Heavy Me

24 - All the Answers

2009-09-20T23:02:00.003-04:00

I worked in retail for three years and I’ve been in wholesale for an additional eleven, and I’ve never worked for the guy selling the least expensive product. So when Kerry Mitchell, president of Addition-Elle and Penningtons, and I spoke, and she detailed the reasons why AE and Penningtons are not the guardians of the lowest price point, most of it wasn’t anything that I haven’t had to explain to my own customers before: “We don’t have the volume to be at the same price as the next guy; we offer services, that cost money, that won‘t be offered by the other guy; the specifications of my product are better than the one to which you’re comparing it--you have to compare apples to apples.” And on it goes. In much the same way, there were five major reasons that Mitchell outlined in her explanation for the pricing at AE and Penningtons. The first, was volume.

Despite the “growing epidemic of obesity” that will have us all dead by the end of next week, the plus size market in Canada, is still significantly smaller than the regular size one. In March of 2008, market research firm NPD Group, found that there had been significant growth in the women’s plus market in Canada, with one in five female shoppers purchasing in plus. However; that’s still only 20% of the market and NPD’s definition of plus starts at size 14. When I spoke with Mitchell, she defined plus as truly beginning at size 18. Both measures are true, but there is a compelling logic to Mitchell’s grouping, in that most women wearing 14/16 can shop at a wider variety of stores. They may not be able to shop at every regular size store out there, but they have a significantly greater number of choices than I do at a size 18/20.

The sheer dearth of plus retailers in Canada bears this out. The same report by NPD indicated that fully 57% of plus sales were done by the top ten retailers in the field. Unlike the US, where up to half of female consumers are size 14+, Canadian women are apparently still hitting the gym, eating right and smoking like chimney stacks to stay slim. With fewer customers to service and less product to purchase, pricing increases accordingly.

This made sense to me, but I still wanted to know why it was that Reitmans could offer such significantly lower prices than Addition-Elle to plus customers. Here I’ll remind you of that t-shirt that costs me $9.99 at Reitmans vs. $16.99 at Addition-Elle. To answer this question, Mitchell explained the second reason for the price discrepancies: the corporate structure of Reitmans Canada Ltd.

From where I’m standing, it seems perfectly logical to combine the purchasing power of AE, Penningtons and the Reitman’s Encore (plus) line, so as to lower costs across the board. Apparently, they don’t agree. Apart from maintaining the same corporate address, there is little else shared by AE/Penningtons and Reitmans; they are run as entirely separate entities, and thus purchasing volume is not shared. In effect, the much higher market penetration of Reitmans (at about twice the stores than either AE or Penningtons) can’t be utilized to lower purchasing costs for AE and Penningtons over all.

The next two reasons are fairly uncomplicated: amount and quality of fabric. While it’s clear to me that my size-18 garment is not significantly larger than a size 13/14 garment, I failed to take into account that a size-26 garment is larger. More fabric costs more money. As for quality, sometimes a price difference is reflective of a difference in quality.

Sometimes, however, a t-shirt is just a t-shirt, and in those cases, the grounds for the difference in price point might be about reason number five: branding. In large part, the different divisions of Reitmans Canada are run separately because their intended audiences differ. The marketing and branding diverges significantly because the customer differs. While AE and Penningtons are under the same division umbrella, even those stores are branded differently. As with all Penningtons stores, the one closest to where I live carries the MXM line (a trendier line of clothing), but most of the store caters to women 10-15 years my senior. The AE stores, on the other hand are going after a 35-40 year old woman.

Apart from demographic, there is also the concept of brand image and what the company is trying to convey—and if there’s one thing that the Addition-Elle brand is not trying to convey, it’s being the store with the lowest price. Believe me, I understand not trying to win the race to the bottom of pricing ladder; Wal-Mart will always be around for that. I just don’t know that I’m buying the image that Addition-Elle is selling. At first I thought this was just an issue of ineffective marketing, but I’ve come to believe that, even apart from my age, I’m not their intended customer.

I shop at AE for three reasons: I am a plus size, I like to dress reasonably well, and I like to have options. What is not included in these reasons is loyalty to the AE brand. When I think about shopping there, I know that the entire store is devoted to plus sizes, affording me options, and on a good day I’ll find a couple items that work for me. But I feel like the price point has always caused me to have a really ambivalent relationship with the brand and I suspect that a lot of younger women, who are not as financially secure as the intended demographic, might feel the same way. I still do as much shopping as I can in Reitmans Encore and I can honestly say that I feel a level of loyalty to the Reitmans brand.

I wondered aloud to Mitchell, during our conversation if, given the presence of younger customers who shop at AE out of necessity and lack of other options, that brand isn’t perhaps a bit narrow in its focus. I now wonder if it might be worth it to draw these younger shoppers in with slightly lower price points in order to garner a loyal customer, potentially for life. Kind of like all of us to whom McDonald’s was marketed when we were children. The food isn’t good—we’re just loyal.

And when I say lower the price points, I don’t mean slash and burn. I’m saying bring the $49.99 hoodie down to $39.99 and it brings it out of the realm of “too expensive for the brand” and into the realm of completely reasonable. Obviously the bottom line is profit, but I think, with a customer who shops in a store out of necessity rather than choice, it’s important to make the customer feel like they aren’t just being charged what the market will grudgingly bear; because if she can escape shopping there, she will. Having said all this, I don’t know how much weight each of the factors Mitchell outlined bring to bear on pricing, so I don’t know if there’s wiggle room at all**. I simply believe it‘s worth it for the marketing team behind the scenes to explore what drives customers like me to AE and Penningtons.

A few days after I wrote my initial letter, I was shopping at Addition-Elle and a girl in her early 20s was at the counter. She decided against buying some t-shirts that she couldn’t afford after experiencing a moment of sticker shock. The sales rep at the cash urged the young woman to buy the t-shirts anyway, but the rep’s urging lacked zeal. I suspect she saw in that customer a mirror image of herself, without the benefit of an employee discount.

**In rebuttal, Ms. Mitchell indicated that AE has lowered its prices in recent years and offers frequent generous promotions and sale pricing, but that due to the other factors mentioned earlier, the wiggle room is very limited.

23 - Fat TV

2009-08-23T14:24:00.002-04:00

For those of you waiting patiently, after a bit of back and forth between Kerry Mitchell (president of Addition-Elle) and me, we are supposed to have a conversation sometime this coming week. As soon as I have something to report, you, the awesome blog fans, will know about it. In the mean time, I want to talk reality TV; specifically, fat reality TV.

The trend towards featuring heavier people on reality TV began slowly with shows like The Biggest Loser and X-Weighted. But a crop of new shows this summer has turned this light trickle into a deluge (or at least a fast-running stream). The afore-mentioned weight loss shows are still around with the addition of Dance Your Ass Off and the one-woman weight-loss journey, Ruby. More to Love—The Bachelor for the heavier set—features a big guy who is very psyched to be choosing from a bevy of big girls. And with this influx of fatty programming has come a valid questioning of whether these shows are actually about the denigration rather than the empowerment of overweight people.

A great deal of criticism has been leveled at all of the programs, with special censure for More to Love. In my opinion, the concept isn’t actually that bad. The bachelor in question, Luke Conley, makes no bones about how much he loves the voluptuous women in competition for his attentions. And a show that features women who wear double-digit dress sizes in a competition that doesn’t have to do with making them feel bad about their weight is certainly something to talk about. But it’s not all good news. Of all the comments on Fox’s website about the show after the first episode, 65% of them were entirely about the network’s unfortunate decision to post each contestant’s height and weight on the screen every time she was interviewed, as well as at elimination time. This is by no means a clear indicator of the percentage of people watching who are upset by this practice and, to be frank, I’m sure there are plenty of people tuning in, who are thrilled to the point of wetting themselves to have that information. But it does make one wonder if the producers really want to treat the contestants like they do the “regular” bachelorettes, or if the show is simply about making a buck at the expense of heavier women.

At least on More to Love, though, there’s question as to the intentions of the makers. No such question enters my mind when it comes to the programs focused on weight loss. Losing weight on TV hasn’t been dignified or even remotely fun since sometime around the Richard Simmons Sweatin’ to the Oldies infomercials. Contestants on The Biggest Loser, X-Weighted and Dance Your Ass Off spend weeks being humiliated, torn down and shouted at “for their own good;” which is why I love what little I’ve seen of Ruby. Ruby Gettinger is the most likeable person I’ve seen on reality TV, ever. She has weighed as much as 700lbs in her life and has lost over 400lbs before and during the show. In the episode that I watched most recently, her adorable ex-boyfriend came to town to help her find a new trainer because she’d just “fired” one. Ruby appears to be surrounded by a number of very supportive, down to earth people—rather than a bunch of self-righteous weirdos—and she does not evoke pity in the least. Instead, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I have to admit, she’s really inspirational and super refreshing. She represents what inclusive TV should look like all the time.

In Susie Orbach’s recent book Bodies, she talks about the Western fixation with the body as a personal renovation project, rather than the place in which we live and breathe. In the book’s opening pages, she makes the following comment, which, I think, characterizes so much of our attitude towards weight and weight loss: “The body has become a new focus in both women’s and men’s lives...the individual is now deemed accountable for his or her body and judged by it. ’Looking after oneself’ is a moral value.”

I can’t think of a context in which this rings more true than in weight loss reality TV. I think an unfortunate number of people in the personal training business have never learned a thing about human nature or how to actually motivate people. Reading that excerpt in Bodies reminded me of every clip I’ve ever seen of X-Weighted’s Paul Plakas and every other trainer on every other reality TV show. They all seem to feel they have a license to belittle contestants because these people have committed the mortal sin of having ever gotten fat at all. It’s like some sort of church of fitness presided over by a gaggle of very hell fire and brimstone preachers. I wonder if these contestants have a lot of success keeping off the weight they’ve lost on the shows with no one around to threaten them anymore?

Recently I watched a show, that was the anti-Ruby, and probably the worst case of self-inflicted fat reality TV I’ve ever seen. It was a Discovery Health special called My Big Fat Body featuring actor/comedian Frank Payne. The funny man narrated the program, which resulted in a simultaneously hammy and pitiable hour of Payne sounding strangely surprised, and then depressed, about how unhealthy he’d become. I expected the show to be about Payne’s actual weight loss attempt, but it was mostly an hour of Payne being told that he was basically about to die by one doctor after another. He spends a useless day at the Stanford University Human Performance Lab, a centre designed to help top athletes find their teeny, tiny flaws and fix them, so they can go on to become super heroes and demi-gods. I’m not sure what the point was in putting Payne on the O2 max machine to do a stress test while he ran. The dexascan, which basically showed him his skeleton in relation to his body size, also seemed irrelevant. Payne was a large man with some health problems—a fact that was obvious before he ever set foot in the building. But he must have gotten something from the experience; in a moment of clarity (or delirium) afterward, Payne declares that he has to “get fit or die.”

By the end of the program, Payne is down 60lbs from an original 363lbs, which is impressive. But the show is full, front to back, with dramatizations of Payne eating uncontrollably, shots of his alleged weekend food intake, and an army of health professionals calling him a “ticking time bomb” and generally tut-tutting at him. There’s even a brief visit with a surgeon to talk about a gastric bypass that Payne never has. The time spent looking at Payne’s actual attempts at weight loss amount to about four minutes—how inspiring. While I’m glad he got what he wanted from the show, it seemed like he was required to check his dignity at the door from the get go, and that’s unfortunate. An experience that will likely change Payne’s life for the better shouldn’t have to be wrought with such cart loads of humiliation. But, for the moment, I guess that’s what keeps people on the couch watching.

22b - Update

2009-07-27T20:06:00.003-04:00

A quick update my blog fans; rather than falling into a black hole, my letter has already garnered a response from Ms. Mitchell of Reitmans Canada. Colour me stunned. She's gamely offered to speak with me on the phone at a time of my convenience. I shall keep you all posted.

22 - Opening Salvo

2009-07-27T11:24:00.001-04:00

First, a wee business lesson. If you didn’t already know this, Reitmans Canada is the big daddy of a corporation that owns the following stores: Reitmans, Smart Set, RW & Co., Penningtons, Addition-Elle, Cassis and Thyme Maternity. If you ever felt like the shirt you saw at Reitmans looked exactly the same as the one you saw at Smart Set, it’s probably because it was the same shirt.

Anyhoo, I’ve long simmered and seethed over the pricing of plus size clothing for women, but when I realized that the same corporation that can offer me at shirt at one store for $9.99 is happy to try and offer me pretty much the same shirt at another store for $16.99, I started to get kinda pissy. So I decided to write a letter. I know it’s just going into some massive in-box that’s being sorted by a lackey at Reitmans Canada, but this is just an opening salvo. I intend to keep picking away at this one, in Roger & Me fashion, until I get someone to explain why plus size customers are being treated as the profit centre for the company.

I have my thoughts on the matter. Regular size retail is a hell of a lot more competitive in Canada than plus size retail, so it becomes a matter of what the market will bear. With competition like Old Navy, H&M, the far less classy than it was when I was a kid Fairweather, Stitches and numerous others, just five feet away in the mall, Reitmans and Smart Set have to be at rock bottom to get a share of the market. One of the last bastions of plus size basics, Cotton Ginny, has closed three stores in Toronto in the past few months and seems like it might be on the way out. With competition like that, Addition-Elle and Penningtons barely have to compete at all. And a captive audience has made it clear to the company that they are willing to pay their crazy prices in order to, you know, not go about nekkid in the streets.

So I’ve written a letter to Kerry Mitchell, the president of Addition-Elle and Penningtons (see letter below). And I’ll keep you posted on what transpires.

Ms. Mitchell,

I'm a customer from Toronto, Ontario and I'm writing because I continue to be dismayed by the difference in price point on your plus size clothing sold through Reitmans vs Addition-Elle and Penningtons. I'm also concerned about the overall difference in pricing between regular and plus size divisions at Reitmans Canada.

Obviously, I'm a plus sized customer, and so realistically, there are not a lot of stylish chain stores for me to shop in at the moment. I've never understood the dearth of options for plus size women in Canada, but that's another issue entirely. Of Reitmans Canada-owned stores, I prefer to shop at Reitmans because the price point is very reasonable. However, even in some of the biggest locations in this city (for example, Dufferin Mall) there are maybe a total of 20 wall and floor racks dedicated to plus sizes (including plus petites and tall) with probably close to 100 wall and floor racks dedicated to regular sizes. So if I want variety I end up at Penningtons or Addition-Elle. And that's when things get whacky.

Astonishingly, the price of just about everything literally *doubles* when I enter those stores. Presently a v-neck T in regular sizes at Reitmans retails for $7.99; in plus sizes for $9.99. At Addition-Elle, that price jumps up to a whopping $16.99 on sale—regular $22.99. Is it literally taking twice the fabric overall to produce plus size clothing? I have a hard time believing that. It starts to feel like we plus size shoppers are your corporation's cash cows—no pun intended.

At this point, because I'm determined to enjoy shopping again, I'm back on a weight loss plan, but Reitmans Canada might not be the recipient of my business when I get back into regular sizes. Right now I'm a captive audience and I feel absolutely treated like one.

Looking at three of the regular size clothing stores on your roster, Reitmans, Smart Set and RW & Co., the prices at all those stores are reasonable. Any woman seeking great style at great value would be able to shop at those places. On the other hand I know plenty of plus sized women on a budget who just can't afford to shop at Addition-Elle and Penningtons. I couldn't always afford it. Why is this difference in pricing so pronounced? It's certainly not a difference in quality. Items I've purchased at Addition-Elle or Penningtons don't last any longer than the ones that I buy at Reitmans.

I realize you only head up Addition-Elle and Pennington's and aren't responsible for the pricing at all of Reitmans Canada's divisions, but I'd like to at least begin to understand the rationale around the pricing from someone intimately involved in the plus size division. I would be so grateful for a reasonable explanation. Plus size women have enough discrimination to contend with in an average day—it would be nice to feel like the clothing stores we support were supporting us in return.

Looking forward to your response,

Heavy Me

21 - The Fat List

2009-07-03T12:58:00.004-04:00

I took today (July 2) off, anticipating that I’d need the day to recuperate from yesterday’s Canada Day festivities. Instead I came face to face with how very difficult it is to get drunk on shandies. So today was probably less a necessity than originally thought. However I’ve spent the entire day swanning around in my pyjamas, watching Wimbledon tennis (Serena won her semi-final match) and scoping out Meetup Groups. And despite my day of easy living, I’ve got nothing. No great insights. No earth shattering news story—certainly nothing that tops the deaths of last week. No personal revelations. So instead, a list: a list of fat things that I love.

Fat Hamsters – Unlike fat cats or dogs, fat hamsters still look like they can enjoy life. And frankly they aren’t living long enough for you to take them in for a hip replacement because they were carrying too much weight. That their cuteness increases almost in direct correlation to their fatness is undeniable. Fat hamsters are the shit.

Fat Asses – I have to be honest in that I only love certain fat asses. When the fat sits like two oversized apples on the bottom, outside edges of the behind, it’s a beautiful thing to behold. I do not have this type of butt and I lament it daily. I’d LOVE a butt like this. Some people would say no to that kind of butt, insisting that it too easily lends to saddle bag formation, should the fat shift even a little. To these I say, until the saddle bags appear, long live the chunky butt.

Fat Asians – Let me first say, this is not some sort of racist remark. I think Asians do heaviness better than most ethnic groups and that’s including black people. I’m not sure why, but I almost never find heavy Asian women unattractive. I always think they’re freaking adorable and get kinda mad that I could never achieve that kind of cute just by virtue of being overweight. My love for a fat Asian man isn’t as strong—but it’s there all the same. They have a way of appearing positively cherubic and I’m all over that (in a totally platonic way).

Phat Farm – This may not quite qualify, but I just love that a term that has always been so derogatory has been co-opted so beautifully for the sake of fashion.

Fat Back Taffy – This is Jill Scott’s band on the live portion of the double album “Experience 826+,” as well as a song on that album. The song sounds like an old time gospel ditty and it’s hard not to sing along.

Fat Stogies – It takes forever and a day for me to smoke a fat stogie but it’s the most delicious fun. It’s one of the few activities that I will tolerate that forces me to sit down and chill out. And it’s not the same as ‘in front of the TV’ chill, which isn’t really all that relaxing for your brain. It’s the kind of chill during which I sit on the rooftop with a glass of wine, in the cool of a summer evening, staring out at the city, and just chill.

A Fat Actress – I loved Roseanne Barr in her heyday. I know she wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but there are few family sitcoms I found nearly as enjoyable as “Roseanne.” I loved that the kids were never going to be even close to Cosby-perfect. I loved that her sister was so hapless. I loved that her husband was so freaking lovable. And I loved that Roseanne Barr actually tried to get this version of the American family on TV and managed to do it. I think she deserves kudos for that.

Another Fat Actress – Kathy Bates. ‘Nuff said. I don’t think of her as a “fat” actress. I just think of her as an amazing actress who has managed to really do well coming into the game pretty late. And she happens to be fat so she can be in this list, but her fatness is really neither here nor there. I simply think of it as her comeliness.

Fat Articles about Skinny People – I include these in the list because they are both maddening and comedic gold all at once. I love it when women like Scarlett Johansson and Evangeline Lily are the women listed in articles about how “fat” is back in Hollywood. I will stomach seeing them called curvaceous because they do have actual breasts and sometimes behinds as well. But anyone’s breasts can seem amazingly large if their waist is amazingly small. I don’t think either of these women would appear particularly curvaceous next to a woman who was a curvy size 8 or 10—you know, the women walking around in front of us all day, every day—the average ones. Johansson and Lily are not fat; hell, they aren’t even average. They are nothing like the rest of us or they wouldn’t be steadily working actresses in Hollywood—period.

Fat Lips – I used to hate my lips as a kid. I mean really despise them. They were too big. I was raised in the suburbs, often the only black kid in my class; if I was lucky, one of maybe three or four in an entire school. I wasn’t teased a lot or anything, but it was tough trying to figure out what beauty looked like in my skin rather than the skin of someone paler. One of my brothers used to constantly tell me to “fold my lips,” insisting that I make them look smaller. I don’t think it was until my late 20s that I started to realize that big, fat, luscious lips weren’t all bad—and I’m not even including the utterly lewd reason that will go through most male heads at this point. I’m still not thrilled when someone makes some weird ass comment about my lips being big because they’ve never laid eyes on a black person before, but for the most part I’m pretty open to compliments now. And as I’ve grown to like my own lips, I’ve started loving big, fat, luscious lips on other people (with the notable exception of Angelina Jolie whose completely natural lips still manage to look like they’ve suffered some sort of Botox assault). Michelle Pfeiffer’s top lip—to die for. Jude Law’s lower lip—a touch of heaven. LL Cool J’s lips are nearly a brand unto themselves. I want to kiss Missy Elliott’s lips—they are freaking gorgeous. All hail big lips.

Fat Sausages – Everyone loves sausage; the fatter, the better.

Fat Asian Babies – This list is in no particular order otherwise, but this is my number one pick. Though I’ve already pointed the general awesomeness of fat Asian adults, I felt that fat Asian babies deserved a category of their own, so special and distinct is my love for them. All fat babies are pretty cute (except for ugly babies—but they’re ugly no matter what size they are). It’s the one time in life when it’s okay to look like the Michelin Tire Man. But there is something insane that happens in my head when I see a fat little Asian baby. I am vaguely tempted to steal it, bring it home, fatten it up further and then snack upon it with little love bites. I can’t help but smile at random fat Asian babies. On transit vehicles, I turn into a grinning idiot. In the street, I won’t hesitate to fall into baby talk. These children have a power over me that is unholy, and yet, wholly welcome. If I ever have children, blame the fat Asian babies—they made me do it.

So that’s my list. I hope it brought you some post Canada Day enjoyment. Please tell me what fat things you love (besides me). Perhaps we can compile a comprehensive list for next Canada Day.

20 - Fabulous: The New Fat

2009-06-21T19:26:00.004-04:00

I’m sure you’ve noticed it. I have before today, but it really struck me this time. Recently I’ve been seeing an ad on the subways for Reitmans, a women’s clothing store that carries plus sizes. The woman in the picture is ostensibly plus sized. The copy next to her reads “Comes in small, medium and fabulous.”

I know I’m supposed to feel all special and empowered by this declaration of my fabulousness as a plus sized woman, but I just feel sort of condescended to.

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty has also used this particular trick. Some time ago they had billboards up around the city showing the image of a woman and two descriptive words. The public was invited to e-mail in their opinion of which word was more accurate. For example, one was a very freckled woman and the listed options were “ugly spots” or “beauty spots.” The options on the billboard I’m thinking of were “fat” or “fab.”

Understandably advertisers are not going to touch a word like fat, and all its negative connotations, with a ten foot pole, unless they are positioning it next to a more positive word—like fabulous. I get that it’ll probably be a while until we’re able to unpack a word like “fat” and allow it to just be a descriptor of size rather than an attack on character. It’s just odd that in a culture apparently suffering an epidemic of obesity we still can’t manage to find a way to talk about size that doesn’t make it feel like we’re avoiding swearing. Instead we’re busy re-claiming and disowning and doing everything in our power to avoid using the word fat.

The Reitmans ad verges on being confusing because the woman pictured is so very close to being a regular size. In fact, she very likely is a “regular” size. Barbara Brickner—one of the most famous plus size models in the industry—is a size 12. Whitney Thompson, winner of cycle 10 of America’s Next Top Model is considered a plus size model, and her size fluctuates between 8 and 10. I guess fair is fair—regular models are laughably unlike real women, so I guess the same goes for plus size models. My point is that the women used for plus size advertising are so normal looking if they’re not placed next to a “regular” model that it can actually be confusing. I wondered at first if the ad was just indicating that clothes at Reitmans also come in large or extra large. It took an extra second for me to make the connection that fabulous was a euphemism for plus.

As it is, fabulous is a word that has been squeezed of all its original meaning anyway. It seems to be the word people use when they want to describe a situation, item or person they actually find far from fabulous while still leaving everyone’s feelings intact. In fact, I’m sort of suspect of someone the minute they use the word. I start to immediately doubt their sincerity about everything that they say. And maybe that’s what I’m keying into in the ad. I don’t actually believe these advertisers think plus sized women are fabulous at all.

The Dove ads use the word in a different way. They clearly buy into all the bad connotations of the word fat because the woman pictured cannot apparently be fat and fabulous—she must be one or the other. Well frankly, given advertising beauty standards, she kind of has to be both. She’s a great looking woman who is quite well proportioned and bigger than average (at least for a model): fabulous and fat.

Both ads leave me with the impression of a sort of whitewash; a complete negation of fat people from advertising existence. We’ll either be acknowledged in euphemisms or not at all because apparently some of us can be too fabulous to even be fat. I’m pretty sure that I don’t fall into that category.

I’m not sure I’m ready for the word fat to be used in advertising. I think even I’m too painfully aware of all the baggage that word brings with it and I don’t know that I’d want to identify with an ad campaign that used the word. But it seems like fabulous doesn’t quite do the job either. Some clothing manufacturers have made an art form of referring to plus sizes and the advertising industry could probably get some pointers. I wouldn’t recommend all the things I’ve seen on clothing labels in my time—“Above Average” and “Encore” are some of the more amusing ones that come to mind—but there just has to be a better way. I mean, it would be nice if we could just say, “this clothing line comes in plus sizes” or “this woman is, incidentally, both fat and conventionally attractive (i.e. you don’t have a have a raging fat fetish to think she’s cute).” Clearly I’m not the person who should be writing this ad copy, but you get what I mean.

I’ve heard it said that advertising doesn’t set trends, it follows them and in these cases I think that rings true. As a culture we haven’t figured out a way to engage with fatness that isn’t mostly about dripping condescension, judgment or fetishism, and I think it might be a while before we do. It’d be nice though, if advertisers managed to get out ahead of the trend for once.

19 - Whatever Happened To...

2009-06-11T15:45:00.000-04:00

I’ve been sick every day of the past two weeks save about three days, so this will be a short one. I know you’ll all weep tonight.

Those of you who are possessed of great memory may have a vague recollection of two Weight Watchers members who agreed to let me have a peek into their progress for a year. Well in my blogging hiatus the year mark came and went and I let the assignment lapse, much to my shame. When they both “unfriended” me on Facebook, my disgrace continued. When I got an “unsubscribe” request regarding the blog from one, I knew I’d really blown it.

I did manage to follow up with both of them around the four and a half month mark and both were gracious enough to at least let me know where they were at with the program now. So on those two things, I shall report. However I won’t attach names to experiences since they aren’t really on board at this point.

One of the participants had to leave the program by the four month mark because of a serious health issue. At this point, she continues to struggle with this issue and so far cannot go back to the program. She’s on a special diet presently, the goal of which is to control the illness that she’s dealing with, so Weight Watchers is just not an option. In our last contact, however, she did express the hope that at some point she would be able to meld her special medical diet with Weight Watchers because she had really enjoyed the supportive environment of the program.

The other participant kept an online journal for some time, which made it nice and easy for me to follow her progress (and still I managed to suck at keeping on top of it). At the point when I checked back in with both participants in July of 2008, she had been on the program about 9 ½ months and had lost 7.8lbs (net). When I checked back with her recently she said she was no longer on the program, but I don’t actually know if she reached her goal in the end or not. Unfortunately, when someone is asking to be unsubscribed it seems indelicate to ask too many questions.

So my less than scientific sample in this case didn’t work out so well, but here’s to better-conducted experiments in the future. There’s a Jenny Craig centre just a door over from my apartment building. Perhaps I can recruit some people there!

18 - My Fat Friend

2009-06-04T14:41:00.001-04:00

Recently I lost a friend. Not in the traditional sense, but a shift in her life has occurred that has precipitated a slight shift in our relationship. As a result she no longer fills a specific role in my life: that of the “fat friend.”

The woman in question happens to be my sister, my closest sibling and probably my closest friend. Now to clarify, because I managed to offend the hell out of her with my shorthand, I don’t mean that she’s the fat friend who makes you feel so awesome about how you look because she looks worse. What I mean by “fat friend” is the person who affirms your decision not to work on your weight by their decision not to work on theirs. I didn’t care if our reasons for not working at it were the same; misery loves company and I enjoyed her company down here in the overweight trenches a great deal.

Allow me a little history if you will. My sister moved to Toronto in 2000, just after a family reunion. And at that family reunion a photo was taken. In it, the whole family is standing except the two of us; we’re seated and (I blame the camera angle now) neither of us looked our best. I remember feeling absolutely mortified at that picture when I saw it later. In fact, I’m fairly certain that photo precipitated my first foray into Weight Watchers. Soon after my sister’s move, she started the Jenny Craig program, and since then we’ve kind of mirrored each other in our weight gain and loss.

Over the past nine years, we’ve both yo-yo’d around and taken stabs at getting the weight issue under control. We did Myrtle Beach together last year in our belle grande bathing suits (though admittedly she was wearing one of my old “skinny” ones—I’ll always be the “big” little sister). Later that year we went home to attend an anniversary party for our parents and while her dress was way better than mine, we were both carrying more weight than we wanted to be at the time.

But now, all of this is about to change because my sister has signed up for Weight Watchers. While I have no great faith in the efficacy of the program, I know there are exceptions to the rule and it’s entirely conceivable that my sister will be one of them. Even in the worst case scenario that she isn’t the exception, I’m sure she’ll lose a significant amount of weight to begin with. She’s down about 6lbs after three weeks which is right on spec for the program. Assuming she continues to lose at this rate with no major setbacks, in six weeks she’ll be down 18lbs. That’s the kind of difference you can see—especially at another family event.

You got it. In a scant six weeks, we’ll both fly home for our mom’s 70^th birthday. All of my tall, thin brothers will be there. And this time I’ll be the only fat sibling.

Being with my family is emotionally exhausting at the best of times, but when I’m already stressed out, it’s hell on earth. Around my family I revert back to some out-of-control eighth grader begging to be understood, respected and listened to and it usually culminates with me having just the temper tantrum to prove that I’m still an out-of-control eighth grader who doesn’t deserve to be understood, respected or listened to. So yeah, that, on top of being the only fatty—not looking forward.

With all this in mind, I’ve begun to wonder if I have the wherewithal to be fat alone, not only with my family but everywhere else as well. Will I be able to calmly stand up to the well-intentioned (I like to think) prodding of certain family members to shed the pounds? Will I manage to enjoy what little I can of my family without worrying about how I look the entire time? Can I manage to not make the entire trip about my weight?

And out here in the real world, can I fight the temptation to change for shitty reasons? I’ve taken a long hiatus from working on my weight and it hasn’t just been the result of sheer laziness. In fact, it’s been a concrete decision based on, what I believe, to be a valid reason. Tempting though it is to do something drastic, I refuse to start another weight loss regimen that I don’t think is healthy or that I don’t see myself maintaining for life; and that nixes a lot of conventional programs. I won’t eat packaged Jenny Craig or NutriSystem food forever; I won’t spend the rest of my life running off to Dr. Bernstein to get shots in my ass; I won’t cut out carbs for the rest of my life; I won’t even count points and go to meetings a la Weight Watchers for the rest of my life. And so far at least, Paul McKenna can’t make me thin. So knowing my failure rate with at least one of these methods and my aversion to the rest of them, there’s little point in starting them. I’m sure I could lose weight in any one of these programs but the likelihood that I would keep it off is so low that I’m not willing to participate. I’ve done enough of the lose/gain cycle and I refuse to subject my body to it. Until I know I’m ready to deal with all my emotional triggers around food, I’m just not going to make some half-assed attempt. But in the mean time, I remain overweight and not terribly happy about it. And now there’s no one along for the ride. My human pillar of affirmation has left the building.

I guess I should be thankful that I’m so tired of the weight gain/loss treadmill because I haven’t been strongly tempted at all to do anything. I’ve had crazy thoughts of just starving myself until July 18, being trim for a weekend and then piling it all back on. But those are thoughts that remain nothing more than fucked up fantasies. So fat I am now, and fat I shall be on July 18.

There have been three positives in this though. The first is that I have quickly realized that my relationship with my sister will survive her losing weight without me; frankly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to be normal about it for a while there. The second is that I think she’s happier with herself and I basically just want my sister to be happy. The last is that I’ve been forced into the realization that I was never okay with not working at my weight in the first place. But what follows is not what you might anticipate.

Even with a friend along for the ride, I have been bound up in mess of self-loathing around my body that’s been pretty substantial and I hadn’t really been aware of how deep it went. I’ve never been in a place of acceptance about my weight but instead this terrible limbo; just waiting for the day when the rest of my life calms down enough to work on it and never really settling into this body in the mean time. Like moving into a house and never unpacking anything because you don’t plan to stay. In lieu of self-acceptance, I struck a deal with myself: it’s okay to not work at the weight as long as you hate yourself sufficiently for being overweight. And I’ve done a fabulous job at the hatred. Messed up, I realize.

So I’ve begun to wonder, can I just sit still and try to be happy at my present size? Can I manage to just work at accepting myself in the here and now, without a plan for the there and then? Can I refrain from continuing to disavowing all connection to this body? Can I stop thinking of my body and thus myself as something in need of major renovation?

I have a hope that being alone in this will make it easier to work on accepting myself on some basic level. It’s funny, but walking alone might lead to greater happiness.

17 - Overblown

2009-05-27T16:29:00.008-04:00

Wednesday, May 20^th was not a slow news day. That day, the missing person case of Victoria Stafford became a homicide investigation. But alas, newspaper editors had to find their stories the day prior, so on that day the front page of The Toronto Star led with the headline “The Incredible Shrinking Man.” [i] the story had actually been about an incredibly shrinking man, it might have warranted the great big font. But the story was only about Toronto mayor David Miller having dropped 50lbs and—shockingly—still being recognizable to 16 out of 20 people

Let me first just address this “still recognizable” thing. No one at a height of 6’3” becomes unrecognizable for dropping 50lbs. I’m 5’5” and I wouldn’t become unrecognizable if I dropped 50lbs. I’m pretty sure people that knew me 50lbs ago are still finding it pretty easy to pick me out in a crowd. I’m going to venture a guess that anyone who found it that difficult to identify the man after his weight loss probably didn’t vote in our last municipal election—for shame!

I’d also love to know who in the hell ran this survey. Who bothered to ask this question? Were there people running in the streets when Miller’s first “after” shot hit the internet asking “who is that and what has he done with my mayor?!” The whole idea of surveying people sounds a bit desperate. I’m all for the printed word, but if this is what journalists are coming up with, the death knell for newspapers just got a little louder.

The comments on the article were an interesting mix. Most of the posters simply voiced frustration with Miller as a mayor. Some of his detractors found ways to use the weight loss as a mildly funny means to get their point across about the job he’s doing (i.e. “maybe he’ll shrink into nothing and The City of Toronto will have shed 230 pounds of distruction [sic];” “must be all that hot air he expels”). And then there were the (sadly) expected digs at fat people in general because the issue of weight has been brought up at all. One poster suggested that there must be a lot of fat people posting since people were actually angry about the article. Another poster urged the rest of us “tubbies” to follow Miller’s lead.

When I finished raging over the “fat attacks,” there were two comments that stuck out for me. One echoed the first question that popped into my head when I saw the article—“slow news day?” The other rounded out what I was thinking by calling this “Paris Hilton journalism.” Well said.

I think it’s abhorrent that the weight of every celebrity is continuously monitored by the media. Unless one’s profession is an athletic one, no one’s weight should be worthy of mention. But I still expect, and frankly accept, that I’m going to see this sort of thing on the covers of People, US and any other magazine meant for mass consumption by, primarily, women. I wouldn’t even really be surprised if I saw something like this on the cover of a more tabloid-like daily like The Toronto Sun. But I always thought of The Toronto Star as a somewhat respectable paper. Perhaps not the most committed to hard journalism but still a reasonable read. And then they pull a front page like this.

I’m pretty sure there were still people dying in Darfur on May 19 before the paper went to print. There was probably something pertinent to say about the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq on May 19. Now some people feel that the future of newspaper is in keeping it local. Fine, let’s keep it local. Weren’t there still some pretty important talks going on between GM and the CAW on the evening of on May 19? Well, I have to admit, that story did make the news, but obviously it wasn’t front page worthy. But David Miller’s shrinking waist line and continued familiarity to the masses (sort of) apparently was.

In 2008, The Toronto Star was still the most read paper in the CMA (census metropolitan area) of Toronto with a total weekly readership of 49%[ii]. While I’m not in agreement with all of the comment posters, it does represent a segment of people actually questioning the relevance of the news they’re reading. I wonder though, how big is that segment? If even half of that 49% don’t question the fact that someone’s weight loss is front page news in a city like Toronto, that’s troubling to me. It’s troubling to me that there is conceivably this great number of people who think that David Miller’s morning runs, bagged lunches, Quarter Pounder with cheese boycott and subsequent weight loss is actually news.

Maybe I’m being censorial about this. Maybe all news is created equal, but I can’t say I believe that. I just don’t agree with semi-respectable newspapers implying that someone’s last weigh-in should be given the same space as wars, elections and economic melt-downs. I’m not okay with the implication that we should be monitoring David Miller’s weight loss as an electorate, rather than his policies. And I’m not okay with the increasing number of editors who feed the misconception that weight loss is something to congratulate people about, like they’ve just done something to secure world peace. Ultimately, I’m not okay with the idea that we should be worried about anyone’s weight except our own.

The “after” shot of David Miller was taken at a cities environment summit in Korea and while news of what was actually discussed at the summit did make into The Toronto Star the next day, I fail to understand why they felt the need to lead the day prior with a “wow, the mayor looks great” article. And if they just had to do the “wow, the mayor looks great” article could they not have buried it on page E4?

I’d love to hear what you think. Is weight loss news? Should it be news? Am I too sensitive to this because of my weight? While I love your e-mails, you can comment anonymously on the blog and then everyone can have the benefit of your thoughts which, I think, you’d all enjoy. So, over to you.

[i]The online version of the story was entitled “The Skinny on Mayor Miller’s weight loss.”

[ii]2008 NADbank Readership Study – check it out at http://www.cna-acj.ca/en/system/files/Press%20Release%200708%20NADbank%20Study.pdf

16 - BMI Begone!

2009-05-20T09:51:00.003-04:00

For some time now, I’ve wanted to talk about the Body Mass Index (BMI), and last week a little nugget fell into my lap. I stumbled across an article in MacLean’s about a new measure being proposed by some obesity experts. Enter the Edmonton Obesity Staging System. What this measure does (that the BMI cannot) is take into account that not every obese person is at equal risk for weight-related diseases, even at the same BMI. In fact, it even allows for the novel idea that an obese person might be relatively healthy.

In the article, the following example is used to demonstrate how the same BMI means different things for different people: “Two people…One is a young woman, aged 24, who seems relatively healthy and plays soccer on weekends. The other is a large 32-year old man who suffers from hypertension and sleep apnea. The woman is five foot five, about 190lbs; the man is six feet tall, 265lb…both are ‘obese’ with a Body Mass Index of 30 or more.”

As the article goes on to explain, it doesn’t take much to ascertain that the only thing that these two people share is a BMI. Any potential medical intervention is going to look very different in each case and using the same approach for two people with such different lifestyles and symptoms would be silly. However, many practitioners are without a sensible guide and have only the BMI and its attendant diagnoses at their disposal when dealing with obese patients.

It seems like a measure as unrelated to specific information as the BMI leaves much to be desired. Yet, in a Frontline diet documentary mentioned in my third post, a nutritionist, going on host Stephen Talbot’s BMI alone, lists off (with a straight face) an array of horrible health risk factors: heart disease, stroke, osteo-arthritis, high cholesterol, adult onset diabetes and some types of cancer. The good doctor planned to check Talbot’s cholesterol and to do a blood glucose test to ensure that he wasn’t “already diabetic,” but all of her declarations were based on just his BMI. At 5’11’ and 210lbs, Talbot had a BMI of 29, which put him in the overweight category, edging dangerously close to obesity. Ironically, he hadn’t considered himself overweight at all prior to that day.

I’d like to believe that most nutritionists would run a few more tests before declaring that you were about to contract any number of terrifying diseases. It’s telling, though, that this nutritionist talked about using the BMI “a lot more” these days and seemed content to be seen on television making a lot of conclusions based on that information alone. I’m left wondering, if Talbot had been a naturally thinner man, with deceptively high metabolism and a normal range BMI, would the good doctor have bothered to ensure that he wasn’t “already diabetic?”

I have a great family doctor who doesn’t treat me like my size is the only thing that defines me. Knowing my 30+ BMI full well, she refers to me as “not that overweight.” Not every overweight person is blessed with a doctor like mine though; a system like this is a great way to begin and facilitate conversation between patients and doctors, so that interventions are tailored to the individual in question. Clearly the one-size-fits-all-BMI approach hasn’t worked thus far—this new kind of thinking is long overdue. My favorite quote in the article, from Dr. Arya of the Canadian Obesity Network, highlights something that I think we all know, but that most people don’t like to admit: “Size is health in many people’s minds, but it shouldn’t be.”

I’ll second that emotion.

To read the full MacLean’s article, click here. For more information on the Edmonton Obesity Staging System, check out Dr. Sharma’s blog.

15 - Freedom of Space

2009-05-12T23:09:00.003-04:00

I ride public transit everywhere. I didn’t even learn how to drive until the age of 30, making me one of those terrible overly cautious (and thus somewhat dangerous) drivers. But I’ve always been vaguely offended by the cost of owning a car anyway. Also, without public transit I’d probably regress into illiteracy; most everything I’ve read in the past 15 years has been read while traveling on a bus or subway. I actually find it hard to read at home at all.

Having sung the praises of the service, however, I’m not always a fan of transit. Waiting for buses in the winter sucks and it’s not uncommon for transit vehicles to smell bad in the summer time. In addition, I can assure you that no one with a major psychological issue in this city owns a car. And there’s a reason that the 300 Blue Night is called the Vomit Comet. But my last beef is the issue of space.

Seats on public transit vehicles are really not made for people my size. I don’t tend to ride in rush hour so this is (thankfully) not an everyday issue for me. I’m often able to get what I consider prime seating on my bus to work—one of the four single seats on the left hand wall. And if the subway isn’t too busy, most (sane) people will observe appropriate spacing—meaning, in a row of three seats the middle one will be left open and you only sit in the open spot of a two-seater if there are no other reasonable options. This allows people like me to have a portion of their ass taking up part of the next seat. Regular sized folks put bags, dogs, children and other sundries there from what I’ve observed.

But when it’s busy, it’s a whole different story. If I’m stuck on the outside of a two-seater, about a quarter of my body will likely be hanging out into the aisle. If I’m on the inside seat, I’m folded up like a contortionist trying to avoid inappropriately touching my neighbor. As for a three-seater, if there are already two occupants, only enormously extenuating circumstances will make me sit (i.e. spontaneous conception or my leg suddenly breaking all on its own). Which brings me to a story.

The other day I was on a rush-ish hour bus that was required to take on the disgorged passengers of an out-of-service vehicle. This newly, exceptionally crowded bus was going to be nuisance enough, but then this dude gets on—and he’s huge. Not just overweight, but just an impossibly large man. I look at him in dread because I know the seat next to me is the best one left. I hold my breath a bit, anticipating being squished into the wall, his thigh melding with my own, as the two of us compete for too little space.

And then it happens. He manages to not only sit next to me, but to pass the entire remainder of the ride, without ever touching me. At all. If it wouldn’t have remanded me to the ranks of the insane, I would have thanked him—thanked him for understanding that we all want space, no matter how big we are and how the small the space is. I wanted to thank him for respecting my space even in rush hour. I wanted to thank him for understanding the hierarchy of seat comfort based on first arrival.

This strange happening got me thinking about personal space in the public realm and one’s right to it. In North American culture there is a bubble of personal space that we all strive to maintain. Only in very specific contexts do we give that space up, like crowded vehicles or schools or Black Friday sales. It’s why, when a dude sits in the seat next to you on an empty bus, you move the hell away toute suite. But the bigger you are, the bigger your bubble and I wondered to myself, did I forfeit the right to my personal space bubble when I got a little too big for one seat? And if that’s the case, is that fair or right?

Ironically, as a fat gal, I tend to walk around trying consciously not to take up too much space for the simple reason that I don’t want to be reminded of how much actual space I take up. There are days when I don’t even want to be seen, let alone felt to be encroaching on someone else’s space based on my size. It makes me wonder, did the man on that rush hour bus keep from touching me out of consideration, or was he just trying not to take up too much space that day? Maybe he just didn’t want to be seen or felt either.

I used to love air travel as a kid. As an adult who’s watched too many episodes of Seconds from Disaster and Mayday, I know too much to enjoy it much anymore. Also, my hips are becoming too wide for the standard airplane seat. Before every flight that I take, I send up a small prayer that the seat next to me will be either empty or occupied by someone insanely thin so that my time of terror in the skies will, at least, be comfortable.

So of course, after all this thinking about how much I attempt not to take up any space, I couldn’t help but think about people who want to take up more space than anyone should need. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some large folks who have zero qualms about taking up all kinds of space, but, in my experience, I see this propensity for being downright weird about the issue displayed most often by thin people. Maybe it’s just because, despite the “epidemic of obesity,” there are more average size people than any other kind. Whatever the reason, this seems to be the state of things. Some examples that come to mind: people who cross their legs (in any variety of ways) on public transit, as if the aisle was some sort of lounge area rather than a through way; the dudes (it’s always dudes) who sit with their legs two feet apart; the huge purse girls and the backpack boys; and the dreaded “SUV-baby-carriage” people*. These people appear to function with the idea that they are not only entitled to the space that they need, but to as much space as they might possibly want. I go about with the feeling like I should be grateful that I’m allowed to take up as much space as I do, and maybe, in light of these people, I’m being overly grateful. On the other hand, if everyone were as grateful as I am, public transit would be a lot more pleasant for all of us.

*Credit to the editor for that one.

14 - Latifah and Jenny: An Awkward Union

2008-09-02T15:57:00.002-04:00

Whether it's an eating regimen, a magic pill, or an exercise machine, companies selling weight loss products tend to feature the users with the least typical results. In fact, that's one of the most smirk-worthy features of every weight loss ad—the tiny white print on the bottom of the TV screen: "Results not typical." From the 50 year old grandmother strutting around bikini-clad in old Bowflex commercials to Kirsty Alley's amazing (though disputed) shedding of 70 lbs, none of these people are an accurate representation of what will likely happen if you try this product. People desperate to lose weight fail to think through the fact that for any 50 year old woman to look that good, she's either got amazing genes or an amazing plastic surgeon...in addition to her Bowflex. I would hope that new users of the Jenny Craig program would pay attention to the fact that Valerie Bertinelli's JC blog is littered with asterisks indicating that her results aren't typical. In fact, all weight loss numbers shown on the JC site are listed as "not typical" because what's typical is that you'll lose and gain the same five to ten pounds for four months and then you'll quit the program no slimmer and a bit poorer. What it amounts to is false advertising, but what else is new?

However, if we want to talk about typical and atypical in the realm of people who actually lose weight and keep it off, most of us don't look like runway models when we're done with a weight loss program. Most people lose their weight and look like the typical size 12-14 woman that is the majority in North America; not the size 0-4 woman who entirely populates TV land. The former is about reality and the latter is about wish fulfillment. People don't pay good money for a product to produce reality in their lives; they pay for the fantasy. And that's why it's effective to show all the women who got down to size 4 (from a 12) in the NutriSystem commercials, or the incredible shrinking waistline of Valerie Bertinelli in the Jenny Craig spots.

It's this weight loss advertising reality that makes Jenny Craig's campaign featuring Queen Latifah really interesting. Admittedly, when I first saw the Queen in the Jenny ads I was dismayed. I was dismayed by the "urban" setting of her first ad, just to ensure that we know she's still "street" or whatever they were trying to convey. It bugged the hell out of me that the fan base that Queen Latifah first appealed to, the fan base that made her famous, probably can't afford to use the program. However, my objections to her role in the campaign aside, I have to be impressed with the tack they've taken: someone who's results actually appear attainable or even typical being featured on TV. Someone who is considered a success story who still happens to look like the rest of us. On her JC blog, Queen Latifah notes that she's lost 20lbs and her cholesterol has gone down 20 points. While the "cover our asses" asterisks also appear next to her results, deeming them atypical, from where I'm standing losing 20lbs is a lot more attainable than 40 or 70lbs—in fact I'd consider it almost typical.

One of Queen Latifah's JC ads has her grooving away on a treadmill talking about how much she loves feeling healthy. In fact, in all of her ads she is shown mostly speaking to "feeling good" or being a "size healthy." The amount of weight she's lost is referred to but unlike the ads featuring Bertinelli (the other Jenny Craig celeb spokesperson on the go at the moment) there are no before/after shots. In her blog she says that she thinks her body was fine the way it was and is fine now, but she's using the program to improve her health. What becomes clear very quickly is that the ad campaign featuring Latifah is not about wish fulfillment.

I would venture to say that this is the reason that Queen Latifah's blog comes up in a new window when you click on her name on jennycraig.com. I believe this is about reeling in a new, but smaller, group of clientele. The client who isn't interested in a dramatic weight loss (or isn't willing to admit that's their interest anyway). The client who has probably dieted so many times before that they are simply looking for a healthier lifestyle. The client who isn't willing to be openly disparaging about her body as it is. Typical Jenny Craig is about atypical results in order to sell the product. The Queen is about appealing to the consumer who thinks they're smarter than that. We're all getting duped but some get to walk away thinking they're above our weight obsessed society. At the end of the day though, it's Valerie Bertinelli's blog that's emblazoned all over jennycraig.com—not Queen Latifah's. Clearly featuring a woman who's lost weight, but still sort of looks like everyone else, remains a risky business.

13 - Bad Shirt

2008-07-25T13:06:00.004-04:00

So in a mere 22 hours, barring any major delays, I will be sitting on a plane headed for Charlotte, North Carolina, where I'll then board a connecting flight to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We are excited--very, very excited. As a result this post is being done so fast and dirty that it won't even be seen by the editor. I can only offer a thousand apologies in advance for any misplaced commas and typos.

So Paul McKenna's book finally showed up on Tuesday last week. I spent three days eating only when I was hungry, eating what I wanted, eating consciously and stopping when satisfied. By Thursday I was too irritable to even go and see my therapist. My stomach felt off, I was headache-y, my blood sugar was on some sort of magic carpet ride, and I was feeling plain old pissed off from not being able to ingest something delicious to cope with every emotion coming my way. I haven't quite tackled the visualization techniques that he recommends yet but I did begin listening to his vaguely hypnotic CD at bedtime. Hopefully he's working some kind of mojo on me while I sleep. Despite his strictly forbidding you to weigh yourself before you've been doing the program for at least two weeks, I figured I wanted a little numerical encouragement before I headed south. Having to buy an even bigger tankini this year (over last year's) to accommodate my enlarged girth was making me feel a little blue (even if this tankini is smokin' hot). The funny part is that I worked to be disappointed. I pulled out the scale from its place of shame beneath my wardrobe only to find that the battery was dead so I couldn't get a reading. I made a special trip to the drug store to get a battery and laboured over getting it installed properly. It was with great confidence that I stepped up onto the scale. After ten days of having to actually cope with anxiety, boredom, and mild sadness, I haven't lost a pound. I was 230 the last time I weighed myself and I'm at exactly the same spot. Now I suppose something could be said for the fact that I haven't gained and I should be glad that I'm not hoovering down enough food for three other people in a day and thus avoiding that awful "my stomach hurts 'cause I'm so full" feeling. But c'mon! Do my efforts count for nothing?! So I hope that in time Paul McKenna will make me thin but clearly it won't be happening at the speed I would have preferred. Whatever happens, you'll be the first to know about it.

And as if the number on the scale wasn't depressing enough I have the vague impression that the teen-aged boy who gave up his seat to me on the bus last night might have done so thinking I was pregnant. I was wearing one of those empire waist line shirts that all fat women are supposed to wear; the ones that are supposed to hide our bellies. The problem, of course, is that not all fat women are shaped the same way, though plus size clothing makers would have you think so. I am one of those fat women whose weight sits at the top of her belly. So an empire waist line in most clothing, unless cut very specifically, makes me look pregnant. I thought I’d lucked out with this shirt though. It appears that I may have been wrong. Seriously, some days it’s best to not get out of bed at all.

12 - Till Heft Do Us Part

2008-07-12T11:35:00.005-04:00

As I’ve made my latest foray back into the dating game, it’s gotten me thinking about my weight in the context of a relationship. On one level I really want to meet someone now, at my heaviest, so that should I lose weight it’s just sort of an added bonus; and if should I gain weight again it’s not a massive shock for Mr. Right. While I’m presently in no danger of losing any weight (my damn book still hasn’t shown up yet), it does concern me that if I entered a relationship 30lbs lighter, that person, the slimmer me, would be the person my significant other signed up for, not the one I am now. This begs the question, if the person that I am now reappeared would Mr. Right be entitled to get outta Dodge for that reason alone? In other words, when a person gains weight in a relationship is the other party entitled to leave for that very reason? Have they been subjected to a bait and switch and are they well within their rights to go and find someone who will maintain a little better?

I sat down with my good friend Candy[i] to ask these very questions. Candy has been married since before I even realized boys were good for something. While Candy’s body has changed and morphed since having children she is pretty much the same weight that she was when she got married (if not a little lighter). Her husband however, has put on a significant amount of weight since “I do” and I wanted to pick her brain about what that’s like for their relationship.

Before we dive in to the interview, I want to thank Candy for her honesty and forthrightness. The blog is blessed.

Heavy: At what point did your husband’s weight gain become an issue for you?

Candy: When we first started dating he was 196lbs and he still had a little bit of a belly—he basically needed to do some crunches to lose it. I don’t know exactly what the number was but I know I reached a day when it just started to irritate me. I realized I had put on weight and he’d never complained about it—so I was probably not saying anything for a while but feeling that way for some time.

H: Do you remember how long ago that was?

C: Maybe about six years ago.

H: You said it started to "irritate" you—can you elaborate on that word?

C: I think when I became annoyed was in moments when he’d already pissed me off in some way. So you know how we are, we always bring up the past; and all the other baggage would come with it. His family would say stuff like "when are you going to get on the treadmill" or "you could stand to lose a few pounds," and I would feel the need to defend him, in the back of my mind knowing it was true. I was torn because I had to defend him but I was feeling the same thing that his family was.

H: How long have you been married now, eight years?

C: Eleven years (laughs).

H: Someday I’ll remember! You’ve been married 11 years – so this has been an issue for almost half the marriage.

C: Yeah. The other thing that annoyed me was buying him clothes. You go into Moore’s to get someone to help you and they ask if you’re buying for your father. You’re 25 or 26 and it’s like you’re buying for your husband.

H: Did you feel stigmatized?

C: I felt the stigma because I’m there buying a 2x or 3x shirt or 44 or 46 waist pant. Also around that time I had just had our first child and I felt like he needs to be active for the one-year old child who’s running around.

H: Did it affect your sex life?

C: Absolutely.

H: Do you want to get into the nitty gritty?

C: Oh I can.

H: Okay, go for it!

C: You always get stuck in the same positions. Especially after you have a baby, sex is really uncomfortable if the person is on top is a lot heavier than you. Especially if the woman has had stitches and they’re still sore. Even with me on top I still have to get my ample thighs around his ample belly.

H: How about from behind?

C: There’s still a belly in the way even if you have the biggest willy in the world.

H: I know there was a period of time when your husband had just left a job and so that was an issue for him. Do you think that affected the issues around the weight gain?

C: Having job troubles contributes to your activity level and if he’s not feeling good about where he’s at, the whole weight thing is an easy excuse to start an argument.

H: Did you bring up the weight when you were pissed off about something else?

C: Oh yeah. You certainly don’t fight fairly. We all do it so we might as well just fess up to it. And I’m always the one who starts talking and then that’s what starts the fight. I’m the woman and emotionally I need to get it out. So it comes off like I’m doing a lot of nagging, which maybe essentially I am.

H: Do you feel that a person’s physical appearance and the maintenance of that is part of the promise one makes at the altar?

C: Yes. It’s the unspoken promise. But as we age, guys get more nose hair, they go bald. Do you really expect that at 25 years old unless they’re already going that way? No. [Looks are] important when you’re young but as you get older you hit a certain age and you mature and you go through life enjoying the experiences that you’ve had with that person. It’s not so much about the nose hairs and the bald head but the person you’re with. You grow to love those things. If you ask a younger person they’d say yes, that’s important, but an older person would say no. It’s certainly been an issue in our house.

H: Do you feel like as you’ve gotten older it’s been less difficult?

C: No, more difficult for me personally.

H: That totally flies in the face of what you just said!

C: I know!

H: Why do you think that is?

C: Because part of me feels entitled. I’m 34 years old and I have this 40 year old husband who should still be taking care of himself. [Who should] be more conscious of how he dresses. There are days when he doesn’t care that he’s not cleaned his ears or shaved his face in three days. I don’t get that, I’m just the total opposite of that. And I don’t just do that for him—I do that also for myself. Maybe it’s a vanity thing. I don’t know. When you go to the gynecologist, you do some work “down there.” You’re not really doing it for them but to make sure the opinion that’s formed is a good one. Maybe it’s part of vanity.

H: Is a person entitled to leave the marriage entirely if someone’s appearance changes dramatically–whether they just entirely check out emotionally or actually get divorced?

C: If someone were to say that a man left a woman because she got fat after having a couple of kids we’d think that guy was the biggest asshole in the world. But I’m not naïve enough to think that there isn’t a whole lot of that happening in marriages. That one person is feeling that the other has given up and they’re feeling frustrated and end up wanting to have an affair or having some other vice.

H: Whether people are admitting to it or not it’s happening then?

C: It’s happening. I’m sure.

H: Is that guy within his rights to do that though?

C: I don’t think anyone should leave a marriage over just that. But I don’t think anyone leaves over just that—it’s not just that someone got fat and it was over. It’s not like everything else is fine and then someone gains some weight and so the other person leaves. Other things are always going on whether it’s a bad sex life or emotional problems, money troubles….whatever.
And people don’t just eat because they like to eat—there’s usually depression that comes along with it. Weight is an easy one to fight about because people have to eat.

H: Do you feel like your husband’s weight gain was selfish?

C: Yeah, sure it’s selfish.

H: Do you think he’s conscious of that?

C: Yes, in a way, because it’s a choice to either get up and exercise or feed your face or not. But I also think that when you struggle with weight, you feel bad about overeating or not exercising and you end up doing the same activity that made you feel bad all over again. So it’s a vicious cycle.

H: Would you say your concern is equally about your kids and you or no?

C: I would say equally. For me, my concern comes from a personal or sexual viewpoint. For the kids, it’s about being healthy for them, healthy enough to play and eventually see them have grandchildren. Kids pick up on their friends’ parents being different from their parents. Kids notice these things and sometimes they verbalize their fears/concerns and sometimes they don’t. And that’s where it becomes a sticky situation.

H: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

C: I definitely think that there’s a difference between a man harping on a wife about weight and a woman harping on a man for the same reason. Usually women gain weight because of children so they sort of have an excuse. But then again why do men get fat? Is it because he’s providing for the family and job stress, that sort of thing? The reasons people get fat might really be the same; it’s just that women also have children. In a way people don’t necessarily badger women quite as much because we usually do hold on to some of that weight after we’ve had kids. It doesn’t necessarily make us an overweight person but things are gonna look or feel different afterwards. With guys there’s a different standard because there are no children. Guys get less lenience. Why does a guy just put on 40lbs? There’s no physical reason for it. I also realize that as we age we are more prone to put on weight because we are less active, so I’m not talking about all of the 60-90 year olds out there. I’m not speaking of putting on weight because of medical issues either. Even though he is losing weight, I’m still not all that into him when he’s naked because I still see all the places he needs to lose weight.

H: At this point are you interested in him sexually or are you, for lack of a better phrase, taking it for the team?

C: Taking it for the team. If I met him today I wouldn’t be sexually interested in him, unless he had an amazing personality or did something really amazing for me. If I saw him today I wouldn’t give him a second look. I might think "oh he’s handsome, but he could stand to lose a few pounds." I’m just not into that type of body. It’s a harsh reality but it’s a fair question. You didn’t marry the person at this weight. If you didn’t know this person would you still be in to them? Honestly I’d say no. Most people are too wishy washy to answer that question.

H: In a perfect world where he loved his job and there were no money problems, do you think the weight thing would be as much of an issue?

C: If everything was perfect, he liked his job, and we didn’t have to worry about money, he’d probably carry himself differently. He would care if he put on twenty pounds because his confidence would probably suffer. If they’re confident, most people will start doing something on their own without someone nagging them. When you feel bad about other things and you’re depressed, you body aches and you physically feel unwell. At that point it is hard to get up to exercise because your mind is not into it, your body certainly isn’t feeling like exercising, and your heart might not be into it.

[i] Same old, same old. Candy is not her real name. Is anyone named Candy anymore?

11 - News and Other Hearsay

2008-06-17T12:33:00.002-04:00

I had planned to come back from my hiatus all triumphant and “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane” (which, incidentally, I sang to everyone who would listen when Hurricane Isabel hit a few years back). Unfortunately, my comeback can neither be described as triumphant nor remotely rocking.

I spent most of the last month and a half commuting three hours, twice a week for adult education classes in order to get some web design know-how under my belt; the point was to perk up my resume so I can get out of my fairly shite job. Now I have to go ahead and see if I’ve actually learned anything by attempting to apply the know-how for the next few weeks. When that phase is over (after I’ve built a couple rudimentary sites by the sweat of my brow and my html skillz) I then have to go back to job hunting in earnest. In the mean time I continue to train new people at work which makes me feel like 32 going on 40, since they all seem to be 28 going on 12. And as if that’s not enough to suck one dry of mojo, the oral surgeon excised a portion of the underside of my tongue last week for testing purposes making it hard to yawn or even talk at points—we are not amused.

So I’m sure you can understand why I’m a little less than effervescent these days. Am I glad to not be commuting six hours a week to have it made clearer and clearer that the barriers to entry for a school board run class are depressingly low? Yes. Does that mean that the climb to the life I’d like to be leading is remotely over? No. I’m just no longer perspiring blood over the whole thing. In light of all this, however, some things are a-changin’.

First, I will post when I can post. I’d love to post something insightful or controversial every day but that’s not reality. In fact even posting something of that nature every two weeks (my original goal) isn’t always achievable. So sometimes I’ll post more often but sometimes it’ll mean you won’t hear from me for a month. Secondly the Google Group is no longer. That damn thing nearly caused my untimely demise. Instead, a brief e-mail from heavymefanatics@gmail.com will arrive at your inbox and instead of the entire post being there you’ll get a teaser and a link to the blog (just like you’ve received this time). There’s one main reason for this—diminished inbox clutter. If everyone reads and posts comments on the blog itself (you can post anonymously) no one gets any more e-mails than they signed up for. So, yes, please post comments on the blog itself unless they’re super personal, in which case you can feel free to e-mail back to the heavymefanatics address—it only goes to me. Third, I won’t be writing something to rival the length of Psalm 119 every time I post. Anything that’s really long will likely be serialized for readability. And lastly, I hope, by summer’s end, to move this blog to the domain www.heavyme.com which is presently parked on my behalf—but that remains to be seen. If the url changes, you’ll of course, be informed.

I think that’s all the business, so let’s get down to the fun stuff.

Anyone who has dieted more than two or three times knows how tempting it is to jump back on the band wagon again—and how scary it is as well. Presently I live in this sort of no man’s land where I’m too scared to go on another diet or “life change” plan, but I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t get this whole food thing under control in the near future. The fear of the diet is all about the possibility that I won’t maintain the weight loss and we all know that the “gain back” phase is generally worse every time. I am the heaviest I’ve ever been by about five or ten pounds, and while I’m not moving up the scale, I’m not moving down either. I think the scary number “they” throw out is that you only have to eat about 30 extra calories a day to gain an extra pound per year (and I’ve heard as low as 10 calories for the same result). Do you know what 30 calories amounts to? A third of a cup of 1% skim milk, a third of a cup of All Bran Buds cereal, a piece and a half of melba toast, a third of a portion of a Jello Gels cup. I mean we’re not talking a phenomenal amount of food here. An extra pound per year over a twenty year period and it’s suddenly clear why your high school physique is a distant memory, or in my case, a sign post from a past life. On the other hand, if I don’t start watching those 30-calorie servings, I’m going to be in a much more difficult place both physically and emotionally before I know it.

I haven’t tried “everything”—I won’t claim that, but I am getting a little exasperated at this point. As we all know, I’m a four time failure at Weight Watchers, one of the more respectable programs out there (speaking of which, we will be getting back to our guinea pigs very soon), and the Weigh Down Diet requires some level of faith in God—difficult since I’m agnostic (though it did work for a while when I was Christian). I’ve never tried anything that sounded remotely like a crash diet because I’ve always wanted to be responsible about it, but no matter how responsibly you lost the weight, when you gain it back the yo-yo has the same detrimental effects on your body. While exercising is a good thing and you should do it, I haven’t yet managed to find a form of exercise that I don’t loathe. I’ve “learned to run” with the Running Room three times now. One would think I’d actually be capable of running at long last. Walking buddies have kept me going for a time but that’s never quite stuck for me either. I have owned a variety of helpful DVDs in my time. The most amusing of the lot is one by Carmen Electra. I lasted two sessions of yoga before boredom forced me out of the room. African dancing is next up on the chopping block. Having said all that though, most experts agree that long term permanent weight loss has more to do with diet than exercise. Ultimately, if I’m to be victorious, I have to resolve my screwy relationship with food.

I eat when I’m hungry like most people. But I’m also very likely to ignore hunger and be all martyr-like about it when I’m busy, especially at work—kiss of death for a fat chick. Eating to deal with hunger is incidental; in fact when I’m not eating, even though I’m hungry, I feel this wonderful sense of control. But when I’m bored, or watching TV, or rewarding myself for surviving some form of stress, or anxious, or wired at two a.m., the urge to eat is seemingly uncontrollable. I don’t know if I can actually sit through a movie in a theatre without something to eat. I could have eaten a seven course meal just before the movie and I still *have* to have my popcorn. And it’s not like I’m eating my way through a vat of ice-cream in one sitting or anything outrageous for the most part. But taking into account that I only need to eat 10-30 extra calories a day to put on some pounds, then that 200-calorie personal size serving of popcorn, or that 300-calorie cup of ice-cream, or 100-calorie chunk of sausage, or the 270-calorie shandy—and oh, do I love a shandy—really add up to something special.

I’m not under any illusion that my weight gain isn’t in direct correlation to how much I eat, but I also know that the drive to eat is all in my head and has little to do with the actual food itself. So being all super strict about what I eat and how much I eat solves the problem for as long as I’m willing to feel punished; but at some point I have to change the relationship between me and food.

Enter neurolinguistic programming. It’s the concept behind that creepy fucking show that aired on TLC earlier this year, I Can Make You Thin (with host Paul McKenna) and the book of the same name. Some of the techniques pop up in The Weigh Down Diet but with God added to the mix. In general NLP has a pretty good reputation and it makes good sense at least theoretically: change the way you think about food and you change the habits around it, thus making the weight go away. So despite the creep factor of the show, the somewhat hard to find book is on order and will hopefully have me feeling a little more positive about this whole thing in the near future (4-14 business days according to the “seller” on Amazon). Unfortunately NLP ain’t gonna have me thin by the time I roll up in Myrtle Beach in my generous tankini at the end of July, but I hope that by the end of the year I’ll be seeing some concrete results. You will be kept posted.

As for the other fear—that if I lose weight and meet Mr. Right, he’ll dump me if I gain weight again—well that’s for another post. For now, let’s see if Paul McKenna can, in fact, make me thin.

10 – The Young and Curvaceous

2008-04-25T22:42:00.006-04:00

It’s 9:11pm and I’m sitting here wondering where the evening went. I’m also thinking that I don’t have it in me—“it” being a blog entry. I have all the mental ability of a toddler right now and I’d crawl into bed in the next five minutes if I had my way. There is light at the end of the tunnel: 3:00pm on May 24, when I finish the courses I’m taking and hopefully have two new trainees at work up to speed; but that light seems very far away right now. I seriously can’t fathom how I’ll come up with two more posts in that time frame; as such, I’ve decided that I just won’t. I will be taking a six week blog hiatus so that (a) you aren’t subjected to crap writing and (b) I don’t become a crazy person. But I promise, it’s just a break, and I’ll be back with a vengeance mid-June. For now, however, read on.

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Last week a couple young ladies became finalists in the Miss England contest. Normally this wouldn’t register on my radar as I don’t go in for the whole “women are really being empowered by beauty contests” BS. Ultimately it’s a bunch of gals being judged, in great part, on their physical appearance. If contestants wore mumus and bags over their heads, then I’d believe it was about their talent. Until then I’m not convinced. So why did this register for me at all? Well one of the finalists, Chloe Marshall, is a size 14. Now that’s a European size 14, which translates to a size 10 or 12 here, so my excitement does dim somewhat. I mean really, size 10 or 12 is just normal people in my books, but I suppose in the face of a lot of size fours and sixes as the competition, that’s pretty cool. But that’s still not the reason that I even know about this girl.

The newly crowned Miss Surrey had a lot of support. Many people felt that it was a good thing to see such a lard ass (Kidding! I mean seriously, size 12 is a plus size now?) in a contest like this; they felt it was brave. Well, not former pageant judge, Monica Grenfell. No, she was outraged at Ms. Marshall’s inclusion in the contest at all. In the Daily Mail, she wrote (this is fucking comical): “Who does she think she’s kidding? What’s she’s demonstrating isn’t bravery but a shocking lack of self-control.” She went on to say “It makes me mad when people like Chloe are allowed to glamorize obesity.”

Bitch, are you for real?

Now just for some context, Ms. Marshall is all of 17 years old. And Ms. Grenfell is…well way too old to be slagging a teenager. To read the entire dip-shitty article, go to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=554870&in_page_id=1879 target=_blank

You’ll get to see pictures of the delicious Chloe and read the silly ravings of “her-career- depends-on-selling-books-to-make-people-thin” Ms. Marshall.

I’m reminded of another recent skirmish a little closer to home involving ’07 American Idol winner Jordin Sparks and National Action Against Obesity founder, Meme Roth. Just as in the first situation, a woman who had to be twice Jordin’s age set to picking on the then 17-year old, about 20 seconds after she won her dubious victory.

Now what both Chloe and Jordin will always have going for them is that they’re freaking cool and beautiful, whilst both Grenfell and Roth will always kind of come off like suspiciously angry older women in search of someone to attack. And frankly, in my books, that’s plenty of reason for both Roth and Grenfell to enjoy a big serving of STFU, but in the name of serious blogging, I’ll actually provide some other reasons for invoking a serious gag order on the two of them. There are five (add your own in the comment section of the blog at will): age, bullshit, success, gender and fear.

Age – Attacking Teenaged Girls Is Shitty and You Know It

This one is fast and dirty. Publicly attacking someone who is still too young to vote over their weight is tacky; doing so when you’re at least twice their age—tackier still. There’s nothing more to say really. Roth and Grenfell should know better.

Bullshit – Monica Grenfell Knows about a Fat-Friendly Fourth Dimension and She’s Not Sharing

Monica Grenfell would have us believe that teenaged girls today don’t just think that it’s okay to be heavy but are, in fact, being pressured to pack on the pounds. Really? I must soon find this parallel universe of which Grenfell speaks, where I will have the emotional space to perhaps work out my weight issues whilst accepting food being foisted upon me by envious thin people.

I have spent a significant amount of time with teenaged girls within the last six years and I can tell you, the ones that I’ve met are not thinking “Well since Chloe Marshall is heavy, I’m going to work towards that.” What I see more of is that the girls who will gladly accept a heavier role model are already struggling with their weight. And I’m not about to begrudge them the assurance that it’s okay to feel good about themselves while they work through it.

I’m not saying that there aren’t a shit load more heavy kids walking around today than there were twenty years ago, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not because they saw someone fat on TV and decided that was the life they wanted to lead. I’m sure it had a lot more to do with the X-Box their guilt-ridden and divorced parents got suckered into buying, and the fact that their moms and dads work a job and a half each to keep the mortgage paid, and consequently haven’t fed their kid a home-cooked dinner since sometime in the early 90s. I’m really, really sure that Chloe Marshall, whose name I would probably never have known had Ms. Grenfell not written her dumbass article, had nothing to do with it. So are the six overweight women represented in our media making our girls fat—not fucking likely.

The idea that Grenfell and Roth feel they need to publicly open up a can of whupass on two teenaged girls in order to protect other teenaged girls from being pressured into becoming overweight is as ridiculous as it is disheartening.

Success – “We Hate It When Fatties Make Good!”

If Jordin Sparks hadn’t beaten out beat-boxing-Blake for the American Idol title, would Meme Roth have given a shit about the young lady’s weight? I think not. Would Ms. Grenfell be falling all over herself calling Chloe Marshall fat, lazy and deceitful (about her diet and exercise) if the teen hadn’t won the Miss Surrey crown and made it to the finals of the Miss England contest? I’m going to assume a big “no” on that score too. It’s only when a fat chick makes good that people like Roth and Grenfell get all hot under the collar. It’s like somehow, with all the discrimination overweight people face, it’s still not okay for us to have a victory here and there.

I get that Roth has a cause she’s fighting for but I don’t know when she got it in her head that attacking someone slightly overweight who has experienced 35 seconds of success makes her cause look good. Amusingly, the Fox News interview where she made the original comments about Sparks is not on the NAAO site and no longer appears on YouTube from what I can tell. You know, the one where she called Sparks the “vision of ‘unhealth.’” What is available on the NAAO site is the Inside Edition interview in which she does a bit of a back peddle. This would have been after the death threats, I guess.

As for Grenfell, it’s bizarre to me that a woman who’s entire success is predicated upon heavy folks buying her books, can’t manage to be nice in the face of a heavier woman’s success. I guess it’s only okay to be successful once you’ve lost the weight.

Gender – “What, Reuben Studdard, Fat?!”

So I’m late to this band wagon, but back when Meme Roth came out swinging at Jordin Sparks, every fat blogger in the world asked in shock, why she hadn’t burst a blood vessel when an even bigger role model, Reuben Studdard, took the American Idol crown back in season two. It does seem a wonder that she went out of her way to make an example of slightly overweight (another size 12-14 girl) Jordin, while undeniably quite overweight Studdard got a pass. I guess big boys don’t register on her radar.

But this is an old story and one that is not exclusive to Roth and Grenfell. The covers of US Weekly, People, Star et al rarely feature the weight issues of men in Hollywood. They’d have you believe that male celebrities don’t ever actually experience fluctuations in their weight. My sister and I used to laugh about the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because as the women on the show got thinner the leading men (excepting James Marsden) all got heavier. To this day, Nicholas Brendon (recently guest spotting on Criminal Minds) remains a little soft around the middle. And frankly I wouldn’t care if all the men in Hollywood decided to put on thirty extra pounds if their female counterparts weren’t held to such a ridiculously stringent standard. What makes me peevish is the lack of equality.

It saddens me, given how much women are still objectified in the media and in their every day lives (some 100 years after universal suffrage), that two women make it their mission to objectify us all a touch further. Sometimes you just shut up for the sake of the team.

Fear – It’s Us or Them

Maybe I’m imagining it, but doesn’t there always seem to be, in an attack like this, an element of fear? Fear that if one does not clearly delineate who the enemy is, one might accidentally be associated with said enemy. It makes me wonder if Grenfell worries about putting on weight some day or if Roth was a chubby kid. I just think it takes a special something to launch an unprovoked attack. And I think that special something is usually fear.

I was on the train last night and a fella boarded who was built like a tank; he was frightening looking and kind of dirty, so I went back to my magazine and avoided eye contact. Well then he turned on this beaut, black, fledgling queen and started calling him a faggot. And not in a nice way. Said fledgling queen responded with questions about scary fella’s self-esteem (how cute is that) clearly putting his health and his kick-ass wardrobe in danger. That’s when said scary guy started screaming “you fucking nigger” over and over again. I can’t tell you how un-Canadian that is. Everyone just stopped dead in their tracks. While the queen did his bit standing up for himself I think we were all afraid it was going to get physical and very, very bad. Luckily it didn’t; big scary fella turned out to be way more interested in making his way home and probably avoiding getting picked up by the cops than he was in fighting the queen. Ultimately he was all incredibly offensive bark and no bite. I had a mind to do a drive by insult on my way out but his stop preceded mine.

The point of that aside though, is that it’s pretty clear that somewhere in big, scary guy’s heart is some sort of enormous fear of a young, black queen. Maybe it’s the enormous cock that he fears. I don’t know and I don’t really care, but it’s the fear that makes him act that way. It’s the fear that makes him think he’s being rational to boot. And I believe it’s the fear that makes Roth and Grenfell act the way they do and think they’re being reasonable while they do it.

To add grave insult to much, much injury, they do their crazy in the name of helping the heavy-weighted.

At one point in a back peddling interview, Roth spoke about how great it would be if we could “get [Jordin] more healthy,” as if she was offering help. Well if someone wanted to offer me help with my weight, the easiest way to do this would be to have a direct conversation with me. Going to Fox News and saying I shouldn’t have won American Idol based on my weight would be amongst the least likely ways to get me on board. This seems rudimentary. But Roth would have us believe that she is concerned about Jordin personally. Bullshit. She was never concerned about Jordin Sparks personally—and that is part of the problem.

Monica Grenfell must think that all the food Chloe Marshall allegedly eats insulates her from the insults of others (ah the irony). If Grenfell was really just disturbed about the inclusion plus-sized women in the beauty contest she could have privately spoken to the judging officials. It was absolutely unnecessary to launch an attack on Marshall in the Daily Mail. And ultimately that’s pretty damn unfeeling—especially when you’re talking about someone’s body.

The idea that Grenfell or Roth are really concerned about the thousands of overweight people that they claim to want to help is laughable, juxtaposed with the way they treat individual overweight people, people who would ostensibly fall within their cause. Instead, what Roth and Grenfell seem most interested in is shame—that tried and true method for shedding pounds. Apparently no one has informed either of them that the “shaming method” of weight loss usually comes with an emotional price tag that’s unfeasible for the long term. Instead of setting up an environment where Marshall or Sparks might seek out Grenfell or Roth if either ever felt like losing any weight, they’ve reinforced the adversarial relationship between fat and thin in our culture. And that’s not a dynamic that needs to be encouraged.

It is possible, Meme Roth, to talk about obesity without denigrating anyone. It is possible, Monica Grenfell, to encourage people to lose weight, without attacking a teenager who doesn’t want to do so. I have to be kind of grateful for them though—if their behavior wasn’t so terrible, I might have nothing to write about.

9 – Gainful Employment, Sickness and Men Hurt Us All (and the blog)

2008-04-10T23:38:00.010-04:00

I’m going to talk about my method for a moment. In order to, some day, score that book deal based on my blog that’s going to lift me out of the pink collar ghetto in which I exist, I try to post entries consistently—in my world that means every two weeks. Week one is devoted to research (or in the case of “Big Lust” consolidating weeks of research) and week two is about writing, tweaking, editing, re-writing and then having that prince of a man, my proofreader/editor, take a looksie—at which point, I post (and for those of you combing entries for typos and misplaced commas, he's only been on board for two weeks). The problem is that last week—the research week—was a total write off. Here’s why.

On March 25^th one of my colleagues announced his impending departure for a new job. In the normal world this isn’t a big deal, but in my world it means that the one other person who’s been helping me hold down the fort at work just jumped shipped. To add insult to injury I’ve been job hunting since August of ’07—which is only about a month longer than he’s been looking, but I can be petty if I want to be. This announcement came after another colleague bailed just a week prior. In addition to the shock of being left alone, there was the feeling of crushing despair about being the first to sign on ten years ago and being, obviously, the last to leave. Frankly, given the spiral of depression into which I fell that day, it’s amazing the last blog entry was posted at all.

Then on the 28^th I missed my dear friend’s 30-something birthday because I started feeling nauseated. The nausea progressed into some unholy cold/flu-like sickness that left me with only some of my hearing for a period of time, a snot-filled head, horrible hacking cough, all the focus of an infant and the wakefulness of a sloth. I had to use up 1 ½ of my eight precious sick days per year to beat this thing.

And lastly—men. Need I say more? There have been skirmishes on that front in the last couple of weeks that make my brain tired. And unfortunately, unlike during puberty, this kind of stress doesn’t make me all angsty/creative and thus prolific—it drains me like an alkaline battery in a digital camera[i] because now there are shriveling ovaries and the understanding of my mortality in the mix.

Now I will admit, things at work are not as abysmal as they were last week because they can’t afford to lose me right now; hence on the 31^st concessions were made and demands were almost met resulting in a decent raise, my own cave-like office and a promise that once the new folk are trained I will never again have to speak to another ungrateful, lazy, snarky, illiterate, insipid, shit-eating customer.

Unfortunately, however, this still amounts to zero research. So today, I speak to you from the heart. (Why do I feel like Celine Dion right now?)

I was overjoyed to see the hoopla that my interview with “Greg” caused. In addition to helping me get a better of idea of what y’all want to read and giving me lots of ideas for future entries (when I’m not too sick or depressed to research them) I was forced to think about my own feelings on this issue of discrimination against the heavy weighted.

Now clearly, as disgruntled employee of the month, I’m in no position to make any decisions about anyone’s job prospects based on their weight, so no one need fear me on that level. But if I didn’t admit that I have mean old nasty thoughts about people who are overweight, it would be completely dishonest.

So full disclosure: sometimes I’m as big a hater as the people that I resent for being haters.

Firstly, it’s all part and parcel of my, so far, absolute inability to accept myself as I am in this body. There are certainly times when I think I’m hot but the bulk of those moments are tied to my sexuality. While I’m thrilled about the verging-on-ridiculous enormity of my breasts at my present size, they’re only really the main event when my clothes are off—which is not the bulk of my day (in fact, I’m dressed right now!). And frankly, I do feel more secure naked than I do clothed. But it’s when I have to get dressed and be compared to everyone else in the world that I lose my cool. And while we all have days when we just think we’re the ugliest creature to walk the earth (or am I the only one; or is it just a female thing?) my days like that—when they aren’t revolving around my hair—are completely bound up in my weight. So yes, I hate on people because I kinda hate me.

But I don’t hate on heavy people across the board. As one reader brought up last week, it seems to come down to how people carry themselves. It’s all about the “fat slob” syndrome. For some reason, in my head, skinny slobs get a pass of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m looking to make friends with a slim guy who looks like he hasn’t bathed in a few days, but the judgment that races through my head when I see a heavy person seemingly not making an effort, is scathing to say the least.

While I applaud the heavy woman or man who dresses impeccably, part of what I’m often thinking is “Well you’d better dress well—you can’t afford not to.” And the irony in all this is that I’ve convinced myself that I look stunning in sweatpants (well two people told me I did so I’m sticking with it). I don’t think I’m quite a slob but the days when I don’t make a concerted effort are certainly numerous. I work across from a transfer station for Pete’s sake[ii]. I’m the youngest of six kids and the other five have spent the better part of 32 years trying to get me to dress up a little more. So clearly I’m not really “representing” on behalf of heavy folks but for some reason I think I get a pass. It makes zero sense, I realize, but I think I know why my brain works this way. I’m a mid-ranger in denial. I’m certainly not average, (and I’ve been called “fat” in no uncertain terms by people before) but so far I can still squeeze with another person into those freaking small public transit seats and I can still choose a side of the escalator. The result—I think I’m closer to average than I am to “fat.” Though, if I’m clearly in a certain amount of denial now, I wonder, if I put on 50 more pounds, would I still think I wasn’t “fat?” Food for thought.

I have too many friends who carry extra weight to think that generally people who are overweight can’t get the job done or that they lack ambition or that they’re lazy or so many of the negatives that have been brought up in the last couple posts; and frankly I know myself and I’m not like that. But I’m more critical of the passing stranger who is heavy than of the one who is slim. And that’s not cool.

It occurs to me that I get sad when heavy celebrities lose weight because I feel I’ve lost an ally. It’s like if they just maintain their size, then maybe it’s okay that I do too; or it’s at least okay for me to be accepting of myself, whether I eventually lose weight or not. But on the flip side, I’m definitely one to applaud the average person who loses weight; I applaud their moving closer to “normal.” It’s the same me who’s green with envy when some old high school acquaintance befriends me on Facebook and I realize they’re a shadow of their former selves while I’ve become 1 ⅓ of what I was.

So in a bid for further self-acceptance, as promised, a candid photo is posted below. I had never planned when I would post this picture after I made the promise to do so, but now seems an appropriate time. When I’m feeling like even more of a champ I’ll post the side shot—right now I still feel like my back fat is too cringe-worthy. Actually scratch that—no promises there. Baby steps, baby steps.

Come back in two weeks. I’ll let you know if I’ve made any movement towards accepting myself and by extension my heavy brothers and sisters. And by then I may even have researched something interesting for you to read.

[i] Yes the analogy sucks but this is what I do for a living—gimme a break

[ii] A transfer station, for those of you not in the know, is where regional trash is consolidated before it is taken to the landfill. Now imagine what it smells like walking in to work on a day when it’s 35 degrees with the humidex outside—yeah, sweet.

8 - Big Hate

2008-03-27T03:36:00.005-04:00

Last week was crazy busy for me, and busy in my world entails a certain amount of fast food. On Monday (the 17^th) that fast food was procured at McDonald’s, where I gobbled down two chicken snack wraps, small fries and a small iced tea. As I ate I couldn’t help but think of a comment that my interview subject had made the day prior: “It freaks me out to watch [fat people’s] food choices.” I have the distinct impression he would have been freaking out a whole lot had he been sitting with me that evening.

This week’s post is about the haters—that relatively large (pun intended) group of people who have a problem with other people’s weight whilst not actually carrying it around. A week ago Sunday I sat down with my friend Greg[i] to talk over what it is about bigger folk that gets so far under his skin. I met Greg years ago at a party; we’re Facebook friends and we socialize here and there, so we get along well enough—which is what makes all this so weird. By nature I want to hate anyone who automatically thinks less of me based on my weight, but Greg is a likable guy and thus I don’t. So knowing that I don’t hate Greg and I’m far from out to demonize him in this post, let’s talk about what goes on inside that head of his.

One of the first things that Greg wanted me to know was that, to a point, he was speaking representatively. Representative of what you might ask? Well actually the better question would be “who.” If money makes the world go ‘round, then those that control the money would, by extension, be those that have the most control over the spinning of our fair planet—and those people would be your CEOs. “CEOs are the stereotypical six foot tall, lean, white male” says Greg. Though not a CEO himself, Greg is white, about six feet tall and doing well for himself financially. So he figured (and I agreed) that he could reasonably bring some insight to the table. And with that in mind, we dove in.

We talked definitions for a bit and I found this bit terribly ironic. In my last post, trying to define the term “BBW” in a narrow way proved fruitless despite the fact that the tastes of the men interviewed were quite specific. In contrast, it seemed really easy for Greg to define what overweight meant to him: “Any man whose stomach extends past his chest is overweight. And for women if the belly fat exceeds the belt line by an inch or more, then she’s overweight.” “Cottage cheese thighs” were also mentioned as problematic. I did put up some fight when he mentioned another litmus test: “If you can’t see your junk to know if you need a shave or whatever, there’s a problem.” I parried with the fact that the point when a mirror is needed to help check out the pubes for a woman is far earlier than for a man, but Greg was unsympathetic. I figured maybe I wouldn’t bring up that I’d arrived at the mirror stage some time ago.

Of course definitions--even with someone as unequivocal as Greg--have some fluidity. When asked if a great personality would make an overweight person seem, well, less overweight, he answered in the affirmative. He even mentioned that the term “Rubenesque” evokes the idea of someone with a certain amount of personality as opposed to just the idea of a certain body type. For women Greg named further distinctions as well. For example, there is a definite difference between women whose breasts can be distinguished from/extend past their bellies and women who do not have this kind of body shape. Women who lack such physical definition, and thus a certain amount of femininity, will simply not get the same level of acceptance in Greg’s opinion.

As in many things though, definitions are usually the least of one’s problems; it’s connotation that causes all the trouble. In my last post I listed a number of ideas that many people associate with the word fat, but I figured I might be missing some so I got Greg’s list too: “unhealthy, will die young, lazy, don’t care, low self-esteem, not career-minded, play the victim, feel they are a victim, not in control of their own lives, not getting sex, unkempt, sweaty, frumpy, not well-dressed, will be likely to have food stains on their shirts” (this last one is my personal favourite for sheer funny factor). Now while my list was longer there were some that I had never thought to include and one that we parked on for a bit was “not career-minded.” At this point, we inevitably came back to the issue of who’s running the show. Assuming the world is run by gym-going, low-cholesterol eating, lean, white, male, six-foot CEOs, then the likelihood that an overweight man or woman is going to succeed in an organization run by that guy can decrease dramatically. Now admittedly there are fields where weight may be less of an issue than others, but Greg brought up fields where I wouldn’t have immediately thought that it would be such an issue. “In a law firm someone overweight might not make partner because he or she doesn’t fit the image of what a partner looks like.”

To make his point, Greg told me about a situation that had occurred in his own workplace. During a down-sizing he noticed a manager continually circling back to one overweight employee. It soon became apparent to Greg that his manager had no clue what this employee actually did all day, but the idea of the “lazy, fat guy” had managed to so severely cloud the employer’s thinking on the topic that this employee’s job was on the line. And of course this kind of discrimination grows in proportion to the amount of extra weight a person carries. In fact, Greg agreed that if I wanted to get ahead in many a work place, I’d be better off cutting out an hour at the office and replacing it with an hour at the gym. When, in a session months ago, my therapist told me that my weight would be a factor in my job hunt, I just kind of tuned her out; sitting with Greg that sunny Sunday afternoon, it was pretty hard to ignore.

But Greg doesn’t necessarily have a lot of pity for people in my position, even if he doesn’t think the discrimination is right. Ultimately, in Greg’s opinion, I’ve made my bed and I can’t blame anyone else for only having that bed to lie in. “I think the idea of genetics making people fat is a fallacy. No one forces you to eat what you eat or forces you to eat how much you eat. Genetics are a factor in body shape, but not weight. It’s about activity, lifestyle and discipline.” Greg’s overall feeling is there is a lack of self-respect in allowing oneself to get very overweight and that people simply don’t care. One concession that he did make was in the case of the stereotypical workaholic who doesn’t take care of themselves. “I’ll admit fat people are probably more apt to put someone else’s needs before their own. They end up not taking care of themselves; like people who are overworked and don’t take care of their health. And then I guess there are emotional eaters.”[ii]

Now “health” is one of my favourite buzz words when it comes to talking about weight, so I had to ask, ‘does a thin person who clearly eats a whole lot of unhealthy food freak Greg out as much’—and the answer is no. He figures they must be active enough to offset that choice which somehow makes it more acceptable. To further complicate the health question, Greg doesn’t mind a roll in the hay with someone unequivocally heavy (to a point) as long as they’ve got a cute face; in a weird twist, Greg could have been a survey participant in my last post whilst still being the interview subject for this one. “I couldn’t date someone overweight in the long run. I just couldn’t watch them keep making unhealthy food choices all the time; ‘like no, I don’t want an ice cream, I just ate’”

Some of you are now screaming that Greg is only one person and I need to take his words with a grain of salt (whilst others nod vigorously in agreement with him). Well don’t worry; I’m not buying it all without reservation. But I also don’t think Greg is that much of an anomaly. He’s a country boy who had the kind of active childhood often associated with rural living. He’s never been anything other than slim and agrees that his family ate well (by which I mean healthily). He’s 35, active, and strikes me as thinking harder than the average about his food choices (certainly harder than I do); but being super food conscious is kind of all the rage right now. When asked how long his issue with overweight people has existed, he recollected the fat kids in school. “These kids were different because they didn’t dress like the rest of us. Everyone was wearing jeans except the fat kids who wore stretchy pants because they couldn’t fit into anything else. They seemed to always be fat, lazy kids from ‘town.’ You certainly can’t run around and play sports at recess when you can barely fit into your pants. They were always eating junk food. I guess I teased them too.”

Thinking on Greg’s response makes me say, on the one hand, hurrah for stretchy jeans. But on the other hand I have to wonder if maybe what seems like this complex and involved form of stereotyping and discrimination is as simple as school yard preservation instincts that we haven’t shaken. Is it just a good old case of teasing the fat kid in elementary school; a continuing saga of excluding the person who’s different? I mean, really, the action is the same. The difference seems to lie in rationalizing it. In elementary school protecting our social status is more than enough motive to exclude or malign another person. It’s in adulthood that we have to find reasons to rationalize this behavior. And so we say things like “the burdened health care system” and “type-2 diabetes” and “shorter life spans” when we maybe really just mean “I don’t like fat people.” Ten and fifteen years ago we were all alarmed about smokers being the burden to our health care system, but it was still generally acceptable to discriminate against heavy people even back then. The only thing that seems to have changed from where I’m standing is that now that someone can voice concerns about my health, their discrimination has a good cover. Understand, I’m not denying health issues exist—I’m simply saying that I don’t think every person on the planet who has a problem with my size is really that concerned about my cholesterol or my triglycerides (both of which are great, thanks). Instead, I have to wonder if the man not hiring me is simply engaged in some form of bullying motivated by how he felt on the school yard when he was five and assumptions he’s made about me way in advance of meeting me. I want to think that humans aren’t that base. But time and time again we seem to prove that we are.

Greg has offered to lead me further down this path of non-acceptance, and if he reads this and still wants to hold my hand I may take him up on it. Frankly, I hate thinking too damn hard about what others might think of me; doing so brings up all the insecurities that I have about my body right now. But I’m trying to believe that facing the monster will make it less scary in the long run. You’ll just have to stay tuned and see. In the meantime this post ends on a bit of a downer; but I think the reality is a bit of a downer.

[i] Of course that’s not his real name—we can’t have survey participants from the last post trying to find Greg and beat him down.

[ii] At this point I nearly fell down laughing because emotional eating is like an afterthought to Greg and is an enormous part of my every day existence; as I am fond of saying, another topic for another post.

7-Big Lust

2008-03-13T21:02:00.005-04:00

I was going to call this entry “Big Love” (I never claimed to be all that original), but honestly the subject matter at hand has a lot less to do with love, than it does hot, sweaty sex.

If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this very young blog, you’ll remember that my eyes were opened to the world of men who like a big girl when I posted in craiglist’s Casual Encounters section back in December. I was on the hunt for some impromptu anger sex, and my assumption at the time was that if a guy knew that I was both black and BBW, I’d have some trouble getting laid. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ve discovered since then that it is really no harder for me to procure a roll in the hay at my present weight, than it was 25 or 30lbs ago. So I set out to see why.

From February 8^th until the first week of March, I cruised craiglist’s m4w (man for woman) Casual Encounters section looking for men who preferred BBWs. I accosted them, sending them a chipper little e-mail asking if they’d be interested in an in-person interview or (as I wised up) answering some questions via e-mail. Of the 30 or so men who I e-mailed, I received a reasonable set of responses from nine; not a bad ROI in my books. And before I get going, let me say a huge thank you to the men who were willing to be so open and honest in answering my questions (a special shout out to ToBrickzShyAload). I’m even grateful to the guy who fucking stood me up for coffee last Friday night (you’re the one who asked, you weirdo).

My goal in conducting this rudimentary survey was to better understand the man who likes to have sex with a bigger woman. Ultimately, I wanted to know if the desire for a larger woman in bed was a legitimate preference or simply a fetish. The answer of course, is yes.

The first thing I tried to determine in all of this was some sort of definition for the term “BBW.” The answers from my participants varied but first we’ll let Wiki speak: “The terms ‘Big Beautiful Women’ and ‘BBW’ were coined by Carole Shaw in 1979, when she launched BBW Magazine, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for plus-size women.” In addition, “the term is a subjective, visually-determined concept that does not have an explicit lower or upper weight limitation, and may denote women who may be considered barely overweight to those who are morbidly obese.”

Having read the words of Wikipedia it wasn’t surprising that the answers of the men surveyed--when asked what BBW meant to them—varied widely. I got answers ranging from “anyone bigger than Marilyn Monroe” (who was about size six or eight by today’s standards—not a 14 or 16) to “a woman ideally 180-250lbs.” There were answers that were more about proportions like: “fit, hourglass…type body” or “a plus sized woman with shape.” And then there were the really confusing answers: a woman who “carries herself in a sexy way and exudes warmth and sensuality;” “a woman who “is comfortable with herself and takes pride in her appearance.” Or this next answer; whilst not a view necessarily espoused by the respondent, it was a possibility that he put forward: “fat ugly girls who can’t get laid normally but use craigslist for sex and then get a bunch of hot guys with big cocks to bang them.” I don’t know where he’s getting his information regarding cock size.

So my second question, which I believe was begging to be asked, was whether the terms “BBW” and “fat” are synonymous, or two different things. Here’s where things get funny:

“When I think of fat I think of someone who may be comfortable with themselves but doesn’t take care of their health or appearance.”

“I consider it different. Sure, on craigslist, every fat girl calls herself a BBW, but not every fat girl is beautiful or sexy.”

“Well it is pretty synonymous although a BBW might not be fat.”

So based on these answers, there are days when I’m fat, days when I’m a BBW and days when my BBW-ism or fatness will be completely determined by my beholder. Also I might not be fat at all. It does do a girl’s head in. Oh to have a nice, neat, relatively objective label like “slim.”

While a few men did simply say that the two were synonymous there was one answer that, I thought, made a great point about terminology:

“It is all about perception. The term[s] BBW, full figured, pleasantly plump, are used by people who find this body type sexy. The term fat is used by people who don’t.”

So let me park there for a moment. For many woman (and men) who fall into the group that is heavier than slim, fit or athletic, the idea of using the word “fat” to describe themselves is relatively abhorrent. I call myself “fat” on days when I’m feeling shitty about myself. When I’m feeling great I just call myself hot. There are so many negative connotations associated with the word fat—lazy, stupid, unhealthy, unkempt, slovenly, dim, weak-willed, unfeeling, greedy, utterly sedentary, smelly, deceitful, jealous, misanthropic, add others as you see fit—that not many people want to take on that word. And there isn’t the same cohesiveness in the “fat community” as there is in, for example, the gay community, so there’s been no great united effort to take back the word “fat” in the way that the word “queer” was reclaimed. Throw in the fact that most heavy people have, at some point in their lives, tried to be thinner (probably several times) and the reasons not to take on that term kind of snowball. While it doesn’t pack nearly the negative punch, there’s a reason slim people don’t generally ask to be referred to as “skinny.” “Skinny” stops being cool after about sixth grade (unless you’re talking denim), at which point it starts to be related to things like weakness in boys and really small breasts in girls.

Given these points I think it’s absurd for anyone to think that the majority of heavy people are going to refer to themselves as “fat” when seeking a partner for a relationship or just posting on craigslist for sex, unless they have made a conscious decision to use that word.

But back to the subject at hand.

So clearly no consensus was reached regarding what the terms “BBW” or “fat” mean. Having established absolutely nothing except the fact that I will never know if a man thinks I’m a BBW or a fat woman, I moved on to some other questions.

I wanted to know if, in an ideal world, these men would choose BBWs as their life partners. Now I made the mistake of essentially asking this question in two different ways, but the difference in responses to essentially the same question in some cases, was telling. The second time I sort of asked it, the question was framed as “if you’re looking for a long term relationship, rather than just sex, would it be important to you that she be BBW?” Of the six men who answered that question only two answered that it would be the ideal. The other four, despite their enthusiasm sexually for BBWs, went with either a “no” or a “not necessarily.” One fellow said that if he were to post an ad for relationship he would specifically mention a preference for BBW, but when answering the previously mentioned question answered: “No. For long term I’d want someone physically able to engage in an active lifestyle—skiing, sailing etc., but for a romp in the hay, there’s something to be said for lots of cuddly warm sexy flesh!”[i]

Which brings me to the issue of fetishism. Now strictly speaking, fetishes around the body tend to focus on a part of it as opposed to its entirety or the person as a whole. In the case of fat fetishism (not including Feederism, Stuffing and Gaining fetishes[ii]) the focus of the erotic arousal is often loose, hanging flesh.

So I looked carefully at the answers again, seeking signs of fetishism, and some phrases did stick out for me:

“[F]east for the eyes”

“[T]he way those soft thighs and bum feel”

“I’m crazy about big thighs and big buns”

“I love smothering myself into all [of] your body.” (Note this man did not ever “smother himself into all” of *my* body—he just wrote very conversationally).

“I am in heaven when orally pleasing a large behind and between thich [sic] thighs”

“[L]ots of cuddly warm sexy flesh”

Once again there was no apparent pattern in these responses. They came from men ranging in age from 27 to 49; men who dated BBWs, men who hadn’t or wouldn’t; men whose idea of BBW meant a woman who was probably around a size 12 or 14 and men who thought it was something closer to a size 24 or 26.

From where I’m standing, there’s a hint of fetish in those statements but on the other hand I’ve had this subject on the brain for weeks now. I did however, have an interesting conversation with the perfect man the other day (unfortunately he is married and has children—damn my bad luck). In his estimation, the BBW-loving men of our world are objectifying women as much as the guy who only goes for a huge rack on top of a set of legs that goes on forever.

And on some level I agree with him. I, like everyone else on the planet, have specific physical preferences when it comes to men—I like ‘em tall, dark and thin (what my sister describes as “skinny” with a grimace) and looking like they’re all of about twenty-one years old. But have the bulk of my sexual encounters or forays into dating been with men that look like that? No. Is it a deal breaker even in the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel world of casual sex (for women anyway)? No. Have I had amazing sex with people who didn’t fit the description and not so great sex with people who did? Yes and yes.

But then I’m a woman. Maybe this is one of those “men are more visual” issues. Maybe men need to have what their ideal visually and sexually to get it up more so than women. But I’m disinclined to agree with that statement. I have a hard time believing that every man with whom I’ve shared a bed has thought of my body as their ideal. In fact I know that’s not so. One former frequent flyer of mine has certainly told me what his ideal body type is (not mine), and has made mention of the “painfully shy woman with the best body I’ve ever seen” more than once. But obviously his preferences are not keeping him away. So if preferences unmet don’t generally keep people from getting it on and the Mars/Venus dichotomy isn’t necessarily a significant factor in casual sexual transactions—maybe, for, not all, but a significant number of guys, the BBW thing is, in fact, just a fetish. Not much different from the guy who wants to sleep with me just because I’m black. And I’m pretty sure I’m not cool with being fetishized. But, then again I probably won’t kick the next fetishist out of bed over it.

[i] While there’s ample fodder here for the beginnings of a discussion about fatness and fitness, it’s another post for another day.

[ii] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_fetishism for blurb about Feederism, Stuffing and Gaining.

6-Introducing Soon to be Superstars

2008-02-29T13:39:00.003-05:00

Sasha, Liz, meet the blog fans.

Blog fans, say hello to Sasha and Liz.

And say hello to each other Sasha and Liz--you're sort of sisters now.

Sasha and Liz are two Weight Watchers members who have volunteered to be my guinea pigs for the coming year. Obviously two people do not a scientific sample make, so clearly this has nothing to do proving any theories. I just wanted to find some random people who would be willing to allow me a peek into their progress on the program for 12 months.

Liz is 27 year old rock goddess haling from the Golden Horseshoe. Liz's goal is to lose 24lbs on the program and she's been working at it since joining WW in October of 2007. This is the third time she's embarked on the program with her first attempt in 2003 and her second in 2005. While the the 2003 stint was very brief (six weeks) she spent almost a year on the program the second time but had to discontinue attending meetings for fiscal reasons (a very real issue with any paid weight loss program). This time, however, Liz's plan is to get to the point at which she's no longer paying and doesn't have to deal with that issue anymore. Liz is using the Flex (points) plan.

Sasha is a 25 year old mother of three little girls under the age of three--obviously a saint (grin). She has tried WW before but left the program due to a pregnancy. Her goal is to weigh 125lbs and she is presently at 177lbs. She started the program in the third of week of January and is using the Flex plan.

I'm looking very forward to bringing you updates of their experiences on the program every three months and I hope they enjoy the ride as much as I know we will.

5-Vacation and Work -- Mutually Exclusive

2008-02-14T17:08:00.007-05:00

So I had these lofty plans to get all this work done on this blog on my week off. Instead I've spent my time watching crap loads of really bad daytime TV whilst sitting around in my pjs refusing to bathe regularly. Yeah, I kinda suck, but that's what vacations are for. Also a couple things that I am working on haven't come together as quickly as I had anticipated so I assure you, there are two potential posts that are not quite ready for public viewing. In the meantime enjoy these articles. Food for thought.

Smokers, fat folks mean health care savings

MARIA CHENG

Associated Press

February 4, 2008 at 10:45 PM EST

LONDON — Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

Mr. van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the “healthy-living” group (thin and non-smoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on “cost of illness” data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

“This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.

“If we're going to worry about the future of obesity, we should stop worrying about its financial impact,” he said.

Obesity experts said that fighting the epidemic is about more than just saving money.

“The benefits of obesity prevention may not be seen immediately in terms of cost savings in tomorrow's budget, but there are long-term gains,” said Neville Rigby, spokesman for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. “These are often immeasurable when it comes to people living longer and healthier lives.”

Mr. van Baal described the paper as “a book-keeping exercise,” and said that governments should recognize that successful smoking and obesity prevention programs mean that people will have a higher chance of dying of something more expensive later in life.

“Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long,” Mr. van Baal said. “But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more.”

The study, paid for by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

“We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity,” Mr. van Baal said. “But they should do it for the right reasons.”

Is the obesity epidemic exaggerated?
(Head to Head: Is the obesity epidemic exaggerated?)

Saturday February 2, 08
Yes: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/336/7637/244
No: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/336/7637/245

Last week, the UK health secretary declared that we are in a grip of an obesity epidemic, but does the evidence stack up? Researchers in this week's BMJ debate the issue.

Claims about an obesity epidemic often exceed the scientific evidence and mistakenly suggest an unjustified degree of certainty, argue Patrick Basham and John Luik.

For example, the average population weight gain in the United States in the past 42 years is 10.9kg or 0.26kg a year. Yet, between 1999-2000 and 2001-2002, there were no significant changes in the prevalence of overweight or obesity among US adults or in the prevalence of overweight among children.

Furthermore, they say, the categories of normal, overweight, and obese is entirely arbitrary and at odds with the underlying evidence about the association between body mass index and mortality.

For example, the study on which the bands for overweight and obesity in the US are based found that the death risks for men with a body mass index of 19-21 were the same as those for men who were overweight and obese (29-31). Other studies have shown negligible differences between body mass index and death rates.

The association of overweight and obesity with higher risks of disease is equally unclear, they write. And, despite supposedly abnormal levels of overweight and obesity, life expectancy continues to increase.

They suggest that some public health professionals may have deliberately exaggerated the risks of overweight and obesity, and our capacity to prevent or treat them on a population wide basis, in the interests of health. They warn that this has unwelcome implications for science policy and for evidence based medicine.

But Robert Jeffery and Nancy Sherwood argue that a large body of scientific evidence shows that obesity is a major global health problem.

In the US, the prevalence of obesity in 1976-80 was 6.5% among 6-11 year olds and 5% among 12-17 year olds. In 2003-4 it was 19% and 17% respectively. Europe can also expect to see the numbers of overweight and obese children rising by around 1.3 million a year by 2010.

The risks of obesity on many serious health conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer, are also serious and well established, they write.

Most health economists and epidemiologists agree that the contribution of obesity to current healthcare costs is high and that it is likely to get much higher. Some have argued that we may even see real falls in life expectancy within a few decades, they add.

In summary, a large body of evidence documents that over-nutrition and obesity are a major global health problem, say the authors. With the continuing rise in obesity and limited treatment efficacy, options for averting a poor public health outcome seem to rest either on the hope that scientists are wrong in their projections or speedy investment in the development of more effective public health measures to deal with it.

They think the second option a more prudent scientific and policy choice.

I hope you enjoyed those two offerings. I hope to have some original content for you soon!

4-Watching Weight, Part I

2008-01-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

I am four-time loser at Weight Watchers. It has become vastly clear that I am not cut out for this program. While some people seem to do well on it, I, sadly, do not.

I joined Weight Watchers four times between 1999 and 2005—two of those times I remained in the program for a year, while the other two times I lasted a few weeks or months. I lost between 20 and 25lbs on the two occasions that I really stuck with it and almost nothing on the other two. I have gained back every pound several times over and presently have zero intention of ever trying the program again. For some bizarre reason though, I have kept some of my old Weight Watchers materials. It’s interesting because pulling them out evokes both longing and aversion: longing for a time when I was thinner and ostensibly in control; aversion, because I had to spend so much time thinking about food in order to feel in control.

I first decided to try out Weight Watchers in 1999 at the age of 23. I had crested to 203lbs, was wearing a size 14 or 16, and generally feeling pretty uncomfortable in my own skin. I remember going to the warehouse at work to make the call to the 1-800 number because I didn’t want any of my co-workers to know that I was looking into it, despite the fact that I was quite good friends with most of them.

It was probably not a coincidence that I had been working my first desk job for a little over a year at that point. Until then I’d always been in retail environments that had required me to be on my feet all day. I had a roommate, which meant I was probably eating less than I would have had there been nobody at home to make me feel some level of shame about overeating. However, I had a hectic schedule, and the money to eat out more, so I could hide some part of my food consumption. Between being suddenly sedentary for eight hours a day and having more money to eat out, I started packing on the pounds.

My schedule was difficult to work around so I chose to go to a Saturday morning meeting even if I had to commute nearly 90 minutes to attend. In time having a Saturday morning meeting became a method by which I could cheat the system. I’d go to the weigh in on Saturday morning and then spend the remainder of the weekend eating whatever I wanted in whatever quantities I desired. Then on Monday I’d go back to “being good” and usually the goodness would show up on the scale the next Saturday morning, though I more than likely slowed down my progress with this methodology.

My ultimate goal, in 1999, was to lose about 30 or 40lbs and get down to my late high school weight of 165, but the first goal that most members try to meet is to lose 10% of their body weight. It took nearly six months but I finally lost my 10% and got down to 183lbs; I never lost anymore weight. I spent the rest of the year bouncing around that number—gaining and losing the same five or six pounds. I remember a friend admitting to me that she’d been jealous of my weight loss. She needn’t have been. After a year of taking my (somewhat smaller) arse across town to meetings I was fed up and frustrated and stopped attending at all; and the weight slowly crept back on.

It was between 2000 and 2003 that I made my two quite short-lived attempts at Weight Watchers. Both times it was my own lack of real motivation coupled with some un-enjoyable meetings that did me in. One of the meetings was simply too impersonal for me. It was held at a regional head office and I felt a bit like one of many cattle—no pun in intended--being herded through the process. The other meeting was in my very Italian neighbourhood and I was the only non-Italian in the room—which became disconcerting after a while. Besides that, the Italian meetings were held on Monday nights and since I usually spent my weekends cheating Monday was the worst possible day for a weigh in, in my books.

My second major attempt at the program took place years later in 2005. This time I went into the program at 222lbs. I’d now been working the same desk job for seven years, I was living on my own (and thus eating constantly without shame), and I wanted to get serious about dating but wasn’t feeling particularly confident about it at my weight. In addition shopping had become such a trial that I felt something had to be done. This time it only took me four and a half months to lose the 10%; but I had help. I had my wisdom teeth out in December of 2005 and didn’t eat solid food for two weeks. It’s amazing how you’ll lose weight when you’re essentially eating baby food. Overall I ended up losing about 25lbs and then, just as before, as the one year mark came up, I got tired of going to meetings every Saturday morning. This time it wasn’t even a long commute getting under my skin. I was only 15 or 20 minutes away from the meeting by subway and I had a friend going with me, so sometimes I even got a ride; but I guess I just got tired one day. And so by August of 2006, I had finished with Weight Watchers for the last time.

The Weight Watchers Method
For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with Weight Watchers, let me explain how it works. I’m going to base my explanation on my most recent attempt to stick with the program, but I can’t guarantee that it reflects the program in its present form whenever you happen to be reading this—Weight Watchers has changed dramatically since its inception and will probably continue to be tweaked as more information about weight loss becomes available.

There are two methods available in the program: The Flex Plan or The Core Plan. On the Flex Plan, foods are allotted point values based on calorie count, fat and fibre content. Members are then allowed to eat a certain number of points daily. This number is mostly based on the member’s weight but factors like age (i.e. if the participant is a teen or child) and pregnancy are taken into consideration. More recently, gender has also become a factor though for a long time it was not. So for me, at 222lbs, I was permitted 26 points of food a day. And for the sake of context, here are the point values of some common food choices that I would have made:

3oz of boneless, skinless chicken cooked = 4 points
a medium sized apple = 1 point
1/8 of a 9” (diameter) fruit pie = 10 points
a Big Mac =14 points.

Ultimately The Flex Plan is a simplified method of counting calories but some foods get more ‘bang for buck’ because of lower fat and higher fibre content. You can eat whatever you please but you must stick within your point allotment. If you enjoy freedom and have the ability to reign yourself in when you know you’re out of points, then this is the plan for you. On The Flex Plan you can also gain points by exercising—but it is sort of a zero sum issue. You’re only getting more points because you’re burning them off—you’re not actually gaining anything extra or cheating the plan in any way. Also, the makers of the plan recommend that you eat no more than four extra points a day even if your exercise has earned you more (four points amounts to about 25 to 30 minutes of high intensity cardio for most people). For someone working out heavily this really isn’t feasible—after a certain stage you have to put back in what you’ve taken out. However this doesn’t tend to be a problem for most members. While the overall idea of Weight Watchers is that one should exercise in conjunction with the eating plan, you honestly won’t find many hard bodied people at a Weight Watchers meeting. In my experience, members aren’t generally doing more than four points worth of exercise a day.

On The Core Plan a member can eat as much as they need to feel satisfied but the actual foods permitted in the plan are limited. Foods that are part of The Core Plan are ones you know to be healthy—lean meats, poultry and fish, whole wheat pasta, brown rice, whole grains and potatoes, fat free dairy products and a lot of vegetables and fruit. But even some of the permitted foods are limited in quantity—whole wheat pasta, brown rice and potatoes, for example, are only allowed once a day; ground meats with no more than 7% fat are only allowed once daily as well. The member, however, is allotted 35 points a week for foods that don’t fall into The Core Plan. The key to successfully navigating The Core Plan is understanding the need to stop eating when you are satisfied--not full or overflowing.

A member can switch between Core and Flex as often as they like—in fact, switching is sometimes recommended as a good way to kick-start more weight loss when one has reached a plateau—as long as the switch doesn’t occur in the middle of a week.

I don’t like being told what to do so I was always an adherent of The Flex Plan. And frankly The Core Plan didn’t exist the first three times that I tried Weight Watchers. The Core Plan was more of a response to proponents of The Atkins Diet and The South Beach Diet asking why Weight Watchers didn’t seem to really encourage healthy foods choices. Despite my reluctance to ever try The Core Plan though, I actually believe Core to be the more effective of the two in the long term. My feeling is that it helps people learn something they can take with them from the program should they decide to leave—relatively healthy eating habits. Flex, on the other hand, simply left me with an even more bizarre relationship with food than when I started out.

The Meetings
The meetings are an integral and interesting part of Weight Watchers. Missing meetings is usually the death knell for your Weight Watchers journey.

The group leader, a Weight Watchers employee, pretty much makes or breaks a meeting in my opinion. I’ve had some group leaders who I loved and other ones who made me never want to show up again. I’m sure that reason I stuck around for a year in ’99 and ’05 had a lot to do with having really great group leaders. I bumped into one of these women years later at my local Running Room and we still really clicked. When we’d have substitute group leaders I’d sometimes just weigh in and leave.

But the meetings have way of being a double-edged sword because there’s a certain amount of “group think” that occurs. Really heavy members will generally receive unmitigated encouragement. People that tend to fall in the middle, like me, will also receive quite hearty encouragement. People who look "normal” when they join (i.e. not people who’ve lost the weight and are maintaining) but for whatever reason have chosen to try Weight Watchers: not so much. There was a young lady in my 2005 meeting who was around 20 years old and came into Weight Watchers at about a size six. She lost ten or twelve pounds and left looking virtually the same to me. She seemed genuine about her struggle to lose the weight but most of us middle-aged fatties were having a hard time being sincere in our encouragement of her—at least I was. It was difficult to understand why she felt she even needed to lose weight.

Another phenomenon that tended to occur was that when people lost a lot of weight quickly--instead of the promoted healthy 1-2lbs weekly--they really did get the most applause. When my friend Patricia* attended meetings for a short time and proudly met her 1-2lb goal every week, the reaction she got was nothing close to that of those who came in saying they’d dropped six or seven pounds in the same time frame. She found it disturbing that this dramatic and generally unhealthy type of weight loss was held up as admirable without the group leader making much of an effort to temper the excitement.

At every meeting, there are, besides the group leader who runs the discussion, a variety of people taking your money and weighing you. The people sitting at those scales have the power, often, to make or break your day. I recall one old fella at my 2005 meetings who used to call out your weight so loudly that every one else could hear it, much to the chagrin of many. There was another woman who was so discouraging to members who had gained weight that some of the members complained to the group leader. There was also the complaint that she was harder on very heavy people than she was on others who were smaller. Ultimately, the actions and reactions of members cannot be fully controlled, and as such the meetings can be both the greatest strength and weakness of the program.

Weight Watchers, My Friends and I
Off the top of my head I can count seven of my friends who have been Weight Watchers members. I'm almost positive that there are more but it’s hard to keep track. Tonya* has tried the program and always slips up with alcohol. She constantly overshoots her points when she and her husband decide to crack open a bottle of wine. She’s no longer on the program. My friend Emily* has an on again-off again relationship with Weight Watchers. Sometimes she does the meetings and sometimes she doesn’t. She almost always seems to be counting her points but never quite religiously sticking with the plan. She’s never really been overweight, in my opinion, either though. My aforementioned friend Patricia was so perturbed by the unhealthy encouragement of dramatic weight loss that went on in the meetings that she attended, that she stopped going after just a few weeks. My good friend Krista* just seemed to tire of the program eventually. Another friend, Miriam*, one day decided she was finished with paying for weight loss and quit attending meetings after about a year and a half. She’s now on a new diet that’s doctor supervised and it seems to be working well for her—she’s lost more than she did on Weight Watchers thus far. I remember an old friend Norma*; she was one of those rare people who had managed to hit her goal in the program and was in the coveted position of not having to pay for meetings anymore. She called me one night because she didn’t know how to keep herself from eating. This was after her weight had floated back up and she was paying for the privilege of attendance again.

And then there is my amazing friend Val* with whom I started out in 2005, still keeping up with it 2 ½ years later. I asked her what makes her stick with it after all this time and she said the following (I’m paraphrasing here): “I like that I can eat whatever I choose to eat. There’s no one telling me what I can and can’t have; because whenever something is restricted then I’ll cheat. With Weight Watchers I can have what I want and find a way to eat that works for me so there’s never any need to cheat. Secondly I like that I’m not alone in this. On every other plan that I’ve tried I always hit a point when I start feeling like I’m the only person doing it and then I want to quit. The support that I get at the meetings really helps. Lastly the accountability. Knowing that I have to go to that meeting every Saturday keeps me on track. I can slack off for the weekend but I know if I don’t stick to the plan Monday through Friday it’s going to show up on the scale. So the accountability is a real motivating factor.”

Even though she's on The Flex Plan, Val mentioned that for the past 18 months or so she hasn’t actually been recording the point values of what she eats at all, but she has diligently recorded what she’s been eating. She finds that having to be honest about everything she eats keeps her in check (or at least lets her know why the number isn’t going where she wants it to on the scale). And to her credit I will say this—Val looks fabulous. I saw Val a few weeks ago and she looks great. I mean she can wear skinny jeans dammit.

But I have my suspicions (and Val had agrees) that she is the exception, rather than the rule. Val said that almost none of the people with whom she began Weight Watchers back in ’05 are still in attendance (myself included obviously)—or if they are, they have left and come back, thus losing the same weight again. It seems that while the psychology behind Weight Watchers works for Val, it doesn’t, in the long term, work for the vast majority of people, myself included.

In the documentary "The Diet Wars" Stephen Talbot compared Weight Watchers to being in a 12-step program; and I have to admit, the shoe fits. Weight Watchers meetings can sort of feel like being in a group of ever-recovering fatties. "Hi, my name is Isabel, and I'm fat." My therapist has indicated that she feels the point counting is only giving you a false sense of control over your eating habits, and only recommends using the program to kick-start weight loss but not as a long term remedy. And I'd have to agree (and no, I don't always agree with my therapist). If it's going to take attending weekly meetings and counting points for the rest of my life to keep me in check--I can't say I'd call that control. And while The Flex Plan is all about eating what you want when you want, no one talks about how dramatic the food reduction is for most new members. Upon starting the program I was easily eating a third of what I'd normally eat. I'm not saying this isn't a good fraction to shoot for but in my case I was left feeling quite deprived. When I finally got accustomed to eating less, I still had be really careful about my food choices or risk being left hungry...and angry. I could have a 10 point piece of pie but I'd have a hard time remaining satisfied for the rest of the day on just 16 more points. In fact I wasn't able to, so I'd have to overeat or starve. One option would leave me trying not to feel bad about having cheated (and usually eating to numb out the guilt) while the other option would leave me hungry and angry. I realize there are a lot of emotional issues caught up in my eating habits and that complicates what is, at its simplest, an issue of calories consumed and calories burned. But I don' t know many women for whom weight gain and loss isn't an emotional issue. While Weight Watchers does have a component of emotional coaching in the program, obviously it's not tailor made for each member.

My intent here is not to besmirch the name of Weight Watchers. I think it's one of the healthier weight loss programs out there. I just wonder if it's as kind and gentle and all-inclusive as it claims to be. Given the seemingly high member turn over, one might not think so. But I don't intend to have you simply take my word for it. I'm not even going to have you go on the word of my jaded ex-member friends. In the interests of checking this theory out I plan to follow some Weight Watchers members over the next year to see how it works for them. It will not, by any means, be a large enough sample to call the experiment scientifically sound, but simply an interesting look at random people trying to make this program work for them. I will give at least quarterly updates on their progress and in a year we'll see where they all end up. While it may prove nothing either way, it will be interesting to get a glimpse into the journeys of others as they navigate watching their weight.

*Of course those aren't their real names!

3-The Story of…the Body’s Fat Cells Was Like A Bollywood Epic

2008-01-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

That quote made sitting through the six hours of documentaries that comprised National Geographic (Canada) Channel’s “Fat Day” all worth it.

Now let me apologize for the delay in getting this entry finished and posted. I’m sure some of you have already decided that I’m just some flash-in-the-pan, fly-by-night blogger who only has something to say for a couple days and then gets bored with the topic and goes back to whatever held their interest before. I tell you, it’s not true; I’m just slow and I have 15 pages of notes to whittle down to bring you something cogent and relatively concise. While I can assure you that concise didn’t end up happening, I hope that cogent did. I promise, however, never to take 15 pages of notes again. I also promise never to try to report on six hours of television again.

So first the facts—eventually I’ll come back to that crazy Bollywood comment.

National Geographic Channel aired a six hour block of documentaries three times beginning at 12:00 noon December 30th and finishing up at 6:00am December 31st, 2007. While this makes for 18 hours of viewing rather than the 24 hours one might have assumed would comprise “Fat Day;” I can’t say I’m terribly upset, given that the channel only cobbled together six hours of content.

Below is a wee synopsis of each of the programs that aired in the order that they were presented.

America’s Fattest City
This doc follows five residents of Houston, TX—the fattest city in the U.S.—who generally don’t seem to care about their weight with the exception of one. They range in size from an 11-year old at 165lbs to a woman in her forties who weighs 625lbs. The myth of this documentary is that these people don’t care about their weight. While two of them don’t ever admit to having dieted, two of them do, and talk about their frustrations with the lack of long lasting results. One of them is having a gatric bypass by the end of the film. While it makes for intriguing copy to say these people don’t care about their weight, I’d venture to say they all do.

Frontline: Diet Wars
Stephen Talbot, who played a young friend of Beaver’s on the iconic “Leave it to Beaver” investigates all the biggest diet trends from The South Beach Diet, to Weight Watchers to The Atkins Diet. And then tries to lose weight himself.

Too Fat, Too Young
This title reminds me of cautionary films about the dangers of teenaged sex. This doc follows three children ranging in age from ten to sixteen, on their weight loss journey as they take three very different paths. Kari, 16, is an American girl who decides that a gastric bypass will be her way of dealing with her weight. Barnaby, a 15 year old boy, convinces his parents to let him go to a fat camp for five weeks. And Daniel, an adorable 10 year old boy, is part of a new program (not covered by the government’s health plan) that sets him up with a dietician, a nutritionist, a trainer and a professor. His plan is meant to be a long terms solution and when the doc ends he’s been working with them for nine months and there’s no indication that the program is coming to an end.

Diets from Hell
Honestly the most tedious of the lot to watch. This poor excuse for documentary film making tells us of some hellish diets. But while the title of the show would give you the impression that you’re going to be watching something about different diets that people have tried, it was basically a documentary about some dramatic eating disorders like addictive dieting, anorexia, over eating, and get this: eating in one’s sleep. Still, even with a show stopper like eating in your sleep, this doc managed to bore the hell out of me.

Fat Plague
Believe it or not, the Bollywood comment came out of this program. In this doc we are introduced to Dr. Nihkil Dhurandar—a man who proposes that obesity, in some cases, may be viral and that it’s catching.

Horizon: The Atkins Diet
Lastly, an entire hour devoted to debunking the myths surrounding the Atkins diet and discovering why it actually works.

And just for the fun of it I watched a couple more British docs on the W network called “The Truth about Size 0” (which actually means a British size 4 but I guess that doesn’t have the same punch) and “Extreme Celebrities.” Both sent British B-listers with already model-esque figures, off to do some crazy diets for two weeks to a month just to prove that those types of diets are bad for us. Really? We weren’t aware that starvation and bingeing are bad for us—in 2007, this was still a mystery to most of us? Who fucking allows this drivel to go to air! I haven’t had my intelligence offended like that in some time.

What I am not going to do here is give you a blow-by-blow of each doc. If you want to know the details of them that badly just stick around your TV next year right before New Year’s Day. I’m sure some network will find six hours of content geared to make you want to lose weight. If you’re really desperate, let me know and I’ll loan you my awesome VHS tape of the event. What I will focus on, instead, are all the things about each doc that the producers of Fat Day don’t want you noticing—like the marketing surrounding it, the visual and sound devices employed by the film makers, and the language used in the programs; all devices meant to instill a certain message, but hopefully in a way that you won’t discern. So off to the races, shall we?

The Promo
I have to tell you about the promo for “Fat Day” because the first time I saw it my heart rate went up. Based on when I started this blog I know that I was seeing the promotional ad for this block of programming at least a week before it aired but I have the feeling it was probably running before then. When I first heard it, I was actually angry, until I heard the last bit. But in hind sight I think I should still be angry. Here’s why:

You’re presented with a kaleidoscope type image of shots of KFC and Burger King signs, various fat persons just being fat, fat persons eating high calorie foods, shots of those high calorie foods all by themselves, fat children and a fat woman in a wheelchair in a hospital—you get the idea. And because it’s in a kaleidoscope every image is multiplied by five so it feels all the more pervasive. My favorite image, because of how cruel you’ll later realize it is, is one of a person pulling a pair of stretch pants over their ample belly. The voice over accompanying all these images is that of a man who clearly has little patience for the fat among us:

“Okay they continue to stuff their faces with crappy food. They’re a burden to our health care system. What the (bleep) is wrong with these people? I mean c’mon, how hard can it be to lose weight? How about injecting a little discipline into your lives folks? Put down the cheeseburgers and fries, eat a salad; then get off your butts and get some (bleeping) exercise!

Then the screen fades to black and the following sentence appears in white:

“If only it were that simple.”

Now, whizzing across the screen, diet books with horrifying sounding names (“Thin Within”) and bottles of pills and a logo for the FDA and a much more sane sounding man with the following things to say:

“From social pressures to biological costs, get the facts on fat. Fat Day, on National Geographic Channel.”

So while the first part of the ad made my skin crawl, and clearly that was the intent, I held out hope when I saw all those awful diet books and the pills and heard the words “social pressures” that “Fat Day” was going to add a little something insightful to the North American dialogue (or is it a monologue really) on fat. Oh how wrong I was. They might as well have left the second half of the ad on the cutting room floor for all it had to do with what actually aired.

I am naïve. I thought National Geographic would pull out some really insightful work on the topic of fat but it was all the same old, same old. It was all about what it takes to lose the weight with very little discussion of how the weight came about in the first place. And even where that was discussed, there was never any focus given to those explanations. The focus simply came back to the big three: less food, more exercise and how’s about a little surgery.

The Timing
Much as I want to believe that the National Geographic channel has my best interests at heart, I should have known by the timing of “Fat Day” that this was all a massive marketing gimmick. It just would have made more sense to me if they’d aired it on the 31st but maybe it got in the way of too much other programming. Or maybe they expect that even fat people have something to do during the day on New Year’s Eve so it’s best to serve up this programming on a Sunday when everyone, including fat people, tends to be sedentary. In any case, December 30th is still only 48 hours away from the great day of resolutions and most everyone can be counted upon to make a resolution about losing weight. So why not a little nudge right?

And if you’re going to appease all the advertisers filling the 138 ad spaces in that block of programming, you can’t be telling people that it’s just okay to stay fat and we’re going to sit and talk about why you are. Because if you do that, you miss out on the enormous amounts of cash the diet industry (an any other industry that wants to be associated with thinness) is willing to dump into advertising right around the new year. So National Geographic, like any other channel, decides they too, want a piece of the pie and you get a “Fat Day” that should have been called “Diet Day.”

The Visuals
The opening shots of “America’s Fattest City” were a perfect precursor for what to expect for the next six hours. There was one sequence in which every person about to be profiled in the doc was shown eating at some laughably unattractive moment. The inference of course is that fat people always look like this when they eat—and apparently thin people don’t eat at all, but they most certainly don’t eat like this. While this type of visual didn’t come up with the same frequency in every one of the programs, in the programs where specific people were being profiled, it was du rigeur that the “offending” party had to be shown eating. Interestingly in the documentary “Too Fat, Too Young” Kari, the 16- year old girl, is never really seen in an unflattering shot like this, but by the end of the of the doc I was left with the distinct impression that she might be trading in one issue with food—overeating—for another—anorexia. Maybe the film makers find anorexia more acceptable.

In “The Diet Wars” our correspondent, Steve Talbot, who is considered at the high end of overweight by the BMI chart, is shown eating plenty of times, but never in an unflattering way. Perhaps because he’s the correspondent and we aren’t supposed to have feelings of loathing and condescension for him. But perhaps also because he is repentant; he spends the entire doc searching for a diet to cure him of his near obesity and by the end has dropped 15lbs. It seems that as long as someone appears to care about their weight they are allowed to be shown eating food like normal folk.

In “The Atkins Diet” documentary these shots were almost nauseating. Taken against a black background, a round table piled with steaks, bacon, eggs and other meats and proteins was harshly lit. The fat group of men and women around this table were shown eating the meats, up close and in slow motion. No one looks good in slow motion (except Bo Derek in “Perfect 10”). It’s a known fact that political smear ads usually slow the film to make the victim of the ad look sinister. So even if you shot Kate Moss eating in slow motion it would look sinister. But when you put fat people in the shot it’s reinforces the idea that it is somehow wrong that these fat people are allowed to eat all these fatty meats and proteins and God forbid, lose weight. Ironically, though the voice over talks about these people losing weight, the unfortunate souls in those shots are all still relatively fat—reinforcing the idea that to eat this much of type of food, even when the Atkins Diet says you can, is at the very least, distasteful and at the worst, sinful.

My favorite, staple visual of these programs is the shots of headless fat bodies walking by. These unfortunate fat folks who’ve obviously never consented to having their images shown on TV are paraded in front of the camera wearing the most unflattering clothing to ever appear in any store. From too-tight shirts to wedgie-causing pants, there’s not a single one of these fat people shown well dressed. I worked in a plus sized women’s clothing store for three years and I can assure you there are plenty of women over size 14 or 16 who dress themselves very well. There are plenty of men who shop while being fat and still do a good job. Take Brian Clivas, a middle aged gentleman profiled in “The Atkins Diet” who even after having lost 70lbs is still way above the top end of Marks & Spencer’s largest pant size. He is as well dressed as any man at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. In fact he looks quite dapper. But I guess it’s okay to show him looking great because he, like Steve Talbot, is repentant and diets. Even when Brian is shown in just his under shorts the shot is more flattering than similar shots of the two thin semi-celebrities who were put through the diet ringer on the two W network programs.

I cannot resist talking about one particular headless fat man shot—the man is seen riding on a Segway. If you’re not aware of what the Segway is, it’s like a pogo stick on wheels and goes the way you want it to based on the direction in which you lean. A reporter on a local news station was shown trying to maneuver one at Disney in order to get around efficiently for the day. She’s thin. I guess it was okay for her to use one.

And then there are the food shots. In these documentaries food is constantly being shot in a way that makes it look unattractive. I’m sure most of us are aware of the tweaking that goes on to make food photogenic. The army of paints, waxes, and lighting that go into making the cover of a cookbook look good are phenomenal. Take that all away and food, photographed, as is, looks generally unappetizing. You’ll know this from staring at the shots of your favorite combo at your local kabob restaurant. They have probably not hired a really good culinary photographer to do their meal shots and so there’s a weird, sickly look to the food. Thankfully you can see the real thing right in front of your face and it looks and tastes a lot better than those photographs would make you think. Like the harshly lit meats of “The Atkins Diet” or the wide shot of all the fajita fixings on the table at a Houston restaurant frequented by one of the “America’s Fattest City” participants, the food always looks abundant in a bad way or frankly unappetizing—when there’s an unrepentant fat person sitting next to it. Cut to Steve Talbot eating dinner on his birthday after two months of dieting—that chocolate cake actually looks good; his Atkins dinner at TGIF looks good and appetizing. The message, over and over again: if you’re dieting and we can see the results (i.e. you’re beginning to look acceptable) what you eat is okay; and if you’re not it’s not.

Over the course of the day I began to realize that the visuals used in the promo were all lifted from the six programs shown that day and there was one that came to bother me when I figured out what it was. During the promo there is a shot of a seemingly random headless fat person pulling a pair of spandex pants up over their ample belly. And with the snide male voice over in the audio you’re left with the impression of someone who seems damn proud of their belly. How far from the reality. That shot is taken from a scene in which Daniel, (the 10 year old in “Too Fat, Too Young”), in an effort to lose weight, is getting dressed to go and do some exercise. Apparently even children are not safe from having their images used to further the idea that all fat people are out of control; even when the image is taken from a moment when they’re trying to get things under control.

The Audio
Polka music. Let’s just lay it out. Polka music is the best music to use if you want to make fun of someone. If you want to convey that George W Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” announcement on the USS Lincoln was all a sham, show the image with some polka music playing. If you want to keep us laughing about the models who have fallen on the runway, throw up the image (in slow motion) and play some polka music. If you want to make sure that we get that fat people should never be taken seriously, play some polka music.

Accompanying nearly every image of the headless, anonymous, badly dressed, fat person in this six hour block was some polka music. Or something heavy on the tuba in any case. It’s like we can’t talk about fat or see images of fat people without having to make a joke. And somehow this joke isn’t considered offensive—though it damn well should be.

I don’t know a single fat person who likes polka music. Maybe show some fat people and play something really cool by Radio Head. I wonder if people might begin to understand that no one has to be made to feel bad in order to talk about fat.

Then there’s your other most popular audio cue: the foreboding music. Whether it’s just one low note on the synth or the long held note on the violins, it’s all about freaking you the fuck out. It’s played at every possible moment: during talks about the rising statistics of obesity in North America and the UK; when the ten year old boy who’s being taunted about his weight at school declares that he’s wanted to kill himself; when the fat people in the black room filled with meat are eating.

And of course when people have lost weight, like Kari and Tiffany, after their gastric bypass surgeries and Steve Talbot, after two months of eating well and exercising, there’s the piano tinkle of quiet triumph. They’ve joined the ranks of the normal—heaven be praised.

The strangest audio cues of the day though, came from “Too Fat, Too Young.” The doc begins with the three profiled children, Barnaby, Daniel and Kari all talking about what they have suffered being fat and how much they dislike themselves as a result to the (appropriate) tinkling of emotional piano. But then the opening credits sound like something out of a 70’s cop show or an episode of the original Batman, with clashing trumpets and cymbals. It only gets weirder, with the voice over about Britain’s obesity epidemic set to some sort of guitar twanging funk piece. It’s like they think it’s serious but still kinda comical. Maybe the music was meant to be subversive. I think it’s a film maker unsure of what he/she wants to convey. Which is almost as bad as the film makers who are quite certain that they want you to feel bad.

The Language
“If you can call being fat an epidemic, it’s an epidemic.”
“So just how have these larger than life Texans ended up being so big…”
“Although obesity is raging through out the entire United States, it’s the southern states that tip the scales more than most.”
“…reveal just what it is about the Texan lifestyle and attitudes that’s turned this place into a land of giants.”
“…are often shocked by the sight of so much wobbling, waddling weight.”
“Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of childhood obesity.”
“These children are dangerously fat. Unless they get thinner they will die prematurely.”
“Can a pioneering new treatment help him escape the fat trap?”

There are two kinds of language that come up here. The shocked and bemused language and the scary language. “Larger than life,” “tip the scales,” “land of giants.” Are they kidding? I shouldn’t have been, having lived while being fat for some time now, but I was shocked by the condescending language used in “America’s Fattest City.” I was shocked by the disregard for the people being profiled. I was shocked that it was not enough to simply describe the situation but to use language that was clearly meant to poke fun at these people. The entire documentary had an air of “if these people don’t care to lose weight, we don’t have to take them seriously as human beings” and it came through most in the language. The second problem here is the fat that these people, did, generally care about their weight.

The scary language came up most in “Too Fat, Too Young.” And here I feel I need to insert a caveat. It’s not that I wouldn’t be concerned if my 15 year old son weighed 308lbs (like Barnaby) or that I’m not concerned about my own weight; I would be and I am. I just don’t think scary language generally motivates people to work on their weight in the long term. It has never motivated me (in the long term) and I would venture to guess, based on the obesity statistics floating around, that most people aren’t motivated that way either. So maybe a little less of the catastrophic language would be a neat idea. People don’t even talk this way about drug addiction anymore. But somehow we can’t manage to be more sensitive and logical when it comes to weight. Frankly the crytal meth will kill me faster than my extra weight—though admittedly if I was on crystal meth I would likely be thin…

While I found the overall message of “The Diet Wars” a bit preachy (eat well and exercise and it’ll all be okay—coming from someone who frankly wasn’t terribly overweight) I was relieved to sit through a program that didn’t talk down or try to scare fat people into submission for the most part.

The Ads
Of course you can’t talk about six hours of programming about fat people and dieting without looking at who’s sponsoring the entire sordid mess.

While it’s not surprising that there were ads geared towards weight loss the surprising winner for ad most aired was a 30-seond spot for Braun’s Pulsonic shaver. It came in at 18 airings in the six hour period. Now while the two ads running for Curves came in at a distant nine showings, (second to a Benilyn ad at ten showings) the Curves spot was nearly double the length of the Braun ad at about 58 seconds. So in the great big scheme of things Braun and Curves got the same amount of air time. Apparently Braun is just as concerned as Curves that you get thinner. Who would have thunk it?

An interesting twist was an ad for Thermacare back wraps that appeared a few times. For months, I’ve only seen a Thermacare ad profiling a couple on vacation during which the husband suffers from back pain. The one airing on Fat Day, however, featured a woman dressed in active wear trying to get in shape and paying for it by having her back go out. An interesting new year’s twist.

Interspersed through out the day were these little blips called “Fat Facts.” These ranged from the inane: “a single pound of fat contains 1.6km of blood vessels” to the so relevant and un-pursued for the rest of the programming that it hurt: “healthy foods often cost more than foods high in fat, sugar or starch.” If even one documentary had run with the concept of good food costing more it would have been really, really interesting. Alas it was not to be.

Honorable Mentions and Poignant Moments
“As it turned out the true story of how the virus woos the body’s fat cells was like a Bollywood epic.” That was the full quote that got me through. It was taken from the doc “Fat Plague” where it’s theorized that people might be catching obesity when someone next to them sneezes. Dr. Dhurandhar is years away from ever proving that this is happening in humans and it’s completely likely that he never will. There was no less than six minutes of that doc taken up with Bollywood-type actors and actresses dancing and singing the story of the adenovirus AD-36 attacking the body’s pre-fat cells and making them fat. While I’m not holding out hope that they’ll find a cure for my weight gain, it was a lot of fun to watch.

Creepiest moment: a group of children are shown pictures of three people who look exactly the same, are dressed the same and are performing the same activity. The difference between them is that one is thin, one is medium sized and one is fat. Without fail the children all chose the fat figure when they had to decide which one of the three was deceitful, ugly, scared, lazy, stupid or selfish. Even Daniel, the overweight child being profiled made the same choices. I guess I shouldn’t be wondering why film makers can’t manage to step away from the visual and sound conventions of showing fat people when we all, apparently, think ill of them.

Most poignant moment of all: Diane, the woman from Houston weighing 625lbs talks about her first diet: “My first diet; I was eight years old. At eight years old I weighed 133lbs. And I can remember that very clearly. It took me a year to lose 30lbs and two weeks to put it back on. That’s all it took. Since then I’ve been on that same program five other times; never successfully obviously. Matter of fact I’ve even gained weight on it a few times.”

There was a woman in the UK, Lisa Kirsch, (profiled in “Diets from Hell”) who is a size 14 but cannot stop dieting. And frankly I don’t feel for her. Lisa doesn’t look overweight. Men don’t expect her to be grateful for a date—in fact she’s married with two children. She doesn’t get stared at in the street. No one has ever called her orca (I actually got that one once—and I was 20lbs lighter than I am now). Her issue is all in her head. None of it is showing up on her body and so she’s got a leg up in my books. She just has to fix what’s going on in her head and she’s good to go. Diane, on the other hand, like all recognizably fat people and even more at her weight, must deal with the shit that goes on in her own head as well as the unwanted opinions of others. She has had a gastric bypass and had to have it reversed. She’s quit trying to lose weight and I don’t blame her. And while the documentary in which she appeared, was supposed to show the humanity of a woman like Diane, all those awful shots of her in comprising positions, are really about the spectacle of a woman like Diane. I guess that was the problem with the entire day of programming. I walked away from it wondering how much longer will it take before we hold ourselves, as a society, responsible for making a spectacle of anyone?

2 - Watching "Sin City"

2007-12-22T18:07:00.000-05:00

In a fit of pique over being sort of stood up by my ex for dinner (though he might also reasonably claim that it was the other way around—alas why we are no longer a couple) I did what Peaches would refer to as "fucking the pain away." This was the ad I posted on CraigsList (which was flagged and removed I might ad—I guess the idea of a woman being serious about wanting sex without a cash transaction being involved is unheard of):

Date: 2007-12-21 20:14:51

PostID: 516704432

Title: (casual encounters) Watching Sin City--Would Rather Be Sinning - w4m

Buxom, BBW, SBF seeks stimulating romp in the sheets
tonight with well spoken fella 20-40.  Have msn so we
can chat.  No msn, no nookie.

After having one guy who seemed absolutely smitten with my robust figure (those candid pics I’ve taken for this blog—well he got first peek) back out on the grounds of being weirded out by the thought of meeting and immediately having sex, I ended up having a 1^st year university type romp with a near juvenile (okay he was 24 but that’s young for me) named Christopher. It wasn’t great sex but it wasn’t any worse than pizza either. It took the edge off for a few hours and that was the point.

Now to even get to Mr. Wimp Out and Christopher took weeding through about 40 e-mails that all appeared in my in-box within minutes of posting the ad. I really thought that between black and BBW the response would not be so enthusiastic. I was honestly surprised. I’m also vaguely amused by the fact that guys sit perched on CL waiting for a woman to post something like that. Even more amused that they would back out when the opportunity presented itself—but that’s a topic for someone else’s blog.

It jump-started my thinking though on the whole phenom of the BBW and how the things play out for her in the contexts of dating and sex. I was absolutely convinced that once I sent that candid pic to Mr. Wimp Out he’d be gone in a flash—but he clearly really dug my physique—a physique I don’t remotely dig.

More on this topic in the future, but I just felt like last night’s spectacle was too weirdly relevant not to share.

1 - All the "Fat" names were taken

2007-12-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

I had decided to call this blog "My Fat Ass" but I'm coming into this blogging game way too late in the third quarter for that url to still be available. I toyed with a few other titles including "Fat Like Me" (oh so clever and oh so overdone) and finally settled on "Heavy Me." And I like it because it's so indicative of how ambivalent I am about my size.

I know there are a significant number of people who would call me fat. But I don't identify with that word. I really don't. I think it's because I've always pretty much resided in that middle ground. I haven't been thin since sometime predating puberty. After that I was always, not fat but not thin. Now, weighing in at 226lbs last time I checked (and I'm only 5'5") I somehow still don't think I'm fat. Some people might call me delusional but I think I have an idea in my head of what "fat" is and I don't feel like I fit that idea. And I carry a lot of weight in my chest (grin).

Of course this brings up the issue of how subjective labels like "fat," "thin," and "normal" are. There is a great deal that is arbitrary about those concepts. But I'll get into the high brow later. This is just an introduction. In the course of this blog, I hope to cover topics like medical issues, obesity vs fatness, size and the media, what is actually average and all sorts of other fun topics. Of course you get to come along on my journey of...well whatever the journey turns out to be. I can't guarantee that it'll be weight loss. It might just be weight maintenance. If nothing else I hope it'll be a journey of self-acceptance. Cheesy, but true.

I am going to take pictures...but I'm not going to post them right away. I am going to take candid (black mailing exes unite) and not so candid shots. I want you to someday have an idea of what this journey looks like in my body (because I know a lot of other people are taking the same road but in different skin suits). But first I want you to get to know what goes on inside my head. We'll get to the pictures later. But I promise the pics will be taken and they will some day be posted.