“Fatphobic” (because that’s what we call social health consciousness these days) rant incoming:
It’s been an issue for a while across all facets of life now and no one is brave enough to be the first voice to say “hey, these things literally were not made to support people as heavy as you.” In the past year, a horseback riding trail in my hometown had to close because there were not enough customers whose weight didn’t pose a serious risk of injuring the horses. A few years ago I had to install a steel support beam in the crawlspace under the master bedroom of a morbidly obese couple. Together, they probably pushed a half a ton and spent easily 16 hours a day on that bed. The framing had become so sunken that you could see the subflooring through the gaps that appeared between the flooring.
Just the other week my roommate invited an old school friend over, the guy probably weighed about 300lbs at 5’8" and broke a stool (Lyra by Magis, very nice, one of my favorites) in my kitchen. How anyone can be that big and so unaware of the strain their weight is putting on the things underneath them is beyond me.
But bigger people deserve to be able to bike too! It’s just the reality of the world we live in, plus many people have genetic issues that make it fairly difficult to lose weight. They shouldn’t be locked out of basic things like being able to survive without a car. I admit horses are a different story because they’re live animals, but bicycles are human-made and can and should be designed to handle more weight, especially with how many people are bigger.
I agree that there should be options for bigger people, but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be bikes as light and high-performing as possible made for those who can use them, and if that’s the focus of a given manufacturer, that’s not an ethical issue. It’s just their specialization, and there’s plenty of room for other designers to focus on bikes for heavier riders as that market becomes viable.
Everyone deserves to ride bikes, and bike designers deserve to focus on the types of bikes they want. 7-foot NBA players deserve to be comfortable in cars, but it’s not Ford’s fault or responsibility that finding a car is more difficult for them than for those between the 10th and 90th height percentiles. No less unfortunate, but changing the design of all cars or expecting app major manufacturers to design for outliers isn’t necessarily a solution.
I don’t read the article as an attack on building high performing bikes.
Just about manufacturers giving a better idea of what a bicycle or wheel set can stand up to by including some maximum supported weight information that is not just available in a manual (which most people don’t see until post-sale)
We can pretty easily infer the weight of an overall build down to how much the spokes weigh before buying… why can’t we be given more information about what a rim or frame can stand up to with regards to weight?
100% agreed with this point. I don’t think the article attacks bike makers for their specialization, but I think a lot of the people reacting to pieces like this take it there or read active/intentional fat-phobia into brands’ current practices.
there shouldn’t be bikes as light and high-performing as possible made for those who can use them
… Nobody is saying that?
This is literally the same argument Republicans used during BLM protests.
Nobody was saying non-black lives don’t matter. Nobody is saying lightweight bikes for fit people should be a thing of the past.
I just want to be able to tell my buddy pushing 250 where he can get a bike that won’t cost way more than someone just getting into a hobby is willing to spend. I want to be able to get my parents and sister and in-laws riding with me and my wife without telling them “sorry, you need to buy a $3,000 bike because nobody makes a standardized style for people your size”
Totally agreed and I see the connection with the (deplorable) “all lives matter” reactionary argument. I don’t think this article makes the argument I was referencing, but many people’s reactions in these comments do. I honestly don’t find much that I disagree with in the article, but in how people suggest the bike industry addresses those issues, there may be a lack of balance.
A lot of people just go knee-jerk in the direction they want, not realizing they’re dragging everything along with them.
I would love for there to be a “fat bike” style that’s fairly standard across the industry, but there simply isn’t. I spend all day building bikes for various companies, and the only new things I see are ebikes, and a lot of those are simply hub motors and speed controllers crammed onto existing frames. That means the effective weight limit is even more reduced.
It’s going to be quite some time before the industry changes to heavier models simply because they don’t see it as profitable yet. Even if they tried to pivot today, it would be years before you see changes in your local stores.
I wasn’t reading through every comment, I just saw a bunch of people saying they want heavier bikes, but it didn’t seem like anyone was trying to suggest normal bikes stop being made. Heck, as far as I’m concerned “skinny person bikes” should always continue being made just for the same reason some people want “fat people bikes” today, so someone with an abnormal body type can ride comfortably, and safely.
The fact of the matter is, the industry will only go where the money is. And as sort of a logical conundrum, more fat people would hike if they had better bikes, but the bikes won’t show up until more fat people ride.
If the industry clearly advertised the weight limits of each model it would help. This would allow a company to offer a niche product. If the demand is there, the company will succeed.
I agree with most of what you said but not It’s just the reality of the world we live in, plus many people have genetic issues that make it fairly difficult to lose weight.
It’s not just the reality of the world we live in. People were not this fat 30 years ago, let alone 50 or 100 years. And it is something we can change, if we cared to.
“Genetic issues” are too much of a crutch or a lame excuse. Yes that makes it more difficult, but it doesn’t make it impossible or justify not trying to get to a more reasonable weight.
But there absolutely should exist a segment of bicycles for almost every range of weights.
I never thought about this until it happened to me, but a lot of medications can cause significant weight gain. I used to weigh 110lbs for a good chunk of my existence and was very fit.
I experienced a mental health crisis and the antidepressants made me gain around 60lbs. Don’t ask me how, I’m not a doctor. But to go from being very thin to overweight was kinda disturbing…just ballooning up like that. Also…the constipation was the worse I’ve ever experienced. I could eat salads all day(and did) and my shit was still rock hard.
I’ve since quit taking them due to side effects killing my quality of life and the weight is slowly coming off…but it’s like my whole metabolism is fucked forever now. (I’m doing much better mentally, I was in a bad situation, and leaving it helped immensely)
There are people who need those meds to function, and A LOT of people take them. Probably a contributing factor as to why there’s more large people now. Either accept the weight gain and be mentally healthier, or have more mental health problems with no weight gain. Thats a hell of a choice.
Hopefully newer meds are being developed that don’t have those side effects.
Dude, it didn’t matter how much water I drank, or how much fiber(Dr’s advice was to eat salads and high fiber food) I couldn’t shit. Laxatives didn’t even help. Never had that issue before or after i stopped taking those meds. It was fucking awful.
Also, without medications messing up my digestive system, salads usually make me poop. Not diarrhea or anything, just…kinda moves things along if you will.
Maybe your body reacts differently? Bodies are weird as fuck like that.
Genetic issues have always been around, but the rise in obesity is strictly modern. Throughout eons of history, people have been at a severe calorie deficit. Your body has many amazing background processes to help you survive famines (your body will try to retain as much fat as possible when starving over longer periods of time), avoid accidentally killing yourself due to excess calorie burns while foraging (your body builds in an automatic efficiency curve into repetitve exercise to conserve calories), and even some genetic changes for those that endured exteme famine conditions, which were passed down between generations after calamities like the irish potato famine, making people more likely to survive. These are great during civilization collapses, but really bite us in the ass in modern times.
However, the rise of ultra processed foods (UPFs) and other calorie dense foods make it extremely easy to take in far more calories than one could ever burn though exercise alone. As more jobs transition from labor intensive (bricklaying, farming, digging trenches, and laying roads by hand and pickaxe), we have created a more sedentary lifestyle at the same time, compounding the issue.
We definitely need to factor in larger people into stuff like biking, but biking alone will not address the root cause of the problem: 1. the proliferation of UPFs coupled with their low costs, 2. a sedentary lifestyle due to cars and office jobs, and 3. the collapse of third places where people can hang out, swim, play outdoor games, sports, etc.
Nip those three problems in the bud, and you improve the health outcomes for generations of people.
Stuff like urban density, lowering the cost of healthy foods while improving signage on UPFs, making it easy to walk, bike, bus, or commute via rail instead of drive, and improve free or low cost social spaces will help. :)
Deserve to bike and “deserve to force bicycle manufacturers to make mass-produced models that super serve the super-sized even though they’re a significant minority of the actual and probable global customer base” are very different things.
If you want a bike for someone 300+, get a used, big steel frame and start assembling. Same for weight weenies the want bikes as light as a feather: customization is on you. Mainstream, pre-assembled bikes are going to be made for the majority of people that are likely to buy them, because otherwise they won’t sell.
Again, to emphasize: AT EITHER END–super comp or super weight–bikes are specialized (not the company) bicycles that require parts selection and piece-by-piece assembly. It’s not “unfair” to morbidly obese people anymore than it is unfair to someone that wants a super light bike or a super durable, weight-bearing, bike-packing ride.
My friend is 6’5 and all muscle, idk how much he weighs but it’s got to be a lot. He had to build a bike from scratch as well. He would pop spokes and mess up frames. It’s not about fat it’s about weight. Less than 2% of the population in the United States weighs more than 300 pounds, and I imagine only a fraction of that fractional subset of people intend to ride a bicycle.
Also, “custom” does not necessarily mean expensive. It just means building it up piece by piece. Many people who have very little money but want a decent bike also build “custom” bikes from used parts, because you can slap together a decent bike from good used parts rather than spend the same amount on a Walmart special that breaks apart in two months.
They are purchasing the wrong equipment because the manufacturer isn’t being upfront about the limits. That’s one of the problems this article is about.
I got put on Concerta as a kid and I ended up gaining quite a bit of weight very quickly. You don’t really notice these things when you’re living in that body 24/7. All of a sudden I was not able to fit in my favourite hide and seek places. Just another perspective since you said you couldn’t wrap your head around people who don’t know their own weight.
Yeah I mean even if you’re someone who feels that being fat is not their fault or something to be ashamed of, nor are the laws of physics and limitations of structural integrity someone else’s.
I implore you to go to Italy circa 1970s and tell Design Group Italia that 140kgs is an unacceptably low weight limit for a single-person stool. Quit normalizing suicide via obesity.
I’m not normalizing obesity I’m criticizing the design of a stool. I looked up the stool you mentioned and it looked like it connected the seat to the legs just by being fastened together from center of the seat to a small point where the legs joined together in a sort of pyramid like design. If the stool had been designed with each of the legs equidistant closer to the circumference of the seat it probably wouldn’t have taken as much damage from Bigman. But idk I’m not a stool designer or a Time Machine owner
Well, no. There’s a place for design and fashion pieces and a place for lightweight / inexpensive pieces. But the middle of the road options, your everyday average furniture? Those should be sturdy, reliable, simple pieces. I can see a stool having a 140kg weight limit when looking at it from the perspective of “a stool is for one person sitting on it”.
But I’d rather it have a bit more strength. Things happen, like somebody wanting to sit in your lap for a moment or children being silly. Design for when things go wrong, not for a happy path use case.
If it’s not meant to hold 300lbs, it’s a decoration, not a stool! My apartment is only built for 2 relatively fit people, being a small walkup. So I consider it more a sculpture than something functional.
Have we really normalized obesity to such an extent that we consider “a small walk” to be an indication of being fit? God.
On the other point, maybe some Europeans can chime in: would you consider a stool unusable and fit only for decoration if its weight limit was 140 kilos?
A walkup apartment means no elevator, so to be fair to anyone else, a small walkup could still require like 15 flights of stairs. And by “small” I was referring to the apartment, but obviously still joking about the whole comment. Saying that a small apartment is only for fit people is supposed to be like saying a stool with a 300lb limit isn’t a stool.
“Fatphobic” (because that’s what we call social health consciousness these days) rant incoming:
It’s been an issue for a while across all facets of life now and no one is brave enough to be the first voice to say “hey, these things literally were not made to support people as heavy as you.” In the past year, a horseback riding trail in my hometown had to close because there were not enough customers whose weight didn’t pose a serious risk of injuring the horses. A few years ago I had to install a steel support beam in the crawlspace under the master bedroom of a morbidly obese couple. Together, they probably pushed a half a ton and spent easily 16 hours a day on that bed. The framing had become so sunken that you could see the subflooring through the gaps that appeared between the flooring.
Just the other week my roommate invited an old school friend over, the guy probably weighed about 300lbs at 5’8" and broke a stool (Lyra by Magis, very nice, one of my favorites) in my kitchen. How anyone can be that big and so unaware of the strain their weight is putting on the things underneath them is beyond me.
But bigger people deserve to be able to bike too! It’s just the reality of the world we live in, plus many people have genetic issues that make it fairly difficult to lose weight. They shouldn’t be locked out of basic things like being able to survive without a car. I admit horses are a different story because they’re live animals, but bicycles are human-made and can and should be designed to handle more weight, especially with how many people are bigger.
I agree that there should be options for bigger people, but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be bikes as light and high-performing as possible made for those who can use them, and if that’s the focus of a given manufacturer, that’s not an ethical issue. It’s just their specialization, and there’s plenty of room for other designers to focus on bikes for heavier riders as that market becomes viable.
Everyone deserves to ride bikes, and bike designers deserve to focus on the types of bikes they want. 7-foot NBA players deserve to be comfortable in cars, but it’s not Ford’s fault or responsibility that finding a car is more difficult for them than for those between the 10th and 90th height percentiles. No less unfortunate, but changing the design of all cars or expecting app major manufacturers to design for outliers isn’t necessarily a solution.
I don’t read the article as an attack on building high performing bikes.
Just about manufacturers giving a better idea of what a bicycle or wheel set can stand up to by including some maximum supported weight information that is not just available in a manual (which most people don’t see until post-sale)
We can pretty easily infer the weight of an overall build down to how much the spokes weigh before buying… why can’t we be given more information about what a rim or frame can stand up to with regards to weight?
100% agreed with this point. I don’t think the article attacks bike makers for their specialization, but I think a lot of the people reacting to pieces like this take it there or read active/intentional fat-phobia into brands’ current practices.
… Nobody is saying that?
This is literally the same argument Republicans used during BLM protests.
Nobody was saying non-black lives don’t matter. Nobody is saying lightweight bikes for fit people should be a thing of the past.
I just want to be able to tell my buddy pushing 250 where he can get a bike that won’t cost way more than someone just getting into a hobby is willing to spend. I want to be able to get my parents and sister and in-laws riding with me and my wife without telling them “sorry, you need to buy a $3,000 bike because nobody makes a standardized style for people your size”
Totally agreed and I see the connection with the (deplorable) “all lives matter” reactionary argument. I don’t think this article makes the argument I was referencing, but many people’s reactions in these comments do. I honestly don’t find much that I disagree with in the article, but in how people suggest the bike industry addresses those issues, there may be a lack of balance.
A lot of people just go knee-jerk in the direction they want, not realizing they’re dragging everything along with them.
I would love for there to be a “fat bike” style that’s fairly standard across the industry, but there simply isn’t. I spend all day building bikes for various companies, and the only new things I see are ebikes, and a lot of those are simply hub motors and speed controllers crammed onto existing frames. That means the effective weight limit is even more reduced.
It’s going to be quite some time before the industry changes to heavier models simply because they don’t see it as profitable yet. Even if they tried to pivot today, it would be years before you see changes in your local stores.
I wasn’t reading through every comment, I just saw a bunch of people saying they want heavier bikes, but it didn’t seem like anyone was trying to suggest normal bikes stop being made. Heck, as far as I’m concerned “skinny person bikes” should always continue being made just for the same reason some people want “fat people bikes” today, so someone with an abnormal body type can ride comfortably, and safely.
The fact of the matter is, the industry will only go where the money is. And as sort of a logical conundrum, more fat people would hike if they had better bikes, but the bikes won’t show up until more fat people ride.
So the question is how big is the demand?
If the industry clearly advertised the weight limits of each model it would help. This would allow a company to offer a niche product. If the demand is there, the company will succeed.
I agree with most of what you said but not It’s just the reality of the world we live in, plus many people have genetic issues that make it fairly difficult to lose weight.
It’s not just the reality of the world we live in. People were not this fat 30 years ago, let alone 50 or 100 years. And it is something we can change, if we cared to.
“Genetic issues” are too much of a crutch or a lame excuse. Yes that makes it more difficult, but it doesn’t make it impossible or justify not trying to get to a more reasonable weight.
But there absolutely should exist a segment of bicycles for almost every range of weights.
I never thought about this until it happened to me, but a lot of medications can cause significant weight gain. I used to weigh 110lbs for a good chunk of my existence and was very fit.
I experienced a mental health crisis and the antidepressants made me gain around 60lbs. Don’t ask me how, I’m not a doctor. But to go from being very thin to overweight was kinda disturbing…just ballooning up like that. Also…the constipation was the worse I’ve ever experienced. I could eat salads all day(and did) and my shit was still rock hard.
I’ve since quit taking them due to side effects killing my quality of life and the weight is slowly coming off…but it’s like my whole metabolism is fucked forever now. (I’m doing much better mentally, I was in a bad situation, and leaving it helped immensely)
There are people who need those meds to function, and A LOT of people take them. Probably a contributing factor as to why there’s more large people now. Either accept the weight gain and be mentally healthier, or have more mental health problems with no weight gain. Thats a hell of a choice.
Hopefully newer meds are being developed that don’t have those side effects.
Salad is high fiber, it’s going to make your shit hard.
Dude, it didn’t matter how much water I drank, or how much fiber(Dr’s advice was to eat salads and high fiber food) I couldn’t shit. Laxatives didn’t even help. Never had that issue before or after i stopped taking those meds. It was fucking awful.
Also, without medications messing up my digestive system, salads usually make me poop. Not diarrhea or anything, just…kinda moves things along if you will.
Maybe your body reacts differently? Bodies are weird as fuck like that.
I had some issues with retention and changing diet to high fiber made it worse… so yeah bodies are weird like that.
Cycling is extremely low impact, and getting exercise on a bike can be a lot easier on the joints than walking or running.
Genetic issues have always been around, but the rise in obesity is strictly modern. Throughout eons of history, people have been at a severe calorie deficit. Your body has many amazing background processes to help you survive famines (your body will try to retain as much fat as possible when starving over longer periods of time), avoid accidentally killing yourself due to excess calorie burns while foraging (your body builds in an automatic efficiency curve into repetitve exercise to conserve calories), and even some genetic changes for those that endured exteme famine conditions, which were passed down between generations after calamities like the irish potato famine, making people more likely to survive. These are great during civilization collapses, but really bite us in the ass in modern times.
However, the rise of ultra processed foods (UPFs) and other calorie dense foods make it extremely easy to take in far more calories than one could ever burn though exercise alone. As more jobs transition from labor intensive (bricklaying, farming, digging trenches, and laying roads by hand and pickaxe), we have created a more sedentary lifestyle at the same time, compounding the issue.
We definitely need to factor in larger people into stuff like biking, but biking alone will not address the root cause of the problem: 1. the proliferation of UPFs coupled with their low costs, 2. a sedentary lifestyle due to cars and office jobs, and 3. the collapse of third places where people can hang out, swim, play outdoor games, sports, etc.
Nip those three problems in the bud, and you improve the health outcomes for generations of people.
Stuff like urban density, lowering the cost of healthy foods while improving signage on UPFs, making it easy to walk, bike, bus, or commute via rail instead of drive, and improve free or low cost social spaces will help. :)
There are no genetic issues which violate the laws of thermodynamics
Deserve to bike and “deserve to force bicycle manufacturers to make mass-produced models that super serve the super-sized even though they’re a significant minority of the actual and probable global customer base” are very different things.
If you want a bike for someone 300+, get a used, big steel frame and start assembling. Same for weight weenies the want bikes as light as a feather: customization is on you. Mainstream, pre-assembled bikes are going to be made for the majority of people that are likely to buy them, because otherwise they won’t sell.
Again, to emphasize: AT EITHER END–super comp or super weight–bikes are specialized (not the company) bicycles that require parts selection and piece-by-piece assembly. It’s not “unfair” to morbidly obese people anymore than it is unfair to someone that wants a super light bike or a super durable, weight-bearing, bike-packing ride.
My friend is 6’5 and all muscle, idk how much he weighs but it’s got to be a lot. He had to build a bike from scratch as well. He would pop spokes and mess up frames. It’s not about fat it’s about weight. Less than 2% of the population in the United States weighs more than 300 pounds, and I imagine only a fraction of that fractional subset of people intend to ride a bicycle.
Also, “custom” does not necessarily mean expensive. It just means building it up piece by piece. Many people who have very little money but want a decent bike also build “custom” bikes from used parts, because you can slap together a decent bike from good used parts rather than spend the same amount on a Walmart special that breaks apart in two months.
They’re not left out. They just have to purchase the right equipment for their condition.
They have excluded themselves from a segment of the market.
We have to stop infantilizing adults and actually tell grown ups what’s actually going on.
They are purchasing the wrong equipment because the manufacturer isn’t being upfront about the limits. That’s one of the problems this article is about.
I got put on Concerta as a kid and I ended up gaining quite a bit of weight very quickly. You don’t really notice these things when you’re living in that body 24/7. All of a sudden I was not able to fit in my favourite hide and seek places. Just another perspective since you said you couldn’t wrap your head around people who don’t know their own weight.
Sorry about your stool though that really blows.
Yeah I mean even if you’re someone who feels that being fat is not their fault or something to be ashamed of, nor are the laws of physics and limitations of structural integrity someone else’s.
That stool is more of a decoration piece than a stool it’s not built with sturdiness in mind sound more like a failure on the designers part
You are an idiot.
👍🏼
I implore you to go to Italy circa 1970s and tell Design Group Italia that 140kgs is an unacceptably low weight limit for a single-person stool. Quit normalizing suicide via obesity.
I’m not normalizing obesity I’m criticizing the design of a stool. I looked up the stool you mentioned and it looked like it connected the seat to the legs just by being fastened together from center of the seat to a small point where the legs joined together in a sort of pyramid like design. If the stool had been designed with each of the legs equidistant closer to the circumference of the seat it probably wouldn’t have taken as much damage from Bigman. But idk I’m not a stool designer or a Time Machine owner
Youre a person who prefers function over aesthetics, thats totally fine.
140kg stool is perfectly acceptable as a furniture piece anywhere but your mind.
Well, no. There’s a place for design and fashion pieces and a place for lightweight / inexpensive pieces. But the middle of the road options, your everyday average furniture? Those should be sturdy, reliable, simple pieces. I can see a stool having a 140kg weight limit when looking at it from the perspective of “a stool is for one person sitting on it”.
But I’d rather it have a bit more strength. Things happen, like somebody wanting to sit in your lap for a moment or children being silly. Design for when things go wrong, not for a happy path use case.
If it’s not meant to hold 300lbs, it’s a decoration, not a stool! My apartment is only built for 2 relatively fit people, being a small walkup. So I consider it more a sculpture than something functional.
Have we really normalized obesity to such an extent that we consider “a small walk” to be an indication of being fit? God.
On the other point, maybe some Europeans can chime in: would you consider a stool unusable and fit only for decoration if its weight limit was 140 kilos?
140kg limit for anything you’re putting all your weight on is quite generous.
Anything over like 100kg limit is bonus
A walkup apartment means no elevator, so to be fair to anyone else, a small walkup could still require like 15 flights of stairs. And by “small” I was referring to the apartment, but obviously still joking about the whole comment. Saying that a small apartment is only for fit people is supposed to be like saying a stool with a 300lb limit isn’t a stool.
It’s a little sad that we need to actually say this, but:
Don’t be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
Respectful debate is totally OK, criticizing a product is fine, but being verbally abusive will not be tolerated.
Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.