Size Discrimination | Adios Barbie

FAT SEX, The Book

December 16, 2011 By Sharon 6 Comments

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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Filed Under: Sexuality, Size & Weight Tagged With: body image, Book, fat, FAT SEX, HAES, Kickstarter, PeopleofSize.com, Rebecca Jane Weinstein, Sexual Stereotypes, Size & Weight, size discrimination, sizeism

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

September 27, 2011 By Sharon 4 Comments

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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Filed Under: Activism, Size & Weight Tagged With: body image, bullying, fat, Fatso, Marilyn Wann, Self-Esteem, Size & Weight, size discrimination, size prejudice, sizeism, Stereotypes, weight

Jess Weiner: When Loving Your Body Goes Wrong

August 9, 2011 By pia 6 Comments

Jess Weiner, body image and self-esteem expert

By Pia Guerrero

“How Loving My Body Almost Killed Me”, a Glamour magazine interview with popular body image and self-acceptance advocate, Jess Weiner, hit magazine stands today. As you can imagine, many size-acceptance activists and advocates are not embracing the title–or the piece.

While I assumed the dramatic title was the result of the slick, quick hand of an editor hoping to lure in more readers, it turns out it was actually pulled from Jess’ journal. And that fact reflects the true nature of the article, which is a highly personal piece about Weiner’s journey towards the realization that her definition of body love and size acceptance led her to ignore her health to its detriment.

As an obese woman, Weiner avoided going to the doctor for as long as she could remember in large part because of the bias and the “blame the victim” mentality found at the doctor’s office. So while embracing and promoting body love led Jess to lead a life with confidence and success, she realized she wasn’t truly “loving” her body by putting her head in the sand when in came to her health.

Renowned author of the popular self-help book, The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck notes that, “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action.” When we live in a culture that degrades and stereotypes people who don’t fit into the singular “Barbie” beauty ideal, it’s crucial to build self-esteem and self-acceptance by surrounding yourself with counter messaging like “love your body”. We must emotionally love our bodies for how we look at any size. But it’s even more important to love our bodies through loving action: by getting rest, not engaging in high-risk behaviors, getting check-ups, exercising and eating healthily at any size.

Weiner’s journey towards an expanded definition of loving her body began when she decided to got to the doctor. Unfortunately, she learned that she was dangerously close to being pre-diabetic and having high-cholesterol. A huge wake up call, as the diagnosis was a direct consequence of her lifestyle and weight. She joined a gym and learned through a nutritionist how to eat healthily, which led to eating differently (a.k.a dieting) and losing 25 pounds. Weiner writes, “I also started seeing a therapist to work on the emotional baggage I carry and how it plays a part in the way I turn to food for solace, not nutrition.” As a leader in the self-esteem movement who has appeared numerous times on Oprah, it may seem contradictory for Weiner to openly reveal her current internal struggles with her self-esteem and size. Unfortunately, even in the body image movement, we expect our leaders to be perfect in their self-acceptance. Sharing her vulnerability and new outlook has already led some to label Weiner as a size acceptance traitor.

But Weiner is clear that “pursuing your health and vitality is in no way betraying the fact that you care about body acceptance.” She accepts that she will never be thin and remains obese even with her recent weight loss. For Weiner, true love for her body means accepting it as it is and taking actions to be healthy at any size.

Filed Under: Size & Weight Tagged With: body love, Glamour Magazine, health and any size, Jess Weiner, Love, self-acceptance, Self-Esteem, size acceptance, size discrimination

Body of Lies: Debunking the BMI

May 4, 2011 By Sharon 13 Comments

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 19^th 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?

Filed Under: Science, Health and Research Tagged With: BMI, body image, Body Mass Index, diet, fat, size, Size & Weight, size discrimination, sizeism, weight

If You’re Fat, Your Paycheck Might Not Be

April 20, 2011 By Sharon 4 Comments

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.

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

Filed Under: Media Bias, Race, Ethnicity and Culture Tagged With: Ethnicity and Culture, fat, Fat Prejudice, gendered disparity, men, prejudice, Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Size & Weight, size discrimination, sizeism, wage disparity, wage gap, Women

Lagerfeld Sets Aside Fat Phobia for Renn

May 29, 2010 By Sharon 7 Comments

“Crystal and Karl, Sitting in a Tree” by Marjorie Ingall

Belatedly, here is Crystal walking in Chanel’s resort show in San Tropez last week. She looks beautiful and fierce, mah nishtanah.

There was a flurry of “OOH GROUNDBREAKING!” buzz when these pix hit the wires, given that Crystal is nominally plus-sized and Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld has made some colorfully fat-phobic comments in the past.

A quick rundown of Karl’s hatey-hatey, to refresh your memory:

On demands for larger models: “These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly.” (Interview with the German magazine Focus, re-reported here.)

Expressing his horror at H&M for producing his line (a mass-market line he’d made exclusively for the company) in larger sizes: ”What I designed was fashion for slender and slim people,” Lagerfeld sniffed. “That was the original idea.”

On the fact that eating disorders certainly are not a problem in the fashion industry: “[Models] have skinny bones.”

On the importance of being skinny: “My only ambition in life is to wear size 28 jeans.”

Lagerfeld is a famously former fattie who lost 92 pounds in 13 months when he became obsessed with the super-streamlined designs of Hedi Slimane and NEEDED to fit into them. He co-wrote The Karl Lagerfeld Diet (published in Europe in 2004 and in America in 2005), which included such advice as starting with around 800 calories a day, having your chef make you quail in aspic, refraining from any exercise since it makes you hungry, and sprinkling cold water on your breasts to tone them. (I’m going out to stand naked in the rain right now! OK, I’m back.)

All this is spectacularly quote-worthy, and Lagerfeld knows it. There’s a reason he dresses like an unholy combo of cowpoke, Teutonic Thomas Jefferson and Spanish fan dancer. There’s a reason he’s still relevant at his cryogenic age of 147. The man’s a master media manipulator.

Read the rest of Ingall’s insightful piece at her website.

Why Being Fat Is–and Isn’t–All That

Size and Sardine Packed Southwest Airlines

NYTimes Writer Barely Apologizes for her Discriminatory Remarks Against Fat People

If You’re Fat, Your Paycheck Might Not Be

Jennifer Jonassen: A Sizeless Star

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

Filed Under: Beauty Standards, Size & Weight Tagged With: Celebrities, Crystal Renn, fat, Karl Lagerfeld, size, size discrimination, weight, women in advertising

Plus-Size Modeling: A Passing Trend or Here to Stay?

May 25, 2010 By valerie 11 Comments

Plus-size model Crystal Renn (right) posing alongside straight-size model Jacquelyn Jablonski in a spread for the January 2010 issue of V Magazine (Huffington Post)

By Valerie Kusler

Has mainstream culture done a 180°? Have we honestly transitioned from Kate Moss to Crystal Renn in just over a decade, or is this just a passing fad?

According to a recent Times Online article by Louise France, plus-size models that previously charged around US$150 an hour are now commanding high profile ad shoots at US$20,000 a day. And models like Crystal Renn and Tara Lynn are starting to become household names.

In the modeling industry, “plus-size” refers to any model that is not “straight-size” – a euphemism for the straight-down, no-curves shape of the traditional fashion model. For example, Whitney Thompson, winner of the tenth cycle of “America’s Next Top Model,” (the show’s only plus-size winner) is a size 10. Renn is a size 12, after overcoming her battle with anorexia to reach the size 0 that the modeling world demanded. The average American woman is 162 pounds and wears a size 14[1] – so in reality, the term “plus-size” does not seem very accurate. Although it’s only semantics, this idea of plus-size models can have real effects on regular women.

Images in mass media have proven to affect the behaviors and body image of adults, adolescents, and even children. A research paper released in November 2009 – “The Impact of Media Images on Body Image and Behaviours: A Summary of the Scientific Evidence” – signed by 45 leading academics, doctors and clinical psychologists from the U.S.A., England, Australia, Brazil, Spain, and Ireland – reports scientific evidence on how airbrushing in advertising can cause serious problems, especially in young women, such as eating disorders, depression, exercise addiction, and more.

As summarized by the National Eating Disorders Association[2], the study revealed that:

Body dissatisfaction is a significant risk for physical and mental health disorders. Idealized media images directly increase body dissatisfaction and negatively impact well-being.
Numerous studies document that ultra-thin and highly muscular “body perfect” ideals have a detrimental effect on women and men.
Negative effects occur in the majority of adolescent girls and women as documented in over 100 published scientific studies on the impact of “perfected” media images.
Adolescents are more vulnerable than adults.
A subscription to a fashion magazine increases body dissatisfaction and elevates the occurrence of dieting and bulimic symptoms among adolescent girls with little social support.
Curbing the impact of idealized media images leads to improvement in body image and body-related behaviors, or at least to harm reduction.

If girls and women continue to see more and more women like Renn in the pages of mainstream magazines, such as Glamour, Cosmo, Harper’s Bazaar, and V Magazine, we should be thankful. Even if most of them are on the slim side of the so-called plus-size these models at least come closer to resembling our own bodies, and the bodies of our mothers, our friends, and our sisters. It’s a step, but we have yet to see whether it will stick – and whether the fashion industry is dedicated to real change, or if they are merely latching onto the trend while it’s hot so they can sell more magazines.

One thing that’s clear – some fashion industry influencers (designers, agencies, models, and magazine editors) are highly skeptical that the plus-size trend is here to stay. The Times Online reports on what Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman really thinks:

She has, she says, no interest in running a plus-size issue, despite the fact that she made a high profile plea for bigger sample sizes last year and is tired of seeing images of thin models that she feels obliged occasionally to retouch. What she wants to see are models who are just a few inches bigger. “I don’t think readers want very, very skinny girls; at the same time I don’t think they want size 16 girls either. I don’t think anyone sees a big girl walk down the runway and thinks, ‘Oh, I must put some weight on.’

Ideally, “straight-size” and “plus-size” would eventually blend together without the need distinguish or for magazines to congratulate themselves for being so progressive by including a spread with a plus-size model. We can hope that curvy girls (of all sizes, not just a size 8 or 10) can appear alongside straight-size models without the need to call attention to it. It seems like wishful thinking, but we are making progress, and it’s a cause worth fighting for.

For more on the plus-size modeling trend, check out some additional articles:

Crystal Renn’s Disappearing Act: Why the ‘V’ Magazine Spread Sends Mixed Messages About Bigger Bodies from the Newsweek blog

The Man Who Champions Curvy Models from The Times Online

The Triumph of the Size 12s from The New York Times

French Glamour Does Plus-Sizes Right from Jezebel

New York Fashion Week To Include Curves

The Sad Truth About Shopping For Plus Sizes

Jessica Simpson’s New Plus-Size Denim Line

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/01/image/ig-size1

[2] http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/in-the-news/news-release-detail.php?release=30&title=National%20Eating%20Disorders%20Association%20Supports

Filed Under: Media Follies Tagged With: Crystal Renn, media representation, models, size, size discrimination, Women, women in advertising

Size and Sardine Packed Southwest Airlines

February 17, 2010 By pia 2 Comments

By Pia Guerrero, Co-Founder/Editor

I hate traveling on Southwest Airlines. In addition to the inescapable thought that the plane is dirty, I can’t help feeling like a piece of meat jammed into a cage with a bunch of others waiting for our imminent doom. I can’t recline comfortably without worrying I’m slamming the person behind me in the face. And when I lean over to grab my Sprite from the attendant, I wonder if I have put on enough deodorant ‘cuz my armpit is smack dab in the face of the passenger next to me.

I am just about 5 feet tall. On any given day I weigh between 103 and 108 pounds. Needless to say, I am small. That’s why I’m glad the recent buzz around director Kevin Smith being kicked off Southwest highlights the prejudicial industry standards around size. If I can’t fit comfortably into one of their seats, how do these airway robbers expects others to?

In her piece Kevin Smith: The face of flying while fat, Kate Harding brings light to the shame so many people (who aren’t a size 2) feel when they board an airplane.

The Reality Behind the Quest to be “The Biggest Loser”

November 25, 2009 By pia Leave a Comment

These days it seems that a lot of folks regard our call to accept yourself (and others) at any size, as uniformed support of fat or obese people who engage in unhealthy eating behaviors and habits. Many claim you can’t be fit and fat, despite the evidence that shows otherwise.

We believe that being fat or obese doesn’t warrant size discrimination or self-loathing. And the whole unhealthy argument? It’s just an excuse to support prejudice.

Except for the morbidly obese, you can be fit and fat just as easily as you can be thin and unhealthy. Size is not necessarily an absolute indicator of one’s overall health. There are plenty of people who aren’t fat who engage in unhealthy habits to lose or maintain their weight. And many may seem to be on the road to better health by losing weight that are actually harming themselves by doing it the wrong way. Fasting, excessively exercising/sweating and dehydration are just some of the get slim quick trends that don’t actually affect long term fat loss. Case in point, Ryan C. Benson from the first season of “The Biggest Loser” recently admitted to some of these dangerous weight loss tricks. If losing massive poundage in a short amount of time seems too good to be true, it probably is. We’re not saying that proper exercise and eating can’t show results quickly. But does the weight loss last if you go back to your old habits? The real test is time. For we all know (but refuse believe) that only long term shifts in our eating and exercising will leave us healthier and–if our body needs it–thinner. Check out this interesting piece by The New York Times on the recent “Biggest Loser” weight loss drama:

On “The Biggest Loser,” Health Can Take Back Seat

New York Times

By EDWARD WYATT

Published: November 24, 2009

LOS ANGELES – When more than 40 former contestants from “The Biggest Loser” gather Wednesday for a reunion television special, the winner of the program’s first season, Ryan C. Benson, who lost 122 of his 330-pound starting weight, will be absent. Mr. Benson is now back above 300 pounds but he thinks he has been shunned by the show because he publicly admitted that he dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood.

Continue Reading: The New York Times

Related content:

TV’s Fat and Happy. Not Quite.

Pop Culture’s Relentless Battle with Body Image

What Reality TV Taught Me About Sluts, Waifs, Douchebags and Angry Black Women

Khloe Can’t Keep Up with the Kardashians’ Body Standards

Filed Under: Representation and Identity, Size & Weight Tagged With: fasting, fit and fat, healthy eating, men, obesity, Ryan C. Benson, self-esteem and dieting, size discrimination, The Biggest Loser

NYTimes Writer Barely Apologizes for her Discriminatory Remarks Against Fat People

August 17, 2009 By pia 4 Comments

You know size discrimination is alive and well when the editors at The New York Times allow a writer to pen hateful remarks aimed at plus sized people and stores that carry larger sizes, like JCPenny.

Image of JCP Plus Size Mannequin from righteousbuzz.blogspot.com

Posted on Stylelist.com by Lesley Kennedy

Style scribe Cintra Wilson didn’t tiptoe around her severe aversion to JCPenney in today’s Critical Shopper column in The New York Times.

“Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops…” she wrote, going on to rip on the company’s “knockoffs,” copious amounts of polyester and even the font used in the company’s logo.

But what really caused public outrage was the writer’s commentary on how the clothes are all geared toward fat people….

“To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen,” she continues. “They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of ‘Roseanne.’”