Category: Anti-fat bigotry
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#fatmicroaggressions
3 comments on #fatmicroaggressions[Content warning: criticism of fat shaming] Melissa McEwan at Shakesville started the #fatmicroaggressions tag on Twitter. (If you’re not familiar, “microaggression” is the concept that specific interactions between those of different races, cultures, or genders can be interpreted as small acts of mostly non-physical aggression; the term was coined byChester M. Pierce in 1970. I am most […]
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Things to Read
You may have seen this poor as folk post on why poor people might not eat healthy. There’s also a great post on why “healthy food vs junk food” infographics are inaccurate, misleading lies. From Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor at the the Health At Every Size® Blog: “Obesity-related” disease actually tracks your social status […]
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World Ending, Fat People’s Fault
It’s amazing what fat is used to justify. Besides the increased health risks associated with obesity, we’re told fat people harm national defense, make global warming worse, and decrease workplace productivity.* The “Oh, but we need to do something about obesity!!!” is trotted out to sell organic foods, free range foods, Whole Foods, books, TV […]
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Why I Think Declaring Obesity A Disease is Harmful
It’s inaccurate: A fit fat person is usually healthier than a sedentary thin person. Obese people (BMI of 30 to 34.9) have no greater risk of early death than those of “normal” body size (BMI 18.5 to 24.9). Most people who fit the clinical definition of obese are in the smaller categories. “Normal-weight” people who think […]
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Best (Worst?) Things I’ve Read Today
In the coverage of this fat-hating, scientifically inaccurate, harmful mess, I’ve seen a lot of variations on calling out Miller for hitting out the send button impulsively or failing to properly censor himself. But the problem isn’t that Miller broadcast this bigotry in a public venue. The problem is that he holds this bigoted view at all. […]
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Fat Bias Isn’t Just About Rapport
As noted on Twitter, the article Tara Parker-Pope wrote for the New York Times about a study in Obesity looking at how fat patients aren’t always welcomed by doctors. Not news, though I suppose it’s good to have quantitative research supporting it. Really, though, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s some more. For patient stories on […]
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Typing “Fat People Are” into Google
I understand if anyone doesn’t want to read this. But it says something about our society. When typing “fit people are” into Google,* it helpfully tries to finish the thought for me, providing “more successful”, “happier”, “harder to kill”, and “smarter”. The search results are similar. Typing in “thin people are” shows options like “better”, […]
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Things to Read
A clear explanation of why New York’s fat hatred is much more harmful than the soda ban from Melissa McEwan: People do not die of “obesity.” Some fat people die from complications of what are commonly known as “obesity-related diseases,” like heart disease and diabetes, but those diseases have only been shown to be correlated with fat, not caused by fat. […]
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Does It Matter?
Tonight I overheard some thin 20somethings discussing fat people as a group (nothing said about the 40ish couple at a nearby table). The terms and statements made were rather derogatory. There was laughter. Then their discussion moved to other topics. This wasn’t pleasant. I tweeted about it. I then focused on dinner with the man […]
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Five Things Make A Post
1) I am sooo looking forward to tomorrow morning, when Mark Reads will post the second-to-last chapter of Deadline. Mark Reads reviews books a chapter at a time, progressing through books every other weekday, and it’s been building to this OMG HUGE second-to-last chapter for weeks. (Need I say “spoilers”?) Some of the books he’s […]
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Quotes: Pretty
“You have such a pretty face. You should lose weight.” — Relatives “A pretty face and fine clothes do not make character” — Anon “Who cares about pretty? I’m going for noticeable.” — Veronica Roth “It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it’s not, it’s a visa, and it runs out […]
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Today in Don’t Read The Comments
Marilyn Wann takes on weight bias in healthcare in “Big deal: You can be fat and fit” on CNN.COM: …People are telling their stories of weight bias in medical care on websites like First, Do No Harm, This Is Thin Privilege and Obesity Surgery Gone Wrong. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has been speaking out […]
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Happy New Year!
Hello and welcome! I’m back at work with my new cartoon-a-day calendar (New Yorker cartoons) and new wall calendar (Pacific Northwest landscapes). I even cut off some of the photos from last year’s wall calendar to decorate my cube. Ready to work! (Yes, I know it’s Wednesday, but today feels like Monday to me. Yay four-day weekends! […]
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What is a job for a morbidly obese woman?
This showed up as one of the search terms used to get to my blog: what is a job for a morbidly obese woman? Let’s see…”morbid obesity” is usually defined these days as having a BMI value of 40 or higher. The BMI Project includes photos of multiple folks who are, officially, morbidly obese. So, what […]
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Women standing up against a society [that bastardizes] thin and athletic women
[Discussion of fat hate & discrimination] OK, I wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt. When Lesley Kinzel wrote about the Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a to stand up for “thin and athletic women” who are oppressed by society’s expectations, I wondered if: The author of the Kickstarter campaign thought that using […]
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Things to Read
From Paul Campos discusses the failure of a “sophisticated and expensive attempt” to validate the hypothesis that “significant long-term weight loss improves health outcomes”: It will probably come as a surprise to most readers to learn that this hypothesis remains almost completely unconfirmed by the medical literature – in part because we simply don’t know […]
Living ~400lbs 