Fat Chicks Rule

Stating the Obvious

So CNN has reported on something I have mentioned all along. That it is sometimes not fatness but poor medical treatment that causes health issues.  According to the report, fat women, even as little as 13 pounds over "normal":

May have a harder time getting health insurance or have to pay higher premiums
Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed or receiving inaccurate dosages of drugs
Are less likely to find a fertility doctor who will help you get pregnant
Are less likely to have cancer detected early and get effective treatment for it

The last one mentions cancer.  Last November I posted a radio interview that included a doctor who thought obesity caused cancer based on a surveying of data from 4 out of 23 studies. Already off to a bad start, could even the results of those four studies be explained by this lack of screening and effective treatment? I'll bet it might.

This article itself isn't that fat positive. As it also assumes fatness must be the cause of disease and that fat people simply need to stop overeating in order to be thin and healthy. Bias comes not just from doctors who assume their patients are too dumb to lose weight but the fact that maybe fatness isn't always the problem.

Long ago I pleaded that there be health care reform that included a public option, (I am personally for single payer, I really think that people shouldn't be broken financially by health care costs) because fat people are often either denied health care coverage or assigned high premiums (sometimes even if all their blood tests were normal), but now there is no public option and the new health care bill in the senate is useless. According to Alternet: 

A little-discussed provision of the Senate bill allows insurers to expand so-called wellness programs that allow insurers to penalize subscribers by hundreds—and even thousands—of dollars for not meeting certain "wellness targets," such as a particular cholesterol number, blood sugar measurement or body-weight target.

We are told we aren't healthy, but yet bias and insurance companies block our access to health care. WTF?

Mo'Nique, earth diets, and sexist store bites the dust.

Big congratulations to Mo'Nique for her Golden Globe from the movie Precious. They usually means Oscar in the future. Also congratulations to Gabourey Sidibe for her nomination. I haven't seen Precious yet.  I will, but it's sometimes hard to see a difficult movie.  That being said, everyone who has seen it says it's an excellent emotional film and that both actresses were extraordinary.  If Hollywood didn't have such a cookie cutter look on lead actresses than Mo'Nique wouldn't be stuck doing bad comedies and Gabourey would be an up and coming star. 

The blog Sociological Images had a post last week that pointed out images of the association between obesity and environmental messages.  My favorite is the one from the Environmental Defense Fund that essentially has a cartoon of the earth with a measuring tape around it. Apparently they are pushing that we go on a carbon 'diet'.  However the picture indicates the planet is dieting. But the planet needs to get fat or stay fat by us not using up its resources.

Finally a note of fun. I once wrote an Igigi column criticizing a store called Yellow Rat Bastard. It's a local NYC store with one in the Queens Mall.  Why did I pick on them compared to the thousand other stores that don't have plus sizes?  Because in YRB, they went up to 3x for men but only large for women. When I emailed to complain, I was ignored. So today I was at the mall for a phone upgrade when I saw YRB was not only gone but it's property seized. 

I'm sure another fat hating store will replace it, but this did brighten my day. 

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

The good.

For those In Massachusetts,  Rep. Byron Rushing's height/weight anti-discrimination bill H.1850 —An Act Making It Unlawful to Discriminate on the Basis of Height and Weight--is getting a new hearing on Wednesday, January 27, at 10:30 am, Hearing Room A-2, in the Boston State House.  For those in Mass, please testify at this hearing.  Do it in memory of Jeanne Toombs who tried to get this law passed in 2007. 

You can also crucially support civil rights for people of all sizes by sending an email!

- Please send your email to legislative aide Tracy Choi: Tracy.Choi@state. ma.us
- Please copy me (marilyn@fatso. com), so I can tally our efforts and report back to you

 Please forward this message to your friends and networks!

V Magazine has actually put women  who don't look like supermodels in their magazine. Of course these women aren't that fat but it's a start.

The Bad

Hey fat girls, it's not your genes, it's your mind. And if you just get some psychotherapy, you too can be trim and beautiful, just like a movie star! Actually to be honest, the study targets binge eating for fat girls to make sure they don't get fatter. So you only get this therapy if you are a binge eater and fat.  Because if you binge eat and have a naturally fast metabolism, that is okay.

The Ugly.

Beautifulpeople.com (i.e. Conventially attractive idiots.com) invites superficial people to meet other superfucial people.  What they essentially did was toss 5000 people off their site for gaining weight of the holiday.  

Am I bitter today?  No, just tired of being made fun of.

Wellness Plans of the Corn

Finally, someone from the medical establishment thinks that wellness incentives aren't as good as they sound and they will unfairly discriminated against the poor who don't always have time to go to the gym. I will go even further. I see no reason to punish someone in good health who happens to be be above the arcane BMI normal weight. (I also see no reason to punish people in poor health who happen to be in the range as well.  Health care needs to be blind.)

Association for Size Diversity & Health has put out a press release imploring that the focus shift from weight to health.

Meanwhile a usually worthwhile source Alternet has genuinely proven that high fructose corn syrup caused the Great American Obesity Epidemic because 16 volunteers got high levels of it. 

This is essentially what I've been talking about: a study involving a whole 16 people have proven beyond a doubt that corn syrup is the enemy. But a six international studies indicating those with overweight BMI needs more studies.

BTW, I cannot eat or drink anything derived from corn. It makes me sick. I think it is healthier to use sugar (Preferably cane and fair trade) than sugar substitutes of any kind, but making any claim from a study of 16 people is ridiculous.