The-F-Word.org

With the exception of Monday’s behemoth of a post, posting will be pretty light again this week.  I’m mad crazy busy with both work stuff and a few personal projects and now with the sun making its grand reappearance along with blue skies and spring-like temps, will most likely be spending any and all leisure time soaking in the vitamin D and preparing my cottage garden for planting season.  In the meantime, I urge you to take up a call issued today by Dan Savage.  Dan might not totally *get it* on issues of fat stigma and discrimination, but he’s right on when it comes to the case of Constance McMillen, an out teenage lesbian and senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi.  Dan writes:

When [Constance] asked if she could attend prom with her girlfriend, she was told no. When Constance pressed her case, the Itawamba County School Board canceled prom rather than allow Constance to attend with her girlfriend. The school board had to know what would happen next: The other students blamed Constance for getting prom canceled and “ruining senior year.” Constance is now being harassed and bullied.

The school board claims it canceled prom to avoid “distractions.” Now it’s up to us—to decent people everywhere—to make sure that bigotry and discrimination are a much bigger distraction for the Itawamba County School District than inclusion and tolerance ever could’ve been.

E-mail, call, and fax Itawamba Schools superintendent Teresa McNeece (tmcneece@itawamba.k12.ms.us, phone 662-862-2159 ext. 14, fax 662-862-4713) and Itawamba Agricultural principal Trae Wiygul (twiygul@itawamba.k12.ms.us, 662-862-3104). Then join the Facebook page “Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom.” And, finally, make donations to the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (www.mssafeschools.org), which is organizing an alternate prom that will welcome all students, and make a larger donation to the ACLU LGBT Project (www.tinyurl.com/yl9mvkb).

Call, write, fax, donate. Constance needs to know that there are people all over the world who are on her side. And, more importantly, Itawamba County Schools needs to know that we’re not going to let them get away with this. Be respectful, but be relentless. Let’s show these bigots what a real distraction looks like. Get ‘em.

My best friend in high school transferred to my school because of the emotional and physical abuse and harassment she received from students and even a few teachers after taking a girl to the prom at her old high school.  One of the chief reasons I think we bonded is that while I was a Rush-parroting conservative Republican at the time (like my parents),  I, too, was often on the receiving end of emotional and physical abuse and harassment because I was fat.  That was more than 13 years ago and yet how very little times have changed.  As Shirley Chisholm said, ““In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing – antihumanism.”  We’re all in this together, folks, so take a few minutes to help Constance out.

This month is Black History Month and this week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and Stephanie Armstrong addresses both in an interview on “Saturday Mornings with Joy Keys,” an interactive, live Internet talk-radio show that focuses on “providing people with tools to enrich and advance their lives mentally, physically, monetarily and emotionally.”  Stephanie  is the author of the new memoir Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia, in which the now 40-something, recovered, married mother of one daughter and two stepdaughters documents her descent into bulimia in her early 20s and describes her struggles as a black woman with a disorder consistently portrayed as a white woman’s disease.  The Brooklyn native also examines the “bootylicous” black woman stereotype and why the black community’s “code of silence” often leaves black women with eating disorders suffering in silence.  The work is being hailed as the first book by and among black women about eating disorders.  You may remember that Stephanie also answered the-F-word’s questions a few months ago.

Guests included Stephanie and Laurie Vanderboom, program director for the National Eating Disorders Association, which sponsors and coordinates National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.  A few interview highlights

Joy: What do you (NEDA) see when you have these programs?  Do you see a lot of African American women coming to the programs?

Laurie: We’re just beginning to and we’re just beginning to reach out.  There’s so much shame involved in an eating disorder that people hesitate to step up.  Stephanie, wouldn’t you agree that no matter what your racial make-up…

Stephanie: Absolutely, but especially coming from a culture that doesn’t support therapy, that doesn’t support getting outside help, and risking falling outside of the strong black woman archetype that we’re raised believing and have to become.  It’s hard to disassociate yourself with that image to get the help you need.

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Stephanie: One of the things I always talk about, especially in the black community, is that we don’t have an awareness of what exactly bulimia is.  It’s like you go to someone’s house and they’re drinking that dieter’s tea.  That’s bulimia.  Laxative abuse is bulimia.  Diuretic abuse is bulimia.  Compulsive exercising is bulimia.  It’s like we think it’s just throwing up, but it’s not just throwing up.

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Joy: I was talking with a professor of mine and he mentioned that psychologists don’t diagnose African American women properly with eating disorders, because they’re not used to seeing a African American woman coming to their office with this issue. Stephanie, do you feel that that’s the case?

Stephanie: Absolutely. Absolutely. I am constantly talking to women — some who are therapists, some who are young — who are constantly misdiagnosed. I’ve had doctors say, ‘Oh, you don’t have an eating disorder. African Americans don’t have eating disorders.’ I had a young woman call me yesterday – she goes to Clark Atlanta College and she’s at the American University in DC working on an exchange and she’s doing a paper in journalism and decided to do a paper on blacks and eating disorders because her aunt was bulimic and died from it. She calls me up and she said her teacher said, ‘Well, the problem is that there aren’t really that many black women with eating disorders, so that’s going to be a hard paper to do.’ It’s that overall belief that we don’t exist. (she briefly cites a rundown of research showing the prevalence of eating disorders among black women and girls, including this study) …the research is seeping in, but it’s still not getting the attention.

And it’s not just black women with eating disorders who are thought to be virtually non-existent.  Running Tiptoe recently posted a review of a recent “Intervention” episode featuring an Hispanic woman with an exercise addiction and a history of bulimia.  In her review, she offered this link to this 2006 study of “eating disturbances among Hispanic and native American youth,” in which it was found a much more significant pattern of disordered eating behaviors than previously thought.  There are more stats and studies on Hispanic women and eating disorders listed in this 2003 news report.*

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, eating disorders continue to persist in public opinion as a disease young, white girls from middle-class and wealthy backgrounds develop.  But eating disorders are the great equalizers: food is one of the few legal “drugs” out there; everyone needs it to survive;  and in industrialized nations, at least, is widely available and relatively cheap.  That, combined with the constant affirmations of weight loss as morally good and idolization of thinness saturating virtually every facet of our lives, and it’s no wonder that  those with emotional issues and unfulfilled needs might turn to food and the body to express a pain they cannot put into words.

Black girls and women with eating disorders.  Hispanic girls and women with eating disorders.  Adult women with eating disorders.  Boys and men with eating disorders.  Orthodox Jewish girls and women with eating disorders.  Poor girls and women with eating disorders.  We. All. Exist.

* For more information on eating disorders amongst non-white populations, see here.

I love me some Whole Foods’ vegan General Tso’s chicken, but I seem to have lost my appetite after reading that Whole Foods is discriminating against its fat employees by offering their thinner coworkers as much as a 10 percent additional employee discount.  Jezebel has the scoop.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explains the program in a letter, reproduced below. Apparently it’s part of an initiative to reduce health care costs, which is interesting since Mackey is against the health care reforms that would actually reduce costs for all people.

Note that Mackey knows BMI isn’t a perfect measure of health, but at least it’s cheap! Even more fun, though, is the poster for the new Healthy Discount program, breaking down exactly what BMI range his minions need in order to get various discounts on his Tofu Pups.

If your BMI is above 30, you’ll get to keep the original 20% employee discount, but you’ll paying more than your thinner co-workers, who can knock as much as 30% off. Because if public health research has taught us anything, it’s that reducing people’s buying power totally makes them healthier. Stay classy, Whole Foods.

(copies of the announcements are available after the jump)

To put this into perspective: to receive the maximum 30 percent employee platinum discount, a 5-foot-4-inch Whole Foods employee would have to weigh less than 140-pounds and a 6-foot employee less than 177-pounds.  That is, of course, assuming they also meet the attendant platinum levels cholesterol, smoking and blood pressure requirements.  And because this is all in the name of health, say that same 5-foot-4-inch employee meets all the cholesterol, smoking and blood pressure requirements of the platinum level but they weigh 175-pounds, which means that they have a BMI of 30.  Their added discount?  Nada.

Whole Foods is careful to point out that they’re not penalizing employees who do not participate or who do not meet their admittedly “imperfect” bio-markers for health — all employees will keep their basic 20 percent discount — but, in effect, they are penalizing these workers by selectively rewarding those who hand over their private medical files and meet incentive requirements.  Whole Foods CEO John Mackey cites an attempt to curb rising health care costs as the impetus for the program, but do the ends justify the means?  Ironically, the company’s plan to slenderize employees by dangling before them an organic carrot may actually work to increase health premiums in the long run.  Remember that many an eating disorder begins as a simple diet and desire to “eat healthy.”  Now consider that eating disorders alone cost U.S. companies about $3.8 billion a year in lost productivity.

By rewarding a BMI of 24 — a full point below what is considered the benchmark of “overweight” — Whole Foods is not-so-subtly indicating its preference that a lower BMI is better and ideal, thus contributing to an atmosphere in which employees who do not meet this standards are made to feel ostracized and targeted.  These blanket standards also ignore genetic, gender, age and ethnic differences across groups, thereby directing this sense of corporate hostility, however passive, toward those employees who may already be among the most vulnerable in the workplace: minorities, women and senior citizens.  Would we tolerate this kind of “incentive” if it were directed at other groups of workers?  Consider this: in at least half the states, marital status isn’t a condition protected by state or federal anti-discrimination laws.  Many other states, like Ohio, are “at-will” employment states, meaning that workers can be fired without just cause (so long as its not based on unlawful discrimination, which even then must be proven).  Whole Foods could also save a lot of money both in terms of productivity and health care costs if they offered similar incentives to employees who make the “lifestyle choice” to remain single, childless or who limit their family sizes to a number that’s more cost-effective for the company’s bottom line.

Absurd!, you gasp.  Unfair!  A person’s marital or parental status has nothing to do with their work performance!

Exactly.

Read the rest of this entry »

So I just watched the trailer for Precious, a new sledgehammer of a film by executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah, and it sent chills down my spine.

The film is based on the book, Push, by Sapphire, about an abused fat teenage black girl in Harlem, and seems to encapsulate the range of feminist topics: domestic abuse, racism, sizeism, poverty, sexual assault, illiteracy… I’m not a fan of Tyler Perry’s fat-lady drag slapstick comedies, but it appears as if his and Oprah’s role is mostly that of lending it their public support. The film appears to depict the stereotypical “black welfare queen” (played by Mo’Nique), but while the inspiring teacher (Paula Patton) is near supermodel perfection, at least she isn’t the tired “Nice White Lady” cliche. And newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, who plays Precious, is an Actual Fat Woman and not some thin star swimming in a fat suit. The film opens in theaters in November and is said to be an Oscar contender.

Reader Clare Burgess submitted the essay below about a male relative who recently tried Alli, otherwise known as the “poopy-in-your-pants” diet pill that’s been determined to be “barely effective” in clinical trials.  I think Clare’s essay is a classic example of how even men — who’ve historically not faced such stringent social pressures to diet and look a certain way as have women — are now succumbing to some of the same body image insecurities and weight-based stigma society has long heaped upon women.  Clare, 22, lives in the South West of England and blogs about her struggles with depression, feminism, volunteering with Girlguiding UK and Oxfam, and pin cushions at her blog so long as it’s black.

When he slipped the pill into his mouth it fascinated everyone. A pill that could make you thin. You can eat but the fat won’t stick to you.

We were having a meal after my cousin’s wedding and I could see the thoughts ticking over in my relative’s brain. Right then and there it seemed brilliant. An hour later they would pull their faces and think it weird. But when he took the pill we where all held captive by its promise.

What shocked me the most was who was taking it. Ever since he met my Mum they had been dieting together. She’d goad him over the table that she had lost more than him. Or the other way round. Or they would explain their fascinating new food rules.

You can imagine how well it all works. The little man on the Wii Fit is just the same size as he’s always been.

Yet, oddly enough, it doesn’t really affect anything but his clothing size. That is why I was so shocked he would take Alli. Surely he realises that his body has achieved some incredible things and weight never stopped him.

This is a man who takes long bike rides, is incredibly active in a swimming club who has travelled the world to climb mountains. His body can take him up a mountain; it just can’t get rid of his tummy.

He sees that as a problem, my Mum sees that as a problem, his Doctor sees that as a problem. And because a chemist saw it as a problem he was given Alli.

He spent his summer holiday hovering near toilets and avoiding fatty food so he didn’t have to deal with the side effects. He couldn’t go on the beach or enjoy fireworks without thinking about it.

It’s time to write a conclusion, but I’m not sure how. I want to say self-hatred is blind to our achievements. That it will hit us whatever we have done. It will always try to knock us down. And even if your achievements aren’t that great and good you can, and should, stand up and fight it. That voice in your head. Because you don’t deserve it.

But life, of course, is more complicated. It’s not just that the above is far more easily said than done. It’s that he isn’t just a victim of hate himself but someone who perpetuates it. Turns out the world is actually grey.