Lara Frater's Blog, page 19

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!

Mommas, don't your babies grow up to be fatties.

Sometimes I think the pharmaceutical and diet industry sit around a table ala Austin Powers and do evil laughs every time the medical community posts research that say we should worry if our babies are fat.  The diet industry needs new customers and the pharmaceutical industry needs more money for diet drugs that don't work.

According  to the Institute of Medicine, having a fat baby is no longer a good thing, it's a bad thing. It's will cause your child to be scum of the earth. No they won't become a politican, they will be fat. Oh, when they say baby what they really mean is toddler. And when they say beware of the fat baby they really mean mom is bad. Mom feeds baby too much, mom doesn't stay home and cook because dad can't ever cook. For he is a manchild in his man cave. (Stereotyping men as being useless  is another rant.)

 I am disturbed by encouraging toddlers to diet. I'm sure if a rep from IOM saw this, I would get the standard responses. It's a lifestyle change. They aren't dieting, they are eating less! Do you want all these babies will die (How about instead of wasting money on making fat babies thin, we work to decrease infant mortality). However I have to wonder what will happen with the parents of a child who doesn't become slim after food monitoring; mandatory exercise, lectures from the doctors (I'm sure every child will love to have "The Talk.") Will less food become next? Oh wait it is already here. IOM is encoraging portion control. 

Now take a look at what their panel is recommending

Pediatricians should track weight gain at every routine visit

  Cut down the time children spend watching TV or using the computer or cell phone

Encourage children in preschool and child care to get more physical activity

Make sure children get enough shut eye

Encourage mothers to stick with breastfeeding for at least six months

Make sure kids are getting the right food portions for their age

Chop off the first and last one (or change the last one to enough servings of fruits and veggies) and what do you get? You get good recommendations for everyone even adults (with the exception of breast feeding) that don't include stigma and encourage healthy eating no matter what size the child is. 

Children are remarkable if you don't fuck with their hunger cues. It's okay for parents to make sure children get the right food (i.e. no you can't have more ice cream but you can have an apple) but arbitrarily deciding how much is too much may end up with it being too little. And with our fat = evil culture, I'm sure parents will end up limiting food intake. Portion control will encourage dieting at an even younger age. (See my post last week about children as young as 10 vomiting for weight loss.) 

And guess what? Some children are fat and stay fat, some children are fat and grow out of it. Some children are thin and remain thin, some children are slender and get bigger and some kids are thin and become fat. (I'm the last one not a fat baby or toddler.) Like adults accept that even children comes in all shapes and sizes. 

Let's fail again

This article in the Atlantic Post talks about criticism of the Let's Move campaign. The same criticism I have been repeating religiously in this blog.

...many experts wonder, is the Let's Move campaign damaging the self-esteem of the very children it's trying to help?

I believe that when you attempt to make fat kids thin you will instead find an increase in eating disorders and low self-esteem. Don't believe me? A study in Journal of Clinical Nursing of 16,000 students found that about 16% of children 10-12 were vomiting to lose weight (and it is affecting both genders as boys actually had a higher rate). We learned from Arkansas' attempts at making fat kids thin that this sort of thing is a waste of time and money. Instead, we should use money from these programs to make sure all schools can afford to have gym every day and that the cafeteria serves healthy edible food (the cafeteria in my high school served unhealthy and inedible food.)

And speaking of making fat people thin - Bariatric surgery doesn't help obese live longer, study says. (I will ignore the fact that they use "obese" as a noun.) Essentially this article is reporting about a study in JAMA where older men who had WLS did not live longer. The study was of 850 veterans, and compare to a WLS group to a non-WLS group. The WLS group did not live any longer. This was after 6 years. And WLS is also causing bulimia among some patients.

Meanwhile According to researchers from the Weight Management Services Program at the UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine study found that about 30% of fat patients they saw were considered healthy.  I have to wonder if the 70% who were considered unhealthy had a history of dieting.

I find all of this a mess: eating disorders, death, metabolically unhealthy. Why do we have to pressure fat people to be thin instead of being healthy?

Whole Foods, and whatever happened to "I respectfully disagree."

An old article from Jezebel points out that the Whole Foods healthy discount program where you get discounts based on BMI, Blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking) may not only be illegal but an invasion of privacy. Really, I don't ever want my to have any of my medical history. I've already given my two cents repeatedly on this stupid Whole Foods debacle  (for example, if you are fat but don't smoke, have normal blood pressure and and cholesterol, you get nothing.)  I'd also like to point out that Whole Foods carries genetically modified food.  So what is the point of even going to Whole foods when I can buy cheaper GMO food at my local supermarket?

Speaking of fat bullies, Pattie Thomas has come out with another wonderfully written blog post on Psychology Today and which calls out the trolls death wish on fatties, especially those who made comments about the untimely death of plus size model and actress Mia Amber Davis. (She died from a blood clot during knee surgery from a sports related injury). Pattie also uses her own blog as an example where the trolls speculated that she died when she took a leave of absence. I have my own trolls. Most of the comments I don't let through is dieting advice but occasionally I get told that I should die, will die, go to hell, get cancer and are scum (usually from people with a multitude of spelling errors). 

I don't let these comments in for my regular readers, the ones who come here and want a safe space from fat hatred. I also want to set a good example for my 13 year old autistic nephew to not let unimportant people ruin my day or control my life. Pattie brings up the term Schadenfreude to describe people who find joy in other people's deaths and she also brings up the idea that the "War on Obesity" has made fat people the enemy.  Is that the reason people feel the need to wish me dead because they see me as the enemy? I would never wish death on people I disagreed with (with some exceptions such as mass murderers although I certainly wouldn't find joy in their deaths.)

Mia Amber Davis was a lovely, talented and beautiful woman that I unfortunately never had the pleasure of meeting. I'm facebook friends with one her good friends and for weeks I heard about the pain Mia's death had caused her family and friends. Only a monster would seek joy in this. 

A fat chick in a movie! And the world didn't end!

So I went to the movies and paid a whooping $9.50 for a matinee to see Bridesmaids. The sole reason I saw it in the theaters is Melissa McCarthy. I wanted Hollywood to know that just because a movie has a fat woman doesn't mean the world will end. (It didn't, instead the movie has so far made over 107 million.) The movie was produced by Judd Apatow who put pre-weight loss Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan in his films.  

Spoilers follow.  You have been warned.

Unfortunately although the movie seems like it's an ensemble, it's actually about the messed up life of Maid of Honor, the very skinny Kristin Wiig's Annie. Melissa's part is actually quite small. I don't know if I would characterize the character as positive. Melissa's character Megan seems nuts, food obsessed and grosser than the other girls. A perfect is example is a scene where all the women get food poisoning.  The bridal shop has only one toilet and three of the bridesmaids run there while the bride runs to the street. In the bathroom, two of the bridesmaids fight over the toilet, while Megan shits in the sink. This is considered funny.  But the thin Bride who ends up shitting in the street this is tragic.  Also Kristin Wiig who co-wrote the script has obviously never gone to a bridal boutique with a fat friend. THEY DON'T CARRY PLUS SIZES.  So really a funnier scene might have been all the women wearing their dresses except for Megan who has hers pinned to her clothes. 

Also whoever dressed Melissa in this movie should never dress a fat woman again. If they were trying to not look fat, they failed but did succeed in making her look like a potato. I don't watch Mike and Molly but I've seen pictures, Melissa McCarthy can be dressed properly. 

Look at the way Melissa is dressed here compared to her co-stars

Might as well have dressed her in a burka. 

That being said Melissa is a very funny lady and while I would like to see more fat actors in dramatic roles (one of Melissa's breakout roles was as Sookie in the drama series Gilmore Girls, although she was the comic relief), I'm hoping to see more of her on the big screen even in comedic roles. She does have an important scene in the movie where she wakes up Annie and helps her change her life. Megan finally has some character development where she reveals she grew up ostracized and instead of giving up, she worked hard on her education and became a higher up in the government and confident in herself.  In a scene on an airplane, Megan immediately knows the man sitting next to her is a sky marshall (played by Melissa's real life husband Ben Falcone). He denies it and also refused her advances. Later it is revealed that not only was she right but they eventually hook up. 

The movie also had a very underused Rebel Wilson playing Annie's strange roommate.  And at the ending Wilson Phillips performing with Carnie Wilson looking much less emaciated. 

Is Bridesmaids fat positive? Not really. Melissa McCathy's comedic talents are underused. While there are no jokes about her weight, she is obnoxious, gross, and food obsessed.  However it is nice to actually see letting a fat chick even in a supporting role. But with such limited roles to fat actors, is it worth it just to be seen?

 

Smile for Big Brother

Last week I posted about how Arkansas' BMI program wasted money and did little, this week there another debacle in action in San Antonio, TX. It seems they got a small grant (only 2 million dollars) to monitor kids food consumption. When I say monitor I mean monitor. Barcodes on lunch trays, recorded before and after kids eat. What is left over and what is eaten. 

I'm not sure what bothered me the most about this. The obsessive nannying, the invasion of privacy (guess what just because you are under 18 doesn't mean you have no privacy rights!) or the waste of 2 million dollars.

I think it's the money (Although I can't believe both a parent and a school would do this, then again if it were my kid I would tell them to mess up the results: get extra mash potatoes and shaped them into a middle finger.) Back to the money, the 2 fucking million dollars. People including children go hungry or are food insecure (that's the idea that they aren't sure they will have enough money to eat). Not in India-- here. I bet that two million would go some way towards making sure no child went hungry. And if San Antonio would like to look at Arkansas, programs to reduce a child's BMI fail. And what if they discover children are eating "too much" at lunch, will they be forced to consume less calories like three cheese sticks and a cup of fruit 

Yes, that is one student's complaint about the not only unappetizing but lack of food they were receiving due to the Health Kids Act.  And the World Health Organization despite their focus of fatness is also focusing on the 100 million children that are underweight. 

So 2 million bucks for Big Brother while kids still go hungry. 

Arkansas wastes our time and money and Some Doctors think fat women don't deserve care.

In 2003 Arkansas created a health bill to make fat kids thin. Then governor Mike Huckabee who had lost 100 lbs after being diagnosed with diabetes wanted a "lean" and "healthy" Arkansas. Some claim he had weight loss surgery which he denied. He has also since gained the weight back. Anyway, under the new rules Arkansas schools would send home BMI screenings and report cards, fewer vending machines in school, limit junk food and increase physical activity.

The results? Some eight years later? A huge waste of time and money. Not only are fat kids still fat there has been very little increase in healthy behaviors. In fact kids are consuming more junk food. 

Now look at this waste of time and money in Arkansas and look at Let's Move. While Arkansas was more harsh, both programs prefer that children get thin rather than healthy. Stigma against fat people is in all walks of life and a recent study by the Journal of Health Communication points out that fat people are often portrayed negatively in media articles (i.e. the headless fattie.)

Obese individuals are frequently stigmatized in online news photographs; this phenomenon has important implications for public perceptions of obese persons and may reinforce pervasive prejudice and discrimination.

Meanwhile in South Florida, some OB/GYN doctors have decided that women who weigh over 200 lbs don't deserve any care. 

Fifteen obstetrics-gynecology practices out of 105 polled by the Sun Sentinel said they have set weight cut-offs for new patients starting at 200 pounds or based on measures of obesity — and turn down women who are heavier...  "People don't realize the risk we're taking by taking care of these patients," said Dr. Albert Triana, whose two-physician practice in South Miami declines patients classified as obese. "There's more risk of something going wrong and more risk of getting sued. Everything is more complicated with an obese patient in GYN surgeries and in [pregnancies]."

So the doctors have assumed no matter what that fat=high risk. I have to wonder if these same doctors don't see smokers  as high risk patients as well? A doctor should see a patient first before deciding they can't treat them. And if you are in OB/GYN who can't handle high risk pregnancy, do ALL pregnant women a favor and find another field. No one needs a doctor who is more worried about lawsuits than caring for a patient. Sometimes women seem low risk in the beginning and have complications at the end. What do you tell them "Oh sorry, I don't do high risk, you are on your own." 

 

Movement! Fat Shame! And put your fetus on a diet!

Busy week for me, so short post of some news of the week...

First off I will bring you some good news. I have mentioned many times on this blog the importance of exercise. CBS news brings you 12 tips for fat people to exercise. This is based on Jeanette DePatie, book, The Fat Chick Works Out! Movement is important for all bodies. Remember do what you can. You don't have to run a marathon (unless you want to.) Number 1o on the list is start slow. Right now I'm training for an all day 8 mile hike in July. 

Check out Amy Farrell on the Colbert Report  as she promotes her book Fat Shame. I haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to it and will post a review here.

 

Occasionally I have joked on this blog that we will one day they will put fetuses on diets and that we will have eating disorders right in the womb. It's a joke no longer. Doctors in the UK are doing a drug trial of giving fat pregnant women the diabetes drug Metformin so they don't have fat children. The Metformin would stop the fetus from absorbing too much food from the mother who being fat is obviously an out of control eater and will not stop eating until her fetus is 100 lbs.

And my essay on Glee was mentioned in Jezebel. 

 

The worst diet in the world

Sign on the subway

My body is at the lowest track, 
With the stink of piss and rats.
No scars, no fat, no unhappy.
Four white men will end the stigma.
They will make me thin
With one small knife in my gut.
The bacteria and urine won't mix.
My stomach already wounded by dieting
Won't survive,
And I will die on the subway platform
Surrounded by a bikini
and how I lost 140 lbs that saved my life

(c) Lara Frater, 2011

Three years ago, Marissa Jones was labeled "Britian's fattest teenager." (I bet she felt great to get that title.) She weighted 475 lbs. Doctors told her that if she didn't lose weight she would die. They pressured her to have surgery, which she did. In late 2009 she regretted having the surgery but now things have gotten worse. Malissa is terrified of eating, she can't carry a baby to term and is anorexic. Now doctors are telling her if she doesn't gain weight, she'll die. And no matter what happens, it is always her fault. It is her fault for failing to lose weight and her fault for gaining weight.

Clinical psychologist Dr Funke Baffour from Waltham Cross, Herts, said: 'There would have been psychological reasons for Malissa' obesity that a gastric band would not have dealt with. 'It is not surprising she has swapped one emotional relationship with food for another.'Perhaps, subconsciously, Malissa is so afraid of becoming obese again, she is stopping herself from eating.'

The above ad makes it seems like WLS is quick and easy. But it isn't, it affects a major organ that we need to live.  Just check out this happy fun chart  from the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery about emergency care after these surgeries.  Teenagers who are still growing may not get as extreme as Malissa, but do lose bone density (but it's okay because their bones were fat!)  And the lapband? The supposedly less invasive WLS, has half the patients wanting a reversal.

So in honor of International No Diet Day, this is my choice of the worst diet ever. (Okay maybe starving to death sucks too. And the surgery can cause that also!)