November 26, 2006
Big People on Campus
By ABBY ELLIN
ASK Sheana Director for a detailed description of herself, and chances are the word fat will come up. It is not uttered with shame or ire or any sense of embarrassment; it’s simply one of the things she is, fat.
“Why should I be ashamed?” said Ms. Director, 22, a graduate student in women’s studies at San Diego State University, who wields the word with both defiance and pride, the way the gay community uses queer. “I’m fat. So what?”
During her sophomore year at Smith College, Ms. Director attended a discussion on fat discrimination: the way the super-sized are marginalized, the way excessive girth is seen as a moral failing rather than the result of complicated factors. But the academic community, she felt, didn’t really give the topic proper consideration. She decided to do something about it.
In December 2004, she helped found the organization Size Matters, whose goal was to promote size acceptance and positive body image. In April, the group sponsored a conference called Fat and the Academy, a three-day event at Smith of panel discussions and performances by academics, researchers, activists and artists. Nearly 150 people attended.
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Monday, November 27, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
A new blog
A friend of mine has a new blog and it is a good one, with lots of good info:
Junkfood Science:
The truth about food, fat and health. Learn the science that mainstream media doesn't report and how to critically think about the junk they do that's not fit to swallow.
Sandy Szwarc knows what she is talking about. She's had a series of great articles on Tech Central Station on the issues of the so called obesity epidemic and food scares, many that have been posted on this blog.
So check out her new blog and her articles.
Junkfood Science:
The truth about food, fat and health. Learn the science that mainstream media doesn't report and how to critically think about the junk they do that's not fit to swallow.
Sandy Szwarc knows what she is talking about. She's had a series of great articles on Tech Central Station on the issues of the so called obesity epidemic and food scares, many that have been posted on this blog.
So check out her new blog and her articles.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Fat! Fit? Fabulous!
Fat! Fit? Fabulous!
Meet the East Bay activists and researchers at the center of the new civil-rights movement known as Health at Every Size.
By Lauren Gard
The last thing Lake Merritt pedestrians expected to see on a recent Thursday afternoon was a fat, vibrant woman inviting them to step onto a scale. "Would you like a free compliment?" Marilyn Wann called out to a group of teenage girls on the concrete path. She motioned to the scale, which she'd covered with pink paint and sparkly silver paper. Silver pipe cleaners across the bottom spelled "YAY!"
A lanky girl with long braids pulled into a ponytail eyed the glittery object with suspicion. "I do not need to know my weight," she said defiantly.
"Oh, this won't give you a number, only a compliment," Wann said, her vintage aluminum-framed glasses glinting in the sunlight.
"What is it?" the girl asked.
"It's a Yay Scale."
The girl squinted at it for a moment, still clearly confused, then shrugged and stepped on. The dial spun and came to rest.
"You're gorgeous," Wann announced.
"Ooh, that's nice," the girl replied with a grin. Soon her friends had all clambered on to take their own Yay readings.
"What are you doing this for?" asked one who'd just been declared "fine!"
"I'm part of a group of people who try to encourage good nutrition and fitness, whatever your size," Wann said, handing each teen a slip of pink paper listing five body-positive Web sites.
Within an hour, several dozen people had collected such spontaneous flattery. A father and his teenage son riding their bikes: "What a way to make a guy's day," the father said after being deemed sexy. "And look at that — my son is fine!" A toned jogger in her twenties whose face initially fell when she realized the scale wouldn't divulge her weight: "Yummy," she read with a smile, after stepping on anyway. "That's better than 140, right?"
A few people recognized Wann, who proselytized body acceptance in a black T-shirt and her signature hot-pink attire of pedalpusher jeans, suede loafers, and a purse: "Are you Marilyn?" a young woman asked. "The one who wrote Fat!So?"
"Yes, that's me," Wann admitted, blushing so her cheeks matched her bubblegum-hued MAC lipstick.
"I love that book," the girl gushed before asking Wann to autograph the handout. "It really helped me!"
At 39, Wann is the uncontested queen of the modern American fat-pride movement. The San Francisco resident carries around a hundred or so pounds more than the US government thinks she should. When she was denied health insurance in 1993 based solely on that fact, she launched a protest zine called Fat!So?, which evolved into a book that has sold fifteen thousand copies, which in turn inspired a popular Web site, all of which have given way to a thriving speaking career. Wann began making Yay Scales five years ago, and now offers them up via word of mouth and, soon, through VoluptuArt.com, an online shop stocked solely with body-positive art that will be run by Richmond therapist Nomi Dekel.
-snip-
Meet the East Bay activists and researchers at the center of the new civil-rights movement known as Health at Every Size.
By Lauren Gard
The last thing Lake Merritt pedestrians expected to see on a recent Thursday afternoon was a fat, vibrant woman inviting them to step onto a scale. "Would you like a free compliment?" Marilyn Wann called out to a group of teenage girls on the concrete path. She motioned to the scale, which she'd covered with pink paint and sparkly silver paper. Silver pipe cleaners across the bottom spelled "YAY!"
A lanky girl with long braids pulled into a ponytail eyed the glittery object with suspicion. "I do not need to know my weight," she said defiantly.
"Oh, this won't give you a number, only a compliment," Wann said, her vintage aluminum-framed glasses glinting in the sunlight.
"What is it?" the girl asked.
"It's a Yay Scale."
The girl squinted at it for a moment, still clearly confused, then shrugged and stepped on. The dial spun and came to rest.
"You're gorgeous," Wann announced.
"Ooh, that's nice," the girl replied with a grin. Soon her friends had all clambered on to take their own Yay readings.
"What are you doing this for?" asked one who'd just been declared "fine!"
"I'm part of a group of people who try to encourage good nutrition and fitness, whatever your size," Wann said, handing each teen a slip of pink paper listing five body-positive Web sites.
Within an hour, several dozen people had collected such spontaneous flattery. A father and his teenage son riding their bikes: "What a way to make a guy's day," the father said after being deemed sexy. "And look at that — my son is fine!" A toned jogger in her twenties whose face initially fell when she realized the scale wouldn't divulge her weight: "Yummy," she read with a smile, after stepping on anyway. "That's better than 140, right?"
A few people recognized Wann, who proselytized body acceptance in a black T-shirt and her signature hot-pink attire of pedalpusher jeans, suede loafers, and a purse: "Are you Marilyn?" a young woman asked. "The one who wrote Fat!So?"
"Yes, that's me," Wann admitted, blushing so her cheeks matched her bubblegum-hued MAC lipstick.
"I love that book," the girl gushed before asking Wann to autograph the handout. "It really helped me!"
At 39, Wann is the uncontested queen of the modern American fat-pride movement. The San Francisco resident carries around a hundred or so pounds more than the US government thinks she should. When she was denied health insurance in 1993 based solely on that fact, she launched a protest zine called Fat!So?, which evolved into a book that has sold fifteen thousand copies, which in turn inspired a popular Web site, all of which have given way to a thriving speaking career. Wann began making Yay Scales five years ago, and now offers them up via word of mouth and, soon, through VoluptuArt.com, an online shop stocked solely with body-positive art that will be run by Richmond therapist Nomi Dekel.
-snip-
Friday, September 08, 2006
An activism opportunity
Stacy Bias, founder of FatGirl Speaks is putting together a book and is looking to interview fat women about their experiences.
The book "will consist of a series of monologues suitable for stage performance, all around the topic of fat. Bias intends to interview 150+ women of size, all across the United States, and in Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Samoa, Asia, India and South America."
So all you fat chicks out there, check out her site for more info on the project and how to contact her if you are interested in being interviewed for the project.
The book "will consist of a series of monologues suitable for stage performance, all around the topic of fat. Bias intends to interview 150+ women of size, all across the United States, and in Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Samoa, Asia, India and South America."
So all you fat chicks out there, check out her site for more info on the project and how to contact her if you are interested in being interviewed for the project.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Follow the money
So who is sponsoring the 10th International Congress on Obesity 2006? A whole lotta companies with a vested interest in selling things to fat people to try and make them thin (most with a very miserable success rate. There is no profit in people who actually like themselves, so these companies have to come up with epidemics and pandemics to panic people in to buying their crap.
Here's a tidbit, everyone in the world is now "pre-hypertensive" and "pre-diabetic" since the drug companies are now trying to get people who don't have these problems onto medications so they can sell more.
Here's a tidbit, everyone in the world is now "pre-hypertensive" and "pre-diabetic" since the drug companies are now trying to get people who don't have these problems onto medications so they can sell more.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
Thursday, August 31 2006 @ 08:33 AM PDT
HealthPull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try."
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
By Maya Schenwar
Pull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try." The goal is to combat what the FDA calls the "obesity epidemic," which supposedly claims the lives of 400,000 Americans per year. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2005 Dietary Guidelines target weight loss as America's number one health goal. The war on drugs is old news, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to rally the troops for the war on fat.
The FDA is spreading the message through a variety of obesity awareness advertisements and programs in schools and workplaces. Government intervention in weight loss doesn't stop at "educational" efforts, though. In many states, including Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, schools are required by law to weigh students each year and report their weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) to their parents, in a format much like an academic report card.
Meanwhile, at home, government health agencies claim that over 30 percent of Americans are obese, endangering their health and shortening their lives. However, many health professionals are questioning the link between body fat, illness and death.
Dr. Glenn A. Gaesser, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia and author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health , calls the FDA's standards for morbid obesity "arbitrary," noting that people do not die of fat.
“There are 'healthy obese' people who are in no need of 'treatment,'” he said. "Furthermore, most of the health problems of the 'unhealthy obese' (i.e., blood pressure, lipids, insulin and glucose) can be remedied by changes in diet and physical activity independent of weight loss." In his recent study, "Obesity, Health, and Metabolic Fitness," Gaesser reports that fat people are no more likely to have clogged arteries than thin people, and that body weight and BMI are not indicative of death rates. In fact, according to a study by the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) itself, "excess" body fat does NOT claim 400,000 lives per year; people categorized as "overweight" (BMI 25-30) actually tallied 86,000 fewer deaths per year than those categorized as thin.
The rigid standards set by the government are outdated and are not based on sound science, says Peggy Howell, public affairs chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). The height/weight charts that determine BMI were created in the 1970s, with only a slight revision in 1998. "I don't question the statistics that 30 percent of the American population is over a particular weight," Howell said. "I do, however, take exception to the yardstick they are using."
-snip-
Thursday, August 31 2006 @ 08:33 AM PDT
HealthPull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try."
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
By Maya Schenwar
Pull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try." The goal is to combat what the FDA calls the "obesity epidemic," which supposedly claims the lives of 400,000 Americans per year. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2005 Dietary Guidelines target weight loss as America's number one health goal. The war on drugs is old news, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to rally the troops for the war on fat.
The FDA is spreading the message through a variety of obesity awareness advertisements and programs in schools and workplaces. Government intervention in weight loss doesn't stop at "educational" efforts, though. In many states, including Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, schools are required by law to weigh students each year and report their weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) to their parents, in a format much like an academic report card.
Meanwhile, at home, government health agencies claim that over 30 percent of Americans are obese, endangering their health and shortening their lives. However, many health professionals are questioning the link between body fat, illness and death.
Dr. Glenn A. Gaesser, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia and author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health , calls the FDA's standards for morbid obesity "arbitrary," noting that people do not die of fat.
“There are 'healthy obese' people who are in no need of 'treatment,'” he said. "Furthermore, most of the health problems of the 'unhealthy obese' (i.e., blood pressure, lipids, insulin and glucose) can be remedied by changes in diet and physical activity independent of weight loss." In his recent study, "Obesity, Health, and Metabolic Fitness," Gaesser reports that fat people are no more likely to have clogged arteries than thin people, and that body weight and BMI are not indicative of death rates. In fact, according to a study by the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) itself, "excess" body fat does NOT claim 400,000 lives per year; people categorized as "overweight" (BMI 25-30) actually tallied 86,000 fewer deaths per year than those categorized as thin.
The rigid standards set by the government are outdated and are not based on sound science, says Peggy Howell, public affairs chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). The height/weight charts that determine BMI were created in the 1970s, with only a slight revision in 1998. "I don't question the statistics that 30 percent of the American population is over a particular weight," Howell said. "I do, however, take exception to the yardstick they are using."
-snip-
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Campos: Fat doesn't equal unhealthy
Campos: Fat doesn't equal unhealthy
August 1, 2006
Occam's razor is a logical rule of thumb suggesting that, roughly speaking, a simple explanation which accounts for all the data is better than a complex one that does the same. For example, the fact that biologists have never seen a unicorn can be explained by the theory that unicorns are superintelligent beings that have devised technologies to make them undetectable to humans.
A simpler theory is that unicorns don't exist.
A story in The New York Times, authored by its excellent health writer Gina Kolata, illustrates how useful Occam's razor can be. The story chronicles the astonishing improvement in health Americans have enjoyed over the course of the past century - what Kolata describes as our transformation "from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable."
Over the course of the past few generations the average American has gone from being thin and sickly to being fat and healthy. The average American man is 3 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than he was at the time of the Civil War (Kolata's story focuses on the health records of Civil War veterans).
This means the typical Civil War veteran had a body mass index of 23, which put him in the middle of what our public health officials incorrectly label the "normal" range of weight (it was normal to be thin in the 19th century, mainly because so many people were malnourished).
Meanwhile, today's average middle-age male has a BMI of 28, putting him toward the high end of the government's "overweight" category.
-snip-
August 1, 2006
Occam's razor is a logical rule of thumb suggesting that, roughly speaking, a simple explanation which accounts for all the data is better than a complex one that does the same. For example, the fact that biologists have never seen a unicorn can be explained by the theory that unicorns are superintelligent beings that have devised technologies to make them undetectable to humans.
A simpler theory is that unicorns don't exist.
A story in The New York Times, authored by its excellent health writer Gina Kolata, illustrates how useful Occam's razor can be. The story chronicles the astonishing improvement in health Americans have enjoyed over the course of the past century - what Kolata describes as our transformation "from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable."
Over the course of the past few generations the average American has gone from being thin and sickly to being fat and healthy. The average American man is 3 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than he was at the time of the Civil War (Kolata's story focuses on the health records of Civil War veterans).
This means the typical Civil War veteran had a body mass index of 23, which put him in the middle of what our public health officials incorrectly label the "normal" range of weight (it was normal to be thin in the 19th century, mainly because so many people were malnourished).
Meanwhile, today's average middle-age male has a BMI of 28, putting him toward the high end of the government's "overweight" category.
-snip-
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Thursday, February 09, 2006
The Big Fat Carnival - First Edition
The Big Fat Carnival - First Edition on Alas, a blog.
The The Big Fat Carnival is a collection of "some of the best blog posts regarding fat pride; fat acceptance; critiques of anti-fat bigotry, attitudes and research; celebration of images of fat people; practical difficulties of being fat; fat love (queer and otherwise); feminist views of fat and fat acceptance; the health at every size movement (HAES); and whatever else each edition's editor feels fits into the theme."
Some great reading.
The The Big Fat Carnival is a collection of "some of the best blog posts regarding fat pride; fat acceptance; critiques of anti-fat bigotry, attitudes and research; celebration of images of fat people; practical difficulties of being fat; fat love (queer and otherwise); feminist views of fat and fat acceptance; the health at every size movement (HAES); and whatever else each edition's editor feels fits into the theme."
Some great reading.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
THE STATE OF THE F-WORD – THREE LETTERS THAT STILL SHOCK
THE STATE OF THE F-WORD – THREE LETTERS THAT STILL SHOCK
By Lynne Murray
The word "Fat" is close enough to an insult that it catches the attention in a title. But what it conveys beyond that is a little more complicated. When the word Fat pops up, should we laugh, be afraid, angry or guilty? Through the magic of media firestorm, fatness is now looked on as a killer disease, a moral failing and a safe target for ridicule by all and sundry. Is it infectious? Can you catch it by reading this essay?
Fat is like a killer clown that may honk a horn at you. It may paint tears on its face as if asking for pity and then bonk you with a rubber chicken when you come near. Worse yet, Fat may suddenly leap out of your closet and strangle you in your bed at night.
No wonder we keep a nervous eye on the F-word, because there's no telling what it will do next.
-snip-
By Lynne Murray
The word "Fat" is close enough to an insult that it catches the attention in a title. But what it conveys beyond that is a little more complicated. When the word Fat pops up, should we laugh, be afraid, angry or guilty? Through the magic of media firestorm, fatness is now looked on as a killer disease, a moral failing and a safe target for ridicule by all and sundry. Is it infectious? Can you catch it by reading this essay?
Fat is like a killer clown that may honk a horn at you. It may paint tears on its face as if asking for pity and then bonk you with a rubber chicken when you come near. Worse yet, Fat may suddenly leap out of your closet and strangle you in your bed at night.
No wonder we keep a nervous eye on the F-word, because there's no telling what it will do next.
-snip-
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