals and primary care. This trend has also led to a significant increase in both the number of people requiring treatment for obesity-related chronic diseases and the total economic cost to health-care systems.

With these trends accelerating, it is worth asking ourselves: What direction are we moving in as a society – and is this the future we want to accept without question?

True body positivity is about staying honest with yourself, no matter how harsh or overwhelming that truth may be. Only through self-acceptance can positive change occur. Ironically, some fat acceptance movements promote accepting everything except personal responsibility. When you truly accept yourself, you do not need respect, approval, or special treatment from others. But when self-acceptance is lacking, pointing fingers often follows. As we all know, it is much easier to blame others than to take full responsibility for our own lives.

This connects to another aspect of body positivity with far-reaching societal implications. There is a saying: if you want to see someone’s true colors, give them power. We have seen this play out in various ways, where groups that were marginalized in the 20th century now hold influence and can shape laws. Unfortunately, when self-interest or ideology overrides truth and biology, the results can be damaging. Continue reading about this in Part II.

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