The <em>Obese</em> Police

Language is constantly evolving, but you know a change has hit the big time when the AP Stylebook makes it official. In light of all the recent news attention to Ozempic and related drugs, the usage guide’s lead editor announced in April that the entry for “Obesity, obese, overweight” had been adjusted. That entry now advises “care and precision” in choosing how to describe “people with obesity, people of higher weights and people who prefer the term fat.” The use of obese as a modifier should be avoided “when possible.”

In other words, the new guidelines endorse what has been called “people-first language”—the practice of trading adjectives, which come before the person being described, for prepositional phrases, which come after. If you put the word that indicates the condition or disability in front, then—the thinking goes—you are literally and metaphorically leading with it. Reverse the order, and you’ve focused on the person, in all their proper personhood. This change in syntax isn’t just symbolic, its proponents argue: A fact sheet from.” Changing words is changing minds.