Fat Justice

Okay, maybe not fat so much as identifiably not exceptionally thin, but President Obama today announced his intention to nominate the relatively average sized Sonia Sotomayor to be a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. You may recall a couple weeks ago Judge Sotomayor, widely rumored to be up for the nomination, was smeared on the Letters page at Salon for being to fat for consideration. The notion being that nominating a fat person is a waste of a nomination since fatties are just going to die on you.

The writer was actually providing a glimpse into a short-hand attack on Sotomayor. Not content to just call her fat, the writer also calls her diabetic. I suspect her diabetes status will get brought up a lot in the coming weeks as a proxy for her weight. It'll be a useful short-hand given the way diabetes is regarded as a moral failure by much of our society. It will be used to conjure up not just the image of a fat woman, but as a reminder of Sotomayor's lower-class upbringing. Her story is genuinely inspiring, but we've already seen efforts to paint her as a stereotype. Smears are out that she isn't really very bright, even though she was a top student at Princeton and Yale Law at a time Latinos from the Bronx weren't even treated equally, much less the imagined preferential treatment that is a bogeyman for white conservative males. She gets accidentally labeled a "Latina single mother" in spite of her not having any children, a none-to-subtle effort to talk in code linking to other frequent cultural targets of the Right. Her being diabetic is already being trotted out for much the same reason. Its meant to feed into a stereotype.

The ironic thing is, she has Type I Diabetes. Which not only is nor correlated with being fat, is actually correlated with being thin. Not that you'll ever hear it called that way. If something is correlated to fat, then fat causes it. If something is correlated to thinness, then its just not correlated to being fat. Not that it should matter, mind you. What we're seeing here is an effort to concern troll about diabetes as a proxy for criticizing her for her not quite thin body. Its an effort to trade of social judgment of fat as a moral failing to make a political hit.

Thin people drink soda

I seem to be seeing soda-based freak outs a lot lately. Its long been a favored thing to blame fat people on, but now that the economy is struggling, that fear is mutating into a desire to tax it like cigarettes.

Listen up. Soda isn't like cigarettes. The correlation between smoking and disease is very high. The supposedly slam-dunk correlation between fatness and disease is much, much, MUCH smaller than the smoking link. Mean, the link between smoking and cigarettes is pretty well established. The link between soda and fatness? Well, not so much proven or evidence based, but gosh doesn't it seem like there are tons of fatties these days? I don't think people drank soda back in the time before fatness. That must be to blame. That or any of the other thousand guesses people have. Oh, except dieting. Mustn't point out that people DIET way more than they used to and DIETING actually has been shown to induce weight gain unlike soda.

Like with trans-fat, I'll allow that there might be cause for concern with corn syrup, though it seems mostly conjecture. But if HFCS is the villain of this story, go after it. Don't promise an end to the fatness, because its not going to happen. Right now, as I type, thin people are drinking soda and not turning into big ol' fatties. Honest. Look it up. Like most "end fatness" schemes, this one will fail but another will rise from the ashes. The phoenix of fat hatred always seems to live another day.

Results Typical

"Results Not Typical" is one of my favorite retorts to diet mongers. Its really all you need to say when someone tries to "refute" Fat Acceptance with a diet success story.

Results. Not. TYPICAL.

It doesn't matter that diets work some of the time. That's not the issue. The issue is that they don't work reliably or consistently. A "success" at dieting as not typical. That diet companies have been forced to append this message on their ads has been a humiliation. Unfortunately, its also a humiliation no one seems to notice. I mean, no other product needs to keep announcing its ineffectiveness in its ads. iPods don't have disclaimers announcing "product does not produce sound". Yet, no one seems to care. The diet industry has quite efficiently gotten everyone to ignore their admission of futility and continuing selling their product. They do this because on some level, every knows that diets don't work. They are actively engaged in self-deception from the get-go. "Oh, sure, diets fail. For other people. Not me, though. I'm gonna really try." Our culture is so involved with fat shaming that the failure of diets is never blamed on the diets. Its ALWAYS blamed on the dieter. They must not have wanted to be thin. Its preposterous, but its what our culture does.

So, I'm not exactly encouraged by the word that the FTC is going to require even stricter standards in diet ads. Now, companies can't just qualify their testimonials with "Results Not Typical." They will need to actually show typical results. I figure there are three reasons to expect this won't change things and might even make them worse.

The first reason is what I've already discussed. The failure of diets isn't exactly a secret, but its still one the diet industry has remained effectively blameless for. I'm not sure this will ultimately do much to challenge those prejudices. But ultimately, I don't think its even going to be an issue because of a combination of my last two reasons.

First, is that presumably, this will only apply with a diet company wants to use a testimonial. While these "I did it, so can you bits" are a cliche, we should remember that its not like they are a legal obligation either. Look at the recent "Hunger" spots from Weight Watchers. They make no specific claims. They don't show you any success stories. Rather, they talk about dieting in abstract, experiential terms. Their marketing department is savvy enough to know that people don't need to be sold on wanting to lose weight. This is an implicit desire for virtually the entire population. So, they let this work for them and shield themselves from explicit promises and let the viewer fill in the rest. So, "counter testimonials" might just not be an issue if advertisers just move away from testimonials. I'm not convinced they need the testimonials to promote their wares. The market is just too willing. Put up a road block, and the companies will just drive around it.

The other concern I have is how we are going to define "typical" results. This actually worries me more, because it gives the companies an incentive to move backwards. I mean, they all insist the testimonials are typical now. No diet company willingly instituted "Results not typical". This will ultimately come down to diet peddlers doing more to justify their fantasies. They'll cook the books, exclude failures, etc. to "prove" that the atypical is actually typical. Thus, the result of the stricter standards actually relieves them of any restrictions because it gave them an incentive to push back against something that ultimately has little political will to resist. It sounds nice, but I don't trust it. Advertisers will just offer bogus substantiation and now their still false claims will have a veneer of truthiness. "Why, it must be true if they don't say 'results not typical'" It will be just as much of a fraud as before, only now companies have a substantial incentive to defend that fraud. Frankly, I don't think there will be any substantive resistance when diet makers pretend their magical stories are true. They never proved any of this in the first place, and everyone still thinks its all true. I just don't think the bar will be very high for them to justify false expectations and all of this will just further fuel the culture of fat shaming that blames dieters and not diets. Then we'll have lost even the small counterpoint of "Results not typical". Count me as worried about this. I don't trust the diet industry for a second, and I trust our fat shaming Society just as little.

Fat art in Boston

Anyone in Boston might want to check out the Herb Ritts Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts through May 10. The Photographic Figures exhibition features "Venus of Willendorf '91" by Harriet Casdin-Silver a feminist artist known for her work in holograms.

The piece was originally made for the cover of the magazine Sculpture in 1991. Its a stunning piece featuring a woman modeling as a stand-in for the famous Venus sculpture. One isn't used to seeing a fat person in this kind of artistic context. Especially given the realism of holography. The form is emphatically real in a culture which too often tries to negate the reality of fat bodies. Its a small piece, but one well worth seeing. Especially encouraging is the item description. A lot of "fat" art is really art the fat positive community appropriated from artists who depict our bodies as metaphors without much interest in our humanity. In this case, the artist set out to create fat positive art. The model isn't just a fat woman. The photographer sought out a fat activist to pose for the piece. Very cool.

The MFA galleries are open to the public on Wednesday evenings and of course there is plenty else to see while you're there (I'd personally recommend the musical instrument collection) so if you have a chance try to check it out.

One to watch: Gabourey Sidibe

Evidently, a new independent film, "Push" is making some noise at Sundance this week. For the record, this is NOT the store-brand superhero movie that's being advertised right now of under the same title. Rather, this is an adapatation of the novel of the same telling the story of a fat teenaged girl named Precious in Harlem in the 1980's. By all accounts, the book handles some difficult material, but generally with a great deal of respect to its lead character. I have not read it, so I hope it was not using fat as visual shorthand for all sorts of negative meanings. Fat is often used as a shorthand metaphor for hostile associations, both when characterizing someone as a villian and as a sympathetic character. Hopefully, someone who has read the book can offer some incite to how the book treats the characters size.

Anyhow, for the movie, the producers made the daring choice of casting an actual fat person in the role rather than padding or feeding a thin actress. Not only does that demean fat people, there is a more insidious aspect to it. Studios usually use such trickier as a necessity because a script demands that we see a character both as fat and as thin. The simple truth is that Hollywood spends very little time telling stories about actual fat people. Just people who are fat for a narrative gimmick. So, its encouraging to see any film tell a fat person's story. I'm especially encouraged by a New York Times interview with the lead actress in the film, Gabourey Sidibe.

"Gabbie" is the daughter of legendary NYC busker and R&B singer Alice Tan Ridley and is the prototypical unknown. Kinda have to be for a role like this as its not like the media has put in much effort in making "known" young talented fat black actresses. Its hard to be known when there is little work for you because you don't look like someone Hollywood tells stories about. The risk of being an unknown in a film like this is that you will disappear into the role. People assume it must be YOU on the screen. She's an "outsider" by virtue of her appearance, so for some critics its not hard to leap to the conclusion that she isn't acting that much. Reading the Times interview, though, its exceptionally clear that she is not her character and is also acting the heck out of this film. A very nice passage closes the interview...

Desk-job ambitions or not, Gabourey Sidibe is not Precious; she is a natural performer. But we all have our insecurities. She used to see Mo’Nique, the plus-size actress and comedian, on television and pray to be like her. Now Mo’Nique is her co-star, playing her mother. What she wanted about Mo’Nique’s life was not necessarily the fame.

“I always thought she was really funny, but also she’s very confident in the way she looks,” Ms. Sidibe said. “She’s very happy in the way she looks, and that’s what I prayed about. At that time in my life, I wanted to be everybody else, but I wanted to want to be Gabbie.”She was speaking in the past tense.

“At this point,” she laughed, “I don’t think there’s anyone better than Gabbie.”

Sounds like a pretty good outlook to me. Keep a look out for this film coming out of the festival. It would be interesting to see if it can get wide distribution and whether anyone else can write a good story for a fat character.

Hungry is my friend and yours!

I accidentally watched a Weight Watchers commercial after noticing an adorable orange monster in a TiVo blur. I went to investigate only to discover that the poor fellow is being called "Hungry" and as an anti-mascot of sorts for Weight Watchers.

I guess Hungry is the bad guy in the spots, but it strikes me as a bit of a miscue by Weight Watchers' ad team as they made the personification of Hungry awfully adorable. I seriously want this as a doll. Me and Hungry would be best friends! And why not?

See, Hungry is totally awesome in the ads. He's always your hook-up for good food. Why would I complain about that? If I had a friendly orange monster who was offering me pizza, cake, pie, etc, I'd be pleased. I'd hug the fellow.

He could sure use the love after watching the commercial. See Weight Watchers, in their continuing effort to totally not be a diet (they pinky swear and everything! For reals this time) keeps being mean to our Orange buddy. The pull out a book he's standing on to make it fall. The trip him when he's trying to hook you up with a hot dog. They crush him a copier machine. He's awfully sympathetic for a supposed villain.

I feel bad for him. I mean, hungry isn't bad. Its natural and healthy. People get hungry for a reason. There is no more pride in "conquering" hunger than in conquering breathing by holding your breath. Hungry is just looking out for us, and I appreciate that.

I hearby suggest the fatosphere adopt Hungry as a mascot. He's being terribly mistreated over at "Stop Dieting. Start Dieting but pretending you're not" Central and he deserves a good and loving home.

Anti-fat Surgeon General?

Well, okay, ANY Surgeon General likely to be nominated in the current political climate from either party is going to be anti-fat acceptance. Still, I hardly see that as a reason to not draw attention to some of the attitudes presented by rumored leading candidate to be the next Surgeon General, Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN.

Back in 2007, he participated in the "Big Fat Blame Game", making a pitch to blame working mothers for fat children. Feministe rightly noted that his approach seems to absolve fathers of any blame, but there is another problem here. There was no good reason for the theory to begin with. Its just another, "gosh, there are more fat people than in 1970/1980/1960/etc. What has changed in our culture that we can glibly blame?" FatFu listed some of the many supposed vilains subjecting the world to fat people.

Though he has spoken out agains the "Thin Ideal" in Time Magazine, his approach is typical of the mainstream medical establishment. Its trying to thread a needle, as it were, in treating "thin ideal" eating disorders without addressing the fat panic that contributes to them. I regard it as the "Oh, but you're not fat" approach to self-esteem. Its not really about addressing the fears, but rather its about trying to contradict them in specific instances. I should stress that I think a lot of the examples he cites in the article aren't doing that, but I definitely feel that this is the approach Gupta is taking. Barbie is bad, sure, but he doesn't want to actually encourage everyone to feel that their bodies are okay. "Body Acceptance for Acceptable Bodies" is not okay, and it usually just works to subvert Size Acceptance in the same way Weight Watchers does with their "Diets Don't Work" ad campaigns.

This point is driven home in a different article: "Sizing Up Your Body", which puts on equal footing a problem of people thinking they are fat when they aren't, with people who aren't fat when they are. He makes the silly case that the problem with fat people is that they don't know they are fat or that they think this okay. This drives me crazy. Its so divorced from the real world. I'm sorry, but fat people KNOW they are fat. They are reminded constantly. The idea that the problem in our culture is that we're too easy on fat people is simply not credible, so it concerns me that Gupta is explicitly endorsing such a position. He revisits it in an even more absurd article taking doctors to task for not pressuing fat people to lose weight. He doesn't even base this criticism on any study showing that doctors aren't pressuring fat people to lose weight. Just that they don't always note it in their medical charts. He's assuming from this that it wasn't brought up. Again, from the shared experiences of countless fat people, I simply don't find it to be a credible position to suggest that doctors are going easy on fat patients.

Most frightening is Gupta advocacy for a "Fat Tax" proposal in San Francisco. Though most proposals that have gotten a serious airing to date (include the SF proposal) have focused on taxing products presumed to be at fault for the existance of fat people, many in the anti-fat movement have been agitating for even worse suggestions that would institute a direct financial penalty on people because of their weight. Note that Gupta essentially buries the fact that there is no proof that products with corn syrup cause fatness in his report. Isn't that a pretty important point to the matter? He still concludes that the idea is fine and that we should avoid corn syrup without offering any evidence of its faults. He just asserts it. The increasing talk of "Fat Taxes" scare the hell out of me, and I don't want someone who approves of them in any fashion as Surgeon General.

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has expressed his dissatisfaction with Gupta on different grounds, but ones which I think have some relevance to a fat acceptance appraisal of Gupta. His complaint is with Gupta's criticism of Michael Moore's film Sicko. Specifically that Gupta accused Moore of getting his facts wrong, but Gupta repeatedly fudged his own facts in doing so. Krugman notes that Gupta seemed to be dismissing Moore simply because he was an outsider. How could his facts be right? He's just a shock-doc director? That strikes me as much of the way the medical establishment treats fat acceptance and especially those scientist who question fat stigmatization. Its usually refutation through assertion. We aren't right because we aren't right. We can't be right, so we aren't right.

Fat Acceptance is not likely to get what they want, though. Even if Gupta is not picked, any likely alternative will surely tow the medical establishments line on fatness. Like I said, though, that's not a reason not to call them out for it.

I resolve nothing.

I was almost going to do some New Year's Resolutions this year until I remembered that I defiantly rejected the concept last year. Which was a good point, so I'm resolving nothing this year again. I may use the New Year as a reason to start doing some things I want to start doing, but screw "resolutions" and their self-guilt inducing BS. Our culture still regards it as little more than an excuse for a month-long diet commercial, so screw that.

Just like last year, this year I resolve nothing.

Yes means Yes: New Book

This may be tangentally related to Fat Acceptance, but I was reminded this evening of the forthcoming book activist Jaclyn Friedman co-edited, "Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape". Edited with Feministing's Jessica Valenti, the book is an anthology of contemporary feminist commentary on female sexuality and ending rape. I've been hearing nothing but good things about the collection and am sure its going a must-read and I wanted to let people know about it.

I was actually reminded because I was at Jaclyn's birthday party, so I suppose you can count me as a biased source. Jaclyn is friends with my girlfriend through Big Moves, where I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to some of Jaclyn's amazing poetry in recent years. I know she and Jessica Valenti have been very hard at work on this volume. In addition to a foreword by Margaret Cho, the book features contributions from feminists such as Jill Filipovic from Feministe, Lisa Jervis of Bitch Magazine, and, well, lots of others. Of particular interest to the fat-o-sphere, though, is an on-point contribution from Kate Harding entitled "How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman?"

The book can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com right now. You know what's more awesome than ordering it from Amazon, though? Going to your local book store and asking if they have it. And if they don't, asking them why not and to order you a copy.

Political Fa(c)t

So long as I'm railing against my usual targets, with election season upon us I'm especially puzzled by those who try to paint fat acceptance as some kind of suppressive force. That some FA is suppressing an anti-FA message. Seriously, I keep seeing people go after FA on such terms.

One group are the people deeply removed from things and have just imagined FA as some kind of fat promoting bogeyman to blame the epidemic of having to see fat people on. This would include stuff like John McCain's bizarre assertion that political correctness is hamstringing nutrition education, presumably in support of fat people. This group has never come close to FA so they at least have an excuse for being so badly misinformed, though its still their own fault for being so off the mark.

But you see the same line from people at fat blogs. There always seems to be someone at the ready to whine about how Fat Acceptance is keeping them down. I'm sorry, but what world are these people living in and how do I move there? I'd like the problems of fat acceptance to be too MUCH power. Here in the real world, though, this isn't remotely true. Fat Acceptance remains a profoundly marginalized political viewpoint and its simply not suppressing any oppositional views. Its hard for me not to see those complaints as really just railing against the fact that someone, somewhere is speaking differently than our weight loss culture. That their ideal is a world with no opposition to weight loss, so any differing viewpoint is thus farcically characterized as suppressing the unanimity they seek.

Because FA isn't keeping anyone's voice quiet in opposition to FA. Opposition to Fat Acceptance needs no support or leg-up from within FA. It is the status quo. It is indeed the extend of acceptable beliefs in our culture. Just look at the political facts on display in this election. There is no candidate for fat acceptance. Both candidates, both political parties have aggressively pandered to fat hatred in their platforms. As a fat activist, I have no luxury of considering the candidate who best represents my views, because neither do.

Fat acceptance is not marginalizing anyone. If you think for a second they are, you aren't seeing the forrest through the trees.