1. From Feed Me: Fat women are paid less than men in the workplace. So obviously, we should lose weight. Wait, what?

Fat women are paid less than women who aren’t fat; fat men, on average, earn comparable salaries to men who aren’t fat. So women are penalized by employers for being fat… All the young women who don’t identify as feminists because they don’t have to fly that flag anymore should take note of studies like this one. Gender discrimination is alive and well in 21st-century America.

But that’s not where the writer of this story went. No, her conclusion was quite different. She wrote, “It’s bad news, but maybe it will help fund better prevention strategies and new treatment methods for this growing scourge.”

Excuse me? Did I hear you right? The answer to discrimination is getting rid of the quality that’s being discriminated against?

2. From Already Pretty: the problem with “she shouldn’t wear that.”

[S]tylistic shoulds and shouldn’ts reinforce the idea that there are absolute rights and wrongs in clothing choices, tastes, and body shapes. Saying a woman “shouldn’t” wear something because of her figure supports the idea that there is one way to look good. And there isn’t. In fact, women who push social comfort levels with their stylistic choices may gradually force the observing public to accept that. Although some may prefer that women with cellulite conceal it, women with bony clavicles mask them, and women with zits apply cover-up, each woman is entitled to make her own choices.

3. The theme of the comp class I’m teaching this semester is feminism (actually, I told them it was unofficially called “F the Patriarchy”—it’s led to some terrific debate and discussion) and I shared this tidbit from Shakesville with them the other day. A headline reads “Man badly burned when girlfriend’s house set on fire” when, in actuality, he was her ex-boyfriend and stalker. And oh yeah, he set the fire.

[A]n amazing example of how violence against women is minimized in news reporting… the violent stalker is badly burned. His intended victims, who merely were doused with gasoline and terrorized, are OK.

4. From Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as “Mammy.”

There can be no denial that there are some people who will look at Gabourey and see mammy smiling back at them both consciously and unconsciously, yet that is not a function of her, but a function of Whiteness. When we use fat hatred to claim that her success is obscuring the talents of other Black women, we are only playing into the divisive strategy that Whiteness has long used to control people of colour. Even the Black women that some believe are deserving of greater accolades, are still perceived by Whiteness as fitting into either the jezebel or sapphire trope, and therefore; the way to divest ourselves of these horrible caricatures, is not to further demean another Black woman, but to defeat the idea that any of these labels are representative of Black womanhood. The entity that needs to disappear is mammy and not Gabourey.

5. Terrific satirical essay from Lesley about the importance of the “suffering ween.”

The sight of fat women is a heavy cross said men must bear every moment they step out into the public spaces where people congregate, be they city streets or shopping malls or public transportation or the dentist’s office. Their eyes burning as though filled with a raging fire, their inability to control their speech — the inescapable, uncontrollable need to instruct the offending woman on the pain she is selfishly causing them — this is hardly their fault! They must say something, in the hope that their words will drive the fat woman back into the shadows and thereby cause the unthinkable torture being imposed upon their enfeebled weens to finally relent. They cannot be responsible for the things they say and do while in such agony. We cannot rightly blame them when it is men, and the relative rigidity of their supremely important peckers, who are being attacked here, attacked by fat women who dare to allow themselves to be seen.

Pretty awesome collection of links, am I right? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Michele Fonville claims she was charged five extra dollars for her manicure due to her weight. Kim Tran, owner of the Natural Nails Salon in DeKalb County, Georgia, said the reason she was being charged was apparently fat patrons were causing damage to salon chairs (as opposed to possible normal wear and tear). When Ms. Fonville told the owner she couldn’t charge her extra because it was weight discrimination, Tran allegedly replied it wasn’t fair to charge $24 for a manicure when it costs $2500 to fix broken furniture. She refunded the extra charge and told Fonville not to come back because she couldn’t serve her anymore…

Us fat people take so much crap in our society, the last thing we should have to worry about is being shamed at a nail salon. And while Kim Tran probably can charge fat people more for manicures because there is no national weight discrimination law on the books, it’s still disheartening she would think to only blame large people for breaking her furniture and making them pay for the cost towards items she as a business owner is required to supply.

Leigh lives in the same town, and sent us this link to a local news source, which quotes both Fonville and Tran:

I said, ‘I’ve been overcharged. She may have made an error,’” said Fonville. “She broke it down, then told me she charged me $5 more because I was overweight. I was humiliated. I almost cried. Tears were forming in my eyes….”

“I didn’t want to argue with her about $5. I wanted to make her pleased with her service,” Tran said. “I whispered … I said, ‘I’m sorry, next time I cannot take you.”

When Kari wrote in, she pointed out that Michelle Fonville’s name is in the headlines of some of these articles, which might suggest a subtle note of public “fat shaming.” And then I realized that despite being humiliated and hurt by what had happened, Michelle Fonville decided to speak out about it—go to the media and tell her story publicly and on camera. A lot of people might have been too embarrassed to do that, and have their name in those headlines. But despite her humiliation, Michelle didn’t waver from her belief that the $5 surcharge was discrimination, and that it was wrong, and that people should hear about it.

How many stories like this must happen every day? If Michelle Fonville’s bravery in going public is a rarity, how many other incidents must happen that we never find out about? How many people—who may blame themselves for their weight, who may buy into the culture of body shaming—are afraid to be laughed at, instead of supported, if they insist they’ve been treated wrongly? I wonder.

Katsyuri sent in this Newsweek article, discussing how intestinal bacteria may affect the number of calories the body is able to absorb. More efficient bacteria = more calories absorbed = more “calories in” than average.

The calories that count are those extracted by your digestive enzymes and—as more and more research is showing—the trillions of bacteria in your intestine. People whose gut bacteria are better at digesting fats and carbs than their neighbor’s will absorb all 1,500 calories in a Friendly’s Ultimate Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt, while the neighbor will absorb fewer. So even in people with identical metabolisms, the effects of eating identical foods can be different.

The bacteria-made-me-fat idea has been gathering steam since 2006. In that year, Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University and colleagues reported in a paper in Nature that obese mice and slim mice have different populations of gut bacteria. Crucially, they showed that the bacteria caused obesity, rather than obesity producing a specific mix of bacteria.

There’s also a slideshow that touches on the connection between underprivileged communities and the prevalence of fast and processed foods (along with pictures of sad fat people… but they do have heads). Here’s Katsyuri’s disclaimer:

It’s still mainly the same old tripe about exercise and calories and that “Obesity Epidemic”, but at least it doesn’t COMPLETELY blame bigger people for everything.

The article does have some more interesting tidbits:

A study published in April… found that Japanese people harbor gut bacteria that digest nori—the seaweed in sushi—but westerners do not, probably because of the Japanese diet (lots of fish and thus marine bacteria, which digest nori). That suggests that “what you eat is proving to be one of the major determinants of…the community of bacteria living in your intestine.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to see people with nefarious motives say to people trying to lose weight, ‘you must have the wrong bacteria; I have something that will help you.’

The idea here is that gut bacteria interact with intestinal cells in a way that causes them to secrete cytokines, molecules that can cause low-grade inflammation. This inflammation can, in turn, trigger insulin resistance (the mark of type 2 diabetes) and increased appetite, which is an effective way to put on weight.

As scientists work out the details by which out gut bacteria make us fat, health mandarins need to look beyond the simplistic calories in/calories out mantra for explanations of the obesity epidemic.

So what do you think: is this kind of science—shifting the blame away from fat people—a step in the right direction? Or is the focus still in the wrong place?

[Note: The title of this post is a play on an Eric Cartman quote.]

• Entertainment Weekly
• L.A. Times
• ABC News
• MTV
• STLToday
• New York Times
• The Frisky

2. An awesome 18-year-old spent a month following Seventeen magazine dictates and blogging about it, calling it the Seventeen Magazine Project. Her intent was to draw more attention to the media’s ridiculous perception of women and teens and what they want, and are supposed to want. And now she’s decided to get even louder, putting together a community project called “Hey mainstream media.”

To participate in this project, all that you have to do is take a picture of yourself holding a sign with words finishing the statement, “Hey mainstream media! I am….”

Anyone can participate in this project. That is, anyone that at some point has felt misrepresented by or excluded from mainstream media. This project is NOT just for teens. Are you a black woman? Maybe you’re more than just a sassy best friend character. A straight man? Maybe you’re interested in more than just pictures of naked women. Unlike media, this project does not exclude or alienate any demographic.

You can add photos directly to the Flickr pool to participate. http://www.flickr.com/groups/heymainstreammedia/

3. The headline in this NYT article says it all: Plus-Size Revelation: Bigger Women Have Cash Too.

Corseted into a size 18 white denim dress, wearing heels that made her about 6-foot-2, Gwen DeVoe, a former model and fashion-show producer, stepped onto a runway in Manhattan this week and made a pitch to retailers for the plus-size woman.

Those stores that don’t carry bigger sizes? “Shame on you, baby, shame on you,” Ms. DeVoe said. “Every curvy girl that has a dollar is willing to spend that dollar.”

So retailers are realizing.

Just now? Just now they’re realizing? It feels like they’ve been realizing and poised to take on the plus-size market for about as long as I have been alive. Hey, maybe one day it’ll be a nice, ordinary fact, and not “news.”

4. A little late, but I just ran into this: Full-Figured Fashion Week happened, and it sounds like it was awesome. Sponsorship was up (7 sponsors last year, 35 this year!). My favorite part: how New York Magazine wistfully notes that everyone had a very swell time.

It’s a shame Full Figured Fashion Week has to be so separate from New York’s main Fashion Week. It’s also too bad the main Fashion Week doesn’t have model competitions or fun award ceremonies and a vibe that’s not life-or-death.

“When you’re not what they consider ideal, you know, and you’re out there trying to get your dance on at those other places, you get the looks, the stares. But not here. Everything’s accepted here,” says Vanessa Gray of Long Beach, an attractive 30-something woman who acknowledges jovially that after giving birth to three children, “I’ve got a little more meat on my bones.”

There are several hands here: on the one of them, I love the idea of a safe place to go, at which you feel absolutely accepted, and in control of other people’s reactions, that you are with peers and being evaluated by a set of criteria that includes your very specific kind of beauty (because let’s face it, night clubs are pretty much all about being checked out. And dancing. But mostly being checked out.). And it’s lovely to have a place to go and not be afraid to be as totally you and gorgeous as possible, without fearing that you might be torn down.

Here’s the other hand, though–it seems a little bit like hiding, to me. Because, okay, the ideal is, as per The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, to advocate “that everyone be treated equally regardless of size,” because “we don’t live in a one-size-fits-all world.” It seems to me that so much fat prejudice is saying “we don’t want to have to look at you,” and a plus-size nightclub is essentially saying “well, okay, we’ll just go hide over here, then, where you don’t have to see us.”

Not to get on my soapbox (I can see your house from here!), but the way to change the perception of fat people, isn’t it to have more visibility–not only more covers in magazines, more photoshoots, more plus size models, but more average, every-day women being visible, beautiful, unashamed of their bodies, dressing up, not hiding out, and going out and being unabashedly, unashamedly, unapologetically themselves? To flirt and dance and do the things that maybe sometimes feel a little dangerous?

Or maybe someone has done that thing where they have suddenly and with astonishment noticed the incredibly economically powerful plus-size market and have jammed their straw right into the heart of it and are greedily sucking it down dry!

So I’m torn. Tell me what you think of plus-size nightclubs–safe haven, hidey-hole, brilliant cash-generating  scheme, or something else altogether? And then, let’s put on sequinned tube tops and go dancing.

Oh, Kirstie Alley. You’re a ridiculously beautiful woman. You’re reasonably talented, you’re fairly charming, you’re actually pretty hilarious, even. My point is, you have many excellent qualities, all of which are ripe for the picking and/or exploitation. You could have a career, Kirstie Alley! You could be an Actress, full stop. You don’t have to spend the entirety of your career being a Fat Actress. You don’t have to base all your attention-getting activies on the size of your body and the shape of your ass. Enough with Jenny Craig and the bikinis on Oprah and swearing that you’re going to get back into a bikini, on Oprah.

What I’m saying, Kirstie Alley, is that you don’t need to have a goddamn reality show about how you’re going to lose the weight. Kirstie Alley, you are equally hot and you are equally talented at every size you have ever been. But more importantly, Kirstie Alley: you are more than your goddamn fat. I’m tired of hearing you talk about it and I’m tired of hearing you complain about it, and I’m tired of hearing you hate on yourself and your body and your life.

I’m sorry, Kirstie Alley. I didn’t mean to get angry at you. It’s just–please believe me, Kirstie Alley, when I say that I’m not discounting your struggle, how difficult it is to be an actress in Hollywood, how incredibly hard it must be to work in an industry where you’re only as good as the size of your ass. I just wish, I guess, you didn’t have to buy into the game. I wish you didn’t have to say ha ha, everyone, I know how awful it is that I am fat! It just makes me sad. It just makes me wish you could be simultaneously happy with your size and happy in your career and successful and while I’m at it, I may as well wish the same for everyone, and ponies for all, and world peace and teleportation technology via the magic of physics. You know, the easy stuff.

Hodges, 31, bought $10 worth of gas in an automated cash transaction at the pump island but assigned the money to the wrong pump. When Hodges went inside the store to ask for a refund, the clerk told her she needed to fill out a form with her name, address and phone number.

“He told me it would take two weeks to get my money,” Hodges recalled. She demanded a cash refund and left the store to run an errand to allow the clerk time to find the money. When Hodges returned a short time later, a second clerk handed her a $10 bill with a receipt attached. On the receipt, the first clerk had written “black lady big fat.”

“I’d like to apologize,” Saechou told News10. “We’re sorry she saw the note.” Saechou said the clerk did the best he could without the identifying information he had asked Hodges to provide.

“It says ‘black lady,’ and I can understand that because I am a black lady,” Hodges told News10. “But I don’t get ‘big fat.’ I don’t get that part.”

Hodges said the clerk could have used a description of her car or clothing instead. She said it was her 6-year-old son who noticed the slight, which hurt even more.

Saechou called Hodges Monday to offer the clerk’s side of the story. Hodges later told News10 she wasn’t satisfied with the explanation because it didn’t sound like a sincere apology.

“The lesson they should learn is my money helps run that store,” Hodges said. “And I won’t be going back.”

So what do you guys think? If they absolutely had to write down identifying information on the receipt, was there another way to go? Is the redundant “big fat” the issue? What if it had been written more euphemistically, like “heavyset black woman” instead? Is identifying someone by their size always wrong?

I’ve heard the idea of a “soda tax” floated many times before, but this is the first time any actual legislation has been on the horizon–let alone right in my backyard:

Newsom said he was particularly motivated… by Thursday’s release of a UCLA study showing a link between soda and obesity in California. Researchers found that adults who drink at least one soft drink a day are 27 percent more likely to be obese than those who don’t – and that soda consumption is fueling the state’s $41 billion annual obesity problem. The study also found that 41 percent of children and 62 percent of teens drink at least one soda daily.

“Soda is cheap, sweet and irresistibly marketed to teens,” said Susan Babey, the study’s lead author. “Not enough teens know about the health and dietary risks of drinking huge quantities of what is essentially liquid sugar.”

I’m not particularly a soda drinker or an advocate for soda, but I also don’t see how this tax will really do anything–maybe if you make soda itself a lot more expensive, it could change people’s habits, but taxing Safeway isn’t going to make them stop selling soda, and I doubt they’d raise their prices on soda in response, so what’s the point? (Also, this tax wouldn’t affect fast-food places, so wouldn’t people just go there for a quick soda fix?) The Chamber of Commerce apparently agrees:

Jim Lazarus, vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, said the group opposes the soda tax. “Does this mean there’s a fee on candy bars, on ice cream, on potato chips?” he asked. “Where do you draw the line?”

He added that a small fee – likely to be passed on from the retailer to the consumer – wouldn’t be enough to dramatically change people’s habits, leading him to believe it’s meant to be just another revenue source for the city.

So what do you guys think–does this all feel a little “nanny state” to you, do you think it’s a good idea, do you think it’s insulting? And where are they getting this “obesity costs California $41 billion a year” from, anyway? And Californians, given the budget crisis–what about the idea of taxing “extra” purchases like soda as a way to help dig ourselves out of the hole?

Show History has a fascinating compilation of names and pictures and brief biographies of fat people who worked as attractions in carnival sideshows. (They were also known as “freaks.”)

A little background:

Professional Fat Folk of an earlier age lived to astound a public for whom not having enough to eat was a real possibility, and even a commonplace. From the 18th Century to the beginning of the 20th Century being fat was a sign of health and prosperity.

Seemingly devouring a constant plentitude of food that their audiences may not have had, the showbiz of girth and jiggle was a universal attraction in carnival sideshows, dime museums and circuses.

Fat people used to perform in many different ways, every sideshow looking for a new gimmick. They used to entertain by performing go-go dances, running 50-yard dashes (thanks, Weet, for that link), bicycling, doing acrobatics, and–yes–boxing. A surprising number had stage names beginning with “Jolly” or “Happy.” One was called “Ima Whale.”

Reading this list makes me wonder more about the lives of some of these performers–Dottie Blackhall, for example, was a 600-pound woman who ultimately committed suicide. Anroe Brown, “The Georgia Giantess,” was born into slavery. Clifford W. Krueger retired from the sideshow to become a Wisconsin state senator. One woman “allegedly died while bending over to pick up a four-leaf clover. One died from complications due to weight loss surgery.” Edward Rusk weighed 449 pounds but claimed to weigh 649 pounds (because even in 1895, people didn’t know what 400 pounds looks like). So many stories, happy and sad.

Here’s a short video clip from the 1920s of one of these performers. More photos after the jump:

Being fat is voluntary. People make a choice to eat unhealthy and not excercise. Therefore, it should never be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Lindsay

This was such an egregious comment that I felt the need to clearly respond to it.

Being fat is sometimes voluntary, but in many cases it is not. Many illnesses bring on unwanted and unwarranted weight gain – my uncle’s liver problems caused him to gain huge amounts of weight with basically no change in diet or activity, going from a formerly rail-thin person to someone who was very overweight. Many medications bring on unwanted weight gain – many thyroid medications, resulting from conditions present at birth, result in excessive weight that’s far beyond the choice of the person.

The problem with being overweight is that sometimes it is the result of personal choice and sometimes it is not – yet it is often assumed that it is due to poor choice, a trap that Lindsay falls directly into.

Yes, it’s true that an overweight person might result in a greater cost for a business that might hire that person – they’re statistically more likely to have heart disease, etc. However, one could make the same argument for a female – they’re statistically more likely to have children than men, thus they’re more likely to need maternal leave and incur replacement costs. Yet the former argument is accepted, while the latter argument is sexist?

Forms of discrimination that are clearly based on factors that are beyond a person’s choice – sex, skin coloration, ethnicity – are clearly frowned upon in modern society. Just because we went through revolutions throwing off racism and sexism doesn’t mean that there aren’t still big forms of discrimination out there.

The way I see it, a person is a person, and as Martin Luther King said, a person should be judged by the content of their character. Being overweight might mean that they have some personal issues – or it might just mean that they were born with a thyroid condition. Either way, what matters is how they treat others and what they produce with their time.

Amy also suggested keeping an eye on the comments, so of course I did. Here’s a sampling:

Racism and sexism are still “out there” too, you know.

I’m glad someone jumped right in with this, because the idea that we’ve “thrown off” racism and sexism is clearly ridiculous. Sorry, Trent.

I have to disagree. The percentage of people that are overweight because of a medical condition is pretty small. Nearly 80% of diseases are curable/treatable by a healthy diet and regular exercise. We as a country just do not understand how to eat. We watch everyone else eat crappy food or massive amounts of food all the time, and we think we deserve to do that too. Being overweight, obese, or morbidly obese is really bad for you. If was all understood just how bad it is, we would all work harder and make better decisions…

Another problem is everyone thinks they are somehow the exception. It is pretty likely you aren’t. Your body is the product of your diet and exercise. If you have just “always” had big hips, thighs, ankles, etc….. It is because you “always” haven’t eaten right, eat to much, or don’t exercise enough.

There are _some_ people that are overweight as a result of a medical condition, the vast overwhelming majority of overweight people are overweight because of poor choices. The ‘average’ amount of television a person watches is something like 28 hours per week. Combine that with a diet of frequently eating out, sugary beverages, and lack of exercise and you will get a population of overweight people. It is as simple as that.

First of all, racism and sexism are not gone the way of the dodo bird, and the revolution ain’t over. To think so would be narrow minded. As to the wieght issue, theres a big misconception that thin is automatically “healthy”, and that people who are overweight are automatically “unhealthy”. In my case, overweight at 58, I have normal sugars, cholesterals, so on and so forht, and I do aerobic exercise five times a week. Lots of thin people the same age cannot say the same thing.

If we agree with Lindsay’s premise that overweight people should not be covered because they are overweight by choice (which I already have a problem with – discrimination by religion is illegal, and religion is ostensibly a choice), knowing that not everyone who is overweight is overweight by choice, who makes that determination? A non-profit commission? A government agency?

I don’t care if you have a thyroid condition or anything else- your body can’t gain fat unless you’re eating excess calories. Genetics, liver problems, thyroids don’t cause weight gain- eating excess food does. The former issues may change the limit on what “excess” means, but there’s no disease on earth that will just force someone to spontaneously gain weight without eating.

I’m tired of people blaming Darwin when Doritos and drumsticks are 99% of the problem.

Well, John, I’m tired of people who think that what one weighs is anything other than a personal matter. Seriously. Of all the things you could choose to judge a person by, their weight has got to be among the most stupid, arbitrary choices there is. Frankly, if I felt the need to do that, I’d be asking myself what nasty thing in myself needed to chase around looking for some childish basis to put other people down.

Trent is right when he says that “what matters is how [people] treat others and what they produce with their time.” Anything else is superficiality.

There is, of course, lots more.