From Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker comes a comprehensive article attempting to determine the cause of increased obesity in America. She talks about portion sizes: In the early nineteen-sixties, a man named David Wallerstein was running a chain of movie theatres in the Midwest and wondering how to boost popcorn sales. Wallerstein had already […]

Filed under: Fatism, Health, Magazines, Media, Question, Science | 18 Comments »

Everyone’s talking about More to Love! I’m going to need to set my DVR immediately. Kate Harding has an interesting review (bolding mine) that makes me curious to watch: As to the specific shows, having watched 2 episodes of “Drop Dead Diva” and one of “More to Love,” I’d put the former at about 70% […]

Filed under: Celebrities, More To Love, The Office, TV | 12 Comments »

Courtesy of my friend dogofthefuture comes… well… no commentOriginally uploaded by mo pie I think Wendy might have something to say about this.

Filed under: Food, Humor, NSFW, Tidbit | 16 Comments »

From BFDiva Jez comes this article, an expose of the Weight Watchers menu at Applebee’s. According to an independent lab, the nutritional info apparently does not always fall within or even come close to the advertised numbers on the menu, and lawsuits have ensued: [L]ast year Scripps News hired a food lab to test the […]

Filed under: Advertising, Advocacy, Fatism, Food, Weight Loss | 20 Comments »

In response to Roger Catlin’s article (which I can’t find online*) about fat people on TV, a reader named Chamein Canton writes a powerful response. Here’s an excerpt: [*Chamein also kindly stopped by the comments to post the text of the original article. Thanks!] I read your article about the rise in the number of […]

Filed under: Biggest Loser, Dance Your Ass Off, Drop Dead Diva, Media, More To Love, Personal, TV | 8 Comments »

Here, from Sarah in the previous post, is a comment worth commenting on. (She’s talking about a scene in Drop Dead Diva that depicts our fat leading character binging on donuts and cream cheese): I’m not bothered by the overeating though. I am 100% on the FA bandwagon, and I know fat can be caused […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Drop Dead Diva, Eating Disorders, Fatism, Personal, Question, TV | 62 Comments »

Namely, Dance Your Ass Off and More To Love. I haven’t seen any episodes of either show (I have Drop Dead Diva on my DVR and plan to watch and post about that soon), but I know they are airing and would love to know the verdict, according to you guys. When we first heard […]

Filed under: Dance Your Ass Off, Drop Dead Diva, Fat Positive, Fatism, Media, More To Love | 15 Comments »

On this list of 10 Dumbest iPhone Apps is something called FatBurner2k: It’s a good thing Apple put this app in the “Entertainment” category. Otherwise one might be tempted to take seriously the claim that it can “help your body consume fat molecules using disharmonic, molecule to molecule, physical oscillations.” Translation: It vibrates on your […]

Filed under: Humor, Tidbit, Weight Loss | 7 Comments »

Sometimes, conversations about weight can pop up in unlikely places. Amy V. alerted us to this post at The Simple Dollar, a blog about personal finance, in response to a reader comment. Being fat is voluntary. People make a choice to eat unhealthy and not excercise. Therefore, it should never be covered by the Americans […]

Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Fatism, Feminism, Health, Race & Ethnicity | 17 Comments »

It’s summertime, which means many of us are getting in pools and worrying about looking fat in our bathing suits when really we should be swimming and diving and doing cannonballs and swimming with dolphins and drinking drinks out of coconuts and being awesome! Hopefully most of us are doing that, and not stressing out, […]

Filed under: Fashion, Fat Suits, International, TV | 61 Comments »

We love Beth Ditto. We love her when she’s totally naked. We have loved her since she was first totally naked. And we love her when she’s wearing clothes, too. One of my favorite quotes, to this day, is from her interview in BUST–“This is the number one thing: just because something makes you look […]

Filed under: Beth Ditto, Celebrities, Fashion, Fat Positive, Gossip, International, Media, Music, Question | 25 Comments »

From NPR: 1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual. The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He […]

Filed under: Health, Science, Tidbit | 7 Comments »

I ran across this hilarious article in the always-reliable and utterly trustworthy very serious newspaper, the Daily Mail: a woman in London decided that she wanted to lose weight, and that weight-loss surgery was too risky, but that she would pay a hypnotherapist to trick her into believing she had! At Joh’s first session with […]

Filed under: Diet Talk Warning, Humor, International, Media, Science, Weight Loss, WLS | 21 Comments »

free for chubbiesOriginally uploaded by mo pie It’s an old-timey Lane Bryant ad! One of the Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time. Personally, I think the creepiest one is the Love’s Baby Soft ad. But a case could certainly be made for “is it always illegal to kill a woman?” Or… most of the other […]

Filed under: Advertising, Fashion, Feminism, Old Timey | 11 Comments »