Fat Chicks Rule

Stigma doesn't make you thin

Stigma (Dictionary.com) - a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one's reputation.

A few months ago I was in the doctor's office. CNN was playing loudly in the background. Most of it involved Republicans talking about how the health care law was the root of all evil. Then Sanjay Gupta came on and gave a five minute rant about the evils of obesity and how it's destroying all health care everywhere. I got annoyed, wanted to yell and throw stuff at the TV. (I didn't.) Thankfully I was called into see the doctor soon after.

I've never had an abnormal blood pressure reading in my life and I didn't when the nurse took my stats but I've always been on the low side of normal. Today's reading had me at the high side of normal. I had to wonder. Did Sanjay Grupta just raise my blood pressure?

Of course this isn't a study or proof of anything. But this 2012 study and 2010 study from the Rudd Center  does prove there are considerable health consequences to weight based stigma.

RESULTS: Participants responded most favorably to messages involving themes of increased fruit and vegetable consumption, and general messages involving multiple health behaviors. Messages that have been publicly criticized for their stigmatizing content received the most negative ratings and the lowest intentions to comply with message content. Furthermore, messages that were perceived to be most positive and motivating made no mention of the word ‘obesity’ at all, and instead focused on making healthy behavioral changes without reference to body weight.

I have huge issues with the Rudd Center and they are pro-weight loss. Even they recognized that stigmatizing a fat person doesn't help.

This week is Weight Stigma Awareness Week. It's time to point out that no matter what you believe about fat people, stigma doesn't help at all and if anything can make health worse.

"People who are severely obese were more likely than people of recommended weight to face some level of difficulty in doing activities of daily living," Schafer said. "Over 10 years, those odds of disability were nearly five times higher for people who reported some form of weight discrimination, but only twice as high for those who didn't face discrimination."

I created a list of 5 perceptions we need to change to end weight based stigma

1. End the assumption that  fat people are fat because we eat too much and don't exercise. Everyone has a unique body. Not all fat people are fat because they eat too much just like not all thin people are thin because they don't eat enough. There is a lot of proof that genetics play a strong role in your size. 

2. Stop pressuring weight loss in the name of health. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to cut down on junk food and enjoy healthy movement. There are several studies showing that healthy habits and movement are more important than weight loss. Encouraging weight loss will only make people stop healthy habits when weight loss stops.

3. Stop making fun of fat people, even the ones that fit the stereotype. You'll find many of them are normal kind human beings. All fat people deserve the same rights and privileges has everyone else.

4. If you are fat, start learning ways to love your body and avoid the stigma around you. While it might be hard in the doctor's office or work,  you can ignore the trolls and the weight based health programs.

5. Reducing stigma on fat people won't work if you push weigh loss. What might work is a healthy dose of self-esteem including ending discrimination at the doctor's office, the workplace and even the mall.  A perfect example is this MRI machine meant to accommodate very heavy people. 

Stigma against fat people will end if we make it socially unacceptable. We all need to be proud of our bodies, we need to say no to the diet industry, weight based health and hatred.

Strongest women in the world

Very short post tonight as I just go back from a vacation of limited interweb.

While I was sorry not to see  Holley Mangold or Sarah Robles win any Olympics medals, kudos to them for their attempts. I know Holley hurt her wrist so she lifted 30kg less than her best. I hope to see them at the next summer Olympics in 2016.

That being said, the winner of the Gold medal in Women's heavy weight lifting was this woman Zhou Lulu of China:

All together, she lifted about 734 lbs.

The silver was won by Tatiana Kashirina who was only 2 kilograms short of beating Lulu Zhou. However she did managed to beat two world records.

Both women would be considered obese by American standards. Zhou Lulu would be considered morbidily obese. If she lived in America, she would probably be pushed by pundits, academicians, doctors, and the weight loss industry to lose weight.

Dieting, HAES, Doctors and the Flea

Happy (one day belated) International No Dieting Day! Today (or any day you want) is when we cast off the dieting shackles and learn to eat and move normally. I started my blog in 2005 with the same advice I have now: Diets. Don't. Work. This includes non-diet diets such as Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. They have a high failure/ low success rate (especially among their spokespersons). Eightly million people in the USA are currently on diets and most will not succeed because they are often fighting against biology. Dieting can cause disordered eating, binge eating, body dysmorphic disorder, low self-esteem, health issues from yo-yo dieting and a hit to your wallet. Most dieting plans are fewer calories than your body needs to function. Instead of fighting against your body, listen to it. Feed it when it's hungry, and put food that it likes in it. 

To me something like HAES (TM) is a good outlook on health for people of all sizes who want to incorporate healthy habits without being dictated by the scale. I have mentioned before when I was dieting everything was black and white. On the diet, everything had to be perfect in what I ate, and how I moved. If was good, my self worth was high.  Off the diet was binging on unhealthy food, no movement and self loathing. Today I try to eat a "diet" of mostly fruits and vegatables and move every day. I don't stop doing one healthy habit because I didn't do the other.

This is something doctors in the UK might want to take notice of. Apparently a survey of some UK doctors found that 54% of them don't think smokers or fatties deserve treatment for non-emergency care. (Good thing it was a small sample.) 

Bedfordshire PCT, for example, decided to withhold hip and knee surgery from obese patients until they had slimmed down by 10% or had a body mass index of under 35. Similarly, North Essex PCT obliged obese people to lose 5% of their bodyweight and keep the pounds shed for at least six months before receiving treatment.

So imagine you are fat and while walking, you trip on something and hurt your knee. You aren't dead or have a life threatening condition. You can still walk but boy does your knee hurt. You go to the doctor who tells you he won't fix your knee unless you lose 25 pounds. Where does that leave you? Even if you believed in the myth that fatness is 100% to do with eating too much and not exercising, how are you supposed to exercise on a bum knee? What might  happen is you end up lying around and eating more. What the doctor needs to do is FIX YOUR FUCKING KNEE.

This is has very little to do with Healthcare and more to do with nickle and diming to save money. We are moving into a scary place where are casting those who are sick or preseived to be sick to just let them die. And in the case of fat people these aren't actually health judgements but moral ones. 

Ragen Chastain on her blog sums it up pretty well.

I will say it again: My life is not worth less than a thin person’s life. My health is not less important than a thin person’s health.  I do not need to do anything to “deserve” the same healthcare that people with a lower BMI receive.

And to go completely off topic, to escape fat hatred for one day, if you are in the New York Metro area, get yourself to the Big Fat Flea. I took about 10 bags over to their storage unit yesterday, so I expect a lot of awesome clothes. 

 

 

Cake, Clothes, and Consumption

When I wrote my essay for the Fat Studies Reader one of my source materials spoke about the book Jermina Jby Jane Green. In the book the main character is fat and to impress a man she never met she drops 80 pounds through crash dieting then buys a whole new wardrobe.  The essay spoke about the issue of consumption. Fat people are often the examples of consumption gone wild. We obviously steal food from hungry babies while driving our gas guzzling automobiles.  However the essay points out the Jermina consumes much more after she becomes thin. When Jerminia is fat, she consumes less clothes, when she is thin, she buys a new wardrobe. She consumes way more materialistic things than she did when she was fat. (And btw, I am not saying thin people consume more or less than fat people. It's Clothing and fashion industry consumption, and they happen to make mostly thin people's clothes.)

Fat people, being shunned by the mainstream fashion industry, consume less clothes. I barely buy new clothes, instead chose to get most of my selection at Big Fat Flea (formerly the Fat Girl's Flea Market) (May 13 btw, you better be there) and keeping my old clothes in good repair. 

*

Oh look it's me and the fabulous Lesley Kinzel of fatshionistas  who also wrote a fabulous book based on her blog: Two whole cakes. Leslie is a self described "clothes horse" but she laments in her book what many other fat people can share with her, unable to find clothes in her size. Another book I happened to be reading at the same time Greenwashed talks about the immense amount of clothes waste (clothes only have  ten wear lifes span. I have a skirt from high school still in my closet.) 

Getting back to Leslie's book. It's a short but intense read of vignettes and most fat people could share stories almost to the same as hers.  If you are unfamiliar with where the term Two Whole Cakes comes from. On Fatshionistas, there was a troll who on another board said that all fat people eat Two whole cakes a day (at my worst binging (i.e. not eating normally), I only managed to get most of one and I got really sick afterwards). One particular story I shared with Leslie was about going to Jenny Craig (in my case Nutrisystem) eating the gross food, losing weight in the beginning than tapering off. For me and for Leslie, both the tapering off and the hungry were the reasons we "gave" up (or our bodies did.) In Leslie's case she walked away, in mine Nutrisystem went "out of business". I got a whole refund of $89.  

So recommend this Earth day that you buy Leslie's book (available as an ebook) and fat people tell the fashion industry to stick it, you are consuming less of their crappy badly made clothes. 

 *(Note: purple shirt, Fat girl's flea market,  Pink Jacket, Re/Dress)

No fat vegans? And another traumatic day at the shopping mall.

Physicians for "responsible medicine" have unveiled an ad campaignwhose only purpose seems to insult fat people, blonds, and vegans. The campaign is for eating less or no meat but you wouldn't know it from the ad they use. One man has to sit next to a rude fattie who carelessly forgets to say excuse me and deliberately barrels through to his window seat. (Quite possibly because what we didn't see was the thin man deliberately not moving his legs so the larger man can get through.) The thin man on the other aisle adverts disaster when a fattie with a ticket for that seat is turned away because this thin man is the king of the plane with the power move those horrible fatties to the back of the plane (Did PFRM forget plane seats are assigned?) He could do this because TA-DAH he has spent a whole 10 bucks to humiliate a fat person and be able to sit next to a hot blond thin vegan.  (Personally I would like to sit next to the original guy who looks like he's cool and laid back).  The ad ends with the slender woman yakking on about the evils of meat.

What any of this has to do with the fact that airlines like to crush as many people together as possible per flight to compensate for crappy business pratcices is beyond me. For some reason this "option" has been pushed on American Airlines. I mean does American have an all you can eat meat buffet? If they offer bacon, I may very well drop my boycott of them.

Anyway, this seems to be the intended message:

Fat people are fat because they eat meat and are too stupid to realize that meat makes you fat. I'm sure all the fat vegans and vegetarians out there might have something else to say about that.

Vegans are all thin, slender and blond and will talk your ear off. Absolutely no vegans are non-white. They especially aren't Asian or Indian.

The ad is confusing about what they are trying to push and it seems to go out of its way to stigmatized fat people.

Write them a new asshole:membership@pcrm.org. 

Speaking of stigmatized: Unfortunately this economy has claimed a fat positive causality, namely the wonderful store Re/Dress. The physical store closed in November, but the owner still has chic clothes available online.

For me this is bad because I have a body that fits no cookie cutter. For the most part I have to try on everything.  I was in need for a dress shirt and my only option (which I thought at the time was a good one) was the Avenue. I don't have any problem admitting I've gained some middle age weight and that I'm creeping closer to size 22 (although some 20's still fit). I went to the Avenue, grabbed two blouses both 2x and 3x. I was surprised to find the 3x was tight. All the 2x and 3x clothes in my closet fit, so while I got pissed off that the Avenue was making sizes too small, I was at least used to that (another store Rainbow did the same thing).  Surely they had a 4x, 24 I could wear?

No, not a one. I couldn't find a single fucking dress shirt in 4x or 24. I walked out of a store with a frilly tank top to wear under a jacket, annoyed at how even  a plus size store was "sizing" me out.

What am I getting to?

Ah yeah. The fat girl's flea market, now known as the Big Fat Flea. Why the name change because guess what big handsome men? They'll be carrying men's clothes this year.

I'm fairly certain that at the flea I will find a nice dress shirt, whether it be 2x, 3x, or 4x. 

So Sunday May 13th, if you live in the Tri-state area, come to the flea. If you don't, this might be a good time to visit New York City. I won't say it's a fabulous place, but on May 13 at the Big Fat Flea it will be. 

The good, the bad and the obnoxious.

The good.

The billboard project and We Stand! has been creating not a flurry of action, but a feel good environment among fat activists. A post on Big Fat Blog talks about how the Billboard project has helped with dealing with growing up being bullied. I for one love to look at these beautiful positve imges as much as possible. Here's anther one to enjoy:

And starting tonight, you can vote for your favorite billboard. 

The Bad

Wired Magazine has an entire article devoted to selling strategies of Weight Watchers, which is changing their diet plan, again. The article starts by humiliating a current WW poster child with the same old stereotypes.

Things aren’t so bad that he would get the Kevin Smith treatment from Southwest Airlines, but it’s easy to imagine him breaking into a sweat carrying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s up a flight of stairs. He’ll soon be diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. His doctor suggests a statin.

Now the After, more than a decade later: close-cropped blond hair, 34-inch waist, and 15 percent body fat on his 6′ 3″ frame. In a form-fitting suit, the 45-year-old father of two cuts the figure of a Marine sergeant 20 years his junior. This is a picture of a man in control.

The author of the article manages to use every single fat stereotype there is. The fat man eats too much, exercises too little, and will have a 100% chance of being metabolically unfit and out of control.  The thin man has no health issues and is completely in control. Here fat people are villianized. If only those fatties would learn some fucking control, they would be thin. The author mentioned several factors for weight gain but leaves out the genetic component. 

The irony here is between this man and me. He put on 75 pounds since he was young. I put on 75 pounds as well but from yo-yo dieting. 

And who is he now, this humailted poster child? He is the current CEO of Weight Watchers, David Kirchhoff. He has to keep his weight off, restraining his eating because it would look bad if he were to gain the weight back, wouldn't it?

Weight Watchers changes its program based on what's popular. The low carb craze had led to a low gylcemic craze, and a hatred of bread. I'm gluten intolerant. My stomach doesn't like it. But you going to find people give up gluten in hopes of losing weight (Gluten free products aren't always low calorie). 

As part of her job, Miller-Kovach and her team constantly follow the latest trends in nutritional science. A few years before the meeting, for example, they had explored a concept called the glycemic index, or GI, which establishes a hierarchy of carbohydrates based on their effect on blood glucose. 

Weight watchers follows trends for one reason: they want your money. They don't care if you are healthy.  They are a not a lifestyle change, they are a diet, they encourage restricted eating.

The obnoxious.

My husband has traveled more than I have and I've been waiting to visit more places around the world. He mentioned we might want to wait for retirement, but I told him I wanted to go now before the airline industry implodes.

Case in point...

Apparently the UK court of Appeals have decided that fat people can't sue if they are humilated on a flight and because of this decision, airlines in the country are pushing for a "Obese tax" to pretty much force fat people to buy a second seat. This ruling goes beyond fatness, it means that if anyone is humilated on a flight, they have no recource to the law.

"The ruling confirms that disabled passengers have no right to dignity once the wheels leave the runway,” said Mr Barnett. “It also means that airlines are immune if they choose to embarrass overweight passengers by demanding a fat tax.”

The implosion begins. 

A movie we all need to see

I saw the premiere of America the Beautiful 2, the Thin Commandments. If it is playing in a theater near you, go see it. If it isn't, email your local theater asking to show it and spread the word. 

In his previous movie, director Daryl Roberts investigated American's obsession with beauty, and the industry that obsession supports. (That movie is available as a DVD or online purchase through Amazon etc., and Netflix has it as an instant play feature).

This film, Roberts' second, is about American's obsession with thinness and dieting. Over the course of 85 minutes Roberts shows his personal experience concerning food, eating disorders, HAES, weight related issues, politics of dieting, and his own habits. 

The movie starts with Roberts getting a doctors appointment (the first in 10 years) where he is diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, and was at risk for diabetes. After refusing medication due to his lack of health insurance and learning that possible side effects include erectile dysfunction, Daryl searches for weight loss solutions. The obvious first stop involves looking into a gimmicky diet, then raw foods. Then in a montage of shots, he tries Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine, and the Cookie Diet. All of which cause him to lose weight and gain it back. Then instead of dieting, he starts exercising regularly.

He touches on issues of weight bias, including his sister, unable to get IVF unless she loses weight, a good friend obsessed with what she eats and how much she exercises, a woman who swings back and forth between anorexia and bulimia, Plus size model Anansa Sims (daughter of model Beverly Johnson), and dancer and blogger Ragen Chastain who explained that her doctor wanted her to "walk more" after which she had to explained she danced about 20 hours a week. Sims' journey is particularly harrowing: a big girl who desperately wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps, she lost weight consistently at the orders of her coaches. No matter how much she lost, it was never good enough for the modeling world. Her answer:  she regained all the weight and found success as a plus size model.

When Roberts returns to his doctor after taking up biking (he was at our screening and said he is still riding) he hadn't lost much weight but he had no trace of his diagonsed illnesses and had perfect blood pressure. Ragen Chastain who she claimed is at the top of the obese scale is also metabolically healthy.

While this doesn't prove anything because it is only two people who happened to be both healthy and moving regularly. I don't know what Ragen eats but Daryl still eats junk food although he supplements with more vegetables, but here are two people where exercise, not dieting, made them healthier. Shouldn't be looking more to encourage movement rather than losing weight? Shouldn't we stop labeling people by their size?

And here is a not so great picture of me with the director.

Happy International No Dieting Day!

19th International No Diet Day

Greetings to all of you celebrating this auspicious day.
How far have we come since 1992? Well, in some respects a long, long way.
More health professionals support a 'health at every size' approach.
There are fat study groups in colleges as younger people are challenging the status quo.
And people in the public eye are speaking out about their experiences.
Plus there are a few more clothes to choose from.

But, the pressure is still on us all to be other than we are...
Whether child or geriatric
There's far too many people ever ready with their knives.
And quacks peddling magic drugs and potions
Fat remains an easy and socially acceptable target and a useful vehicle for others to project their self hate.

It is not unusual for oppressed people to understand their oppressors more than they understand us.
So, no surprise if people scratch their heads in puzzlement as we say, in our various ways, "get off our backs" -
when 'they only have our best interests at heart'.
But today is a day of pride and to use our precious creative and fighting energy to challenge institutional sizeism and the nasty trinity:
diet, media and fashion who exploit us all for their own ends.

As a British politician famously said, "Don't let the bastards get you down".
INDD is an opportunity to change the rules: encourage self acceptance and respect for all.
And use your love and friendship to have a great day.... in the way it suits you.
Go well.

In solidarity, Mary Evans Young
Oxfordshire, England

Setting the fashion industry on fire

If the fashion industry went out of business, I wouldn't care. If everyone stopped subscribing to fashion magazines, I wouldn't cry. I don't follow trends, so I never know what's in or out.

High fashion and these magazines don't cater to me. They cater to what their advertizers want us to be: unnaturally thin, with flawless skin, glassy inhuman eyes, fully made up by a professional. Oh and photoshopped. They also want me to buy expenisve clothes, except I can't until I lose 100 pounds.  Before I started on my size acceptance journey, I believed a lot of this bunk. I thought I really could be unobtainable.

I know one place that does cater to me: The Fat Girl Flea Market, which I am happy to say is returning this year on April 30th. Yes this post is a shameless plug for the Flea but I wanted to tell you the difference between shopping at the Flea and shopping at Macy's. I don't shop at Macy's anymore. Do you know why? I feel like a leper. The local Macys has such a limited plus size section, it's nearly impossible to find anything with a good fit, leaving me to either not buy clothes or leave with poorly fitting one.  When I go to the flea I have lots of selection. If something doesn't fit right, on to the next thing.  With everything under $10 if I buy something then turn out I don't like it, I can donated it to next year's flea. At the flea I feel comfortable and happy with myself.

I know not everyone has things like the Flea or Re/Dress within a reasonable distance, if at all. I know some people only have Walmart as an option, but if you have other options use them instead of the stores that treat you like dirt.  As of now I only shop at Re/dress, Marshalls, and occassionally Lane Bryant, Torrid, and The Avenue.  I refuse to shop at a place that doesn't make me feel welcome for being fat.

People hearing without listening

I went to a body image conference on Friday night and Saturday. Although I had a good time, learned a lot, enjoyed the speeches especially of Deb Lemire, Deb Burgard, Erica Watson, Katherine Flegal, among others, I have my own issues with this conference. Namely something I wrote in my essay about fat chick lit: I referred o size 16 as the fat glass ceiling. In my essay I mentioned that in chick lit novels the average size of fat heroines was 16. Granted you won't find size 16 or 40 on the Howard Stern show, but you do find far more acceptance of someone like Cannie Shapiro of Good in Bed compared to Ronnie in Alt. Beauty (Ronnie weights 300lbs, Cannie is a size 16.) 

After a panel about medicalization and the body, people lined up for questions. Because I tend to be familiar with a lot of the issues, I like to ask a question so the audience would have something to think about. So my question was about Let's Move. I said while I'm not against encouraging kids to eat better and excercise, I am concerned about using it to make fat kids thin. I feel that it would create eating disorders, low self-esteem, and stigma. I was also worried that the diet industry was targeting children as a new cash cow. 

But to repeat. I am not against healthy eating, junk food in moderation, and enjoyable movement. 

So about five minutes later, we got a commenter with "Won't someone please think of the children?" She remarked that she worked with children and the essence of her comment was Let's Move is a great idea, we need to get children healthy and that all fat children had diabetes. 

Deb Burgard asked the woman for her sources. When the woman couldn't give any other than anedotal data, Deb told her, the official statistics for diabetes for children were very low about .26% (Rates for Adults are 8.3. And that .26% is mostly Type 1). Deb had to repeat no one was against healthy eating, and exercise, but felt it was unfair to target one group to change (when there is no proof that the majority of people who lose weight keep it off).

I believe that anti-fat bias is so ingrained that we only see fat never the message. No one on the panel taked about encouraging unhealthy eating or sitting on the couch, merely to remove weight as a health indicator.