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I’ve got lots of school stuff to catch up on, so here’s a quick round-up of related topics in the blogosphere and news.

Congratulations to Harriet Brown, who announced this week that HarperCollins has purchased the rights to her next book, Brave Girl Eating. The memoir follows the Brown family’s struggle to cope with daughter Kitty’s anorexia. You can read Kitty’s story here. A brief summation of the book:

When Brown’s daughter developed anorexia at 14, Brown refused to accept the dismal track record of traditional approaches to eating disorders; this is the story of her family’s triumph over the disease, weaving together a parent’s perspective, a journalist’s point of view and issues of neurobiology and genetics. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Brown wrote about her family’s experience in the Times Magazine in 2006.

I’m still accepting blogs to be added to the Eating Disorders Digest feed. If your blog addresses eating disorders at least in part and you want to be added to the list, leave a comment here with your blog RSS feed address. Note: I have had to delete a blog off the list that ends every post with a running count of the blogger’s current weight, calories consumed, and exercise undertaken. While this feed is not intended to be anti-reality, I also want it to be as safe a place as possible for those struggling with eating disorders to go to. Detailing your own struggles with an eating disorder is fine, but I think posting a running count of your stats and weight loss goals aren’t appropriate for this feed, either. Another note: if you’d like to be added to the feed, please embed the feed on your site first. The feed is intended to be a cross-collaborative project, for both bloggers and readers of our blogs. You can view the feed here. Also, if you haven’t already, join the Eating Disorder Studies Yahoo group.

Size-zero models form a convenient coathook upon which the media like to blame many an eating disorder. But for me and others like Naomi Hooke, the development of our eating disorders has very little to do with ultra-thin models. Hooke explores the forces that led to her development of anorexia at age 11 in the British Independent - finding it had nothing to do with size-zero models.

Anorexia has often been perceived as a quest for model-like beauty, as a teenage fad or as a diet gone wrong. It has even been described as a lifestyle choice. Seldom is anorexia acknowledged as the life-threatening medical condition that it is… Sufferers are often presumed to pour over the pages of glossy magazines and starve themselves in their aspiration to become glamorous, thinner-than-thin sex goddesses. From my own experiences and from those of numerous other eating disorder patients I have met, I can say unequivocally that nothing could be further from the truth. Beauty has very little to do with eating disorders, and the desire to be thin is merely one of many symptoms. Rarely can a single “cause” be identified.

Although the fashion industry may be rife with anorexia, the majority of eating disorder patients have not become ill through catwalk influences. And nor are they models.

And finally, go and read 18-year-old Katie Muller’s fantastic essay “F.A.T.” over at the other TheFWord site:

There is no good reason why women should be so appalled by their natural size and inherent store of fat (women naturally have a higher percentage of fat on their bodies than men) but there is a simple reason why they are. We live, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise, in a man’s world. We are still, in a million small ways and plenty of big ones, submissive, convinced of our inferiority and full of contempt for our own sex. And to fit into the small space left for us in this man’s world, we have no choice but to shrink.

Shrink to fit, we are told, and reap the glorious benefits of success, money and even love. And when that never happens, reap the benefits of dying exhausted and being buried thin.

Muller’s conclusions on why aesthetic beauty standards are more stringent for women than for men fall in line with my own research interests: Women are encouraged to change their bodies so they don’t have the time nor the effort to change the world. As Miller explains:

Self-starvation is encouraged because as long as fat is seen as the enemy and ‘beauty’ the prize at the end of the rainbow, men are safe and women are trapped. Suddenly, from this perspective, eating disorders seem like an obvious solution, a practical reaction to society’s demands. They are so perfectly suited, in fact, to the job of undermining women that it would not be unreasonable to suppose they had been invented for that very purpose.

Muller, who also struggled with anorexia, understands what so many women in similar situations have come to understand: that “thin enough” is simply a journey, never a destination reached; that one can never be “thin enough” or “pretty enough” or “good enough” because the standards constantly shift, become higher and harsher. As she explains it:

We are all bashing our heads against the same brick wall. What are we trying to do? Break down the wall? It is not working is it? Perhaps that’s because we don’t need to break down the wall at all. We just need to stop bashing our heads against it.

Sage advice, indeed.

Comments? Critiques? Leave your thoughts on the stories above in the comments below.

Stand-up comedian, actor and writer Tom Naughton insists all we know about fat to be a load of bologna. In parody of and response to Morgan Spurlock’s mockumentary Supersize Me, Naughton’s Fat Head insists the so-called obesity epidemic has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC.

How does he set to disprove obesity stereotypes? He plays into them by setting out to show how one can lose weight while eating a fast food diet. You can watch the trailer below and other clips on his website.

I’m straddling the fence on this one. On one hand, it’s hilariously funny and represents a departure from the usual fat fear-mongering while also disproving tired stereotypes. But on the other, it’s still promoting weight-loss and a particular means of weight-loss, namely a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet. In his effort to dispel stereotypes of fatty and fast foods while demonstrating how one can lose weight and improve health by cutting carbs and sugar, Naughton is still reinforcing the good/bad food ideology. Still, I don’t think we ought throw the baby out with the bathwater. Given the dominant socio-political clime of the day, is it better to work with people than against people, while still appropriating channels and spaces for our own means? What do you think?

I do not often discuss my own personal dietary choices here, although I may discuss them on other sites in which I feel they are welcomed and appropriate. The reasons why are primarily twofold: Many readers here are actively battling with or recovering from dysfunctional relationships with food and I respect their struggles. My consistent platform has always been and will always remain that food itself is irrelevant; it is rather our relationships with food that are key. In that sense, what I had for dinner last night is moot.

My personal dietary choices are also informed by influences and beliefs that are unique and personal to me. I became vegetarian initially as a reaction to my eating disorder, but later became a committed vegetarian out of moral and ethical concern for animals and the environment, as well as the desire to live a cruelty-free lifestyle. I also identify as Buddhist, and because of my spiritual beliefs, I do not eat meat, drink alcohol or imbibe other drugs, and I try to do things that I feel do not harm other people, creatures or the environment. Because of this and other health concerns, I try to eat organic when I can afford to do so and I eat minimal processed foods. I also try to patronize businesses whose views are best aligned to my own and I donate support, both financial and otherwise, to organizations I feel promote causes I also believe in.

My spiritual beliefs, as well as my political, environmental and feminist ethos, are my own personal choices. Just as I hope others will respect my right to make choices that are right for me, I also hope I respect the rights of others to make choices they feel are best for them. This is why I do not include vegetarianism or alcohol abstinence or eco-consciousness as part of my fat rights or eating disorders awareness activist platforms and I think I have been largely successful in doing so.

Read the rest of this entry »

The belief that upward social mobility in the United States can be achieved with mere hard work and determination has existed almost as long as the country itself. America’s Protestant worth ethic has been encapsulated by people like Horatio Alger, who wrote a series of stories involving poor young men who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to achieve great success.

Weight-based discrimination is rampant today because of our culturally ingrained stereotypes of fatness and fat people. Fat people, it is assumed, are fat due to “lifestyle choices,” that being a willful overeating of “bad” foods and sedentary lifestyle. So-called obesity-related diseases are viewed to be a drain on our national economy, as they decrease work productivity and increase health care costs. And because of the conflation of fat with overconsumption, those rapacious fat people are also thought to represent a threat to the environment and the security of the nation state itself.

The world collectively sighs as it wonders why fat people won’t just practice dietary restraint, eat healthier foods, exercise and pay scads of money for diet programs, even if such programs have been shown to be largely ineffective. Why, oh why can’t and won’t fat people pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become thin, socially acceptable, and responsible citizens?

Maybe it’s because fatness isn’t always caused by inactivity and a scarfing down of Twinkies. As anyone who has struggled with weight will attest, weight loss and gain aren’t always simple matters of “choice.” Here are some physiological reasons why some people are fat:

Read the rest of this entry »

A roundup of related topics in the news…

Fat activist Jeanne Toombs has passed away due to complications of pneumonia. Am active board member of NAAFA, Toombs also spearheaded efforts to assist in the passing of the bill that would add height and weight to the protected classes in Massachusetts. Expressions of sympathy may be sent to her sister Nancy at ntb180 (at) comcast.net.

Via Shapely Prose: The magazine that’s working on reproducing Kate Harding’s BMI project is still actively looking for more women of color and women in their 40s and 50s to submit photos. If you fall into one or both of those categories, and either the overweight or obese BMI category, and are in good health (by your own definition), they would love to hear from you. Submission info is here.

Daniel Engbar, an associate editor at Slate magazine, wants people to shut up about the cost of obesity. Check out his editorial on the subject in the Dallas News. Calling current obesity scapegoating efforts “misleading” and “misguided,” Engbar argues it is the stigma of being fat - and not being fat in itself - that actually contributes to illnesses attributed to obesity and poor health. He rightfully calls for presidential candidates to pledge support for a federal ban on weight-based discrimination.

Speaking of weight-based discrimination… Anna Kirklund’s new book Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood has been released. Kirklund, an assistant professor of Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan, places the focus of fat rights squarely where it ought to be: civil rights. I’m definitely adding this one to my already growing summer reading list.

I’m featured in the newly released issue 6 of Pulse Zine, along with articles on coping with sizeism and sexism, the gender of group fitness, sexual abuse, a DIY on creating a zine and many more feminist-inspired topics. I received a copy of the previous edition before I agreed to the interview and I found it chockfull of feminist artwork, articles, affirmations and body-positive articles. For ordering information, see here.

Author Leslie Goldman of the blog The Weighting Game appeared on The Today Show last week for a segment on spring break and eating disorders. The story centers on Ashley Fillips, who fought and beat an eating disorder and is now an eating disorders activist. The segment focuses on spring break and eating disorders, but it’s important to note, by Ashely’s own admission, she struggled with disordered thinking and eating at a very young age. I don’t think the segment entirely simplifies eating disorders to spring break syndrome, but it does skate over other factors inherent to eating disorder development. Leslie shared some admissions from women she received during research for her book, Locker Room Diaries, including a woman who admitted that she and her friends were all doing cocaine so that they could fit into their bikinis for spring break. Click here for a video clip of the segment.

Diabulimia makes the news again, this time with an excellent feature in the Boston Globe. The term refers to people with Type 1 diabetes who skip or skimp on insulin doses in a dangerous attempt to lose weight. It’s been estimated that up to one-third of women with the disease engage in these behaviors. The article shares results from a recent Joslin Diabetes Center study of 234 women with type 1 diabetes. They found 10 deaths among women who had restricted insulin, compared to 16 among the larger group who had not. Those who restricted their insulin died on average 13 years younger - at 45, compared to 58.

Many patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy also experience a number of symptoms of eating disorders, according to findings from a Dutch study reported in the journal Sleep. Aside from the main features of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy, one of the more prominent symptoms of narcolepsy is an increase in body weight, along with some reports of symptoms of eating disorders in these patients. For more information on the study and its results, read here.

Comments? Critiques? Post your comments below.

Donatella Versace, sister of slain fashion mogul Gianni Versace, is this week’s profilee of Time’s 10 Questions feature. After her brother was killed in 1997, she took over the family business and built it into a global brand - but not for a global demographic. Asked one Time reader:

Q. Do you think the fashion industry should make clothes for plus-sized women?

A. Plus-sized women shouldn’t think of themselves as a size. They should think of themselves as women with rich goals in life. Size doesn’t mean, really, anything. You can carry your size with pride and dress in a way that you like.

After reading this I thought, “Wait a minute - Does Versace even make plus-size clothes?” Note that Donatella never quite answered the reader’s question and the company’s website doesn’t specify. Neiman-Marcus carries Versace, but doesn’t offer the brand in plus-sizes. Nordstrom also offers the line, but stops short at size 14, the size at which plus-sizes start.

So, how exactly can women wear their “size with pride and dress in a way that [they] like” if your fashion line doesn’t make clothes to fit their bodies? You can dress as you like, as long as what you like isn’t Versace? And I find this oh-so-empowering response to be rather disingenuous coming from the same agency that embraced the arrival of heroin chic and regularly features waif-thin emaciated models in its advertisements and on the runway.

You’d think that after daughter Allegra Versace was diagnosed and treated with anorexia last year the Italian clothier would be a bit more cognizant of the powerful and negative ways in which society and media make women feel about their bodies. If actions speak louder than words, what does the Versace line say to girls and women?

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” ~Margaret Mead

So my last post on “coming out” as a fat rights activists sparked lots of “I don’t consider myself an activist because….” kind of disqualifiers. I probably ought to have been more clear on how I personally define activist and for me, it’s not always the militant devotionalist marching on Washington.

I consider activism to be any action that serves to disrupt, oppose, or defy the established social or political status quo. The most effective and successful forms activism aren’t always the big think tank mega-conglomorganizations with big budgets and a paid full-time staff who can chase legislators around Washington all day throwing big wads of incentives their way; rather, its the thousands upon thousands of small personal choices individuals make every day that have the most far-reaching impact in producing changes in attitude and heart that truly make a difference. The personal is very much political.

Don’t think you can be an activist? Here are some of the many small and non-confrontational ways you can start fighting sizeism (and this applies to eating disorders activism or fat rights activism):

• Don’t contribute financially or otherwise to the already obese diet company coffers. Don’t purchase diet products. If a diet commercial comes on television, change the channel.
• Don’t support media publications that glamorize heroin chic or bony as beautiful. Do support media publications that show a diversity of sizes and an emphasis on health, not weight loss.
• Slap a sticker reading “This Promotes Eating Disorders!” or “This Promotes Healthy Body Image” on ads and articles and mail them to magazine editors. Stickers available for $5 a sheet (20) from the Renfrew Center.
• Spend your dollars at stores, doctors, restaurants that are size-friendly. For a list of winning and offending companies, see About-Face.
• Don’t engage in fat talk - that is, if a group of people start bemoaning the size of their thighs and how “bad” they are because they indulged in cheesecake, avoid it or talk up the positives about your own body. Don’t feel pressured to laugh when someone makes a size-related joke.
• Participate in size-friendly communities, comment on blogs, and join the conversation. Or start your own blog about your life, your lifestyle, your kids, your dog. Show the world you are human, and not a statistic.
• Take Harriet Brown’s “I Love my Body” pledge and reread it often.
• Support national and international organizations like NEDA, ASDAH, or COFRA in working towards larger change.
• Raise your children to be appreciative of size diversity and work to instill good self esteem in them. Be a mentor and a good role model for young girls in your life.
• Throw out your scale. Or, if this is too drastic, make the commitment to go a day without weighing yourself, then a week, then a month.
• Vote. Support candidates who promote mental health parity in health insurance and other issues important to you.
• Let go of fear. Don’t be afraid to do things just because you may be laughed at or criticized. Dare to wear tank tops in the summer or to go jogging in the park. Order what you really want off the menu, make a splash at the community pool, go to the gym. Learn to delight in the thump of your step, the resiliency of your body, the size of your heart.

And keep in mind, sometimes the best form of activism is not in trying to change the world, but in refusing to allow the world to change you.

What are some other ways we can empower ourselves and work towards fighting sizeism?

Since I am not in the habit of routinely jetting off to New York City to tape a national television show - yes, I know, hard to believe - I found myself in the rather awkward position of explaining to my currently-dieting editor and largely fat family why The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet wanted me on its program.

“Well, you see, uhh, I blog about fat rights…” You should have seen the look on my editor’s face. Luckily, he’s an awesome, progressive-minded guy who, in the three years I’ve worked for him, is no longer surprised by my eccentricities and all-around hippiness. Not to mention, he’s a very snappy dresser (Brandon, take a hint) and the best supervisor I’ve ever had.

It was like I was “coming out” as a fat rights activist and it felt vaguely uncomfortable, in a way declaring oneself to be a civil rights activist or feminist or even a gay rights activist - at the annual conference of Republican National Party, no less - never would. It was much like I imagine declaring one’s commitment to felling the rainforests to the Sierra Club or coming out as PeTA member at a cattle ranchers convention would be like.

I began my blog just more than a year ago, and while I am pretty transparent online, only a handful of Real Life People I know knew of my blog, namely my husband and my sister (who says I use too big of words for her to, like, understand and stuff - she’s in college to become a teacher, so help future generations). Both my family and my husband’s family knew I was in graduate school, but they knew little of my research or what it is I believe in or promote. And as the only democratic-leaning independent in a family of staunch Republicans, politics of any kind are topics best left untouched at family gatherings, no matter how firmly I believe Rush Limbaugh to be the love child of Mildred Lewis Rutherford and Nathaniel Bedford Forrest.

So, I was rather surprised today, to meet a Real Life Person who recognized me not from my blog, but from Big Fat Blog, which is, unarguably the quintessential of fat rights blogs. K works for a community paper covering news in some of the communities I also cover. We see each other on stories from time to time, and are pretty friendly. She’s about my same age and very personable, not to mention, she has the natural red hair I pay my stylist dearly for.

Oh, yes. And she’s thin.

K told me she recognized me in the photo Paul posted from the last Think Tank, and also saw clips from the morning show. “Wait,” I said. “You visit Big Fat Blog?”

“Oh yeah,” she replied. “I think it’s a neat movement.”

We didn’t have time to discuss it much - lots of people to network with and I had to vamoose for another appointment - but I would have loved to ask K what drew her to BFB or the movement in general. I realize there are thin people active in the movement, but most activists I know are inspired to act from personal experiences with sizeist discrimination - in short, they’re fat. Perhaps K was once fat or maybe she has loved ones who are fat. K’s editor is the same woman who gave me my journalistic break about seven or eight years ago by allowing me to freelance as a writer and photographer for the same paper. She’s considered super morbidly obese, and she and I often had talks about the ways in which fat people were treated badly and the unrealistic and hurtful stereotypes about fat people and us in particular. Perhaps K is also friendly with her editor and it is her that led K to BFB.

Then again, maybe K sees the movement for what it really is: a civil rights issue.

Do you regularly identify yourself as a fat rights activist? Why or why not. Or have you also had a “coming out” as either a fat rights activist or eating disorders activist? How has the experience been? Share your experiences below.

Kudos to alternative weekly San Diego CityBeat writer Kinsee Morlan on her fair and sensitive pro-fat article. I am quoted in the article, as are Paul Campos, NAAFA spokesperson Peggy Howell and others working to end size-based discrimination. And let me just say how awesome it feels to be quoted in an article alongside the great Paul Campos.

I think Kinsee may have confused me with Kate in one line - I can’t sit still or keep quiet for 15 minutes, let alone silence the chatter in my head long enough to do meditative yoga every day and the only picture of myself on my blog doesn’t really show much of my body at all. But, both are moot points in the light of such a lovely and positive article.

The story centers around a San Diego woman, Kathy Hernandez, and her Big Beautiful Women night at a local club there. I don’t particularly care for the BBW euphemism or the fetish some attach with it (also addressed in the article), but I think it’s fabulous that this group of women have found a way and means in which they feel empowered, beautiful, and fabulous. And even if the guys there are looking for “bigger-than-average racks of lamb,” it sure beats the alternative:

“Would it be acceptable for me to go over to a guy in a wheelchair and start berating him because he’s in a wheelchair?” asks Kathy. “That wouldn’t be socially acceptable. But three guys over there walking by and going, ‘Look at that fat cow.’ Is that socially acceptable? Right now it is. If I had to worry about these three guys coming in and looking at me with disgust and saying, “Eew, would you do her?’ I’ve actually heard that. What am I supposed to say? Should I call them assholes? I’ve done that before, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t do it every time.”

Abigail Saguy, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA, who’s written extensively on obesity and society, complements the story with some interesting context on the origins of how obesity has come to be epidemic’ized:

Saguy traced the origin of the term “obesity epidemic” to the mid-’90s, after a publication by CDC researchers noticed the increasing number of people who are overweight or obese according to the BMI. Soon after the report was released, Xavier Pi-Sunyer wrote an editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In it, he said, “If this were tuberculosis, we’d call it an epidemic.”

“So it was metaphorical at first,” Saguy explains, “but then the metaphor was dropped and people just use it.”

The piece is largely positive and I thank Kinsee for taking the time to research the issue and to understand what it is we’re saying. I particularly like these two lines:

But evolution for fat people is actually more like adaptation to a world that doesn’t understand or accept them… As things stand, fat people are still metaphorically sitting in the back of the bus.

Luckily, there are people out there like Kinsee who do understand, or at least, try to understand. I’d encourage everyone to write in to the San Diego CityBeat with letters of appreciation and praise, because you know who else will be writing in, too.

After I had lost about a third of my body weight on The Diet Turned Eating Disorder, friends, family and co-workers all encouraged me to stop (what they thought was) the diet. “You look great,” they’d gush and then more sternly, “Now stop dieting.”

I, of course, took their mostly well-intentioned compliments as indicators of jealousy and attempts to sabotage an increasingly consuming and sick desire to lose more and more and more weight. (I say “mostly” because there were some women who didn’t like it when I, their quintessential fat girl friend, became thinner than they). In my defense, I’d throw out those widely used BMI standards, which showed that despite my dramatic weight loss, my BMI remained firmly lodged in the overweight category. “I’ll stop when I’m considered an average weight,” I reassured everyone.

It’s amazing how easily the lies come when you have an eating disorder.

My weight did eventually reach that magical average range on the BMI scale, but by that time my “diet” had long ceased being about weight or BMI. And by that point, my body was so beaten and worn down and I was so suicidally depressed from malnutrition and the eating disorder that I couldn’t even enjoy my newly-won thindom. Still, it’s probably a good thing I never saw this news article:

It seems that measuring body fat, rather than tracking your weight on a body mass index scale, can more accurately identify whether you need a lifestyle overhaul to lose weight.

“Using criteria based on body adiposity (fatness) rather than body weight would result in a much greater proportion of the study population receiving recommendations for weight loss,” said Dr. Ottavia Colombo of the University of Pavia in Italy.

The study referenced examined 23 men and 40 women, aged 20 to 65 years, who underwent body composition analysis. The volunteers were reported to be healthy, but led sedentary lives and were not following a low-calorie diet (how low is low?). Researchers compared BMI and body-fat measurements of each person, along with waist circumference and total body fat percentage and found that while BMI identified 11 percent of the group in need of weight loss, waist circumference measurements indicated 25 percent needed to lose weight.

Keep in mind: These same researchers are most likely laboring under the demagoguery of medical studies heavily influenced by and even funded by corporate special interests. It’s disputable how body fat negatively affects the health of any of these study participants and its questionable if the 25 percent even need to lose weight.

Despite adding another log to the fire that is increasingly incinerating any shred of BMI reliability, the article, of course, quickly cautions those readers with BMIs in the overweight category not to get overly optimistic:

But don’t get too excited if your BMI is still in the “Overweight” category - it doesn’t necessarily mean that the index has got it all wrong, ad you’re in prime health. Researchers found that the BMI Index usually under identifies risk, meaning that even those categorized as “Normal” might have a risky level of body fat.

Emphasis mine. BMI standards have continually been lowered so that more people qualify as overweight and obese and yet the standards under identifies risk? How fortunate for diet and weight loss companies if even those whose BMIs are considered average are also in need of weight loss. Does this make underweight the new paradigm of good health? Boy, talk about an anorexic ideation.

This article should, no doubt, please Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, who encourages people to reduce their weights toward the low end of the government-approved “normal” BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9 (the low end of the range is 108 and 129 pounds for women and men respectively). By this measurement, even rampant fat-hater MeMe Roth, who claims to have a BMI of 20, would be considered fat.

The article author might want to apply the logic in her next few lines to BMIs that fall outside that narrow and myopic realm considered “average.”

The next time you check out your own BMI categorization, keep in mind that the number can’t tell you everything about your health. Are you physically active and do you eat well? If you can answer an honest “yes” then you can probably get rid of that BMI bookmark.

Check, check and done.