The-F-Word.org

MSNBC interviewed U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin about weight and fitness and her “vision for a health and fit nation.”  Benjamin, you may recall, was attacked and criticized for her weight after her nomination (she appears to be about a size 18).  But while Benjamin is enthusiastically joining the “nation’s war on fat,” I’m glad to see that she’s more even-keeled and sensitive about it than, ehem, others.

So how do you reach more people?

If you talk to the average person, what’s clear is we need to give them tools to make it easier. We need to get people to make good health part of their lives. I’m showing my age, but I remember going out dancing, doing the hustle and sweating off my makeup. That was fun. People need to exercise and eat well because they enjoy it and they want to be fit. It could be taking a walk in a park. But we need nice parks. We need people to buy better foods. But a lot of communities don’t have access to fresh produce. Right now, it’s very difficult to find a meal that’s healthy and competes with a “dollar meal” like a burger and fries. We need to ask the communities and food manufacturers to offer more healthy choices not as alternatives, but as first choices.

Your weight was made an issue when the President picked you for the post, and you said it was hurtful. So how do we talk to our kids about a sensitive topic like weight?

I’m very secure in my own self esteem, but yes, it was hurtful. There were some mean comments. But what about those kids who will be looking at me as a role model? They may be very discouraged by some of those comments. I exercise regularly, at least four days a week. If I didn’t I probably would be a big blimp. And I try to eat pretty healthy, as much as I can. I know the things that I’m doing. I tend to stay on the elliptical as long as other people. I’m not out of breath. You can be healthy and fit at different sizes. The real message is that you don’t want to limit yourself by your dress size. You need to be comfortable with yourself and have a good body image. Don’t have some dress manufacturer tell you what size to be. Be a size that makes you fit.

I dislike Benjamin’s near exclusive focus on obesity — as if Not Getting Fat is the only worthwhile reason to encourage people to make healthier choices — and I am vehemently against workplace wellness programs and challenges, which she also promotes, but I’m glad to see that not only does Benjamin appear to support HAES, she also seems to recognize the racial, environmental and socio-economic forces at play that contribute to body weight.  Now if we could only get her to heed her own words and redirect her health and fitness outreach efforts from just fat people to all people.

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.

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From the station that helped destroy the Gosselin’s marriage comes a new series called “One Big Happy Family.” The series, which premiered last month on TLC, documents the efforts of a black North Carolina brood, in which all four members weigh in at more than 300 pounds, to slim down. The show’s producer, Mike Duffy, likened it to the TLC show “Little People, Big World,” saying that “One Big Happy Family” is instead “about big people living in a little world — fat people living in a skinny world.”  Show clips are available here.

The Boston Herald calls it “TLC’s latest attempt to exploit a family for ratings.” Monsters and Critics says, “Trainwreck reality TV doesn’t get much bigger than the TLC effort, One Big Happy Family.” Variety says, “One Big Happy Family joins a TLC lineup that often seems devoted more to pithy titles than anything else.” And a CNN report last week drew attention to “big” concerns whether or not the show is “potentially exploitive of the family, whose ‘fat and happy’ attitude has drawn comparisons to the comedic Klump family from the Eddie Murphy film ‘The Nutty Professor.’”

Granted, the Cole family’s attempts, at times, can seem like buffoonery. For instance, in the clip above, the family is shown eating a voracious amount of pancakes, which mother Tameka says the family can work off later with a walk around a local water park (an excursion undoubtedly suggested by show producers). Once there, they indulge in a big, sugary piece of funnel cake. Chairs break beneath their weight and the family is turned away from a water park ride for their size. But weight-loss reality shows are, by their very nature, exploitive, which begs the question of why the sudden concern and criticism over this weight-loss reality show.

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When I was younger, our parents would have us fill out our Santa wish lists weeks before Christmas.  As the sole bookworm in the family, I, of course, always requested a long list of books — Oliver Twist in the third-grade, Shakespeare at the age of 9 and later, in my teen years, Stephen King.  My list must have not made it to the North Pole because instead I got things like a makeup brush kit or a t-shirt screenprinted with a picture of a black labrador.  One of the joys of marrying a man who used to do all his Christmas shopping at Walgreens on Christmas Eve is that now all I do is fill out my Amazon wishlist and know that most, if not all, will be wrapped and waiting under the tree.  I’ve already devoured the two fiction books I received — Stephen King’s new book, Under the Dome and The Strain, coauthored by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro — and am now ready to dig into my non-fiction gifts.  In no particular order…

• Sherrie Inness, Secret Ingredients: Race, Class and Gender at the Dinner Table

• Sander L. Gilman, Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity

• Jessica Weiner, A Very Hungry Girl: How I Filled Up on Life… And How You Can, Too!

• Stewart Lee Allen, In the Devil’s Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food

So, what’s on your reading list?  Any recommendations for the rest of us?

Matthew Tiemeyer, the about.com Guide to eating disorders, poses an interesting question about the definition of binge eating disorder and how it’s diagnosed.  He writes:

Here’s something I hadn’t thought about before. The definition of binge-eating disorder (BED) says that binges involve eating more food than most people would expect you to eat in a relatively short time. So what if all of the people in your world don’t find your eating out of the ordinary?

Another way of asking this question: Could the definition of BED be culturally-dependent? A blurb about a recent study suggests that black women meet BED criteria less often than white women. One of the project’s researchers says, “These (black) women could be binge eating, but they may have less anxiety and distress surrounding their eating habits, so they don’t recognize it as an issue.”

So I have to ask: If there’s no distress, is it really binge eating? Is it really an issue?

It’s irksome to find that the primary concern listed in the aforelinked blurb isn’t for the mental health or emotional wellbeing of women who may have binge eating disorder, but rather for the fact that OMG! they’re getting fatter! As for Tiemeyer’s question… what are your thoughts?

If I could travel to any part of the globe, India would be it. But as much as I love Indian food and culture, I’m not all that hip on Bollywood and the representation of Indian women in film. Luckily reader Kara (a.k.a. Filmi Girl) is a big fan. About 15 years ago, a friend gave her a cassette tape with the soundtrack from the 1980s hit Bollywood film Maine Pyaar Kiye. She was hooked. A few years later, she began watching the films the songs were centered around, and after realizing that her real life friends were uninterested in hearing her gush about Aamir, Preity and Rani, she started a blog. The 30-year-old librarian now spends her limited free time reading about her latest interest and watching large amounts of deliciously, over-the-top Indian films.  She guest blogs today about the ever whittling waistlines of Bollywood actresses.

I began watching Bollywood movies about 10 years ago. Amidst the colorful songs and costumes and dramatic storylines, I began to realize something else that appealed to me about these movies – the actresses were all of normal and healthy weights. By “normal weight,” I don’t mean Hollywood normal, I mean real life normal. From Madhuri Dixit, whose ample thighs supported her beautiful dancing to Kajol’s sturdy tomboyish frame to Karishma Kapoor’s gawky slimness, the actresses all appeared healthy and well nourished. Being beautiful included a variety of different weights and shapes and sizes, rather than a single hard-to-achieve standard.

Yet, something disturbing has happened over the last few years, the variety is disappearing and in its place has taken root something very familiar – the new global standard of beauty.

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The tangled political culture surrounding black women and hair seem to be getting a lot of press these days, perhaps because Chris Rocks’ new documentary Good Hair opens in U.S. theaters today.  Diana Bell at Barnard College was kind of enough to let me know about this FREE panel discussion to be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15.

Just Hair?: Women, Politics, Passion and Fashion
Barnard College
James, Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall
West 117th Street and Broadway

Long, short, sleek, bold, kinky, natural, covered or shaved—no matter how you cut it, women’s hair is a frequent topic of conversation. But why all the fuss? How far-reaching are the decisions women make about style, dye, and hair product? And what do our preferences reveal about our deepest desires and fears? Janet Jakobsen, director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, will guide us as we untangle the meaning of hair and beauty. Panelists include Ayana Byrd, author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America; Anne Kreamer, author of Going Gray: What I learned About Beauty, Sex, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters; and Atoosa Rubenstein, former editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine and founding editor of CosmoGIRL!.

It’s a little far for me, but if you are able to attend, please be sure to give us the rundown!

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.

Stephanie Armstrong 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.

A playwright and screenwriter currently living in Los Angeles, Stephanie’s commentary on black women and eating disorders, “Digesting the Truth,” has been featured on NPR.  Her work has appeared in Essence, Sassy, Mademoiselle, and Venice magazines, among other publications. She authored the screenplay for Contradictions of the Heart (20th Century Fox), starring Vanessa Williams, and her plays Three Stories Down, The Outside Sisters, and The Long Journey Home have been performed in theaters in Los Angeles and New York.  Her essay on bulima, “Fear and Loathing,” is included in the forthcoming anthology The Black Body (Oct., 2009).  She also sold a TV treatment, Kimchi and Cornbread, which led to a talk-show deal with MTV.

Now in a must-read interview, Stephanie takes the time to respond to questions from me and the-F-word readers.

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