Every time I drive around to Los Angeles, especially around the holidays, I’m inundated with billboards advertising lap band surgery. I guess the home of the Hollywood culture of thin chic is the perfect market for that sort of thing. But whenever I see the billboards, I think of my friend Sony, who had the […]

Filed under: Health, WLS | 40 Comments »

It’s been three years since we asked Is Fat A Feminist Issue? And over the past few days, the subject has come up again. And how. I’d seen some stirrings on Twitter, while I was out of town for the weekend, about a problematic post on Feministe, but I didn’t have a chance to go […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Fatism, Feminism, Health | 22 Comments »

1. We all know I get ridiculous PR spam, but a real doozy landed in my mailbox yesterday, featuring the top five “Flabulous Celebrity Love Handle Offenders” who can fix their “offensive” love handles with a Spanx-type product that we should all run out and buy too! (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning the […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Art, Beth Ditto, Beyonce, Books, Britney Spears, Celebrities, Crystal Renn, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Health, International, Jessica Simpson, Kirstie Alley, Links, Music, Nikki Blonsky, Science, TV | 8 Comments »

1. It doesn’t “make economic sense” to make clothes in many different styles for fat people. So, if fat people just stuck to wearing muumuus, that would be great, then? I would ask why are thin women allowed to want different kinds of clothing and fat women are not? I’m pretty sure all of the […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Fashion, Health, Humor, Kids | 9 Comments »

Jezebel republished an essay by Tasha Fierce at Red Vinyl Shoes called “As Fat As I Wanna Be,” articulating the idea that if you eat junk food, and are lazy, and don’t exercise, and are fat, you still don’t deserve to be shamed and concern trolled and vilified for your fatness. The Jezebel post is […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Carnie Wilson, Celebrities, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Health, Kirstie Alley | 17 Comments »

You can click the “Links” category for our previous links roundups, which so far have a different name each time. Maybe one of these days I’ll do a poll! Okay, let’s not go crazy. But anyway, here are some links! 1. Celebrity gossip and internet drama, two of my favorite things! But seriously, an interesting […]

Filed under: Celebrities, Christina Hendricks, Fashion, Health, Jennifer Hudson, Links, Mad Men, Meta, Race & Ethnicity, TV | 6 Comments »

I heard this story on the radio this morning: one California supervisor wants to ban fast food restaurants from selling toys with fast food meals. Of course, this is only one county in one state, so we’re hardly at the level of an argument before the Supreme Court. A child’s “Happy Meal” may soon be […]

Filed under: Advertising, Health, Kids, Personal, Question, Tidbit | 45 Comments »

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 very […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Celebrities, Gabby Sidibe, Health, Kirstie Alley, Links, Meta, Mo'Nique, TV | 12 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, […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Art, Eating Disorders, Fatism, Health, Kids, Movies, Personal | 48 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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 | 5 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, […]

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.” […]

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 […]

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, the ups […]

Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Fatism, Guest Post, Health, Kids | 45 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Filed under: Advertising, Health, Science, Weight Loss | 25 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 getting […]

Filed under: Health, Video, WLS | 14 Comments »