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Dare to Resolve to Ditch Dieting

December 27, 2011 By 6 Comments
Official logo for the Ditching Dieting campaign.

Dieting is toxic to your health.

By Sharon Haywood

Aside from bikini season, late December and early January is the other time of year that we’re especially susceptible to feeling bad about our bodies. Special thanks to the media and the diet industry for ensuring we do by reminding us that we overindulged during the end-of-year festivities and we must resolve to lose (at least) that holiday weight come the new year. Weight Watchers in the UK is making certain you hear that message loud and clear. On January 1, 2012 almost all the major UK television networks will simultaneously air a three-minute Weight Watchers commercial aka music video worth over US$23 million. In it, Weight Watchers proudly parades 180 clients, mostly women, who have lost a total of 5908 pounds using its trademarked ProPoints program launched just a year ago.

What I’d like to see is how many of those slimmed-down success stories will have kept the weight off by New Year’s Day 2016. According to the studies, within four to five years most of them will have regained the weight, and at least 60 to 120 of them will weigh more than their pre-diet weight. Yes, I said diet. Regardless of what Weight Watchers (or SlimFast or Jenny Craig or any other system or product designed to lose weight) calls it, a diet is a diet. And diets don’t work. Sure, if you eat only protein and avoid carbs or measure your portions or adhere to a system of points that limits your caloric intake, yes, you will lose weight… initially. But research[1] clearly shows that any weight lost is sure to creep back within five years.

Researchers at California’s UCLA sought out specific evidence on the long-term results of dieting by analyzing every published diet study—31 in total[2]—that monitored participants’ weight from two to five years after their initial weight loss. The study’s lead author, Traci Mann, summarized their results:

“You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.”

You may have already heard this information but you may have very well just resigned yourself to playing the losing and gaining game. It’s understandable considering how barraged we are with the message that fat will kill you. But the truth is fat can actually protect you against certain diseases including osteoporosis, chronic bronchitis, and some cancers.[3] Furthermore, the evidence strongly supports that continued yo-yo dieting or losing and gaining weight repetitively does real damage to your body, not to mention the mental and emotional self-abuse that dieting demands. The research is clear: weight cycling plays a large role in various ailments, ironically often attributed to obesity: high-blood pressure, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and even premature death.[4] Unfortunately, the studies that attract the most press are those that support weight loss as a means to health; such studies are substantially funded by the pharmaceutical[5] and weight loss industries. And these industries are certainly not lacking in profits; in only two more years, the worldwide weight-loss market is predicted to be worth a staggering US$586.3 billion.

It’s time to say “No” to big business making money off our bodies. Enough of believing the propaganda that fat is the enemy. Enough of trusting that the label ‘overweight’ or even ‘obese’ obtained from an unsound BMI chart translates to ill health. As the year comes to a close and you compile your list of New Year’s resolutions, dare to do something different. Dare to listen to your body. Dare to ditch dieting. And know that you don’t have to do it alone. Across the pond, the Endangered Bodies campaign, launched by the Endangered Species International March 2011 Summit, is in full swing. The Endangered Bodies (EB) team in the UK[6], led by Susie Orbach, launched its Ditching Dieting campaign last month at UK Feminista’s national conference where they invited attendees to “speak out against the misery caused by the diet industry.” And you can, too.

Anyone, anywhere can hold a SpeakOut in the name of Ditching Dieting. You can organize a few friends around your kitchen table or you might fill an auditorium. The point is to create a safe space where the suffering caused by dieting can be expressed and validated. A SpeakOut and the subsequent support group that can emerge from it offer similar peer support that diet clubs such as Weight Watchers provide; however, instead of focusing on working against your body’s natural impulses, a SpeakOut club facilitates strong bonds as you explore collaboratively with other members how to truly take care of yourself. In the words of the UK EB team:

“In general, the aim is to become really aware of where dieting puts you, and to start making important choices about how much you want to play along with a game that is making you miserable… It is about taking on the challenge to accept and understand how natural it is to eat happily, in response to your hunger, and without guilt.”

Learning how to eat intuitively is a process that takes time, especially if you’ve historically relied on external factors, such as a meal plan or a point system to guide you on when and how to eat. Diets teach us to ignore our internal cues, which only contributes to eating disorders and obesity. As Susie Orbach has asked many times,

“If dieting worked, why would we need to do it more than once?”

Let’s kick off the New Year off by Ditching Dieting and move toward eating “happily ever after.”

* * *

Whether you’re in the UK, the US, Canada, or Europe, consider hosting your own SpeakOut. For more information visit www.ditchingdieting.org and write to info@any-body.org to obtain a SpeakOut package.

Currently in the UK, a Body Image Inquiry is underway looking into the causes and consequences of body image anxiety. If you’re based in London, take the day off work on January 16, 2012 and join the UK EB team in speaking out against the diet industry at Parliament. Full event details here.

[1] Gina Kolata, Rethinking Thin, New York: Picador, 2007, 188.

[2] Contrast that with the fact that the obesity “crisis” was primarily borne out of four studies. See Paul Campos’ The Obesity Myth, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, pages 13-20 for more details.

[3] Linda Bacon, Health at Every Size, Dallas: BenBella Books, Inc., 2008, 138-139.

[4] Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, 32-33.

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Feel Fat? Try Burlesque to Feel Beautiful

December 20, 2011 By 7 Comments
Photo by Powerful Goddess Photography

Photo by Powerful Goddess Photography

By Kitty Cavalier

Recently a friend told me she wants to love her body but she always feels fat. I dedicate this article to her.

No woman is immune from “feeling fat.” But notice we don’t say, “I have fat on my body all the time.” What we are describing is the FEELING of being fat. For every woman, the feeling of being fat represents something different. Try completing this sentence: “I feel fat, and that means I am _______.” Some examples would be: unattractive, too much, not enough, gross, unlovable, a mess… just to name a few.

Now, continue the sentence with: “if I am _____, that means__________, and that makes me feel__________.”

For example:

“If I am unattractive, that means I will never live my dream of having a partner who truly loves me, and that makes me sad.”

“If I am not enough, that means I will never get anything I want in this life no matter how hard I try, and that makes me mad!”

” If I am too much, that means I am different than everyone else, that no one will ever understand me, and that makes me feel sad and alone.”

What is fat? Fat is a tissue. An assemblage of molecules and acids. But for a woman who is feeling sad, lonely or angry in a world that takes drastic measures to prevent her from feeling the fullness of her truth, it is easy to trick ourselves into believing that if we did not feel fat, we wouldn’t have to encounter these intense feelings so often. That’s what it looks like on TV anyway. So we put all our attention on how we can reshape, reform and reinvent our sweet, precious bodies. But as many of us have discovered, you can still be lonely in a differently shaped body.

So, what is the antidote? Well, it sure as hell doesn’t begin an X or end with a drine. Have you ever met a girl who looks really pretty, but because she so clearly doesn’t love herself, she is really un-beautiful? Her beauty is there, but it leaves you with a feeling of emptiness? And then, have you also met a girl who is incredibly “imperfect,” yet completely enchanting because of how much she enjoys being exactly who she is? Her self-love is infectious, and you cannot help but fall under her spell. With this kind of woman, it’s not in what she has, it’s in what she believes. She refuses to buy into the idea that her scrumptious self could be anything less than lovable.

Burlesque is the living practice of being this kind of woman. There are some who think that burlesque is a step back for feminism, and that stripping is an objectification of women, period. To me, it is the exact opposite. When I went to my first burlesque show five years ago, what changed my life forever was seeing women who looked exactly like me, with real bodies, making the rules about what it means to be beautiful.

They were not trying to fit into someone else’s definition of sexiness, or waiting for something to change in order to feel the fullest expression of their beauty and power. And if you couldn’t groove to their beat, well, you could just move on over. The same bodies I would see being squeezed, cursed and quickly covered up in the gym locker room were being flaunted and adored. I saw teeny-weeny AA cup breasts, G size breasts that came down to the belly button, and each woman walked around in mere pasties and a g-string with an ease and confidence that was impenetrable. These were not mere objects of male desire. These were objects of pure feminine power. The kind that is gorgeously unapologetic, perfectly imperfect, simultaneously embodying the beauty that dwells in the darkness and the light.

Today, act as if you are a woman who has the world in the palm of her hand. A woman whose beauty is eternal, and leaves a legacy in her wake. Act as if you are a woman who turns every head as she walks into a room. A woman that is flown across the world because her beauty is legend, and someone is prepared to pay millions of dollars for the inspiration that comes from watching her take one sip of coffee. When you live your life from this spot, you evaporate the chains that tie us down to the belief that we will only experience our fullest power when we don’t feel fat. That is bullshit. You are this woman. Feel your power now.

Kitty Cavalier is known for bringing mischief to the masses at The School of Charm and Cheek in NYC, of which she is the founder. After a lifetime of hating her body, she took a wild risk by performing a burlesque striptease in front of 100 people, and has never been the same. Since then she has been on a mission to help women adore and appreciate their feminine form through burlesque dancing and other sensual arts. For more information, visit her website, join her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

Cross-posted with permission.

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FAT SEX, The Book

December 16, 2011 By 6 Comments
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By Jennifer Jonassen

If you’re like me, you grew up with a very limited view of what sexiness is, of what sexiness looks like. I always found it perplexing that what was considered sexy was so narrowly defined. As a young girl, the women that surrounded me did not look like the so-called ideal and yet they were all partnered up. Obviously, they were having sex too! Yet everything I learned from television and fashion magazines told me this could not be so. More than 30 years later I am still searching for positive images of sexy fat women in the mainstream, which has happily led me to FAT SEX.

Author Rebecca Jane Weinstein’s book FAT SEX affirms what I have known intuitively all along — women of all sizes and shapes are sexy, passionate, desirable creatures with romantic and sexual lives. A seasoned lawyer and social worker, Weinstein recently took some time to talk with me about her inspirations for her revolutionary book, FAT SEX.

Jennifer Jonassen (JJ): Tell us about FAT SEX. Where did the inspiration come from?

Rebecca Jane Weinstein (RJW): FAT SEX is a book in which large-size women and men tell their true stories of social and self-acceptance in romantic and sexual relationships. Though they sometime face bigotry and experience shame, they are often heroic and live remarkably fulfilling lives. The stories are compelling and told with sensitivity and humor, connecting people on profoundly important aspects of their lives.

If there are two subjects that are universally fascinating and rife with controversy, they are sex and fat. Though our culture is obsessed with both, the notion of the two comingling is sometimes seen as offensive, obscene, or grotesque. There is an undertone in our society that fat people are not sexual beings, or shouldn’t be. This is, of course, far from the truth: fat people have normal and peculiar sex lives, just like everyone else. FAT SEX is a compilation of true stories, cultural references, and narrative commentary.

The inspiration for FAT SEX has come from several places. I have been fat, off and on, since I was four and my parents got a divorce. A pediatrician put me on my first diet in first grade and my teacher told the entire class I was not allowed to eat birthday cake. In Girl Scout Camp my bunk-mates would chant “here comes the tub” when I would walk by. I did many things to not be fat. Many of them dangerous, and none of them stuck. Though there were periods of not-so-fat, like after two summers of fat camp and later a lot of uppers — in the end I got progressively fatter. In law school one supposedly kind and caring professor told me I would never get a job because of my body. Every aspect of my life, since before I can remember, was punctuated with what was apparently the most important aspect of my being: My fat body. Especially love.

If my own life experience wasn’t enough, when I started working on http://www.peopleofsize.com/ I saw the pain and that I was not alone. And it was not actually about body size, it was about shame. Fat people can’t hide their bodies in the closet, but their shame is tucked neatly away. Fat people are mere mortals, and they need a voice. I am just one person trying to give that voice to those whose shame keeps them from speaking. It is me, my computer, and the wonderful people who tell me their stories, which I try to tell with compassion, empathy, honesty, and enough humor so we all don’t jump off a bridge.

JJ: How many stories are featured in the book?

RJW: There are about twenty stories in the book, but they interweave and represent so many more stories and people. They represent all fat people in some way or another. And not just fat people, other people who have body issues and food issues, or just live in this society and are conflicted about all the mixed messages that drive us insane.

Each chapter will delve into a different topic related to romance, relationships, and sexual practices. Subjects will include heterosexuals, gay men and lesbian women, those who have gained and lost a great deal of weight, the sexual “underground” such as cybersex and pornography, also alternative perspectives such as “fat admirers” and “chubby chasers.” Experiences, thoughts, and feeling about being a fat person in a sexual culture, sexual situations, and intimate relationships will be explored, explained, and validated. Through shared understanding people find the best in themselves and others.

JJ: Why is this book so important?

RJW: Research shows that weight discrimination is currently more prevalent than race and gender discrimination (Yale). According to the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination people who are larger than average encounter discriminatory attitudes and are denied equal opportunity in many areas of their lives, including prospective employers refusing to hire large size people; physicians and other health-care professionals advising fat patients to lose weight no matter what their medical condition; large people being systematically denied health insurance and life insurance; and landlords, housing agencies, and real estate agents denying larger people apartments.

But for my purposes, this book is about the human element: The day-to-day crap that large people go through; the insecurities they feel simply because of the size of their bodies; the personal rejection and loneliness; and the misguided notion that no one will love a fat person. The fact is, fat people can be and are loved. They can and do have great romances and sex. We are so brainwashed to believe we are undesirable that it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. These stories tell not just fat people, but the world at large, that fat people humans, and extraordinary humans at that. That is very, very important.

Author of FAT SEX and founder of PeopleofSize.com, Rebecca Jane Weinstein

JJ: Tell us a little bit about your site PeopleOfSize.com.

RJW:  PeopleOfSize.com is an online community that provides information, support, and interaction for “people of size” of all ages. We are not a diet site, though health and fitness are part of what we address. We focus on all aspects of life, from medical [issues] to fashion, relationships to daily living, entertainment to emotional well-being.

We provide comprehensive information and access from many perspectives and offer a forum for discussion and social interaction. All subjects include a social networking function. People of size can communicate about their favorite plus/large size fashions, size-friendly vacation spots, health questions and concerns, job, family, and relationships, political and social issues, and everything in between.

The PeopleOfSize.com e-community is a welcoming place for all people of size, recognizing everyone should have the opportunity to live life to the fullest, learn and grow, be healthy and happy. We are a community with no judgment, just opportunity. Of course, PeopleOfSize.com is totally free. We also have a very active community on Facebook.

JJ: What would you tell a young person who is struggling with body image?

RJW: I would tell a young person not to do what I did. Don’t confuse your body size with your self-worth. Don’t let people mislead you into thinking you will be alone and unloved because of your size or shape. That’s easier said than done, but it’s the best advice I’ve got.

Then do seek out size acceptance groups. Look into Health At Every Size. Understand there is a big difference between health and weight, no matter what else you hear. Stand up for yourself. Be a proud person, not because of your weight or despite it, because of your inner-strength. There are a million slogans I could yammer, pep talks I could give, platitudes and clichés I could proclaim. The truth is young people are saturated with negative body image messages constantly. Know you are not alone. You are not alone!  There are young people and old people and people in between that struggle too, and we need to support each other because things do change. We change. Our attitudes about ourselves and the world change all the time. I have changed a lot and I am still changing, and I am pretty old, though these days I feel like I am living some of the youth I missed.

JJ: What has the funding process been like and how have editors responded to the material?

RJW: I attempted to sell this book the traditional way. First I sought out an agent, which I understand can be a grueling process, but I found a great agent in about 24 hours. I thought I had it made. We were both anticipating a bidding war from publishers. My agent has been in the business a long time so that wasn’t just my fantasy. But it didn’t work out that way. I have been turned down by every major publisher in the country. We believe, from what we have been told that the material is too cutting edge, and right now mainstream publishing is all about celebrities and dieting. I am not a celebrity and this book is certainly not about dieting. The publishers and their editors are afraid there is no market — that not enough people will by the book. For them, of course, it’s about the bottom line.

This is a bit ironic, because the public interest in this book (and not just from fat people) seems to be great. My agent and I decided the best strategy would be to self-publish on Amazon and hope to get picked up from there. It’s a reasonable strategy but there is no advance or publishing and distribution support, so I am on my own. I started a Kickstarter.com campaign for FAT SEX. I am trying to raise $5,000 by January 14th. The money is trickling in slowly as this is a difficult economy and time of year. However, the number of “likes” for my projects is relatively astronomical. I have more Facebook “likes” on my Kickstarter.com page than most of the tech projects that have raised hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars. I still have 28 days to raise money, so we will see. I don’t think there is any question there is a market for the book. When more people “like” your page than the one for the iPad mini keyboard, it says something. Still, raising that money would really help.

Learn more about FAT SEX at its official website, its Kickstarter campaign, or read a chapter from Rebecca’s book in the online literary magazine Writing Raw.

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Remembering Ruby

November 15, 2011 By 3 Comments
ruby body shop

By Sharon Haywood

Fifty-something-old Barbie[1] might be middle-aged but she sure doesn’t show it. When she was in her 30s, her manufacturer Mattel sent her for plastic surgery, not to maintain her youthful appearance, but rather in response to market demands to morph her into a more realistic-looking doll. In 1992, Barbie’s waistline slightly expanded. Then in 1998, Mattel altered one version of the doll—Really Rad Barbie—giving her a decreased cup size and slimmer hips. Currently, her estimated measurements—38-18-34—contrast greatly with the American woman’s average of 41-34-43[2]. Barbie’s curves fall several inches short of what typical women possess today.

Considering that the average woman in the U.S. is a size 12/14, a doll that wears a double-digit dress size would be a much more accurate reflection of American women. The late Anita Roddick (1942-2007), the founder of The Body Shop, thought the same. In 1997, the socially-conscious international cosmetics franchise and Host Universal created Ruby: a chubby-cheeked, chestnut-haired, computer-generated figurine. Ruby was the brainchild of The Body Shop’s self-esteem campaign, “Love Your Body.” Her size 16 image was accompanied by the caption, “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.” She sent the message that you should love what you’ve got, not loathe it.

If you’re familiar with Ruby, you know that she’s not easy to locate. So, where’s this confident and curvaceous character been hiding? You can find her here, alongside other rejected and banned ads.[3] We can thank Mattel for Ruby’s label of “Banned.” The U.S. toy manufacturer thwarted the innovative campaign in its early days by serving The Body Shop with a cease-and-desist order; all posters had to be removed from American shops. Why? In Roddick’s own words:

“Ruby was making Barbie look bad, presumably by mocking the plastic twig-like bestseller … Mattel thought that Ruby was insulting to Barbie.”

Outside of Roddick’s explanation on her website, no other information regarding Mattel’s specific legal grounds can be found online. We can surmise that Ruby’s rolls and less-than-perky breasts were the offending culprits.

This year Ruby would have turned 14. But imagine if she had grown from being a self-esteem campaigner into a three-dimensional doll in direct competition with Barbie. Do you think that when she would have reached her 30s, she would have gone under the knife, too? Would the folks at The Body Shop have decided she needed a tummy tuck, a breast lift, and some lipo to give her a competitive edge? The Body Shop’s global communications head told the New York Times that Ruby represented “a reality check” in contrast to the “stereotypical notions of unattainable ideals.” Odds would tell us that the Rubenesque beauty wouldn’t have any part of her body nipped or tucked; in fact, like many women approaching middle-age, she might even have gained a couple of pounds. Regrettably, we’ll never know for sure.

Although Ruby’s existence was short-lived, her presence generated controversy. She caused Mattel to sit up and take notice. Along similar lines, consider that Barbie underwent cosmetic surgery to appease consumers’ demands. Although Mattel was conservative in its alterations of Barbie’s figure, the company did respond to the public. Furthermore, with sales of the blonde figurine consistently dropping,[4] the toy manufacturer has even more incentive to cater to the customer. If more and more women let corporate giants like Mattel know what they really want, who’s to say that Barbie’s waistline (and the rest of her) can’t fill out as she eases into her fifties? Something to ponder in memory of both Ruby and the visionary Roddick.

Originally published at Any-Body on June 21, 2009. Cross-posted with permission.

[1] When Any-Body originally published this post in 2009, Barbie had just turned 50 years old.

[2] I cited body measurements for White women ages 36 to 45 to reflect Ruby’s race. For the same age group, the average measurements for Black women are 43-37-46; 42.5-36-44 for Hispanic women; and 41-35-43 for Asian women.

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Weight Stigma: Breaking it Down with Advocate and Activist Marilyn Wann

September 27, 2011 By 4 Comments
Marilyn Wann

by Jennifer Jonassen

One of my biggest heroes in the struggle against fat hatred is unquestionably Marilyn Wann. Her first book, FAT?SO!, was positively revolutionary to me. I initially found myself drawn to the title as I painfully remembered that “fatso” was about the worst thing you could be called on the playground at lunch, and I was, many times throughout my childhood. Reading her book was the first time I considered the possibility that I was equal to everyone else, that I was worthy and entitled to respect. For many years I have considered Marilyn Wann the Gloria Steinem of the weight equality movement.

In person, Marilyn Wann is warm and incredibly understanding. In addition to being an indefatigable warrior and champion of human rights she is also one of the funniest people I know. I was recently blessed to have an opportunity to speak with her about some of the issues we face today including bullying, First Lady Michelle Obama’s controversial “Let’s Move” campaign, and U.S. healthcare. Ms. Wann’s story begins one important day where she faced a “double whammy” of discrimination and rejection. The catalyst events of that day led her to write FAT?SO! and to become the knowledgeable and inspiring leader she is today.

MW: I had what I called my Really Bad Day and I don’t think I’m the only person who has ever had a day like this. In 1993, I was having dinner with this guy and in the middle of dinner he said that he just realized that he was embarrassed to introduce me to some of his friends because I was fat. It really hurt my feelings. I was angry at him and outraged at being excluded. Then, I came home from that experience and opened a letter from Blue Cross California telling me that I would not be allowed to buy health insurance, not at any price, because of my weight. According to them I am morbidly obese. That was a double whammy.

JJ: What was your first step?

MW: I’m inspired by Audre Lorde, a feminist African American lesbian poet. She said that your silence does not protect you. So, because of that really bad day, I decided to come out as publicly as possible as a proud fat person. I started a zine called Fat!So? and then after five or six issues of the zine I got to put together a book proposal and write a Fat!So? book.

JJ: And Fat!So? is still in print today?

MW: Yes, it has been in print for 11 years and people are really enjoying it. I think it’s proof that people of all different sizes have these moments of being excluded for who we are. We all feel like we’re the only person who is alone and everyone else has some magic secret, when in fact we are all having that experience. So we have this solidarity in this alienation.

JJ: Do you think discrimination has gotten worse or better?

MW: I think it’s possible that levels of weight-based prejudice and discrimination have gotten worse. We are just now starting to get basic data on weight discrimination. I do know that for children it is getting worse. Children face more hatred from their peers and the anti-obesity campaigns against fat children are terrifying. The government-sponsored campaigns are also promoting fat hate. But I do also think that our resistance is better. The grassroots community of people—of all sizes—are saying that this is a stupid kind of prejudice that gets in everybody’s way and wastes our lives. I think we are finding more strength and more fabulousness!

JJ: Do you have any thoughts on why this form of prejudice is getting worse?

MW: I do think that weight prejudice got really heated maybe a hundred or more years ago out of a combination of a lot of different industries jumping into the public [realm]. Advertising, medicine, insurance, the government, and all kinds of major forces in our society, like the media, all jumped into public awareness for different but self-interested reasons. Weight discrimination is really driven by health beliefs. Health beliefs around weight are not neutral or beneficial: they really are very dangerous and they justify discrimination.

JJ: What can we do to fight against this discrimination?

MW: I don’t think it’s necessarily an incremental battle where you have to fight every step of the way against overwhelming odds. I think it’s a battle where we can use leverage, where things can shift on one idea or one zesty comeback or one powerful confrontation. So I have the hope that although we are incredibly outnumbered we actually have a really powerful position.

JJ: Why do you think the anti-obesity campaigns are not including information about HAES (Health At Every Size), NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance), or input from you or other scholars? It seems to me that these campaigns ultimately end up becoming more damaging although that probably isn’t their intention.

MW: Well, I think they may have good intentions but if they were behaving like scientists they would certainly notice the data doesn’t support their approach. The approach of telling everyone to just eat better and exercise more and they’ll be thin has been tried a million billion times by a million billion people, and it doesn’t produce the results that everyone is hoping for. People lose weight and feel better about themselves for a little while and then gain it back and continue feeling bad about themselves. So whatever good intentions there may be, [their intentions] are also shaped by fear of social ostracism.

JJ: Let’s talk about the Let’s Move Campaign, which is First Lady Michelle Obama’s major project.

MW: The Let’s Move campaign has this goal of “solving the childhood obesity epidemic within one generation.” That’s a terrible goal. There are ways that they qualify it but basically what they are saying is we don’t like fat children in our society, we don’t want there to be any fat children. Now there have always been fat children and there will always be fat children, so by having that goal they’re not changing the reality that fat children exist. They are just adding shame and blame onto fat children.

JJ:  I know from experience that it is incredibly difficult and painful when your weight is targeted at a young age in school.

MW: I think that there’s this notion that weight loss goals are good and I don’t think that they are good. I think they are very discriminatory. Because they know that when people lose weight the majority gain it right back. And the majority of people are still going to [have] the natural body shapes that they were born to have. And so it’s kind of a utopian uniformity goal: the world won’t be good until we’re all the same body shape. I find that very creepy. Why do we even want that?

JJ: Can you explain the difference in approach that HAES takes?

MW: Well, I think Health At Every Size offers the possibility for reclaiming the joy and benefit from proper nutrition and good eating and the joy of moving and being physically active. We can reclaim behaviors that have been attached to weight loss goals and they can really be good for us. I think that when you have the Health At Every Size approach it celebrates weight diversity and health. We can revolutionize the way we think about health, weight, food, eating, and fitness if we stop torturing ourselves and each other.

JJ: There must be a correlation to bullying and these campaigns I imagine…

MW:  It’s hard to gauge yet without studies [but] childhood for fat children can be hellish. We [NAAFA] recently [learned of] a tragic story. This teenage girl who was of average weight moved to a new town and she was picked on for her body and size and her nose. She was so harassed for her weight that she wouldn’t even eat on the school grounds. She had one new friend and she and this friend committed double suicide.

And this has happened before. These tragedies are horrifying and there are other children who will think of killing themselves. Their lives are permanently hindered. Their feeling of worth in the world is permanently damaged from being bullied and teased. We know that’s going on. There is kind of an attitude that bullying or teasing is somehow a necessary or required part of growing up. And I think that it’s just adults being fearful and cowards because this is not necessary. This is something anyone can stand up to. There is even a wonderful book by an eight-year old girl in Chicago about how she didn’t choose to be fat and she shouldn’t be teased for it. I think it’s up to all of us as human beings to stand up against hurtfulness. I go out and I give talks in schools.

JJ: You visit schools a lot. What is that like?

MW: I go in as a really fat person saying, “Hi, I’m a really fat person and here’s my story. Here is what it has been like for me and I don’t agree with being mistreated and I don’t want any of you to be mistreated for who you are. You don’t have to be fat or thin or whatever—you just have to know that all of you are fine as you are and you don’t have to take that.”

JJ: What kind of response do you get?

MW: I think its really powerful for children of all sizes and ages to meet a happy fat person and to meet a fat person who is not willing to blame everything bad in their world on their weight. It’s important to meet someone who is trying to challenge weight-based prejudice and stereotypes. It’s really powerful for kids just to see you. When I meet with children I don’t use Power Point, I don’t show videos. I want them to see a person like me because they’ve probably never seen a person like me. It’s just a little bit of contrast to the fat hate which they see everywhere. So it’s really powerful just to be with them. Kids have a great sense of fairness. They get really angry at unfairness in the world and I think that’s a great quality.

JJ: Is it hard standing up against these discriminatory beliefs?

MW: Sometimes when you stand up to this stuff more of it comes toward you. But it’s not like this hatefulness wasn’t already there. I think of it as information. If I speak out publicly about being a proud fat person and people make hateful comments, I look at it like these are people I did not want to be friends with anyway. And it’s good to know that they can be on the outside of my healthy boundaries and not be let in. And their hatefulness is proof that I need to say what I’m saying.

JJ: A lot of people feel that their hatefulness is justified since the issue is tied up with healthcare.

MW: I think we need to call people on that. For example, if somebody isn’t wearing a seatbelt and they get into an accident, well maybe that person doesn’t get a paramedic and we just leave them on the side of the road to die. That is the logic behind that thinking. There’s a lot of fear mongering from the public health establishment about these so-called alleged costs of healthcare for fat people. But all that is based upon the assumption that your weight can somehow predict how healthy you are and how long you are going to live.

JJ: Do you think if fat people were allowed to purchase healthcare [in the U.S.] that it would decrease tax dollars going to healthcare?

MW: There are a lot of fat people who simply aren’t allowed to buy health insurance, like me. And so we’re not costing anyone anything. For most of my adult life, I have had to pay my healthcare out of pocket. I was not a burden on anyone. And it’s really quite painful to know that people would rather have you die than have access to healthcare. You know, in many cases if a fat person goes to visit a doctor they are going to get a lecture rather than proper medical care treatment. That means that fat people are not getting the same quality of care or the same amount of healthcare than other people … and so we may get sicker because of that and that is very sad.

I find it interesting that we have skepticism about all different kinds of other topics. We’re willing to be skeptical when the government tells us we have to go to war, we’re willing to be skeptical of the advertising industry when they say “this is the best product”; we have some awareness that the information might be motivated by self interest and we question it. And it’s super interesting to me that people are really afraid or unwilling to be skeptical or to question the [relationship between] health and weight. I think that is because there is so much social pressure that if you don’t go along, you are going to be mocked and ostracized. And nobody wants to be mocked and ostracized so we’re refusing to even consider questioning the beliefs.

JJ: You find fun ways to get the message out. Can you tell us a little about the “flesh mob”?

MW: Recently I organized a bunch of people to interrupt an obesity conference on International No Diet Day. A place where people were convinced that if you are fat that means that you have to have all kinds of health problems. This particular conference was held to convince healthcare providers to buy weight loss products to sell. Basically a way to make money off of an oppression. And promote fat oppression. So I organized people to interrupt that conference with a dance party, which I called a “flesh mob.”

We had about 15-20 people show up at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon … and my friend came up with a song that was similar to the kid’s song: “Heads Shoulders Knees & Toes” but instead of the children’s version, we made it syncopated and added a funky dance. The words were: “Chins Bellies Hips & Ass.”

JJ: Love that!

MW: We went into this conference room and we started playing the music and dancing and we stopped everything that was happening. The guy who was talking is a big promoter of fat hate. He was the guy responsible for lowering the BMI definitions of “overweight” and “obese” back in 1998.  He takes a lot of money from diet drug companies. He takes a lot of money from Weight Watchers and other diet companies. He basically goes around the world promoting huge, ineffective, dangerous money-making fat-hate systems. And because he’s considered a medical expert he gets treated with respect. And I don’t think that anyone has interrupted him and shaken their fat ass at him and said, “You can’t have this one. This body is not susceptible to your judgment.” And to have about 20 of us doing that was really fun! When the security person came in we danced out of the room the same way we danced in. I would really like to see our community come up with more of these fun, irreverent activities that directly interrupt fat hate. Fat hate deserves to be interrupted. It deserves to be questioned.

For more about Marilyn Wann and her activism, visit her website Fatso.com (“for people who don’t apologize for their size”).

Editor’s Note: Ms. Wann will be publishing a 2012 FAT!SO? dayplanner, which will raise funds to create a community center called the Weight Diversity Action Lounge or WDAL. For more information checkout www.voluptuart.com.

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Aerial Arts for All Bodies

September 20, 2011 By 9 Comments
Jennifer Jonassen takes an aerial class with Michelle Sargent. Photo by Sierra Lisa

Jennifer Jonassen takes an aerial class with Michelle Sargent. Photo by Sierra Lisa

By Jennifer Jonassen

About a year ago I was working on a circus variety show in L.A. called Your Town Follies. One night, I was talking to my fellow cast mate Michelle Sargent, a seasoned professional aerial artist and circus performer. I was telling her that the beauty and artistry in aerial acts always made me cry. There was a definite longing in me to do it. In fact, “it might be the only thing I would ever consider losing weight for” I said. To my surprise Michelle told me that she thought I could do a lot of the work as I was and that she’d be happy to give me a lesson.

My first class was amazing! But in the days leading up to the lesson I was nervous. A year had gone by and I had gained weight and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. In fact, according to the doctor’s scale a few weeks ago I was at my heaviest. I decided to show up at the lesson anyhow and just face my fears even if it meant facing failure. But astoundingly enough Michelle was right! I was able to do quite a few positions and tricks. Certainly a heck of a lot more than I originally thought was possible. And I have to say that it was wonderfully liberating and freeing. It felt amazing to be supported by the silk fabric hammock, which Michelle assured could support thousands of pounds.

We worked together for an hour and a half and I discovered muscles I have never used before. Afterwards, my hands were deliciously sore and felt unbelievably strong. I left the lesson feeling a lot more confident and hopeful about life. Anything seemed possible. I am over 40 years old and over 350 pounds. I am also able to flip backwards into an upside down position and get into a full split.  But I would have never known I could have done that without the phenomenal spirit and open mindedness of Michelle Sargent, whose interview I am happy to share with you here.

JJ: So have you been training since you were a child?

MS: My background isn’t actually in circus arts. This is maybe why I believe anyone can do it. I came to it after college. I didn’t even know about it. I was a singer and was offered a show where they needed singers on trapezes. They gave me a class to try it and I started doing it for fun and then two years later I was a professional. And it really took my career onto another path for 15 years. And I love it. I am also still an actress and singer.

JJ: What have been some of your favorite moments in your career?

MS:  One of the seminal moments in my career, a completion point in my life was when I was finally in a show and I really always wanted this to happen. It is really hard to find this in circus—I was in a show in Europe called My Life where I was doing my aerial act, I was singing, I was acting, I was clowning, and I was dancing. I wanted to be in a show where I could utilize all my talents and skills and be a triple threat.

JJ: I think you’re more of a quintuplet threat! What has been the most challenging out of all the things you’ve done?

MS: I think everything has its own difficulties. It’s all challenging. I guess the show My Life was the most challenging because it’s hard to do an aerial act, come down, quick change, and then come out and sing opera. It was physically really challenging. I always thought it would be fun and easy (laughing).

JJ: How many shows a week?

MS: Seven shows in six days.

JJ: Wow! I have watched you onstage and you always seem so centered as a performer.

MS: There’s something about being onstage and connecting for me. To me it’s like magic. Something ephemeral and alchemical happens. Performing is alchemy to me.

JJ: Have you ever struggled with body image issues?

MS: Yes. Absolutely. This is something I feel very strongly about and I speak about. I never have had a weight problem per se but I’ve struggled with weight image my entire life. Growing up in California and being a performer, actress, singer, and finally a circus artist in a business where literally your next paycheck depends on whether you are 105 pounds or 110 pounds is really hard on the brain. It’s really difficult to separate my own personal self-love and self esteem with how I make my money and pay my rent. To keep those separate and not begin to identify with that 105-pound muscle, which is actually just my tool and not me, has also been a struggle. And probably always will be. Once I retired from circus I went for a year and a half feeling I was no longer attractive to men because I went from 105 pounds to 115, which is such a small amount and in all honesty I look better now than I did when I was a working acrobat. When I was a working acrobat I looked a little creepy. But in my body image, in my mind that was sexy and because it was equated with my value, my monetary value as an artist. And we’re all taught from a very early age that value equals looks—I’m getting so emotional about this because it’s such a huge deal. I mean when an eight year student of mine complains that her calves are too fat I get really, really upset because I know that there is something inherently wrong with the system. So the answer is yes, I have always struggled with body issues.

JJ: How do you get to the other side of those feelings?

MS: At least part of it for me is taking action. If I’m struggling with body image I try to do actions that are compassionate. I will take walks. I will take myself out of my brain and get into my body.  

JJ: Great answer!! Any upcoming projects?

MS: I am concentrating on acting and improv. And singing as well!

JJ: And teaching!

MS: Yes! For me what inspires me about aerial is that I love helping my students find their own unique and artistic voice. The important thing to know if you have a desire to do aerial work is just to know that there are realistic steps and repetition involved. You should go into it knowing that it takes time. Allow yourself that time to go through the steps. Don’t be defeated if it doesn’t happen right away. It’s not about the goal, it really is about the process. If you can only hold yourself up for five seconds then tomorrow try for six. Everybody comes to me—and no matter what age or size—with the same fears. Everybody is afraid they’re not strong enough. Everyone is afraid to go upside down. Everyone’s hands hurt after class. And everyone feels a little rush!

For more information on Michelle Sargent, visit her website at: http://www.myrubylife.com/

You can view some of this aerial lesson in the documentary FAT by Julian Dahl 

 

 

 

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Fashion’s Night Out: When Will We Have a Fat-shionable Fall?

September 2, 2011 By 2 Comments
F-No, we won't go! Or will we?

F-No, we won't go! Or will we?

By Ophira Edut

Summer’s about over. The red carpets are rolling out (hello, MTV Video Music Awards), which means sucking, tucking and plucking season has begun again. The new fall shows, with a fresh crop of homogenous stars, will be premiering. (Oh, how I’m counting the minutes until Glee’s third season.) New York City, where I live, is gearing up for Fashion Week and the stampede that is Fashion’s Night Out. While I enjoy style and creativity, I admit that my first wry thought was: Fat Girls’ Night In, is more like it. Or maybe Fat-Shun’s Night Out. Hide your kids, hide your wife!

Extreme? Yeah. But I’m issuing a back-to-school rallying cry: will any celebrities step out this fall and represent for the F-word? Not the expletive that got bleeped out of so many VMA acceptance speeches. I mean F-A-T.

Look, I’m not asking for 300 pounds, but that would be awesome. A girl can dream. Gabby Sidibe is available for hire, you producers out there. And I’m not talking about casting for The Biggest Loser, Celebrity Fit Club, or any other fat-bashing show designed to “correct” (read: shame and vilify) people whose size ticks into the double digits. I don’t want to see cameras panning through a weeping fat woman’s apartment as she talks about her out-of-control emotional eating, then is “saved” by some heartless celebrity trainer.

Unless, of course, we level the playing field. Here’s an idea: let’s bring a camera crew into the home of skinny stars secretly wolfing down carbs or binge drinking, smoking, and exercising for hours a day. (Training for a role, my ass. And half my Hebrew School class got nose jobs because of deviated septums, too.) Watch the poor things weep as they forage for cigarette butts in the bushes, or do their third week of a kettle-ball workout and pretend to love it. Perhaps a psychiatrist from the fat acceptance movement can come save this person from the life-threatening dangers of addiction and yo-yo dieting (which can lead to heart attack), or the psychological perils of body dysmorphia. And please, keep those damn calipers away from me, o’ commission-earning trainer stalking the gym floor. The whole BMI measuring system is so out of wack that even Brad Pitt would be considered overweight by its standards. (Seriously? Has anyone else seen Fight Club?)

Nowadays, if I dare say this kind of stuff, I’m accused of a) being a clueless hothead, and b) ignoring the “big O”: obesity. Which may be real, but it’s been co-opted and corrupted by so many money-making industries, that a lot of the hype is pure bull-shizzle.

There. I said it. Slap on my scarlet F (for fat acceptance), please! I hear that red is big on the Fall 2011 runways, speaking of fashion…

Fighting obesity has given us something to do with our money instead of oh, saving it or investing in a sinking stock or housing market. We have an enemy! It has a name! Of course, soda machines don’t belong in schools (duh) and kids could use more exercise. Sure, we should all ride bikes, take hikes and eat fresh produce. But do we all have equal access to these things? Hell no. So let’s shame the poor a little more and blame them for not being able to find a decent piece of fruit for miles, find affordable health care or power-walk safely through crime-riddled neighborhoods. Thumbs up for urban farming and all the eco-friendly efforts that bring health and sustainability to under-served communities. Healthy living without the shaming and judgment, I’m all for.

Then, there’s the simple, unacknowledged truth: food is fun. At my stepdaughter’s upstate New York elementary school, sweets are banned from the cafeteria, even on cupcake-friendly holidays like Valentine’s Day. So now we’re teaching kids that sugar is bad, something to fear and avoid. THAT should keep the candy stores in business on allowance day.

* * *
I’m keeping a scrapbook of celebrities who dare to embrace their non-conforming bods. Much like the stars in Hollywood, it’s perilously thin.

There’s Tyra Banks from a few years ago, who went out in a bikini after putting on some weight. Jennifer Love Hewitt, who always wears bikinis, even when her weight fluctuates and the bloggers publicly stone her with cruel posts. This week, Disney Channel star Demi Lovato scores the F for going “curvy” to the VMAS (whatevs, she’s still tiny) and Tweeting “I’ve gained weight. Get over it. That’s what happens when you get out of treatment for an EATING DISORDER.”

The Kardashians get an honorable mention, though I keep taking them out of the book. Fat that’s distributed to body parts sexualized by mass culture (the Hottentot Venus ass, namely) doesn’t count. There’s no risk involved, otherwise Kim wouldn’t flaunt hers in every bandage dress she can find. Oh, and 50 points off for the QuickTrim sponsorship. Mixed messages are the enemy of healthy body image.

People are visual. Thanks to reality TV, we’re officially desensitized to the surgical fat-sucking and anti-aging procedures that so many millions undergo. So, how about we apply the same treatment to love handles, belly rolls, cellulite, sags and all the body “issues” we’ve declared war upon? Let’s see that being normalized. Because, frankly, that’s what NORMAL looks like. We’ve largely forgotten. With CGI, Photoshop and all the latest digital retouching wonders, our minds are being trained to erase normalcy, SPAM filtering it out into a big global junk file.

Self-acceptance is not defeat. I’ve been saying it for years, and I stand by it. That doesn’t mean you don’t make changes for your health, happiness and well-being. But please, make them from a place of self-love, not shame. And truly question: if you didn’t feel shamed by the culture, would you really make these changes? Look deep. We all want the goodies of acceptance, and social anxiety is not easy to navigate. But the long-term effects of body hatred are worse.

[Author's note: if you're a fashion-loving girl who doesn't fit a size 2, The Curvy Fashionista has listed a handful of Fashion's Night Out events for the plus-size crowd here. But ugh, Lane Bryant is debuting a new line of "slimming jeans" featuring their "exclusive T3 Tighter Tummy Technology." Soooo, invite us to your store so we can spend to look skinnier? Enough already! But the Cupcakes, Curves and Cleavage Event at Viva La Femme in Chicago sounds rad. More, please!]

I do smell the opportunity for a revolution here, though. Fashion’s Night Out COULD be respun as Fat’s Night Out. (Fat being used loosely, to encompass anyone that doesn’t fit the ever-narrowing standard, that is.) If anyone wants to do some impromptu fashion activism, by all means, do! (I’m imagining a picket line chanting “F-no, we won’t go!” But picket lines aren’t all that fashionable anymore.) Whatever your creative version of resistance looks like, go to town. Fashion IS supposedly all about art and free expression, or so they say. So hit the streets with your own Fat-shion’s Night Out parade. Tell them we sent you.

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Terrifying Trend: Models and Mini-Liposuction

June 17, 2011 By 9 Comments
The size 2 model who sought mini-lipo featured on The Today Show

The size 2 model who sought mini-lipo featured on The Today Show

By Valerie Kusler

Earlier this week, in my half-asleep daze, I flipped on the Today Show for background noise while getting ready for work. When I heard Matt Lauer introduce one of the segments, I stopped in my tracks, turned up the volume, and braced myself. “Why are thin, fit women getting liposuction?” he inquired. Oh boy. This should be fun. It’s always amusing when the mainstream media seem so shocked and dismayed at a phenomenon that they help perpetuate every single day.

The segment begins with a pre-filmed story about a woman named Nicole Silva: model since age 15, size 2, and current liposuction patient. Oh, sorry, mini liposuction, which according to the Today Show reporter, “is far less invasive than traditional liposuction” and completed within an hour. Nicole wants to trim her thighs, because she’s feeling the pressure of aging in the modeling world. “I love my body,” she explains. “I’m very comfortable with my body. I don’t think it’s bad at all. I just know that it can be better.”

At this point, I’m already scoffing, “Loves her body? Is comfortable with her body? This woman clearly has zero concept of real body confidence.” After a beat though, I have to admit I was questioning myself, or at least my logic on this point. Isn’t it possible to know we are great in other areas of life, yet want to improve to be an even better writer, concert pianist, gymnast? What makes the body any different? Or is it the line that is being crossed in surgically modifying, versus doing what’s in our natural power to be the best person we can be? (Lance Armstrong comes to mind.)

I digress – because at this point, Dr. David Amron, a Bevery Hills dermatological surgeon, comes on screen and states:

“It seems like every other patient I’m seeing for liposuction is a thin, fit patient… somebody can be thin like Nicole and have stubborn disproportioned areas of fat, and they can be a perfect candidate for liposuction. It’s all about my role in terms of rebalancing her body.”

Next on screen, to continue the story’s paradoxical theme, is Glamour Magazine’s Cindy Levy:

“I think you have to watch out when you start fixing flaws that nobody but you can see you might end up with the kind of body you will never be happy with. You need to make sure that once you have the surgery you’re not going to say, ‘any little flaw that comes up, I’m going to fix that too,’ because it’s a slippery slope.”

Her point is hard to argue with, but what is it really worth when the magazine that she works for features mostly models with bodies that are unattainable by 95% of women?

Fast-forward to the live interview, in which Matt grills Dr. Amron and clinical psychologist Belisa Vranich about the motivation driving thin women who want to receive liposuction, and what might be going on psychologically that makes them feel they need the procedure. Dr. Vranich explains, “If I have a patient who wants liposuction, we have to talk about some psychological factors in there. Is it a quest for perfection? Is it a quest for happiness, which should be done somewhere outside a surgeon’s office, maybe in addition to the surgery? Is it an event or is it an age that’s making you go in for the surgery? Once you’ve talked about all that, if you want to go in and get that one little problem area done, it’s not a bad idea.”

Not a bad idea, eh? So what about when the patient goes in for that consultation to Dr. Amron? Matt asks him, “Would you say no to someone if you get the hint and the red flag goes up that this is about trying to win back that guy, as opposed to just being more comfortable in their body? Would you say, ‘No, I don’t want to do this procedure’?” Amron responds, “If I see someone who is a candidate, and I feel that liposuction is going to make an improvement, I will probably want to do the surgery, but I also want to make sure they’re in the right mindset for things, and not be using it to replace some sense of internal happiness.” How thoughtful! Just wait.

At the end, Matt mentions a recent study that the New York Times covered about liposuction, which revealed that weight gained after the procedure would just redistribute to other areas of the body. Dr. Amron defensively rebutted that he “reviewed the study extensively” and felt that it was flawed, because the participants were not evaluated for disproportion. “For example, I don’t ask a patient what they want to do. I determine as a surgeon what really should be done to rebalance their body. If you don’t do that, you run the risk of throwing someone out of balance, out of proportion.”

Whatever happened to client empowerment, especially considering this is an elective surgery? I’m not going to say that liposuction is a bad choice in absolutely every situation. However, if there’s a trend of more and more people feeling like they need the procedure, especially when they are already healthy and “fit” (by their own definition), it certainly does speak to our society’s continually narrowing standard of beauty and demand for perfection. I guess I’m good. Just not good enough.

* * *

Watch the Today Show segment here:


Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

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Body of Lies: Debunking the BMI

May 4, 2011 By 13 Comments
antique scale

By Ashley-Michelle Papon

It’s that time of year again: swimming pools are opening, students are jogging, and if you’re a mom, you’re probably getting fat. According to a new study released in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, young mothers are more likely to make poor dietary decisions, less likely to exercise, and have a higher Body Mass Index, most commonly known as the BMI.

The United States has a firm history of economically punishing teenage mothers by denying them access to better resources including healthier food. Still, the most troubling pretext of the article has little to do with the gender disparity or economics skewed to keep the poor poor, but the implication that the BMI of young mothers is an indication of just how unhealthy they are.

Though the BMI has long been touted by medical and athletic communities as the greatest tool of measurement to determine someone’s health, stricter academic scrutiny and authentic scientific study is finding that the BMI as a gauge of health is flawed. Contrary to what you have probably heard several times over, the BMI is not an accurate indicator of how “overweight” you are. And it’s certainly not a viable indicator of your health.

In July of 2009, Keith Devlin of the National Public Radio shared with the world 10 reasons why the BMI is bogus. Urging listeners and readers to take the BMI—and their next meal—with a grain of salt, he patiently explained that, at its core, the BMI was a nonsensical, physiologically inaccurate formula created by mathematician Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet in the early 19th century. Quetelet’s method to create a measurement was calculated by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters.

Although it may seem scientifically sound at first blush, the methodology creates no distinction between the weight of muscle versus the weight of fat, despite the fact that fat takes up roughly four times the space of muscle. In other words, there can be quite a difference in your weight and size based on your body type. By failing to evaluate the two body features separately, the BMI delivers faulty results that make being classified as overweight a virtual certainty. And though BMI has some level of success with whole groups of people, its use to determine how healthy one adult can be is questionable at best.

But the biggest weakness with BMI would have to be how it attempts to lock people into rigidly defined categories for underweight, ideal, overweight, and obese. The scale, ranging from 1 to 100, becomes overweight at 25 and obese at 30; it is transfixed in such a way to suggest that when individuals reach 25 or above, they’ve crossed into the territory of being unhealthy. This conclusion begs the question of what unhealthy actually looks like. By relying solely on the BMI for the numeric answer to this question, the aesthetics often don’t bear out to compliment the BMI’s ranking.

And although people think they can eye it the way they can parallel parking, a true visual assessment of one’s physique isn’t something that can be winged. In one of her earliest criticisms of the BMI, blogger Kate Harding launched a photo project showcasing woman with their height, weight, BMI, and a commentary about the accuracy of the BMI’s rating. One volunteer, Laurie, 5’0 and 130 pounds, carries a BMI of 25.4 percent. According to the BMI, Laurie is “overweight,” despite being a size 4. For emphasis, Harding showcases several curvier women, warning viewers not to get too attached because the BMI’s validation that they’re unhealthy suggests they will drop dead of heart attacks and diabetes soon.

Harding’s point was drastic, but the photographs of everyday women unable to meet these unrealistic body standards hammer home the damage done by the promotion of outdated rubrics employed to shame our bodies. What was pioneered in the interest of helping advance medicine has become a modern tool of extremely organized bio-power. The cultural and social obsession with weight management for women has always gone hand-in-hand with the desire to render them less powerful. In a very real sense, the physical reduction of their size is a stripping down of their agency. Since Kevin Smith gave up directing movies and became a factivist following his ejection from a Southwest flight for being “too fat,” this schism has widened to keep persons of size from inheriting power, often out of concern for their health.

Except that that brings us back, full circle, to why the BMI is completely bogus. The BMI is billed in a way that if someone has a BMI that places them in the “overweight” range, they are immediately considered unhealthy. Yet new research is finding that heavier people actually have more protection against a number of illnesses and chronic conditions, from kidney failure to infectious diseases and lung issues.

Despite this, it’s not going to stop the diet industry from using the BMI to keep pushing their products. Social attitudes notwithstanding, sources like the International Obesity Task Force and the American Obesity Association are treated as completely legitimate entities when they use the BMI to explain how we, as a society, are doomed because of our size. Despite authoring the majority of the World Health Organization’s obesity reports, both organizations are primarily funded by pharmaceutical and weight loss companies. Is it any wonder that these folks (and others associated with them) have been aggressively campaigning to have obesity classified as a disease? As Paul McAleer over at BigFatFacts concludes, “The ‘obesity epidemic’ is worth billions to the pharmaceutical, diet, weight loss, media, and government agencies fueling it.”

This should leave every person asking themselves: do I want to keep banking my health on a tool designed to tell me my body is flawed so that the companies employing that tool can continue creating a billion-dollar industry?

Related content:

If You’re Fat, Your Paycheck Might Not Be

 

 

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If You’re Fat, Your Paycheck Might Not Be

April 20, 2011 By 4 Comments
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By Ashley-Michelle Papon

When it comes to cultural and social inequalities between men and women, the wage gap is one of the most widely accepted yet paradoxically ignored aspects of the gendered disparity. For over 30 years, equal pay has been the law of the land, though numerous independent studies have established that working women who clock 40 hours still make, on average, 77 cents to their male counterpart’s dollar. Furthermore, earlier this year, The Washington Post reported on some surprising findings that a person’s body size has more to do with the size of their paycheck than previously believed.

“The study found that thin women are paid significantly more than their average-size counterparts, while heavier women make less,” Amelia Rayno writes on Jan. 29. “Skinnier-than-average men, on the other hand, cash smaller paychecks than their average-weight peers.” Rayno goes on to quote Teresa Rothausen-Vange, a management professor at the University of St. Thomas, who explains that skinny men are considered “less-than-manly” while thin women make for a more attractive corporate image.

However, uncovering that the workforce is enabling and perpetuating unrealistic physical standards of attractiveness is old hat. What makes The Post’s report so shocking is contained several paragraphs down where Rayno reveals staggering results: Men on the smaller side earn $8,000 less than their more beefy male peers, a paltry amount in comparison to the women’s results. According to the study, thinner women earned more than $16,000 a year than their heavier co-workers.

Attempting to deconstruct all of the social mores that fuel the pay schism would require a blog post the length of Atlas Shrugged, but let’s examine a few of the more thought-provoking issues here. To begin with, it’s worth noting that the pay disparity between the two different male body types is still considerably less than the wage gap between men and women, particularly for women of color. This suggests that although the corporate world is hostile to people of size, men, particularly white men, have a leg up on the female competition.

That certainly seems to be supported by a study completed by Michigan State University researchers in April of 2009, which examined a control group of 1,000 bosses from companies in the United States. The study, published in the British Journal Equal Opportunity International, went on to conclude that being “overweight” didn’t appear to hurt men’s chances for professional advancement unless they were considered “obese,” while women were hindered by being considered “overweight” and “obese.”

Although the study validates what factivists have been saying regarding discrimination in the work place, it also exposes a flaw in the methodology of such information-gathering. The Michigan State University researchers carried out their study by asking medical professionals to rate the executives as overweight or obese based on the Body Mass Index, commonly referred to as the BMI, a formula that has been debunked in recent years for being grossly inaccurate. The results are made even more suspect due to the fact that the medical professionals only had photographs of the executives to go on, challenging the veracity of how objective the study actually was.

This isn’t to dispute that there is an obvious phobia towards persons of size because the instances of fat discrimination appear to be on the rise, but rather to illustrate how wily the problem is. Much like the Supreme Court’s standard on pornography, nobody can define what being healthy looks like as a universal precedent, but plenty of people think they have been granted the magical power to recognize it on sight. There is no standardized rubric with which to visually judge whether someone is “overweight,” but that doesn’t seem to deter some people from trying.

Although these findings affirm that employers are likely to rely on their own prejudices of weight to determine an employee’s worth, they also signal a strong need for political change to challenge the dominant, aesthetic narrative. Until such reform happens, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the pay gap may snowball into a pay canyon.

Related content:

NYTimes Writer Barely Apologizes for her Discriminatory Remarks Against Fat People

Jennifer Jonassen: A Sizeless Star

Lagerfeld Sets Aside Fat Phobia for Renn

Carrie Fisher Joins the Ongoing Star War Against Fat

Why Being Fat Is–and Isn’t–All That

Size and Sardine Packed Southwest Airlines

Weight Stigma: Breaking it Down with Advocate and Activist Marilyn Wann

 

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