Fat Chicks Rule

The best they can offer

Guess what parents? If you have a fat kid, Dr. David Ludwig of fat hating Harvard would like the state to take your child away and force them to diet. Dr. Ludwig is supposedly doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Those poor fat kids have evil or stupid parents and must be stopped!  Dr. Ludwig's concerned because these fattie children are getting WLS when they should be in foster care.  (I guess any other elective surgery is okay.)

So imagine you're a fat kid who genetically is bigger than most kids. (Only a minority of fat people are considered supersized but unfortunately when media portrays fat people, they are usually refering to someone supersized. But if you look at Kate Harding's BMI Project you'll see that what is considered "overweight" or "obese" or "Underweight" really don't match up to the label)  Imagine that you are relentlessly teased in school outright by other children and underhandedly by adults. The school bombards you with messages such as OBESITY KILLS! or DESTROY ALL OBESITY (Okay, I made that second one up.) And when other kids aren't calling you fattie two by four, they are blaming you because pizza or cupcakes are no longer allowed at school. 

So school sucks, but at least you can leave and go home to your loving parents. Until the state arbitrarily decides your fat ass is due to your parents' neglect, takes you from your loving home and puts you in foster care, forces you to diet and in the end, not only are you still fat but now you have been traumatized.

This happened to Anamarie Regino who was taken from her parents when she was three because she weighed 90lbs. (At the time, she could easily pass for a child who is 7 or 8). Yet in this fat hating obsessed society doctors didn't say "hey that's unusually for a three year old." They assumed her parents were feeding her ding-dongs all day. (BTW, if a parent was feeding ding-dongs all day to their thin child, there would be no state intervention.)

Marilyn Wann wrote a great article about this situation with a great quote that Dr. Ludwig needs to pay attention to: "What kind of choice is this for kids? We cut off your stomach or we cut you off from your family? That's the best advice a Harvard public health expert can offer?"

Yes, that is the best that they can offer. Health experts, routinely claim they "understand" fat isn't all about eating, but in the end, all they recommend is to diet.

Up the Mountain

Short post today, just got back from a week in Vermont. Because I didn't have to work, I had more time to have fun movement like swimming and hiking.

I went halfway up a mountain. My husband made it to the summit (He came back so tired, he couldn't even drive). Going up the mountain I came across people of all ages, sizes, and shapes. Physical fitness had more to do with getting there than anything else. Last year I was unprepared and only made it about a mile, this year I made four. (Despite a damaged tendon in my foot.)   Very few people hiking the mountain managed to do without pain and fatigue. 

So the moral of this post is this. Being thin doesn't make you automatically fit and being fat doesn't make you automatically out of shape. Exercise is important, we don't have to make it up the mountain. (Yes it would be awesome), we just have to make it as far as we can go. 

All aboard the Fat Parade.

Short post this week and next, as I'm about to go on vacation, but I wanted to share this awesome article. 

No one is free while others are oppressed -- Unknown.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.  ~Abraham Lincoln

I can across the first quote when I was in a feminist group in college. At the time for me, it meant women's rights and freedoms, but now it expands to even more, I don't feel happy or free while people get treated like second class citizens. 

Marilyn Wann has a great article in the San Francisco Weekly about intersectionality which is  about people who come from  different social oppessed groups. (i.e. female and African-American)  and how instead of having separate causes, we have one big fat one. 

Instead of making long lists of outsider groups who deserve long-overdue welcome and then debating who's deserving and who isn't, what if we were all welcome all the time?

I'm all with Marilyn on this one. Oppression is oppression, even if some have it worse than others. 

Sometimes I think society at large doesn't consider fat prejudice oppression. After all weight is fluid, it changed artificially or through illness. If they just lose weight it will no longer be a problem. But this has nothing to do with whether weight loss works or not (for the most part, it does not work in the long run) but it has to do with the right of a person to not be discriminated against because they go against the "norm." It's not fair that a fat person goes to the doctor, job interview, applies for health insurance, life insurance, etc and they are immediately labelled unhealthy and lazy. If you removes rights from a person, for being who they are, then you are denying their freedom.

Everyone needs to join one big parade to accept that people are different and that should be valued not shunned. 

Dead end mall

I was getting Starbucks at my local mall. And when I say my mall, I have been going to this mall since I was a teenager. It became my second home when I had to get out of the house and none of my friends were around. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with malls. On one hand I find them to be an urban and suburban blight, on the other hand, this mall allowed me an escape for a few hours at a time.

Today this mall offers me little except for the occasional Starbucks and my credit union is next door.  The mall opens at 10 but Starbucks and Gloria Jean coffee opens for commuters before that. I got to traverse the mall with no pedestrian traffic thinking this might be a good place to walk during hot or cold days. The mall is mostly small chic clothing stores such as Banana Republic, White House, Black Market (stupidest name for a store ever), Bebe, Charlotte Russe, Guess, Forever 21, H&M. If you see one suburban mall you should know all the stores. Despite the fact these stores sell overpriced crap, this mall is one of the most successful malls in the country and that disturbs me considering that the neighborhoods around it are all working class, median income people.

Oh yeah about almost none of the stores carry plus sizes. At last count out of the 33 stores in the mall that carry clothes for woman, only 4 carry plus sizes and of those 4, only one carries a variety of selections. For example Hot Topic which owns Torrid has plus sized t-shirts but nothing else. So what does that leave us in the mall? Not the food court because fat people aren’t supposed to eat.<

I often hear comments that the reason stores don’t carry plus sizes is that fat people never buy clothing but a small study shows that might not be the point. In this study a random sampling of people of difference sizes went to stores in a Houston mall. Casually dressed fat people were discriminated more than the others, even well dressed fat people. Fat people who held a diet drink and talked about how they exercised were treated better than fat people who held an ice cream drink, talked about not dieting and being unable to do exercise. Average size shoppers who carried different drinks did not suffer discrimination.

So if you walked in a store that didn't have your size and if they did they had terrible selection and limited sizes (And if you are over a size 26, don't even bother looking) and they treat you like dirt,would you shop there?  I wouldn’t. There is a reason I am now only shopping regularly at two stores, Re/Dress which is unique to New York and Marshals because I can shop with anonymity. Department stores no longer carry the selection and style I need. In fact many have gone downhill since I published my book. While Fashion bug, the Avenue and Lane Bryant carry style, sizes and selection, I find their quality of clothes substandard and in the case of Avenue and Lane Bryant overpriced.

So what does a fat person get? Lack of quality, quantity and selection or nothing at all. So my fat sisters and brothers. What do we do? First things first, if you like a store's style, but they don't have your size. Let them know. Let them know that until they carry your size in the store (Not the Old Navy BS that has plus sizes online but not in their stores) you will never shop there for anything and you will encourage other friends to not shop there as well. If you do find a store you like that has what you need, patronize it as much as possible. I go to Re/Dress as much as I can despite the long trip and I go to Marshals despite the long lines. Don't give any money to a store that won't give you respect!