The-F-Word.org

Here’s five new-to-us blogs we love.  If you aren’t reading them already, go have a look.

• Operation Beautiful:   Operation Beautiful is simple: all you need is a pen and a piece of paper…  So says site editor Caitlin, who’s on a mission to leave positive, body-affirming notes in public spaces and invites you to do the same.

• The Manfattan Project: “A collection of photographs of stylish everyday people in New York City. These people are beautiful, they are well-dressed, they are confident. They are also, without apologies or contradictions, FAT.”

• Men Get Eating Disorders Too: Okay, so it’s technically not a blog, but the site does feature personal stories and inspirational articles all penned by men with eating disorders in an effort to dismantle the gender stereotype keeping so many men from seeking help for their disorders.

• More of Me To Love: The site’s mission is to “promote and spread the healthiness and happiness that you deserve through our welcoming community, certified experts and empowering programs. But More of Me to Love is more than the sum of its parts: it’s a lifestyle of living better and loving yourself.”

• The Plus Runner:  Blogger Sallie has completed 12 half-marathons and another dozen triathlons and she’s done it all in sizes ranging from 16 to 22.  Her goal is to “encourage more future runners, walkers, hikers, to hit the road, and redefine your life as an active person.”

Know of any other awesome blogs or websites?  Post ‘em in the comment below.

Slate.com has one of the best histories of BMI I’ve ever seen and why, despite it’s demonstrated ineffectiveness, doctors nonetheless persist in using it.  The story, while succinct, is still two pages long, so I’ll paraphrase the highlights here, supplemented with some of my own commentary:

Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet devised what we now know as the BMI equation in 1832 as a way to define the “normal man.”  He never intended for the equation (weight equals height squared) to be used to determine body fat — his project was intended to describe the standard proportions of the human build.  The equation was largely ignored by the medical community even though insurance companies began using somewhat vague comparisons of height and weight among policyholders beginning in the early twentieth century.   Slate writer Jeremy Singer-Vine doesn’t go in much detail about these tables, but I’ve written on their history here.

Medical researchers searched for an accurate, uniform way to measure fatness for decades when in 1972, physiology professor and obesity researcher Ancel Keys published his “Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity,” a landmark study of more than 7,400 men in five countries.  Keys considered the various height-weight formulas in existance and found Quetelet’s equation to be the best marker of body-fat percentage.  He renamed this number the body mass index or BMI.  As Singer-Vine reports, the new number caught on among researchers who had previously relied on slower and more expensive measures of body fat or on the broad and ambiguous categories defined by the insurance companies.  The number also sowed the seeds for the later and continuing bombardment of anti-obesity research.  “The cheap and easy BMI test allowed [researchers] to plan and execute ambitious new studies involving hundreds of thousands of participants and to go back through troves of historical height and weight data and estimate levels of obesity in previous decades,” writes Singer-Vine.

At first BMI was used by epidemiologists in studies of population health, but was quickly adopted by doctors who wanted a quick and easy way to measure body fat in their patients.  By 1985, the National Institutes of Health began defining obesity according to body mass index.  At first, the thresholds were established at 27.8 for men and 27.3 for women.  Then in 1998, the NIH consolidated the threshold for men and women — even though the relationship between BMI and body fat is different by sex — and added the category of overweight.  The new, drastically lowered thresholds were now 25 for overweight and 30 for obesity.  It’s worth adding here that many who were on the “independent” board making the recommendations for the new lower cutoffs had ties to the commercial weight-loss industry and stood to profit financially should more people be considered overweight and obese.

Here’s the kicker: Like Quetelet, Keys never intended for BMI to be used in this way.  In fact, his original paper warned against using BMI for individual diagnoses, since the equation ignores variables like a person’s age or gender, and I would also add, also their ethnicity, frame size and muscle mass ratio. Writes Singer-Vine:

It’s one thing to estimate the average percent body fat for large groups with diverse builds, Keys argued, but quite another to slap a number and label on someone without regard for these factors…  Now Keys’ misgivings are gaining traction across the world of medicine: BMI simply doesn’t work when it comes to individual measurements.

No matter how attentive they might be, health professionals have increasingly used body mass index to justify lifestyle recommendations for their patients. And online BMI calculators—there’s even one hosted by the NIH—invite people to diagnose themselves without any medical supervision whatsoever. Faulty readings could promote a negative self-image among healthy people and lead them to pursue unnecessary diets. Or the opposite problem: People with a little too much body fat might be lulled into a false sense of complacency by a misleading BMI.

Singer-Vine points out (as I’ve noted before) that waist-to-hip ratios are a much more accurate way of determining the kinds of body fat that might actually pose health risks. And WHR, as it’s called, is just as easy and quick to record as BMI yet few doctors have made the switch.  Why?  WHR require slightly more time and training than it takes to record BMI and they don’t come with any official cutoffs that can be used to make easy assessments. “The body mass index is cheap and easy, and it has the incumbent advantage,” concludes Singer-Vine.  “In short, BMI is here to stay—despite, but also because of, its flaws.”

The health dangers of anorexia are well known, especially by those who suffer from the disorder, but what I don’t see often discussed is how an eating disorder can affect one’s sex drive. Fox’s Sexpert Yvonne Fulbright tackles this thorny issue in today’s column.

The majority of sufferers are sexually naïve and exhibit sexual disgust. Full of body hate and extremely self-conscious, they see themselves as less sexually appealing and are less interested in sexual activity than others.

Of the anorexics who are sexually active, many report lower rates of overall sexual activity and orgasm, and higher rates of negative emotions during sex. They also rarely engage in sexual fantasy. But other studies, like one published in the journal Psychological Medicine, report that some females with anorexia report increased sexual activity, despite lowered libido.

This is because many women suffering from this eating disorder become hypersexual, using sex as an expression of power. They enjoy the control involved, even when it becomes self-destructive.

Fulbright goes on to give an astute analysis of how anorexia affects the body and sex drive:

When a female severely reduces her intake of food to the point she’s consuming hardly anything, naturally, her reproductive system shuts down.

With low body fat, her body fails to produce sufficient amounts of sex hormones, namely estrogen. Thus, she’ll quit menstruating, making pregnancy difficult for those hoping to reproduce. These endocrinal changes have a domino effect, starting with a lack of vaginal secretions.

This loss of vaginal lubrication makes intercourse painful and uncomfortable. As a result, many develop an aversive reaction to sex and further loss of interest. Lack of orgasm is also common in women with anorexia nervosa.

Ending on a brighter note, Fulbright notes other research that indicates weight restoration might also bring about an increase in libido.  Matthew Tiemeyer at About.com has a more detailed rundown of how and why anorexia affects one’s sex drive.

In related news, a new study out in the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests that women who have greater emotional intelligence — that is, being more attuned with their bodies, feeling and emotions, as well as that of others — have more orgasms.  Lead author Andrea Burri said: “Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women’s sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner.”

* Note: The title of this post is a play on Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book “Sex and the Single Girl.”  I usually prefer people-first language, like a girl with anorexia, or a woman with an eating disorder.

While doing some research for the graduate article I’m writing on the genderization of meat, I stumbled across two truly bizarre cases straight out of the Stone Age.

The first is that of Ryan Pacifico, a Long Island man and former trader with Calyon in the Americas, who recently filed suit against his former boss, Robert Catalanello, and company for unspecified damages. What’s Pacifico’s beef? Pacifico has no beef, and therein is the problem. According to the New York Post:

Ryan Pacifico says he was mercilessly mocked, labeled “a homo” and canned for not eating meat.

“You don’t even eat steak, dude. At what point in time did you realize you were gay?” the suit quotes beef-loving boss Robert Catalanello as saying. Catalanello did everything he could to make Pacifico uncomfortable – including only ordering hamburgers and pepperoni and sausage pizzas for the weekly team lunches.

The boss chose a steakhouse as a site for a team building dinner, and another broker suggested they go someplace else because Pacifico was a vegetarian. “He was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? We’re going anyway,’ ” Pacifico recalled. When a coworker asked what Pacifico would eat, Catalanello said, “Who the f- – - cares? It’s his fault for being a vegetarian homo.”

And, of course, what better marker of manhood than eating a slab of blood red meat than to eat said carcass off a human platter of beautiful women. In what InGameNow, a networking/chat site for sports fans, dubs the “Ultimate Super Bowl Tail Gate Food,” raw bacon is slathered over the nipples and genitalia of couple of “uber hot girls” to form a “meat bikini.” (Pics to follow after the jump because they are most definitely NSFW.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Multiple studies have documented the prevalence of eating disorders amongst female athletes. A study published last year by researchers at the University of Denver revealed that female athletes and exercisers tend to exhibit eating disorder symptoms more often than those who don’t exercise as regularly. And at least one-third of female athletes have some type of disordered eating, according to two studies of college athletes done by eating disorder experts — for more on these studies, read here.

Now a new report, authored by Dr. James L. Glazer of the Maine Medical Center in Portland warns of the rise in eating disorders amongst male athletes, too. Glazer says that he’s increasingly seeing problematic eating behavior among male athletes in even recreational kinds of activities, like cycling triathlons and Nordic skiing. The problems first arise after an athlete loses a few pounds as the result of training, he explains.

“Often he’ll notice that he’s getting faster and that his placement when he competes is getting higher and better,” he added. “That will change what is a good and a healthy dieting pattern into one that becomes a little problematic and dangerous.”

Eventually, Glazer noted, a man may lose so much weight that his performance starts to suffer. Seeing this change for the worse may be enough to convince him to change his habits for the better, he added.

“Many men can turn things around just with a little bit of increased awareness about nutrition and healthy weight,” Glazer said.

I find Glazer’s quotes here interesting on several levels. The scenario presented mirrors the experiences of many female athletes with an eating disorder, but as Glazer explains it, male athletes with an eating disorder seem to have a much easier time recovering from an eating disorder than their female counterparts. In the cases of disordered male athletes, an eating disorder isn’t a proxy for an emotional issue, insists Glazer, but rather driven by performance and easily resolved once that performance begins to suffer for it.

Perhaps males with eating disorders do represent an entirely new eating disorder beast altogether, but most I know with eating disorders, myself included, are already quite familiar with nutrition basics — we choose just not to practice it for ourselves. If I had spent the countless hours I put into pouring over health and nutrition and weight-loss magazines during my eating disorder days instead into a degree program in nutritional science, I’d probably have a degree in it by now. And I find it difficult to fathom that eating disorder recovery is just a nutrition class away. Nutrition counseling is a part of recovery, but it’s more an adjunct to cognitive therapy.

I am in agreement with Glazer in that the current emphasis on obesity and inactivity has led many health professionals to overlook the potential for eating disorders in not only men, but also women. Not only are current anti-obesity approaches encouraging development of eating disorders, they’re also counterproductively encouraging obesity. But that’s a whole other discussion and one I’ve gone into more detail on here and here.

What do you think about Glazer’s assessment of male athletes with eating disorders? Is he on the mark? Misguided? Share your thoughts below.

Despite poll and pundit predictions the past few weeks giving Barack Obama a healthy lead, recent electoral history kept me cautiously optimistic on his chances. And then Ohio was announced as a blue state and I knew it was all in the bag — no Republican has ever won the presidency without the Buckeye State. Even my low-information-voter sister calling and angrily insisting that Obama would be sworn in on the Koran couldn’t damper the swell of absolute excitement/joy/hope/relief that arose as I watched our nation make history. One hundred forty-five years after Lincoln emancipated slaves in America and 44 years after the Civil Rights Act outlawed racial segregation, our national finally has an African-American president. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it and I’m overjoyed that, in some small way, I helped to make that happen.

Godspeed to you, President-elect Obama, and to all of us.

Read his full speech here.

Reproductive Rights

• South Dakota abortion ban. Failed.
• Colorado Personhood amendment. Failed.
• Check out NARAL’s round-up of winning pro-choice candidates.
• California Issue 4 (parental-notification requirement for abortion). Failed.

Anti-Gay Measures:

• California Proposition 8 (gay marriage ban). Passed.
• Florida amendment 2 (gay marriage ban). Passed.
• Arizona Proposition 102 (gay marriage ban). Passed.
• Arkansas Act 1 (bans unmarried couples — hence gay couples — from adopting or fostering children). Passed.
• Connecticut Question 1 (would allow change to constitution, thus clearing the way for anti-gay and anti-choice amendments). Failed.

Anti-Immigrant:

• Oregon Measure 48 (would strictly limit teaching students new to English in their native language). Failed

Anti-Equal Opportunity:

• Colorado Amendment 46 (initiative to end race- and gender-based affirmative action programs). Too-close-to-call.
• Nebraska Initiative 424 (would ban race- and gender-based affirmative action programs). Passed.

New marketing research by toy manufacturer Martin Yaffe gives some cause for celebration. The company put this year’s top Christmas toys to the test, with seven out of 10 girls opting to play with toys designed for boys over the traditional girls’ alternatives.

All disgust at the perpetuation of gender roles aside, here’s the real cause celeb: Bob the Builder emerged as the top coveted character this Christmas, outshining girl favorites like Barbie and Bratz.

Barbie, of course, has breasts so massive her slender frame would not be able to support such heaving bosoms, while the more recent Bratz dolls have increasingly come under fire for contributing to the sexualization of girls.

The American Psychological Association recently released research that shows exposure to sexy images from an early age has a devastating impact on mental and physical health, leading to low self-esteem, depression and the onset of eating disorders.

Apparently, colleges are but mere breeding grounds for children of the devil. Or so says the fundamentalist preacher man and company who spouted this and other such hate-mongering on the “designated free speech” area at the University of Cincinnati, where I attend classes.

I couldn’t help but stop and listen in morbid curiosity yesterday as “Brother Mike” shouted out his interpretation of Christianity. Yesterday he was alone; today, my friend Ryan tells me he brought friends. Here’s a sampling of Brother Mike’s views (yes, I wrote them down verbatim because I didn’t think people would believe me otherwise).

On race relations…
“Martin Luther King is burning in hell.”

On masturbation…
“Every masturbator is a confused homosexual.” (They say even babies masturbate. So ergo, is one then “born” a confused homosexual?)

On sin and the Christian concept of original sin…
“Sinners aren’t Christian. Sinners are children of the devil. I am not a sinner because I am a Christian.” (Boy, this one sure does go against everything I was taught in Sunday School)

On women and women-related issues…
“Women have strayed from their natural uses.” (Natural uses as in, say, dick warmers?)

Of course, the sin of abortion has its own very special place in Satan’s basement of hellish horrors. But one girl asked Brother Mike about cases involving rape and incest. He said:

“You girls should dress more modestly. You’re asking for it. Close your legs.” (Right. Closing one’s legs when a man is forcing them brutally apart is a little difficult, Brother Mike)

And so on and so on, ad nauseum.

Ryan, who happens to be very secure with his openness as a gay man, called me today with news that Hate-Mongering Part Two had only gotten louder and more violent. According to Ryan, the group even devised a “god hates fags” song that they tried to make the crowd perform like some divinely-inspired musical number.

I wasn’t surprised when Ryan told me of the group’s proclamations of hate against gays, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who believes the world to be older than 6,000 years. But I was shocked by his next words. He said the group was singling out larger women – and calling them whores.

I stopped Ryan mid-sentence and asked for clarification. But my ears did not deceive.

Ryan said – and he recorded such incidents on film – that these “men of god” were picking out fat women in particular – any such woman who happened to merely be walking by the spectacle on their way to class, the bookstore or elsewhere on the campus they pay to attend classes at – and were very vocally calling them whores and sinners and proclaimed that they were surely going to hell.

Were they picking on the thin girls also, I asked Ryan. Oh, they were, he said, but it was mostly larger women and especially any woman who sported large, natural breasts who bore the brunt of their biblical condemnations.

It seems as if fat women are quarantined in either one of two bipolar extremes: either fat women are desexualized to the point of invisibility, or they’re hyper-sexualized to the point where fat becomes fodder for fetishism.

This is the scene from yesterday. I’m going to check with Ryan about posting video clips to YouTube.

UPDATE
May 24 – 3:45 p.m.
I stopped by campus again today and the fundies were still on campus. There were two preachermen and two women. The two women didn’t talk and the preachermen were quick to remind us how god placed man over woman, and that women cannot teach men.

I’ve been in contact with several people at the university, including Director of Public Safety Eugene Ferrara, who patronized me with a very asinine email about freedom of speech and the First Amendment. I am a journalist; I know the first amendment. But there is a vast difference between free speech and hate speech which advocates and promotes violence.

As students, what Ryan and I are most upset about isn’t the vitriolic spewing of hate emanating from these miscreants; it’s that the university has failed in fostering an atmosphere of true dialogue, where more than one side of a debate is presented. There is a total lack of transparency at UC; although they knew how controversial and potentially offensive these speakers would be, the university failed to notify any group on campus so that they would have ample time to apply for permits and present alternate views other than “You’re all children of the devil and you’re going to burn in hell.”

I’ve inquired numerous time to numerous offices at the college, including Public Safety, and have yet to be given the policy and procedure on how guest speakers receive these permits. I find it highly ironic that a fundamentalist speaker, with no ties to the university, can discover this procedure, yet I, as a paying student, constantly run into brick walls.

Ryan’s editing the videos today, and plans to upload them to YouTube soon. I’ll keep you all posted.