Since I started doing this crazy accept-my-body thing eleven years ago, there has been a series of ups and downs with my own body image. I go through good times, I go through bad times. Sometimes really, really bad times. Over the years, the good times get longer and the bad times get shorter.

What doesn’t change, though, is the amount of pressure on me — on all of us — to look a certain way. To be feminine, to be light-skinned, to have smooth hair, to fit into straight-sized clothes.

As you get fatter, gravity doesn’t get weaker or kinder. It stays the same. Your body is more subject to it, in fact, because apparently the earth is a fat admirer, and wants to keep you as close as possible. As this happens, as the scale creeps up to numbers a previous version of you would have fainted at, you have two choices: to attempt to loosen the bonds of gravity, and Earth’s apparent amorousness, by making yourself smaller — or to use gravity to your advantage, to get stronger, strong enough to carry your weight happily through the world.

History has taught me that I’m not very good at getting smaller, but that my strength? It is awesome. And it can grow.

As one gets bigger, or even just as one becomes more aware of the sickness of the body-obsessed culture, the pressure increases. It drags on you, eventually to the ground, the point of crisis, the valley of decision.

Do I lay here and starve until I am light enough that gravity rescinds its uncomfortable obsession? Then get up and walk fearfully away, knowing I am weakened against the next time it drags me down? Or do I allow myself to rest briefly, then begin to move any muscle I can feel: an arm, a leg, an eyelid — working continually against the pressure, until I’m strong enough to stand the fuck up, under my own power, and walk toward the things I want?

The things the world says it won’t give to me unless I am white, thin, and wearing makeup? The things that I am now strong enough to take for myself, any way I want them?

Each time I’m dragged down, I’m stronger and quicker at pulling myself to my feet.

Gravity doesn’t go away. I get better at remaining upright.

I’m thinking today about body image. My body image, to be specific, and the way I feel when suddenly confronted with photographs of myself taken by other people, showing my whole body.

The experience is one of immediate shock, often followed by a weird cognitive dissonance. My body doesn’t Look Right. Because apparently there is a Right Way for bodies to look, and whatever I’ve constructed in my head as that Right Way sure as hell has nothing in common with the photographic evidence of my squat, round, rather sticky-outy body.

Bodies, in my head, are supposed to be straight up-and-down, to have clean, spare lines and angles. The head should be a particular size in proportion to the rest of the body — not too large, or, in my case, too small. The feet should not be too long in comparison to the length of the legs; the shape from the front of the thigh to the back of the calf not such a dramatic S-shape.

And, for the love of all that’s holy, the whole thing should not be so damn big.

After the emotional reaction, I have to start thinking rationally again. That’s when I realize: hardly anyone spends much of their time daily considering images of themselves, especially not full-body images. Hardly any of us are constantly taking full-body self-portraits, or are surrounded by full-length mirrors. We don’t spend a few hours here and there watching video of ourselves.

We are too busy being in our bodies daily to spend more than a few minutes confronting how we actually look in them.

Then it occurs to me that all those articles decrying the apparent fat-person curse of Being In Denial of One’s Fatness are actually just restating the obvious: when you’re not spending all day staring at yourself, but do spend a considerable portion of your day observing media depictions of bodies that are not much like yourself, isn’t it natural that the part of your brain dedicated to constructing the Platonic composite of How Bodies Look will be mostly filled with images of sparse, clean lines, slenderness, and a particular head-to-body ratio?

Won’t you go through your day, in your body, almost implicitly assuming that it looks more-or-less like the definition of Body you have mentally constructed, based on the images and people you’re constantly surrounded by?

And won’t you then experience a cognitive dissonance when confronted with an image of a body that breaks all those Platonic rules — especially when you realize that it belongs to you, that it is, in fact, you?

Of course. Of course you will. Not because you are a stupid fat person in denial about your fatness, but because the culture we live in has erased fatness (and other forms of physical variation) from most of its artwork and entertainment.

If you’re like me, and fatter than about 97% of the population, you’re also not going to see a whole lot of other people like yourself in daily life. Most people you see, even the relatively fat ones, are going to be a bit less sticky-outy, have proportionally-larger heads, etc. You will also incorporate those impressions into your little Platonic file cabinet, along with the much thinner media impressions.

And your first reaction on seeing a photograph of your body will be one of shock, possibly horror, and an indefinable sense that Your Body is Wrong.

The secret, of course, is that there is no Right Body, no matter how hard our culture tries to define one. There is no Platonic Body floating in indisputable ether — only real bodies that exist in the real world, available in an extravagant assortment of shapes, colours, sizes, and conformations. None of them wrong or right. All of them just are.

And now I can understand that the experience of cognitive dissonance and disgust with how my body looks is an artifact of my cultural training, not a Real and Inescapable Truth About Me, requiring a dramatic gesture of repentant food restriction and mortification of the flesh through exercise.

If anything, the dissonance is a reminder that, because my body is different and even somewhat rare in this world, I must take special care to fill my Platonic File Cabinet with images that make sense to me, that I can identify with. That my own indisputable body shall now be the starting point for my definition of Body, and that I can spend a few minutes daily filling the file cabinet with pictures of me.

But when I saw the advertisements for A&E’s new show Heavy (in between advertisements for Hoarders and Intervention, in case you were wondering about the tenor of the show), I really wanted to watch it. And, this time, to avoid yelling at the television, I decided to yell at the internet instead.

Episode one, “Tom and Jodi,” opens with this quote:

And here’s our first fact-check, before the show even properly begins. While 1/3rd of Americans are “obese” by the BMI (BMI of 30 or greater), only 5.7% are considered “extremely obese” (BMI of 40 or greater. I’m one of them. Hi!) The people featured on Heavy are in this weight category — it’s the highest one. Tom weighs 638 pounds and has a BMI of around 94. Jodi weighs 367 pounds.

If your BMI is 30, do you consider yourself debilitated by your obesity?

At a BMI of well over 40, I may sometimes move and bend a bit differently than thinner people, but I don’t really feel debilitated.

The most limiting thing about being “extremely obese,” for me, is being afraid to exercise in public because I am likely to be harassed (and have been. Thanks, random lady joggers and dudes in cars! You have successfully encouraged me to exercise and get healthy!)

That, and certain seatbelts. But at least the seatbelts don’t call me names.

The people on the show are not only fatter than 94% of the population, they exhibit very obvious signs of compulsive or binge eating. (Which the show repeatedly refers to in terms of “addiction,” something I have a problem with.) Whether or not they meet the clinical criteria for an eating disorder, these are disordered eating patterns. Most fat people do not binge eat, and many binge eaters are not obese. Conflating compulsive overeating with fatness is not just inaccurate, it can be dangerous.

Fat people going to doctors for non-eating-related complaints may be told to stop binge eating, even if they don’t binge eat. (I have been.) And thinner people who do experience binge eating — which is a type of eating that is not exactly optional, voluntary, pleasant, and definitely not the result of gluttony, greed, or general immorality — may go undiagnosed and untreated.

None of this is to minimize OR marginalize what Jodi and Tom experience. My intent is only to put into perspective a serious condition that the show’s creators obviously have tried to render commonplace — perhaps epidemic? — by suggesting that fully one-third of the US population lives and suffers like this.

If anything, this attempt to make the exceptional seem typical diminishes the seriousness of what these people experience. An audience of (potentially) 100 million “obese” individuals is likely to try and relate their experience as relatively unimpaired fat people to those on the show. And since many of those fat people will not have experienced compulsive or binge eating, or the immobility and physical challenges of being extremely large, they may be unable to empathize with these issues, and the fact that recovery is more than a matter of “willpower.” And, let’s be frank — like Hoarders and Intervention, this is likely to become a point-and-pity affair, not something that the majority of the audience can truly relate to.

Jodi and Tom are clearly in pain, and their weight definitely appears to contribute to that pain, both emotionally and physically. Their eating habits likely to contribute to their weight — but “contribute” is not the same thing as “cause.” Furthermore, the drive to eat compulsively is not under one’s control, and may even be the result of an underlying physiological imbalance, not just a psychological one.

Much of the emotional suffering described on the show is not even directly caused by the physical reality of extreme obesity. Rather, the pain described is often the pain of discrimination, social ostracization, and prejudice. Jodi describes giving up her career as a singer in a rock band because of the discomfort of standing on stage, knowing that people in the audience were judging her. Tom hasn’t been to the doctor in fifteen years — anyone want to take a wild guess as to why?

The physical pain is another matter. Some of it, maybe a lot of it, is caused directly by weight, but there are other issues at play as well. Tom exhibits signs that look (to me) like exercise-induced asthma, a condition that weight can exacerbate but does not cause, and that discourages people from moving because, untreated, it can be life-threatening. He also has high blood pressure — again, a condition that can be exacerbated by weight, but is not caused by weight alone. Jodi has had a mini-stroke, and the same can be said for weight’s role in that condition.

So what other issues might be at play? Lack of fitness, as a result of finding movement uncomfortable or inaccessible (for either physical or social reasons), independently contributes to physical suffering and immobility. Emotional stress, such as that caused by living in a world that does not physically accommodate you or socially accept you, can also independently contribute to physical health problems like those described.

These are complex issues for which weight is only one factor.

Next time, maybe I’ll yell at the blog about the month-long weight loss program presented on Heavy.

So, in response to a loathsome editorial postulating that the extravagant air conditioning of public spaces is the fault of the fat, and presumably sweaty, masses, while simultaneously admitting that “thick, sturdy” folk also find the chill uncomfortable:

You’d think that Ms. Smarty Logicpants would use the same awesome powers of deduction that led her to conclude “overbearing air conditioning is because of fat people” to question the solidity of that reasoning, if FAT PEOPLE ARE COLD, TOO.

I am constantly cold in air conditioning, and I was even when I wasn’t fat. And I am no special fucking snowflake. Lots of fat people are just as cold as is Cepeda in these situations, where, I’d like to point out, air conditioning gets blasted all summer because the doors are constantly opening and closing and letting in 90°+ air.

-Melissa McEwan, Shakesville

Shakesville is an especially great non-Fatosphere place to find excellent writing on fat and social justice (as if you didn’t already know that.)

Dear Michelle,

I’m wondering what it’s like to be a fat nutritionist. Just to give you my background, I’m in recovery from an eating disorder. I’ve worked with two nutritionists. My first nutritionist was wonderful and taught me a lot about nutrition. My current nutritionist is absolutely mind-blowing and is the most talented eating disorders treatment provider that I have come across. I hate to admit this, but to be honest, my nutritionists’ weights had a big impact on how much I am able to trust them. This is also true for most of the other eating disordered people that I know. I know that this thinking is disordered because, rationally speaking, I really believe in Health at Every Size.

Have you found that your weight impacts your relationships with your clients?

Have you found that your weight has come under fire from others in the field?

Thanks,
Anon

Hey Anon,

I’ve been mulling over your question since yesterday, and I think what it comes down to is this:

People are comfortable with other people for lots of different reasons.

For instance, when I’m choosing a doctor, I have the choice to go with a man or a woman. If I don’t like the way the doctor talks to me, or something about her/his office, or receptionist, or, hell, even their clothing choice, I get to pick another doctor. And this is not only allowed, but tacitly encouraged by just about everyone.

After all, how can you be expected to be vulnerable and open, and to do good work with someone you’re not 100% comfortable with? Even seemingly “silly” reasons for discomfort may be getting at a deeper issue that deserves to be heard and addressed.

So, for that reason, I really don’t mind if someone chooses not to work with me due to my body size. That is absolutely their right.

On a personal level, yes, it would hurt if someone came out and said to me, “I don’t want to work with you because of the way you look.” But, luckily, the way it works out is, no one ever does that. They simply avoid me, move onto the next practitioner, and hope for the best. I never have to know people’s various reasons for not choosing to work with me.

And, especially for people with eating disorders who are at a certain stage of recovery, I can totally understand not wanting to work with a fat nutritionist, or doctor, or whathaveyou. It only makes sense, in the context of the disorder, and I don’t think I would feel particularly hurt by that — it’s the reality of that disease, unfortunately, but as people recover, I think they are likely to get past that kind of thinking.

As far as my colleagues go, no — I’ve never had anyone question my competence due to my body size, and I’ve been hired for some pretty advanced jobs, given that I’m still a student. I worked in an outpatient diabetes clinic with very traditional, weight-loss-oriented dietitians, and they seemed to love me. They chose me over thin candidates who had their degrees finished. They never questioned me about my weight, and were willing to frankly discuss with me their concerns about their patients’ weights. They listened to me when I asked critical questions about the efficacy of weight loss treatments.

I’ve worked in various inpatient areas, and again, my weight never seemed to be an issue. I also worked in an outpatient cancer clinic — in both of these circumstances, the main point of my job was to encourage people to eat as much as humanly possible, because malnutrition was the biggest risk for these populations. I enjoyed it, and seemed well-suited to it.

I work in eating disorders occasionally, though not directly with the patients. I think that, more important than my body size, is my attitude toward food, and myself, and the world. I’m positive about food. I’m comfortable with myself. And I expect good things from the world. I think that, even in this rather sensitive area, these parts of my personality contribute more to my competence at work than my body size.

Anyway, thanks for writing and being so candid. Best of luck to you in your continued recovery. Don’t ever let the bastards grind you down.

As ever,
Michelle

Because, you know, fat people enjoy making themselves sick just to annoy everyone, and to drive up healthcare costs. (It’s all part of the secret fatty agenda. If you haven’t been coming to the clandestine meetings, please email me.)

What we don’t often hear — because, at least up till now, it doesn’t seem to be as much fun, or get as much funding — are the other associations that can be drawn between fatness and health.

So, without further ado, I present you a few tidbits from this morning’s headlines:

• How income inequality leads to obesity – Researchers Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have been studying income inequality for years. Their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, contains a hypothesis that recent increases in body weight could be due to increasing inequality.

• Indeed, food insecurity (a.k.a. “not getting enough to eat”), is often associated with obesity, especially among African- and Hispanic-Americans.

• And, at the same time obesity has been epidemicized, fad diets, and orthorexia in general, seem to have taken off. (Ignore the fact that Prof. Hawkey appears to be kind of a bonehead when it comes to “obesity,” and focus on the association he’s unwittingly drawing here, and his astute criticisms of apocryphal diets.)

• Oh, also, weight gain in adolescents is associated with drinking diet drinks. Yeah, diet drinks. I know. And they think it’s because diet drinks mean they were dieting.

So…yeah. Something for obesity researchers to gnaw on, HUR HUR.

(ETA: Also, sorry for spamming the feed this morning — I’m adding some old posts to my archive, and they all go out over the feed whether I like it or not.)

Sadly, I also think it’s wrong.

Why is it wrong?

Because, first of all, weight isn’t equivalent to health. And therefore, weight loss isn’t equivalent to automatically improving health. But I think we all know that.

More complicatedly, weight isn’t even the most important factor in determining a person’s health. And this is an idea that I think might encounter some resistance. But I’m totally serious.

(And I’m sorry if this is all a little too “Public Health 101″ for everyone, but bear with me. All that theoretical crap I learned in school actually DOES, it turns out, have relevance.)

I propose that the insistence on “obesity” as a personal failing, and even the conceptualization of “obesity” as a disease, is actually an artifact of an individualist perspective of health. Which is to say, because we tend to believe (as Americans, as North Americans, and sometimes just as humans) that health is an individual issue, not a social or public one, we revert to blaming individuals for all kinds of conditions and illnesses that do not jibe with our cultural ideals of What A Person Should Be.

But if you start to look at health as more than just a personal balance sheet of good behaviours vs. bad behaviours, and even look beyond genetic underpinnings, or plain roll-of-the-dice random luck, you’ll see that there are broad, societal patterns of who gets sick and who stays well. And thus, we run smack-dab into the concept of Social Determinants of Health.

If fat people experience poorer health than other people — and there are stacks of epidemiological associations that imply we do, the lower mortality risk of “overweight” people notwithstanding — then maybe it would be useful to put down the keys to the blame-mobile for just a moment and consider one question:

Why?

Now, if “obesity” were one of those things that had a single cause, and a single mechanism, and, subsequently, a single, reliable cure — then maybe it would be fair to jump instantly to the conclusion that being fat, itself, is the problem. (And, naturally, losing weight would be the magic-bullet cure.)

Except it doesn’t work that way.

At present, we’ve got so many hypotheses for why people get fat that you could drive yourself crazy trying to read it all. There’s, you know, adenoviruses, and some kind of woo-woo social transmission by which your being fat tacitly encourages your friends to get fat, and there’s the leptin-deficiency hypothesis which turned out not to apply as easily to humans as it did to specially-bred mice, and the whole food addiction thing, the obesogenic environment thing, the evil-carbohydrates thing, and then the genetic component (which, in itself, seems to implicate so many different genes that I don’t think you’d be able to find a police station long enough to accommodate a line-up.)

Fatness, it turns out, is a many-splendoured thing.

And, as a result, we’ve never found that wonderful magic-bullet cure I mentioned, even though people will swear up and down on their life, on their Bibles, on their mother’s-mother’s-mother’s grave, that we have.

In that case, I have only to ask: then why are so many of us — most of whom desperately don’t want to be — still fat?

Because there isn’t a single “Cure.” Because there isn’t a single cause or mechanism. And, not least of all, because fatness isn’t a disease.

A quote I love:

My definition of a disease is a categorization…that has predictive power and, in some cases, enables causal inferences to be made. There remains the difficult but not insoluble problem of distinguishing disease from social deviance.

-Ian R. McWhinney, CMAJ, VOL. 136, APRIL 15, 1987

I’m preeeeetty sure that the whole OMGBESITY CRISIS!!!! is actually more about policing social deviance than it is about concern for our health.

And even if fat people are at higher risk for certain diseases, I still contend that fatness itself isn’t the problem.

So what is?

I posit that the problem is social inequity. To wit: marginalized people have poorer health outcomes.

Are fat people marginalized? You betcha.

Does it affect our health? Quite possibly.

As always, let’s hash it all out in comments.

But I’m wondering, what’s really the most important question here? Whether fat people are unhealthy? Or why fat people might be unhealthy, if they are?

I think you know my bias is going to tend toward the latter.

This is not just an academic question for me: I am a fat person. And not just a little fat; I’m the highest caliber of fat there is — Class III Morbidly Obese. For me, this is an intensely personal question.

Am I unhealthy? Are people who look like me unhealthy? Are we unhealthy in similar ways, and can any of those ways be blamed on our bodies? Can our bodies, subsequently, be blamed on our habits, or our morals, or our characters?

And I think you might also know that my tendency is to answer these questions with yet another question:

What is health, anyway?

The World Health Organization says:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Which, you have to admit, seems rather noble and inspiring.

My only problem is, according to this definition, who on earth has ever been completely healthy?

I would answer, no one.

I don’t believe anyone living now, or anyone in the past, has ever enjoyed such a rarified state of ideal physical, mental and social perfection. At least not for longer than, say, about ten minutes. On the most perfect day of their entire lives. Which also happened to be their sixteenth birthday. And the first day of spring. And the day when Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics professed his undying love for them . . .

. . . with an ice-cream cake.

And while I understand the rationale behind putting forth lofty mission statements for organizations, such as the WHO, whose reason for existence actually is the attempt to eradicate all threats to well-being, and to optimize all people’s health, I don’t believe such mission statements make appropriate aphorisms for the individual to live by.

We are, after all, individuals. So this matters.

And this is why, in my second or third year of university, I proposed another definition of health, based on the work of John Kabat-Zinn, who pioneered the mindfulness-based stress reduction approach, which has subsequently been applied to all sorts of therapies for mental, as well as physical, illness.

I wrote:

I sense a flaw within [the WHO's] definition of ideal health. It’s the silent assumption that anyone experiencing less than ‘ideal’ health is not only possibly to blame for their predicament, but that their lives are tainted, somehow broken, and possibly less meaningful than the lives of the ‘healthy.’

I propose that our definition of health should have less to do with how sick or well we are, and more to do with how we live inside and with our unique physical condition.

A person’s state of health is what it is, and the thing to strive for is not less disease, or even longer life, but the ability to inhabit, accept, and cope with what is.

We can focus on using our skills [as healthcare practitioners] to help individuals live meaningful and worthwhile lives, no matter what their physical condition, alongside treatment and our search for cures.

And we can revise our definition of health to mean having the skills to face and live with challenges, and call people ‘healthy’ who manage to enjoy meaningful lives in the face of pain, illness, and mortality.

See, the thing is, health and illness, as concepts, are socially constructed.

Meaning — reality is messy. There are no clear lines of demarcation between healthy and sick. We decide — humans decide — how to label each other. And in that deciding, we reveal our biases and our unspoken assumptions about how other people live, and how worthwhile their lives are.

This is not all just pretty talk. The definition of health is at the base of how we structure not only our healthcare system, but also how we structure our society with regard to impairment, illness, and death — all of which are inescapable facts of human existence.

And while I would never propose that we stop treating illness, or ending suffering, or curing actual diseases, I would like to see these things happen within a conscious awareness of where our ideas of illness come from, in the first place.

Who gets treated, and to what end?

Are we banishing disease and improving quality of life, or are we blindly, almost compulsively, seeking to bring people in line with powerful, if latent, cultural ideals?

Why must everyone’s BMI fall within a certain, narrow range in order for us to feel comfortable?

Is this truly a risk-reduction strategy, predicated on the notion that the associations between weight and health are purely causal in nature, as well as reversible if we could just figure out how to turn down the goddamn dial on weight?

For health practitioners, particularly those enamoured with biochemical indices and relative-risk reduction strategies, the notion of one, simple solution to a myriad of chronic diseases — and possibly to mortality itself — is eminently seductive.

Sadly, I also think it’s wrong.

Next, I’ll talk more about why. In the meantime, click on comments, and let ‘er rip.

So, I’m working on this thing I like to call my Unified Theory of Kicking Ass. What that means is, I’m reading and learning stuff about normal eating and nutrition and how people change their behaviour.

I have a pretty decent understanding of this stuff already, since I’ve almost finished my nutrition degree, but I’m looking for something more.

Something that will really help people. Something that will totally kick ass.

The thing is, there are a lot of useful theories around. There’s intuitive eating, and eating competence, and demand feeding, and health at every size, and various non-diet approaches to good nutrition. And we’re going to discuss them all on this blog.

They’re based on solid evidence. They work. And a lot of people really, really like the idea of putting them to work in their own lives.

But that can be really, really hard to do.

I know because I went through it myself.

I had a serious Dieting Incident that really messed me up. It took me five years to relearn to eat, and move, and feel normal with my body again.

I’m not perfect by any means, but I’ve reached a place that is, apparently, enviable: I feel comfortable around food.

I don’t think of food as “good” or “bad.” I don’t see my weight as a reflection of my character. I combine what tastes good and what feels good without a lot of thought. I mostly get hungry at regular times, and I mostly eat until I feel just right. My weight is stable, finally.

I’m cool with food. And I’m pretty cool with my body, too.

Five years ago, I literally thought I would never get to this place. I cried just thinking about it. (Yeah, I’m emotional like that.)

But I’m here, and it’s every bit as awesome as I’d hoped. And the reason I’m writing about it is because, after being involved in the Fatosphere, and reading so many discussions about food and intuitive eating and whatnot, I know there are tons of people out there who feel like I did — that normal eating will never happen for them.

Well, I think it can. And I’m here to help.

Normal eating is what we’re born to do — and I truly believe we can relearn how to do it, if it’s necessary. (And it is.)

So, you’re here. I’m over the moon you’re here, because I really need your help with this.

I’ll tell you what I figure out along the way. I’ll bounce ideas off you. In return, I hope you’ll give me your suggestions, your thoughts, your stories and your support.

Help me develop this thing, this Unified Theory, and I’ll be your biggest fan. Seriously. How could I not?

“More To Love is by the same guys that do “The Bachelor” for ABC and is essentially the same show, except all the gals on the show are real girls with real curves.”

It pissed me off. And because this is my blog, I’m about to tell you why.

First, because it’s fucking patronizing.

Second, because it’s a sneaky little divide-and-conquer strategy, of the type commonly used to pit women against other women.

Third, because we’re ALL real women, you fuckwad.

There seems to be a common assumption that, if you’re fat and not particularly ashamed of that fact, you must, by default, HATE thin women, or find them ugly, or some other form of stupidness that can only be described as SOUR FUCKING GRAPES.

Not so.

I’m fat, and not particularly ashamed of the fact, and I also think thin women are just fine. I largely share the same aesthetic standards of my culture (with a few exceptions — most notably, the ones that allow me not to hate myself), and I often think thin women are just lovely. I also don’t feel particularly jealous, because why would I waste my time? They’re them, and I’m me.

I certainly sometimes sigh to myself wistfully about what it would be like to, say, have curly hair, or be blonde, or to be slender and model-perfect, but I don’t spend a lot of time on it. I recognize these moments for what they are: pure fantasy, a grass-is-greener kind of escape from reality. And then I go back to being me without a whole lot of fuss. I see certain pictures of myself, or put on a certain outfit, or flip my hair in a certain way that makes me think, “Yeah, other people are lovely. But I’m pretty alright myself.”

So then, why is it so impossible to believe that we can genuinely admire others, without simultaneously wanting to look exactly like them? We’re not all crazed bitches from some psycho-stalker horror movie here.

I’m going to steal your haircut, and then YOUR MAN. Fear meeeeeee.

ENOUGH already with all this real woman garbage. We’re all real women, for fuck’s sake — the thin ones, the pale ones, the dark ones, the hairy ones, the not-hairy ones, the short ones, the tall ones, the young ones, the older ones, the fertile ones, the sterile ones, and yes, of course, the fat ones. If anyone has the temerity to identify as a woman in this culture, I’m handing them over an Official Membership Card and inviting them to the pool party, since, you know, I’m a real woman and all. By the power vested in me, etc. etc. And because if you’re willing to put up with the bullshit women put up with every single day, then shit — you’ve earned it.

In closing, I’d like to say: you’re not fooling anyone, fancy-TV-producers-attempting-to-ingratiate-yourselves-with-the-fat-people-you’ve-used-as-the-butt-of-all-your-super-sophisticated-sitcom-jokes-for-so-long. You’re just pissing me off.

And you sound like a fucking squid.

Stunning insights abound, such as:

Many people who meet the body mass index criteria for obesity “are really not that sick at all,” says Sharma, chairman for cardiovascular obesity research and management at the University of Alberta and scientific director of the Canadian Obesity Network.

‘Obesity was far less common when it was identified, and then obesity became this gigantic epidemic, with just the assumed outcome that everyone is going to be at risk for vascular disease and a whole bunch of other things,’ says Rachel Wildman, an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College.

‘As it turns out, it seems not to be the case. There is at least a proportion of obese individuals who at this point don’t seem to be at elevated cardiovascular risk.’ Not only is their risk fairly minimal, ‘in some instances it’s better than individuals who are normal weight.’”

‘Treating obesity, like treating any other medical condition, takes resources, you never get it for free and if you’re asking people to do things where you know off the bat that most people are likely to fail then you’re really setting them up for disappointment,’ Sharma said.”

Wildman, of Albert Einstein School of Medicine, agrees that it may be time to deal with the obesity epidemic in a more nuanced way. For one thing, efforts to get everyone to lose weight are falling flat.”

Also, some good quotes from our friend Paul Ernsberger.

Really, I don’t mean to snark. This is a good article, and I’m glad to see the issue getting media play. It’s just that it all seems so fucking obvious.

On the scourge of OMGbesity:

“The claim that we are seeing an ‘epidemic’ of overweight and obesity implies an exponential pattern of growth typical of epidemics. The available data do not support this claim. Instead, what we have seen, in the US, is a relatively modest rightward skewing of average weight on the distribution curve, with people of lower weights gaining little or no weight, and the majority of people weighing ~3–5 kg more than they did a generation ago.”

-Campos et al, International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(1):55-60

On fat and mortality:

“Except at true statistical extremes, high body mass is a very weak predictor of mortality, and may even be protective in older populations. In particular, the claim that ‘overweight’ (BMI 25–29.9) increases mortality risk in any meaningful way is impossible to reconcile with numerous large-scale studies that have found no increase in relative risk among the so-called ‘overweight’, or have found a lower relative risk for premature mortality among this cohort than among persons of so-called ‘normal’ or ‘ideal’ [sic] weight.”

-Campos et al, International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(1):55-60

On fat and mortality, again:

"Overweight was associated with a slight reduction in mortality relative to the normal weight category. The impact of obesity on mortality may have decreased over time, perhaps because of improvements in public health and medical care. These findings are consistent with the increases in life expectancy in the United States."

-Flegal et al, JAMA. 2005;293:1861-1867

On increased life expectancy in the United States:

“Life expectancy for Americans surpassed 78 years for the first time in 2006, and life span increases occurred for both men and women, the National Center for Health Statistics recently reported. Although the results are estimated, the report found the average life expectancy for Americans born in 2006 was four months greater than for children born in 2005. Although (sadly) an estimated 2.4 million Americans died in 2006, there were 22,000 fewer deaths in 2006 compared to 2005, which is a statistically significant decline. Even infant mortality rates dropped more than two percent in 2006. For adults, the improvement is based on falling death rates in nine of the 15 leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, accidents, and diabetes. There was a drop of more than six percent in stroke and respiratory diseases, such as bronchitis and emphysema. Heart disease and diabetes deaths also declined by more than five percent in the U.S.”

-Medline Plus, July 2008

On the consequences of dieting:

“Even granting the existence of an association between increasing body weight and higher mortality, at least for younger people, it does not follow that losing weight will reduce the risk. We simply do not know whether a person who loses 20 lb will thereby acquire the same reduced risk as a person who started out 20 lb lighter. The few studies of mortality among people who voluntarily lost weight produced inconsistent results; some even suggested that weight loss increased mortality.”

-Kassirer & Angell, New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 338:52-54, no. 1, 1998

On the “success” rates of dieting:

“Using these figures, it appears that there are 76 800 000 people dieting…According to the NWCR Web site, there are currently 4000 people enrolled. So the researchers can demonstrate a “success rate” of 0.001%, which is not even close to the dismal 5% estimate cited in the scientific literature.”

-Ikeda et al, J Nutr Educ Behav. 2005 Jul-Aug;37(4):169.

(I did a similar bit of arithmetic in 2002, though the numbers I used were slightly different. Fat Fu did an excellent bit of arithmetic using Weight Watchers statistics.)

On fat people being gluttonous overeaters:

“Everyone knows what it feels like to skip a meal or to refrain from enjoying that alluring cheesecake. From this shared experience comes the conclusion that obese people restrain themselves less well than the lean. The problem with this view is that it ignores the basic neural system that controls the drive to eat and the variability of its potency in different individuals.”

-Friedman, Nature Medicine, 10, 563-569 (2004)

(My version of this same argument.)

On why we hate fat people:

“Weight is seen as controllable, unlike other stigmatized traits such as race and gender. Our subjects held a particularly strong explicit belief that fat people are lazy. This belief assumes that overweight individuals simply lack motivation or responsibility for a condition that is under their control.”

-Wang et al, International Journal of Obesity (2004) 28, 1333–1337.

On just how much we hate fat people:

“The prevalence of weight discrimination in the United States has increased by 66% over the past decade, and is comparable to rates of racial discrimination, especially among women. Weight bias translates into inequities in employment settings, health-care facilities, and educational institutions, often due to widespread negative stereotypes that overweight and obese persons are lazy, unmotivated, lacking in self-discipline, less competent, noncompliant, and sloppy. These stereotypes are prevalent and are rarely challenged in Western society, leaving overweight and obese persons vulnerable to social injustice, unfair treatment, and impaired quality of life as a result of substantial disadvantages and stigma.”

-Puhl & Heuer, Obesity (2009)

Some good books:

The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology by Gard & Wright

I’d like to say something about how much fat people eat. I, personally, would be neither surprised nor offended if it were somehow proven that fat people, on average, eat more than thinner people. Of course, this hasn’t been proven, and if it were, there would be exceptions and outliers — but if it were found to be the general case, it wouldn’t surprise or offend me in any way.

I think I eat a fair amount of food, but I do not binge, and I do not habitually overeat. By its definition, overeating is eating “too much,” or an unhealthy amount. In our culture, this means “eating enough to get fat,” because fat is shorthand for “unhealthy” — and it suddenly becomes a lovely example of perfectly circular logic: overeating is what fat people do when they eat, whether it’s a two-pound steak or the parsley garnishing it. Therefore, if you are fat, you are fat because you overeat, else you wouldn’t be fat; and if you are fat, any act of eating you undertake is defined as “overeating” — because you are fat.

I’ll tell you what; I eat exactly the amount of food I want and need at any given time. This is not overeating. This is called Being a Grown-Up Human Being Who Can Take Care of Her Own Damn Self, Thank You Very Much. And if I found that I ate more than a thin person, or that the average fat person ate more than the average thin person, I wouldn’t be offended because I don’t think it’s morally wrong for different people to eat different food in different amounts. I wouldn’t be offended because I don’t think what a person eats reflects on their character. And I wouldn’t be surprised because, well, I am hungry.

I could go into the biological reasons for why I am hungry, into the fact that I support more fat mass than the average person, and to do that requires more muscle mass, more bone mass, more vasculature, more everything, and the fact that, beyond that, nutrient requirements are normally distributed — but I won’t, because there’s really no explanation necessary (and if you think there is, you’re well on your way to a bingo.) I am simply hungry, and there is nothing anyone can say to dissuade me from being hungry, or talk me out of being hungry, or trick me into thinking I am not hungry when I am, in fact, hungry.

I am hungry, and my body is a much better estimator of calories and portion sizes and even balanced nutrition than my head, or anyone else’s, will ever be. I eat exactly what I’m hungry for, and I do this because I learned how — something that many people won’t ever learn, because that is exactly how fucked-up our culture is over food. If I overeat, it’s an occurrence relative only to myself, not to the thin person next to me. And if I eat more than someone else, say, more than someone thin, it is not because I am stupid and they aren’t, not because I don’t understand nutrition and they do, not because I’ve never been read the Riot Act Obesity Act, and certainly not because I am an immoral, no-good, greedy, wanton symbol of evil Western imperialism and overconsumption.

It is because I am hungry, and I know how to feed myself so that I am no longer hungry. It’s something no one else can do for me; I have to do it for myself. And I thank the good Lord every day that I can, and do.

These are the fat acceptance zealots — using fat acceptance and ‘in your face’ fat imagery and messages in order to shock the world into accepting their fat as meaning they are valid, worthy and ultimately just as healthy as the next person.

“And really fat people are valid and worthy, but as healthy as the would be if their hearts weren’t beating much harder in order to accommodate an extra 100lbs?

“No — this simply cannot be.”

–Weighted Long Enough

This is the writing of a woman who was once passionately involved in fat acceptance. Presumably, she still believes in basic tenets like, you know, appearance-based discrimination is wrong. But she got to a point where she felt her fat was detrimental to her health.

Now, I wouldn’t presume to argue with a person about their own experience, except to say that I believe directly addressing comorbidities associated with fatness is probably more effective than addressing the fatness itself, given that there are precious few (read: NO) permanent, safe methods of fat reduction.

But still, a person is allowed to be the expert on their own experience. If she feels that fat was causing her health problems, who the hell am I to contradict her?

This is where I believe Health At Every Size connects with the fat movement. The fat movement, as I see it, is primarily about politics and human rights, and well it should be. These are the critical, the most important, factors determining our experiences as fat people. But because fat is inextricably bound up in matters of health, at least from the perspective of our oppressors, the HAES component is a critical tangent of our movement.

See, the thing is, people who are involved in fat acceptance don’t always seem to fully understand HAES, and this concerns me. It concerns me because it is a useful tool that many of us seem content to toss by the wayside. This woman is a prime example of not understanding the basic structure of the HAES philosophy…the first being that “Health At Every Size” means health at every size for the population, not necessarily the individual.

If you accept the theory of set-point, as many fat acceptance advocates do, then you realize that an individual body has a preferred level of adiposity, for which a handy (though imperfect) proxy is body weight. This not only means that maintaining a weight lower than set-point is not good for you, but also that maintaining a weight much higher than your body’s natural set-point range is also not good for you.

The thing is, despite what the BMI dorks seem to think, set-points, or body weights, or body compositions, naturally come in a wide variety. I like to think of this as one way our species protects itself against extinction by one poorly-timed famine, epidemic, or ice-age. If all our bodies operated identically, the human race could easily be wiped out in one fell swoop, because we’d all react in exactly the same way to dramatic environmental changes.

So there is variety in size. There is variety in nutrient requirements as well…not only for kcalories, and macronutrients like fat, protein, and carbohydrates, but also for vitamins and minerals. Now I know those RDAs and the popular multivitamin supplements and the Food Guide Pyramid and everything seem to suggest that we all have the same requirements, dependent on things like age and sex, but it’s not so. Those things are basically educated guesses on how we can catch most of the population, within its wide range of requirements, so that nutrient deficiencies are no longer widespread. There was a time when things like scurvy and rickets were near-epidemic, so the usefulness of these tools can’t be overstated. But they do not represent some magical, unequivocal number that super-smart scientists have determined to be the perfect amount of X nutrient for everyone in the whole world.

If you doubt this, I would like to turn your attention to the development of the DRIs, which are, basically, a more complex and comprehensive form of the RDAs. There were huge debates, for example, over the recommended intake of calcium. Calcium! A nutrient we all take for granted as being a set-in-stone, God-given prescription for strong teeth and bones! Well, the goddamn scientists argued so much over the RDA for calcium that they never came to consensus. So, yes, you read that right, there is no RDA for calcium at this time. Instead, they came up with a rough guesstimate (the AI), from which specific recommendations cannot be extrapolated.

Okay. Phew. Sorry for the Nutrition 101 lecture. I just wanted to illustrate my point that, if we can’t even come up with solid numbers for the entire population on something as basic as calcium, why do we assume that ideal weight can be so easily established?

It can’t. Just as it is not logistically feasible to thoroughly test and document the nutrient requirements of each individual across the entire population, it is logistically infeasible, and as yet IMPOSSIBLE (since we are nowhere near understanding all of the complex mechanisms that influence body weight), to determine every single person’s healthiest weight. For practitioners of the HAES model, the definition of ideal weight is this: the weight you maintain when you are eating nutritiously and getting adequate physical activity. Not some arbitrary, shame-inducing number on a goddamn table picked out by a bigot like Walter Willett. Sorry, but for all you BMI-lovers out there — them’s the fucking breaks.

So, back to this woman. Is it possible that she maintained a weight that was above her own healthiest weight? YES. Does this mean that anyone else maintaining the same weight and body composition at similar height, age, and gender is also above their healthiest weight? NO.

Health at every size, as I have said approximately 7,386 times on this journal, does not mean that one individual can be healthy at every size. Cause you can’t. You’ve got a basic range, and the range may shift a bit during different stages of life, but you cannot run up and down the huge spectrum of possible body weights, like a pianist running his hands over the keys from lowest to highest, and expect to be perfectly healthy at each step.

It is perfectly possible that, by an individual definition, this woman was ‘overweight.’ The problem, though, with focusing on weight, even if it does prove to be causing health problems for a person (and this is rarely, if ever, proven), is that not only is there no way of predetermining an individual’s ideal weight, there ain’t much we can do about the weight anyway. Weight-loss treatments, from drugs to diets, are dismal failures. GI surgeries are risky and do not have a lot of long-term research to back them up (I won’t even mention the anal incontinence, or possible vitamin deficiences that can cause irreversible neurological damage. Oh wait, I just did. Sorry.) Even people trying to gain weight have some difficulty.

So it’s a bit of a bind, isn’t it? And even if someone buys fully into the political aspects of fat liberation (there, I said it, fat liberation), the health argument is just sitting there, waiting for them to have a bad day, or to get tired of being fat (which is a very real possibility in this culture), or to get sick in a way that a doctor would readily attribute to ‘obesity.’ Under these circumstances, it is very easy to see why even an ardent supporter of the politics of fat liberation might go and do a thing like have weight-loss surgery, or start a reducing diet, or take the newest FDA-approved fat-person extermination pill — I mean, ‘obesity treatment’ — and maybe start to side, just a little, with the attendant propaganda. Because cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

This is the where Health At Every Size becomes not only a useful tangent to fat liberation, but an essential component.

Listen: there is an alternative. We need not be extremists on either end of the spectrum of fattitude — one being the end that says “I am healthy no matter what” and the other being the end that says “I’ll take the Roux-en-Y with a side order of Meridia” — because, all-too-often in my experience, two extreme ends of any spectrum eventually meet in the same, frighteningly psychotic person. Like radio shock-jocks who go from an ultra-liberal upbringing to ultra-conservative vitriol in the brief time it takes to experience one adolescent disillusionment. Like the woman who writes about being “involved in the fat acceptance movement as a way to stay in an illusion that one can be extremely fat and healthy.”

Thing is, there are extremely fat and healthy people out there. That’s how the fucking bell curve works. No, you cannot be healthy at every size. But we can. Here’s how:

You eat well. This is not a moralistic determination, nor is it the same from person to person. There are general suggestions that most people can safely follow, but the most important is to learn to listen to your gut. Try to resuscitate the cues that a lifetime of dieting and an eating-disordered culture have probably killed. If you can’t do it on your own — and many can’t; it’s hard — get someone to help you. Size-friendly therapists and dietitians exist, and many of them believe in an empowering philosophy of health promotion, which in English means: you get to make your own choices. You get to figure out what is best for you. Because even scientists can’t tell you how much goddamn calcium you need.

You move well. This is also hard to figure out, and I’m currently doing battle with it myself. Kell has some good ideas. Like we all have an appetite for food, I think we all have an appetite for movement. Think back to the way you might’ve played as a kid, the times you got restless from sitting still for too long. Try to remember a time when being sweaty and out of breath meant you were having a fucking awesome time (if you’re lucky enough to have such memories.) Think back on those times, and try to come up with creative ways to have fun now. REAL fun, like the kind of fun you had when all you needed was a hot day and a sprinkler in the yard, or a jump-rope, or a piece of chalk and a stretch of concrete. When did adult movement become so boring and medicinal? Who says you need to have ‘proper footwear’ or a gym membership or all sorts of ugly spandex clothing in order to get a little hot and sweaty? If you’re into that kind of thing, cool; you have that many more options than the rest of us who hate all that shit. And if you hate it, take heart: so do I. But I won’t be disingenuous and pretend that physical activity has no bearing on our well-being. Neither will I deny that it’s more than possible to go out and find ourselves a bit of fun.

Third, you learn to deal with your body. Whatever size it’s at, whatever health conditions you might be facing, whatever colour it is, however big your butt is, or small your tits are, or anything. You take what God fucking gave you, and you make the best of it. You do the treatment for any health problems by focusing directly on the problem itself, not by buying into the cultural fantasy that, if you lose weight, you’ll magically lose any physical and/or mental illnesses along with it.

By doing this, your body is going to change in whatever way is best for it to change. You don’t get to control that. It might mean gaining weight, in the form of fat or muscle, and feeling self-conscious. But we have tools to deal with that, because that is what this whole movement is about: creating a society where people of all sizes can feel reasonably welcome.

It might mean losing weight, and you might feel guilty, like you’re betraying your fat liberation buddies. But you’re not betraying anyone. A real betrayal would be to go and swallow shit like “I wanted to believe I could be as healthy as a person whose weight didn’t literally drag them down. This was my greatest lie – a lie that allowed me to get more and more fat, until I’ve now reach the point of do or die.” Betrayal would be to believe that, in order to be healthy, you must first focus on changing your body to a socially-enforced ideal…in order, presumably, to become ‘deserving’ of proper health- and self-care. Betrayal would also be to totally deny the fact that eating and moving well will have a positive impact on your health, and that, if you want to, you deserve those things as much as anyone else.

Most likely, no matter how your weight changes, your basic health indicators are going to improve. Your blood pressure is probably going to improve, as well as your blood cholesterol, and your ability to use insulin and regulate your own blood sugar. These are much more accurate proxies for health than body size could ever be. And if things get worse, it’s a sure sign that something else is going on and you need to see a doctor. But for most people, you can bank on the fact that eating and moving well and treating your body with respect is only going to make things better, whether or not you get bigger or smaller in the process.

Listen: as surely as we are oppressed by systematic external discrimination, we collude in our own oppression by not demanding the care we deserve from health professionals, and by not caring for ourselves in the way we deserve. And don’t you believe for a MINUTE that you have to submit to ‘their’ idea of health and self-care, or the health meritocracy. First and foremost, all of this is a choice. It is optional. But in order for that choice to even exist, we have to have access to good information, and we have to really believe that we deserve to be cared for. I have a sneaking suspicion that an internalized sense of inferiority drives a lot of our rebellion against ideas of self-care and health at every size. And I totally understand. I get panicky, too, when I entertain ideas of ‘making healthy choices’ and what-not because, more often than not in our deranged, pathological society, ‘making healthy choices’ is code for ‘submitting to coercion.’ I know. I know. But we can’t let the difficulty of the fight let us stop fighting it.

There are size-friendly health professionals out there. There are dietitians and therapists and doctors in a number of specialties who are on our side. We definitely need more of them, and that’s another thing we’re working on, but we should be taking advantage of the ones we’ve got. (Check out Stef’s Fat Friendly Health Professionals page.) We also need better resources for general information on health and nutrition — in print, on the internet, on TV — stuff that comes from a size-positive perspective (hell, even a size-neutral perspective would be an improvement over what we’ve got now.)

Pattie pointed out that a lot of the HAES terminology is being co-opted by forces that are anything but size-friendly. This scares me, and I think one of the reasons they’ve been able to do this is that HAES has not yet come into its own. One of the things we’ve got to fight for is to make HAES work, and work in the way we want it to. We can’t let it revert into yet another health-fascist approach that’ll only find creative new ways to blame and marginalize people in the name of health.

Pattie also talked about how “the personal is political.” With the way things currently are, what could be more political than for people to stand up, demand quality health-care, and to make truly free and informed choices about their health, regardless of what size they are? In a true HAES framework, this would never result in dividing us into ‘good people’ and ‘bad people.’ It would simply give people of all sizes the information and support they need to make real choices — something we don’t currently have, since most of our resources are hopelessly tainted by their association with “Brand Thin” — and its mandate would be to then respect those choices, whether they might be classified by the majority as ‘healthy’ or not.

If we’re fighting a war here (I’ll indulge in some militaristic language, since everyone else seems so eager to compare fat people to terrorists and to declare ‘war on obesity’), we need our troops to be as strong as possible. And that doesn’t mean conforming to some arbitrarily defined, absolutist notion of what ‘health’ is. To me, health is a matter of making autonomous choices, and having the resources necessary to inform those choices. Though we may all disagree on which behaviours are healthy or not, I think we can all agree that losing once-fervent supporters to the health meritocracy does not strengthen our numbers. Having an alternative that emphasizes good information, respectful practitioners, and a culture of individual sovereignty will.

What about fat women who’ve tried to love themselves and have failed at that too?

It’s a curious dilemma. I mean, what do you do when not only diets have failed you, but your effort to try and accept yourself has failed? You’re kind of stuck, and I don’t think it would be a fun place to be stuck. You know that dieting is pretty stupid, but you’re starting to think that the idea of actually *liking* your big ugly body is starting to sound stupid as well…

I have a few questions, and please don’t take offense…I’m just trying to understand.

-Have you put as much effort into learning to accept yourself as you have put into dieting? Have you thrown out the ‘thin’ clothes and bought new ones that you like? Have you read books and websites?

-Have you talked to your spouse or partner about this; does your spouse or partner find your body unattractive? Have you talked to your family? Do your relatives harass you about losing weight?

-Have you found a doctor who is not prejudiced about size? They do exist.

-Have you looked for a size-friendly exercise or support group? They also exist.

The reason I ask this is because learning to love yourself is not easy. If anything, it’s even harder than dieting, but with one important difference: in the end, you will succeed. But the effort must be real. Self-love does not automatically appear when you decide you’re done dieting. It takes work and effort.

Ask yourself this: Suppose you have a set amount of energy to apply to a task. And you have two choices. Which one are you going to choose to spend your energy on? Dieting, which works for most people only in the SHORT TERM, and can make you feel worse about yourself if you gain the weight back…or self-love, which will produce long-term results and can actually improve your physical and mental health?

Making the choice is easy. It’s following through with the choice that takes work. Loving yourself requires ACTIVE changes, since everything in our culture is geared to weight loss. When you look up health, you find weight loss. When you look up nutrition, you find weight loss. When you look up body image, you find weight loss. Therefore, if you sit passively back, the tides of our culture will gradually erode your resolve not to focus on weight loss. You must actively seek out size-positive information and support.

If anyone needs resources for self-love, ASK ME. I have tons, and am more than willing to share. There are websites, books, advocacy groups, dietitians, doctors, and researchers galore who believe in health at any size.

And, for the record: I do not advocate weight gain. My agenda is encouraging people of all sizes to live healthy lifestyles, regardless of weight. I actually believe that keeping a STABLE weight is healthiest of all, whether you start off fat or thin. Sometimes you will gain or lose naturally; but that is not my concern. My concern is for people to love and respect themselves, their bodies, and each other.

One last thing: a note on medical conditions. PCOS has been mentioned to me more than once now, by two different people. I don’t know the specifics of the disorder other than what I have read here, but what I’ve heard is that the condition results in a higher weight, and a harder time controlling weight for women who have it.

To this I offer the following logic: we’ve determined that for perfectly healthy people, controlling weight is near impossible, unless through extreme, unhealthy measures (we’re talking self-starvation, bulimia, compulsive exercise, weight-loss surgery, etc.) In fact, it is so difficult for normal people to control their weight that many health professionals have decided to encourage people not to worry about weight, and focus instead on living healthfully (which means eating nutritious food and exercising regularly.)

Therefore, if you have a medical condition which makes losing weight even MORE difficult than it already is for normal people, why would it make sense to try losing weight? You’re fighting a losing battle. For anyone with a medical condition, I think it is conservative to say that you should eat well and exercise moderately. Why add to the stresses of your condition the impossible task of trying to control an uncontrollable weight?

Also, the tone in which this is written — it strikes me as so earnest and…young! Awwww.

Marilyn’s Body: The Debate

This has been a topic of some mild debate, both online and off. I have some opinions on it since I have studied Marilyn Monroe’s life a bit. Don’t ask me why…it’s a long, convoluted, weird story. But I’ve been interested in her life for about five years.

The point of this is: the Marilyn body-size debate. Some people claim that she was quite large (by today’s standards) and would be a size 16 today. Others say she was slender and small like today’s actresses and models. But I’ve only seen one person (*Sex&Candy*) cite sources.

The sources I have accessed are these:

-Marilyn’s reported measurements (both studio and dressmaker claims) from marilynmonroe.com, the official Marilyn website maintained by CMG Worldwide, the representative for Marilyn’s estate. They are: 37-23-36 (Studio’s Claim), 35-22-35 (Dressmaker’s Claim), and height: 5 feet 5 1/2 inches. I will go by the Dressmaker’s claim, seeing as how a dressmaker requires accurate measurements for his work, and the Studio would be publishing measurements to titillate a male audience and gain publicity…therefore, they might ‘pad’ the measurements to make someone’s figure seem more ‘hourglass’ and fashionable.

-Today’s size requirements to be a fashion model, available from blufire.com, an online Model Registry.

-Lena Pepitone’s book (Marilyn Monroe Confidential), which includes an account of Marilyn’s body size and weight gain. Pepitone worked as Marilyn’s maid when she lived in NYC, and did some of her sewing/mending.

-Some original Simplicity and Butterick patterns from the 1950s, which have measurements and size charts printed on the back. Also, contemporary patterns with sizing charts.

-The BMI (Body Mass Index) which is the tool currently used to determine if a person is overweight by contemporary medical standards.

The claims I have heard are these:

-Marilyn Monroe would be considered “overweight” today (claim made by the NAAFA.)

-Marilyn Monroe wore a size 16.

-Marilyn Monroe would wear a size 6/8 in today’s clothing.

Other:

-On one website created by a devoted Marilyn fan, the fan took a trip to L.A. to see some Marilyn artifacts, including several of the dresses Marilyn wore. The fan remarked on how ‘tiny’ they seemed.

So, using my sources, I have come up with the following answers to these claims:

-Marilyn was not overweight. According to Lena Pepitone, Marilyn’s maid in NYC who was in charge of mending her clothes and other functions (like bathing and laundry) which would give her a good idea of Marilyn’s body size, Marilyn regularly wore clothing so tight that they would split at the seams, requiring Lena to do a lot of mending. Also, she reports that before the filming of Some Like it Hot, Marilyn went through a period of depression and ate compulsively, gaining enough weight to put her at 140 lbs. (The studio claims that Marilyn weighed between 115 and 120 lbs., at a height of 5’5 1/2″.) By current standards (the BMI), a weight of 140 at a height of 5’5 1/2″ would result in a BMI of 22.9, well below the cut-off BMI of 24.9 for ‘overweight.’ At 140 lbs. she was reportedly unhappy, but was still able to go out in public and be revered as a sex goddess.

-However, Marilyn would probably not fit the requirements of a contemporary fashion model. According to the BluFire Model Registry: “Female fashion models typically are at least 5’8″…and 34-24-34, plus or minus one inch…for each dimension. (Sometimes hip size is 36 inches.)” Therefore, Marilyn would have been too short at 5’5″. Though her measurements were about right, her height would have made her seem wider. But, “She was working as a model in the mid-’40s, gracing the covers of hundreds of magazines and winning beauty contests (she was 1947′s Miss California Artichoke Queen.)” (According to swinginchicks.com.) Obviously, in the 40s and 50s, size requirements for models were a bit more lenient than they are today.

-Marilyn wore between a size 10 and 18 in the 1950s. According to several original 1950s patterns I own, Marilyn’s bust measurement (36) would be a size 18 or 16; her waist (22) would be about a size 8 (none of the patterns listed as low as 22 for waist…the lowest was 23 1/2, which was a size 9); her hips (35) would be 12 or 14 (or 13 junior.) Anything above a size 12 (measurements 32-25-34) might’ve been considered “plus-sized” as evidenced by a “Slenderette” pattern by Simplicity. “Slenderette,” I imagine, was their special designation for patterns that would make larger girls seem more slender. I have not been able to find any sources on this though.

-Marilyn’s size today would be between 6 and 14. According to a modern Simplicity pattern, her bust (36) would be a size 14; her waist (22) a size 6; her hips (35) a size 10, 12 or 14. Many people have claimed that pattern sizes are wildly different between the 1950s and today, but this is not the case. Between different pattern companies there is always a wide range of different sizes based on measurements, although there does seem to be about one or two sizes difference between most patterns from the 1950s and most contemporary patterns. This does not constitute a huge disparity, however, as some have claimed (for example, that a size 16 in the 1950s would be a size 8 today.) Since sizes generally move up in two-number increments, this would be a difference of four sizes…whereas the largest difference I could find for Marilyn’s old size and her contemporary size was two sizes: sizes 6 to 10, and 14 to 18.

-Also, I’d like to note that a reason occurred to me why Marilyn’s dresses would seem so tiny when viewed in person: Marilyn’s dresses were often sewed onto her and, as Lena Pepitone asserts, her clothes were often so tight that they required regular mending of split seams and zippers. To get her clothing onto a dressform without ripping out seams and re-sewing them, they would have to choose smaller-than-Marilyn dressforms so that the dresses would maintain a normal amount of ‘ease’…though in Marilyn’s lifetime, she wore them without that ease. If you stuffed them as tight as sausage-casings, as she wore them, you could have an accurate 3-D depiction of her nude body size/shape (since it is reported that she didn’t even wear underwear [Lena Pepitone], let alone girdles and other shaping garments popular at the time.)

All in all, I tackled this just to show that nothing is as clear-cut as we’d like it to be. No, Marilyn was definitely not fat and would not even be considered overweight by today’s standards. However, she was certainly not as tall or skinny as today’s fashion models and many actresses, and she did not wear a size 0 or 2, as is becoming the norm for ‘beautiful women’ in contemporary society. Like all of us, her weight even fluctuated a bit over her lifetime.

Cause guess what? Sex goddess or no, she was human too.

Added later: Thanks to CelestialRaine’s tip, I checked out the website she mentioned, and it comes to pretty much the same conclusion I did. Thanks!

I had no idea this book would undermine everything I was doing and, subsequently, change my life. I am always wary of people who say something Changed Their Life…it was rather unsettling when I found myself in that situation.

I read the book, and thought for a few weeks. I turned things over in my head. I thought long and hard. I looked at my life, and what I was doing. I realized that my entire waking life had been consumed by my goal of losing weight. My interests had been swept aside so I could devote all my energy to this one thing. I was exercising between two and three hours a day. The only reason I was able to sustain this incredible burden was because I had no job and nothing else in my life to keep me busy. Once I started working and going to school, as I planned, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to keep up. Also, I realized that I was putting my life on hold until the day I weighed 120 lbs. I needed new clothes NOW…not 60 lbs. from now. And I needed to like myself NOW. Not when I was finally a socially-acceptable weight.

I looked at the boots in my closet, and promptly sent them back to Sears. Instead, I ordered a pair of shorter, lace-up boots that I knew would fit. My dream had ended.

It took me a long time to feel normal again after my stint logging all of my food. Reading How to Get Your Kid to Eat…But Not Too Much by Ellyn Satter helped a lot. But it took time for my compulsions and the guilt I felt for eating until I was full to subside. I stopped exercising for a while, because it was too related to weight-loss for me still, though I had learned to love it.

Also, as I have mentioned, I had to face the very scary possibility that I would gain back lots and lots of weight. I had to accept the fact that I might weigh 300 lbs. or more, but I still had to love myself, and I had to keep my promise never to ‘diet’ again. Because although I told myself it was a lifestyle change, that’s really what I was doing. I was not listening to my body, and eating when I was hungry. Effectively, I was denying myself food (though I met all of the nutritional requirements of the food pyramid, and ostensibly consumed an adequate amount of calories) and my body would not forgive me for that. That is why, I think, I felt so horrible about myself although I was looking ‘better and better.’ My body felt neglected and betrayed, like a child I was punishing for no good reason.

And now I can honestly, with all my heart say, I’d rather be fat. I’m happier when I respect myself (and show that respect by allowing my body to dictate what and how much I eat), and I love myself. I don’t feel strange in my body, like an ill-fitting garment, anymore. And I haven’t had a relapse of pneumonia.

There are times I see pictures and think, “Oh my God I’m huge!” but I’d much rather think that about pictures occasionally, than feel that way constantly and have to look in the mirror to confirm my self-worth. I’d rather be fat and deal with other people thinking, “She could be so pretty if she just lost some weight…” than think that way myself.

I don’t know everything there is to know about nutrition. No one, not even an expert, does. No one can say, irrefutably, that being fat or ‘obese’ is unhealthy. For myself, I’m willing to bet on what my body naturally wants to do, with mild guidance (I eat lots of fruit everyday, drink water, and I get a bit of exercise walking on my way to work. If I want a chocolate bar, or even a whole box of chocolates, I eat it. I trust myself.) I’d bet on my body’s natural hunger signals and the weight it seems to want to cling to before I bet on what anyone else tells me…a fashion magazine, a diet guru, the women at my office, or even a doctor.

When I turned 16, something weird happened. I got pretty. And suddenly all those people who once told me I was ugly and fat and a dork, were now telling me I was desirable. I couldn’t buy it. Those people had betrayed me before, and I frankly didn’t give a fuck to hear any more of their opinions. All the same, I felt the need to live up to some kind of expectation. I was concerned with my looks and would not leave the house unless I felt I looked good enough. There were many times I skipped school simply because I had a big zit or had picked my face raw (one of my many ways of dealing with anxiety) the night before. I weighed around 160lbs. during this time.

When I got out of high school, and away from all that kind of pressure, I became more independent and stopped being so worried. So by the time I left home to get married, I thought I had outgrown these problems. I was wrong.

About six months into our marriage, I noticed I had gained weight. I was now about 200lbs. Hitting the 200 mark was a blow, as much as I hated to admit it. I wanted to pretend I didn’t care, but I no longer could. My jeans were uncomfortably tight…I had trouble tying my shoes…I felt depressed and lethargic (no thanks to the oppressive Ontarian winter) and I felt the need to DO something.

For a few months, I studied nutrition on my own (at this time I was immigrating, and therefore forced into housewifedom with no job and no school) and tried to figure out the best way to get healthy. After researching for a while, near the beginning of summer I finally decided to put what I’d learned into practice. I vowed to myself that I would do this ‘the right way.’ This meant no fad dieting, no starving myself, and no compulsive exercising. I would simply keep a log of what I ate, make sure I ate the daily requirements from the four food groups, and exercise moderately, keeping my calories around 1800 a day. I made sure to keep telling myself that this was not a diet…it was a lifestyle change, and after I reached my goal weight, I would stick to a maintenance program for the rest of my life.

By no means is this extreme practice…most commercial diets hover around 1000 calories a day. I signed up with an online dieting website for moral support, and most of the women there were doing their own thing, like me, but were eating about 1200 calories a day. I would later learn that 1500 calories is considered semi-starvation, and that, not much below 1000 calories, you’re getting into anorexia nervosa territory.

It started off well. I felt an incredible surge of pride and almost euphoria. For once in my life, I was doing The Right Thing. I was doing something that everyone I knew could be proud of. I was encouraged by my husband, my mother and brother, my in-laws, and their friends. I even worked out a system where I could still eat as much chocolate as I wanted…whenever I wanted a candy bar, I simply had to walk to the store to get it (which, according to my calculations, burned about the same amount of calories as was in the chocolate, and so they canceled each other out. Theoretically, I could have eaten five chocolate bars a day and walked to the store five times a day, and not derailed my program at all.)

The weight came off around 1-2 pounds a week. I didn’t weigh myself more than once a week, and I tried not to get too wrapped up in the weight game. I set my goal weight for around 120 lbs., which, for my height (5’4″) is quite reasonable, according to the BMI. I only hesitated for a moment on the thought that I hadn’t weighed 120 lbs. since I was 11 years old.

On a bit of a side note, I went away to be a volunteer counselor at a camp for kids whose lives have been affected by cancer for two weeks during the summer. I returned home tan, happy, but with a small cold virus. The virus bloomed into pneumonia, which stayed with me for ten weeks. It drove me crazy because I could not exercise much while I was sick, but I stuck to my plan as much as I could.

Soon I found myself celebrating my ten pound weight loss. Not long after that, it was 20. I was so happy. I was putting away $10 for each pound I lost, with a view to buying myself a whole new wardrobe with the money once I reached my goal weight. I noticed something funny, however. Though I could now look at myself in the mirror with a feeling of approval, I was feeling slowly and slowly worse about myself. My body felt huge and wrong to me when I was not looking at myself; the feeling would persist until I proved it wrong by checking the mirror or stepping on the scale.

When the Sears Winter Catalog came out, I ordered a new pair of winter boots. They were black leather, mid-calf height, with a zipper up the side and high heels. Very cool. When they came, I was a bit disappointed that they wouldn’t zip all the way up my plump calves. I carefully wrapped them in the tissue paper they came in and put them in the closet, knowing that soon they would fit.