No, I still haven’t committed to a name that isn’t Fattie Quickies, although I did enjoy your suggestions. (And Emily also came up with the Round pun in the comments. Yay, Emily! E-mail me; I’ll send you a present.)
Anyway, I’m going out of town this weekend and am teaching classes up until the [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Celebrities, Gabby Sidibe, Health, Kirstie Alley, Links, Meta, Mo'Nique, TV | 11 Comments »
This article from the L.A. Times runs down some recent examples of fatism, such as the save-the-whales PETA ad, the mandatory “fat class” graduation requirement, and the proposed bill outlawing restaurant dining by obese people in Mississippi.
The pattern, the Times posits, is that slim people are “fed up” with the obese. Some choice quotes, bolding [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Art, Eating Disorders, Fatism, Health, Kids, Movies, Personal | 39 Comments »
A fascinating article in the Boston Globe, called Fattened by Pills, discusses the often-unspoken correlation between taking antidepressants and gaining weight:
Many [psychiatric drugs], which are used to treat emotional problems including depression and anxiety, cause weight gain — often of the rapid and massive sort — as one of their “side effects,” that brilliant marketing [...]
Filed under: Health, Science, Tidbit | 26 Comments »
The health risks of obesity may be exaggerated by (or in part caused by) the discrimination of health care professionals. Particularly, of course, when their patients are women. I’ll quote at length; the article really speaks for itself. (Shoutout to Suzy Smith, my Facebook friend, who is mentioned in the article.)
Recent studies have found, if [...]
Filed under: Fatism, Feminism, Health, Science, Tidbit | 19 Comments »
And he may lose his license because of it.
He admitted he told the patient that thick eyeglasses would not cause her to go blind “but her thick thighs and diabetes would. I poked her thigh to emphasize that diabetes is the leading cause of blindness,” he said Thursday. “People have got to accept criticism without [...]
Filed under: Fatism, Health | 22 Comments »
Speaking of feeling confident in our bodies, have you guys heard about National Fat Talk Free Week? We’re actually two days into it, now–it started on October 19, and appears to end on October 23rd, after which, presumably, we can all go back to shit-talking our asses and blaming all our flaws and unhappinesses on [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Eating Disorders, Fat Positive, Fatism, Health, International, Magazines, Media, Politics | 4 Comments »
It’s Sunday night, and my brain is tired from Mad Men and William Blake and getting ready for another week of school. So I give you, another batch of Google alerts that I just clicked on!
1. Expectant Parents Should Be Weighed To Prevent Fat Children.
“Tam Fry, a trustee of the National Obesity Forum, will tell [...]
Filed under: Celebrities, Fat Positive, Fatism, Health, International, Links, Meta | 24 Comments »
I was catching up on my blog reading this weekend and found two posts I thought were especially worth passing along. First, I really enjoyed Kate’s post, “We Already Know We’re Fat“:
“This so-called epidemic is not made up of theoretical fucking people who are just as fat as you can possibly imagine. It’s made [...]
Filed under: Health, Meta, Personal, Question, Science, Sex & Romance | 2 Comments »
Gavin Newsom, the hottie mayor of San Francisco and California gubernatorial candidate, is proposing legislation to tax stores that sell soda, including grocery stores like Safeway, but excluding restaurants. (Voters need to approve a tax on individual soda sales, which is why this is sort of secondhand legislation.) Newsom is calling soda the “new tobacco.”
I’ve [...]
Filed under: Celebrities, Cold Hard Cash, Food, Health, Politics | 41 Comments »
In case you missed it, Rachel had a fabulous overview of the recent coverage of fat discrimination at Newsweek, including an article called America’s War on the Overweight:
The bubbling rage against fat people in America has put researchers like Levine in a difficult position. On the one hand, she says, she wants to ensure that [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Exercise, Fat Positive, Fatism, Health, Magazines, Media | 4 Comments »
No, no, no, not me! But I received an email from my friend Jennifer, who is 36 weeks pregnant, and she graciously said I could reprint her words here. I found her thoughts about pregnancy as a plus-sized woman really fascinating, and I hope you will, too! She covers topics including maternity wear, [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Fatism, Guest Post, Health, Kids | 33 Comments »
At least it does according to this article, where health care professionals are worried that some fat people “now seem to think their weight is just fine.” WELL GOD FORBID.
So you look at people around you or maybe you hear news stories that now two thirds of Americans are now overweight or obese, and you [...]
Filed under: Fatism, Health | 16 Comments »
Although I saw this news about this when Kate Harding Twittered about it, I didn’t get a chance to post the link until today! It’s a story about a study that suggests having larger or more muscular thighs is better than having thin ones.
People who have agonised over their fat thighs might be able [...]
Filed under: Fat Positive, Health, Personal, Science | 7 Comments »
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 tried [...]
Filed under: Fatism, Health, Magazines, Media, Question, Science | 18 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 with [...]
Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Fatism, Feminism, Health, Race & Ethnicity | 17 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 produced [...]
Filed under: Health, Science, Tidbit | 7 Comments »
The FDA has issued a warning against the diet drug Hydroxycut, which, as it turns out, can kill you. (It killed a teenager in 2007, but apparently the FDA was just alerted to this now.)
Other patients experienced symptoms ranging from jaundice, or yellowing of the skin, to liver failure. One received a transplant and another [...]
Filed under: Advertising, Health, Science, Weight Loss | 24 Comments »
BFDiva Michaela posted a link to this video on Facebook; in poking around, I also found a story to go along with it. The surgery is “deep brain stimulation” in the parts of the brain believed to control feelings of hunger and satisfaction. Here are the words of the woman, Carol Poe, who is [...]
Filed under: Health, Video, WLS | 14 Comments »
Just for the record, I love the Obamas. I couldn’t be more overjoyed that Barack Obama is our president, and I want him to be president forever. Everything he does and says makes me happy. At home, we play a drinking game: whenever someone says “President Obama,” take a drink. Only we don’t drink, we [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Celebrities, F.A.T. Chance, Fat Positive, Feminism, Health, Kids, Magazines, Politics, TV, Tidbit | 25 Comments »
Here’s a study from the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (which may I say I am happy exists) that talks about the link between household instability and obesity—specifically, obesity in mothers.
Thirty-eight percent of mothers in low-instability households were obese, while nearly 48 percent in high-instability households were obese.
The researchers rated household [...]
Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Feminism, Food, Health, Kids, Work | 14 Comments »
Mary alerted me to the existence of the blog “This Is Why You’re Fat,” which features pictures of extremely unhealthy, often disgusting-looking, food. Some highlights include “Deep Fried Peanut Butter-Covered Brownie Wrapped In Cookie Dough” and “French Fry-Encased Hot Dog On A Stick.” Cripes.
The title is unfortunate, conflating unhealthy food with fat people [...]
Filed under: Feel Good Friday, Food, Health, Humor, Tidbit | 24 Comments »
The Guardian runs a feature called Private Lives, in which readers write in with their problems, and the Guardian’s expert provides her expert advice, along with a healthy helping of the peanut gallery’s remarks. The audience is encouraged to write in with their very helpful ideas on how to fix these people’s problems, and then [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Health, International, Media, Question, Weight Loss | 10 Comments »
I ran across this news in my google reader, and at first blush, it made me happy–a picture of a little girl with a hula hoop! The idea of a small sponsoring an exciting activity day for kids, saying Hey, kids, it is cool to go out and play and run and be active and [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Exercise, Health, Kids, Media | 12 Comments »
An adoption agency in Britian is likening an obesity to smoking, drinking, drug addiction, alcoholism. Damien and Charlotte Hall, who have been pursuing the adoption of a baby, had their application rejected because his BMI was too high, and was considered to violate the agency’s “suitability criteria.” His BMI is also considered evidence that he [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Health, International, Kids | 10 Comments »
I saw a thought-provoking post on suethsayings this week about a contestant from The Biggest Loser named Eric, who lost 214 pounds on the show and then went on Oprah to talk about gaining back 107 of them. (Oprah and The Biggest Loser in the same post! When categories collide!)
Oprah had invited him a few [...]
Filed under: Biggest Loser, Celebrities, Diet Talk Warning, Exercise, Health, Oprah, Personal, Question, TV, Weight Loss | 53 Comments »
