Ms. Blog: Don’t Be Shamed by “The Weight Talk”

by Jessica Holden Sherwood

I recently had my annual physical, and I got The Weight Talk for the first time. Luckily, I had come prepared.  While driving to the appointment, I even rehearsed in anticipation.

When I got The Talk, I responded by saying that I will never count calories.  I asked the doctor in earnest why he would care about my weight if I had good health, good blood pressure and so on. I listened to his answers. And a week later, I sent him a copy of Health At Every Size (a book which also has a website).

After all this time, fat is still a feminist issue...

Read more on the Ms. Blog

NY Times: The Triumph of the Size 12s

...as usual:  great that we're expanding (no pun intended) our notions of beauty, bizarre that size 12 is considered "large."

Read the NY Times article here.

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Fat Talk Free Week

What are you doing for Fat Talk Free Week?

Vanity iPhone app

Seems like so much effort to "find out" if someone's beautiful by some inane mathematical standard... I mean, won't I just know if I find someone particularly striking?  And do we really need to spend more time making ourselves feel not-good-enough?  Aren't there so many better things to do with one's time, even *on* the iPhone itself?!

At least this app doesn't pretend to be about anything other than what it's about (it's not a Photoshopped ad that pretends to be real beauty), but rating oneself about *anything* on a scale of 1-10 seems really shallow and hurtful to me.  People are beautiful and amazing to be friends with because they're complicated, interesting, ever-changing, alive.  Calcifying human beauty with a score doesn't represent anything real or truthful, yet that human want to please and be at the top drives our curiosity to see what score we "are."

The score is meaningless anyway!  Go get an app where you can note all the great things about yourself, keep track of your talents, get loving messages from your friends--oh wait, I think that's called Facebook.

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London Fashion Week stylist resigns over designer's decision to use size 14 models in show

via dailymail.co.uk

My reactions:
1. Hooray, someone used normal sized women to display fashion!
2. Ick, women on the runway still look like mannequins. Who cares what size we are when we're still objectified and obsessed with looks?
3. Who is this dude who resigned and what is *that* about?!
4. Why isn't the headline "Fashion Designer Uses Normal Sized Models"? Is the fact that that's *not* news, good news? Have teeny steps actually been made in an altered public consciousness? Or is there no attention being paid because nothing has changed and no on cares about a drop in the bucket?
Lots of mixed feelings here, folks. Help me out.

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Bingeing on Celebrity Weight Battles

From the NYT Fashion & Style section...

Bingeing on Celebrity Weight Battles by Jan Hoffman

The tagline is: "The dieting sagas of the stars might be more frustrating than inspiring to overweight women"--and I'd add, to everyone, regardless of size. These stories are meant to inspire health but they promote self-loathing and an unhealthy obsession with appearance. How can we encourage a healthy weight for heart care, diabetes, etc. separate from unhealthy cultural standards of beauty?

Selling Chips to Chicks

Frito-Lay's latest ad campaign is based on women's guilt about eating--and sadly, it was designed with women in mind, in order to appeal to women.

Advertising generally plays on our insecurities (and tells us to buy things to fill those holes or shortcomings), and the usual "guilt-free" commercial tactic often used for yogurts and snack foods is plaguing enough. But making a cutesy website of gabby cartoon women with men-focused personalities and back-stories seems to me to show just how far off-track we've gotten.

Who knew that eating junk food could bring such little fun? I mean, if we're not eating for the enjoyment of salty, crunchy, bad-for-you-ness, can someone tell me why we'd be eating chips at all? Revamped health-food-colored packaging and accompanying cartoons about women waxing their bikini lines does *not* make me want to buy or eat chips.

Frito-Lay tried to max out on demeaning stereotypes of women and our culture's guilty obsession with food and appearance--so not cute. At all. Hmph.

Let's Stick to the Topic

I have to hand it to Meghan McCain (Senator McCain's daughter) for writing so eloquently on weight criticism--especially in the media--as "one of the last frontiers in socially accepted prejudice." She points to the fact that women from Hillary Clinton to Oprah are "victim[s] to...image-oriented bullying," and that women in power can be publicly discredited if they are the "wrong" size or wear the "wrong" outfit.

This article was written in response to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's dig about McCain's weight. And why did she want to insult McCain? Because she didn't agree with some political statements McCain made in an online column and an interview with talk show host Rachel Maddow.

I think political debate is fantastic--but let's stick to the topic, please. At the least, women can show respect for themselves and their gender by responding to ideas, not appearances. (And if one doesn't have a response, let's not go back to the middle school solution of making fun.)

Weight bias videos by the Rudd Center

The Rudd Center has recently released videos on YouTube about weight bias at home, school, and in health care. Check out the preview trailer, or watch the full length weight bias in youth full video and the weight bias in health care full video.

When watching the preview, I was really struck by just how confused we are about weight and health. While we campaign for tolerance of people of all sizes, shapes, genders, races, and ethnicities and encourage youth to love themselves as they are, we also campaign for help against obesity as a medical problem that causes many other health issues, in a way demonizing obesity (and its "hosts") even more.

How can we look out for our actual health without becoming wrapped up in how we look and how we are treated because of our appearance? How can we expand our definitions of beauty to include the myriad types of people that there are, while still promoting health?

I'm glad that these videos address the often unacknowledged weight bias that hurts many children and adults - even in an ideal world where everyone eats and lives healthfully, we hopefully will still be able to revel in our diversity.