First, this story from reader Jess appeared as a comment yesterday.  It’s relevant to today’s blog and it’s awesome so I wanted to make sure that everyone got a chance to read it:

I’m on my university’s dance team, and let me tell you, there are two big girls on the team and they kill the dances, every time. I am absolutely jealous of the way they move. And I’m not the only one, haha. They’re two of our best.

I remember one time we were performing at halftime at a football game…there were two or three girls behind us who noticed our matching clothes and asked who we were. We told them we were the dance team, exchanged some “How is it?” “Oh it’s fun” smalltalk, and then turned around to watch the game.

A few minutes later, we heard one of the girls who was sitting behind us begin to wonder under their breath about the two bigger girls on our team. Stuff like “I wonder why they let the two fat girls on the team?” “Maybe they just joined to lose weight.” “I wonder if they can do like, leaps and jumps and stuff?” Then, one of the dancers (a really loud, outgoing, no nonsense kind of personality), who was sitting right in front of them, turned right around and said,

“Our two fat girls challenge you to a dance off, after the game, behind the stadium.” And she was totally serious. The girls behind us went redfaced.

“Uh, no, no thanks.”

“Why not? They’re fat, right? So they can’t do leaps and turns and stuff. Doesn’t the fact that you’re thin mean you can automatically do a triple pirouette?”

The girls behind us sort of laughed in a confused, uncomfortable way. “We were just joking.”

“Well I’m not. Behind the stadium, after the game. We’ll grab some football players to be judges.”

“Uh, we don’t want to dance battle.”

Our dancer gave her a, quite frankly, terrifying look. “Damn right you don’t,” she said, and then turned around again.

See I told you – great story right?! It put me in a fantastic mood right up until I heard a story that made my blood boil.   I was talking to America the Beautiful 2 filmmaker Darryl Roberts, who is awesome.  He was telling me that one of the film’s editors really didn’t support the message that you could have health without being thin.  Darryl watched over him and even re-edited some of his work to make sure that the finished product reflected Darryl’s vision.  Now that the movie’s final cut has had several of its premieres, the editor called Darryl to say that he “got him”.  Darryl asked what he meant.

When I am first introduced in the movie, it’s with a clip of me dancing. This editor was apparently quite proud to tell Darryl that the background music for this part of the film is the music that the hippos dance to in Disney’s Fantasia.  See what he did there – he used music associated with hippos. You know, because I’m fat…and hippos…get it?

Now, let me make sure this is clear.  I’m not saying that the editors mean-spirited, emotionally immature, technologically advanced 8 year old kid decided to make a funny by comparing the fat woman to a hippo. This is a grown ass man, being paid to do a job.  And he thought that the best use of his paid time was researching, finding, and cutting music so that he could make fun of me – subtly.

Except that he failed – badly.  The dancing hippos in Fantasia are really graceful. They are shown as happy, confident, accomplished dancers and all of the alligators want to dance with them. How is that insulting? I guess I’m vaguely insulted that his effort on this was so weak.

Let’s do a quick comparison (I know it may be easy to get confused – I’m the one in red…)

As I drove back from Dallas I was trying to think of what I would say to this guy.  I got home and checked my e-mail and here’s what I decided:

In just the last 24 hours I’ve received e-mails from people telling me that my work:

• inspired them to try Zumba workout classes that they were “too scared to try before”
• inspired them to “concentrate on healthy eating and exercise and ignore the people who try to make me feel bad about myself”
• helped them “reclaim their health”
• helped them “spend 10 minutes not hating myself… it was the longest I’ve gone in over 10 years”
• made them ” REALLY look forward to being that doctor who helps patients find the cause of their problems, not the cause of the doctor’s problem”
• gave them “hope” and made them rethink “committing suicide because I just couldn’t take all the haters anymore”

So, Mr. Editor, what have you done?  Who have you inspired? You had the chance to be part of something that is making a tangible, positive change in the world and you squandered it to make a cheap, pathetic joke at my expense.  Are you proud of yourself?  In the last 24 hours – just like everyday – I’ve also received hatemail from people like you (only, you know, more clever and actually able to come up with something insulting) who thought it was hilarious to make fun of the fatty so that they could sit in a puddle of their own self-satisfaction and feel superior to somebody for a minute.  Please understand, I don’t do this work so that people like you realize the error of your ways (although it would be great if you did).  I’m here to support the people who your behavior drives to consider suicide. I don’t care nearly as much if you think that fat people deserve respect, as I care that fat people understand that they deserve respect.

You picked the wrong girl dude.  I get death threats weekly and they don’t even phase me, so if you want to insult me you’d better come at me with more than just some dancing Disney hippos.

If you want to rethink your strategy I would welcome you to the Health at Every Size®  movement where we concentrate on health instead of body size and support people in making their own choices, setting their own priorities, and getting good information – instead of making fun of them and deluding ourselves into believing that we’re helping them to hate themselves healthy.  I am absolutely prepared to accept your heartfelt apology and move forward as part of the same team.

If not, in the spirit of Jess’s dance team, I challenged you to a dance off.  Pick the time and the place and I’m there.  I even have a suggestion for a song.  There are no fat dancing animals but I like it all the same:

UPDATE:  In good news, we’re making some real progress on the issue of the National Eating Disorders Association’s harmful partnership with the STOP Obesity Alliance.  There are a couple of ways that it can go at this point but either way having the most signatures possible will be really important.   If you haven’t already, please consider signing the petition and passing it along to your network:  http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-neda-to-stop-working-with-the-stop-alliance I hope that have a more comprehensive update very soon!  EDIT:  We won! NEDA pulled the partnership off the website and stated that they have no ongoing relationship with the STOP Obesity Alliance.  We are making a difference!

Today my friend Amy and I drove from Austin to Dallas for an America the Beautiful 2 – The Thin Commandments Premiere.  Along the way Amy took her eyes off the road to look at something and we started to drift right.  When I teased her about it she said “I’m a very successful driver based on the fact that I’m still on the road.  I’ve been in a ditch, but I’m not there now.” (Amy is both feisty and clever, and so this phrase was uttered with a feisty cleverness that made it hilarious.)

It also clarified for me everything that is pissing me off about this completely inappropriate partnership between NEDA and the STOP Obesity Alliance.  The idea that someone would call me diseased or claim that I have an eating disorder just based on the size of my body, my amazing body that does amazing things, is ridiculous and offensive beyond all human reason, not to mention completely unethical.  (No matter how much more money it makes them because of forced insurance reimbursements and a huge new target demographic for their products.)

Tonight during the film Q&A a woman felt the need to continuously assert that obese people as a group don’t exercise and are unhealthy.  Conveniently, the two examples right in front of her were “exceptions to the rule”.  At one point she said “You are the exceptions, most of the rest of them don’t exercise!” (Information that she seems to have acquired via rectal pull.  We already know the two things that you can tell by looking at a fat person.) I think that history has shown us that anytime you characterize an entire population as “them”, and proceed to make broad sweeping generalizations about them, you are headed down a bad road.

And what makes it even more frustrating for me personally is that when I had the body that everyone seems to think would prove that I’m disease free and have a healthy relationship with food, I was suffering from an eating disorder and sicker than I’ve ever been in my life. Which is why I’m a more competent witness to my experience than someone with a scale, a yardstick, and a BMI app on their iPhone, or someone with the ability to state the same prejudice loudly and often during a Q&A session.  I’ve been in a ditch, I know what it looks like, and I’m not there now.

Hey, do you suppose that’s why diagnostic tools exist?  You know, so that Medical and Mental Health professionals don’t make up stuff based on their preconceived notions and prejudices or what will bring them the biggest profit potential? Hmmm…

My ditch was all about dieting and trying to lose weight because I thought that was the path to health.  When it didn’t work I just tried more and harder.  Eventually it occurred to me that my strategy basically amounted to trying to get out of the ditch by digging out the bottom – which of course just leaves you in a deeper hole.  When I put down the shovel and started using my brain things came together for me and I found a path to health that I love and that works great for me.  It’s not that I’ve never been in a ditch (I certainly have), or that I’ll never be in a ditch again (it could happen), it’s that I’m not there now. And jumping up and down and claiming that I am – because it means that you can sell me your stuff and force my insurance company to pay for it, or because it makes you feel superior- does not make it so.  Please sell Concern Trolling for Fun and Profit somewhere else, we’re all stocked up here.

Now that I’m all packed for the Dallas Premiere tomorrow (there’s still time to get in on the fatty/fatty friendly lunch at Twisted Root Burger on Saturday at 11:30ish).  I realized that I hadn’t posted an update with all of the pictures from the Los Angeles Premiere. In cases where I do not know the people in the photograph well I kept the names out of the picture, but rest assured that I do know your names and you are awesome.  Almost all of these pictures were taken by Rose who was my tourguide in LA and is a super cool person and an excellent photographer.  These pictures would be in some reasonable order except I’m being defeated by technology at the moment and so they are captioned and in completely random order.  Enjoy!

Before I get into today’s blog, there is now an official petition asking the National Eating Disorders Association to end their harmful partnership with the STOP Obesity Alliance.  Of course these things run on signatures so if you would like to add yours that would be awesome (and if you passed it on via FB, Twitter etc. that would be even awesomer!)  The signature goal is 500 but I’d like to blow that out of the water.  Just Click Here to Sign! (The link to pass it on is http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-neda-to-stop-working-with-the-stop-alliance)

On to today’s blog:

I got the following comment on my blog about Fat Activism, and it’s a question that I hear a lot so I thought now was a good time to address it:

5% of people DO SUCCEED in losing weight and maintaining the loss. Thus, 5 out of every hundred, 50 out of every 1000, 500 out of every 10,000… 5,000 out of every 100,000 succeed, In spite of the now near constant chant that it “can’t” be done About the same number of people who manage to turn around failing businesses, become proficient at difficult skills of any kind, – you see my point?
I am against fat-phobia, and I agree that people are healthy at many weights. What I am tired of is “why try since it can’t be done?” – when what is really meant is “It is extremely difficult and means life changes at several levels, not a temporary diet… but some do succeed”.
My point is, that if people want to give it a try to lose some of their weight, for whatever reason (unless they are anorexic), the it is equally offensive for you and other bloggers to keep telling them “It’s nice to see you “try” but it won’t work” as you find the remarks of those who you helped with your consulting.

My answer

Thanks for the questions. The reason lies not just in the “can it be done” (and it should be noted that the 5% success rate is generally within the margin of error for the studies), but also in whether it makes sense to do it. The 95% of people who are likely to fail at weight loss are also likely to become less healthy than they were before those attempts (including markers of physical and mental health) which means that the most common outcome of weight loss attempts is weight gain and endangerment of health. The consequences become worse the more that people attempt weight loss.

There is also no proof that losing weight causes an increase in health – as weight has not been proven to cause health problems (only to be correlated with them) and weight loss has not been proven to cure them since it’s most likely that the behaviors and not the weight loss are responsible for the health changes . A Health at Every Size perspective where we concentrate on health rather than weight offers all of the health benefits of a weight loss regimen without the risks. Therefore the only benefits of weight loss are social which makes it a civil rights issue and not a health issue at all.

You’ll note that I never tell people not to lose weight, but I think it’s important – especially in a world where weight loss is marketed as a successful cure for things – that people understand that suggesting weight loss is prescribing something that nobody has proved is possible for a reason that nobody can prove is valid. I was always honest with consulting clients about their odds of success and also about the consequences of lack of success as I am when it comes to weight loss.

But there’s more to it than that.  When the commenter says ““It is extremely difficult and means life changes at several levels, not a temporary diet… but some do succeed”, that makes it sound like most people fail because they just don’t try hard enough or aren’t willing to make “life changes” and that’s simply not what the data reflects.  In truth the body has a series of very strong psychological and physiologic deterrents to weight loss that may make long term weight loss impossible for many people.

She says “About the same number of people who manage to turn around failing businesses, become proficient at difficult skills of any kind”.  The trouble is that this isn’t about being proficient at a skill, this is about our health. If Viagara worked 5% of the time and 95% of guys who took it became LESS able to get erections, I seriously doubt that we would be telling guys to keep taking it and just try harder.  If  a health intervention only works 5% of the time with a negative outcome 95% of the time, then we call it a failure and go looking for another health intervention.  For some reason dieting and weight loss have been exempted from this rule. That’s dangerous because the rule exists to protect our health.

The commenter is tired of “why try since it can’t be done?”  For the record, I’ve never said that.  I make  great effort to avoid telling other people how to live since I want the way that I live to be respected.  If you want to diet, that’s fine but I think that you should have access to true and correct numbers about success rate, possible side effects, and long term dangers.

As far as being offensive, people are allowed to decide to be offended by the truth but that’s entirely their deal and I’m certainly not going to gloss over it or ignore to protect someone’s delicate sensibilities. The truth is that dieting leads to weight gain and endangered health in 95% of the people who try it.  If someone disagrees that’s fine, but in the immortal (paraphrased) words of Jerry McGuire: SHOW ME THE RESEARCH!

Don’t forget to sign the NEDA petition if you are so inclined (and pass it on!)

WORLD TOUR UPDATE

The Schedule is F&#$ed.  It’s nobody’s fault – the first leg was intended to be in the States and follow the American the Beautiful 2 Premiere schedule.  The premiere schedule has changed quite a bit and is in flux so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to follow the movie around since we can’t get everything scheduled and marketed in time (although it’s super fun to go to the premieres and feel like a Movie Star and meet cool people and Darryl -the film-maker- is awesome).

I will be in Dallas this weekend for the Friday and Saturday premieres (and if you want to have lunch on Saturday then e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org and we’ll get an awesome Fatty and Fatty Friendly lunch together)

After that we’re continuing with an independent tour.

My awesome PR Team is hard at work with connections in a series of cities in the US, Canada and overseas both booking gigs and getting the cities in some kind of reasonable order.  It’s no small feat! In the meantime I’m using this time to finish my book, get the dance classes ready to go online and blog until 2am.

If you want a tour stop in your city you can definitely e-mail me (ragen at danceswithfat dot org) and we’ll see what we can do! I’ll get the new and improved schedule up as soon as possible and hope to see you soon!

I took a Zumba class tonight that had a lot of latin hip movement.  After class one of the women came up to me and said that I was a “great dancer” but that she thought I should “tone down the hip movement” because it “just looks dirty on someone your size…it’s not your fault…I mean, no offense…” she trailed off, I assume because I was looking at her like she was out of her damn mind.

Okie dokie.  First of all, I don’t know why people say these things to me.  I was wearing a shirt with a picture of Kung Fu Panda that says “I’m not a big fat panda.  I’m THE big fat panda” so you would think that she might have caught the Fat Pride wave but I guess not.

I got some control over my facial expression and decided to try responding with a series of questions in the faint hopes that she would lead herself to some kind of  revelation: “Why do you think you feel that way?”

“Um, I guess it’s because you have so much more body – it just looks more…decadent… when you do it.  Obviously you have great technique.”

“And you feel that’s a bad thing?|

“It makes me uncomfortable”

“And you feel that the solution is to tell me that I should move my own body based on what makes you comfortable?”

“I don’t know what else to do”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure”

“You could try looking at your own biases and prejudices about people of size.  Would you have said that same thing to a dancer about her skin color?”

“Oh, I honestly hadn’t thought of that.  Oh my gosh, I’m …holy cow I was totally out of line – I’m so sorry.  Thank you for talking with me about this.”

I love it when a plan comes together.  (I also love it when somebody says “holy cow”, I don’t know why.)  Seriously, I’m really happy that I could help her through that and that she was willing to be open to rethinking her strategy.  But it brings up an issue that I still sometimes have as a fat dancer.

I typically dance “kinesthetically”- When I watch someone do a move, I feel how it feels to do it in my body and then my body can reproduce it without much trouble.  That’s all well and good but my coach Rowdy will back me up that this does not work for me in Waltz or West Coast Swing. For whatever reason, I just don’t “feel” those dances.  This created a problem because, not matter what I did I never looked like other dancers. I would work on something, then look at the mirror or video and it wouldn’t “look right”.  My attempts to look like other people’s bodies lead me far away from proper technique.

I realized the problem one day when my friend, the brilliant plus sized model/actress/life stylist CJ Legare, was talking about the difficulty of making clothes for fat people because of the varied three dimensionality of our bodies.  In other words, our bodies are so differently shaped from each other and from the way that thin people’s bodies are shaped that it’s much more difficult to make clothes for us.  Eureka!  That was the problem with my dancing. I almost exclusively see dancers who are thin and so I’ve become conditioned to think that what looks “right” is however a thin body looks.

The bad news is that the is really prevalent, and that some jackasses try to make themselves feel better by making fun of the way fat people look when we move.  (Because they are so very concerned with our health that they discourage us from moving our bodies.  Wait, that doesn’t make any sense….)

The good news is that just because that’s the way it’s always been doesn’t mean that’s how it will always be. And those of us who enjoy movement and athletics have the power to start changing it.  One of the super coolest parts of my trip to San Francisco (and there were many super cool parts) was attending a rehearsal of Big Moves Bay Area.  They were so incredibly welcoming to me and their rehearsal was a lot of fun and hard work (Kick Army!!!) It struck me as we leaped, transitioned to the floor, spun and kicked, that dancing looked amazing on us.  We didn’t need to look like thin people to be dancers, we are dancers and so the way that we look is perfect.  Dance has always been about evolution, and we fat dancers are evolving it in our own awesome way.

I think that can be the case for lots of types of movement.  Most of the people we see moving are thin but that’s just what’s happening – not what has to happen in the future.  Not only is it rarely about “looking right”, but in truth “looking right” is different for us than what we are used to seeing, so we get to create that for ourselves.  And this is one of those awesome times that we can change things just by doing what we love to do.  The more fat runners, cyclists, mountain climbers, dancers, soccer players, Zumba participants etc. there are, the more we get to see what movement looks like on a fat body. Hell we may even *gasp* normalize fat athleticism and how awesome would that be?!

And if people have something negative to say about that then let’s marvel at the fact that they can still be heard with their heads so very far up their asses and hope that they get that colorectal head extraction for Christmas this year, then go about the business of being us and changing the world.

UPDATE:  We did it!  After only a few days NEDA sent a letter saying “The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) does not have any ongoing partnership with George Washington University’s program, Strategies to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Now Alliance.”  They have removed the STOP Obesity Alliance partnership from their website. You can read my full report our successes here.

Thanks to everyone who signed and everyone who passed the petition on.  Activism works!

Want to get involved?  Sign the petition to tell NEDA to STOP working with the STOP Obesity Alliance

Dear National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA),

As someone who has recovered from an eating disorder, and who has worked with people who are struggling with eating disorders, I have deep respect for your organization and the work you do.  I am writing you this open letter to express my concern about your partnership with the Strategies To Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance.

In a May press release that you released in conjunction with STOP you stated that in dealing with weight the media should:

“Focus on the concept that weight status and the importance of maintaining a healthy weight is not about appearance, but about health”

Pathologizing body size by claiming that there is such thing as a “healthy weight” is highly problematic on multiple levels.  Use of the term “healthy weight” ignores the multi-dimensionality of health, and the fact that there are healthy obese people and unhealthy thin people. It sends a dangerous message to people of size that healthy habits are not enough unless they lead to weight loss, and to thin people that they are healthy regardless of their habits. Both of these statements are incorrect.

Obesity is defined by Body Mass Index – a statistical tool that was never meant to be an indicator of health. If your weight in pounds times 703 divided by your height in inches squared is greater than 35 you are considered obese.  That does not constitute a physical or mental health diagnosis.  The diagnostic tools that we have at our disposal mean that we can abandon the dangerous practice of using body size as a proxy for mental or physical health.

Since all of the other organizational partners listed on your website are eating disorder related, I am very concerned that the addition of the STOP Obesity Alliance to that list may give people the mistaken impression that obesity constitutes an eating disorder diagnosis.  Of course you are aware that ED is a mental illness that includes emotions, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding weight and food issues and not a body size, but I feel that your partnership with an organization that considers obesity to be a disease may make it unclear, and I believe that your use of “healthy weight” type languaging muddies those waters.

I’m also concerned that you are sending very conflicting messages. Your website says:

“No Weight Petition: Signing this declaration of independence from a weight-obsessed world may help you accept your body’s natural shape and size”

“Shut down those voices in your head that tell you your body is not “right”

“Become a critical viewer of social and media messages. Pay attention to images, slogans, or attitudes that make you feel bad about yourself or your body. Protest these messages: write a letter to the advertiser or talk back to the image or message.”

“Encouraging the media to present more diverse and real images of people with more positive messages about health and self-esteem may not eliminate eating disorders entirely, but it would help reduce the pressures many people feel to make their bodies conform to one ideal, and in the process, reduce feelings of body dissatisfaction and ultimately decrease the potential for eating disorders.”

“Your “ideal” body weight is the weight that allows you to feel strong and energetic and lets you lead a healthy, normal life.”

These messages seem to be in conflict with the suggestion that obese people should view their bodies as diseased based only upon their size and regardless of their health or how they feel.

My final concern is conflicts of interest.  The STOP Obesity Alliance is funded by:

• Sanofi-Aventis:  a French pharmaceutical firm that manufactured the weight loss drug Rimonabant (aka Acomplia, Zimulti et al.). They refuted reports about the medicine’s psychiatric side effects until the European Medicines Agency issued a press release stating that the benefits no longer outweighed the risks for the drug based on data that patients had twice the risk of psychiatric disorders as a group on placebo. Approval of the drug was officially removed in January 2009 and they have, so far, failed to gain approval in the United States. They continue to pursue weight loss drug development.

• Allergan:  This company manufactures and sells the lap band that is used in weight loss surgery, has sponsored a contest to give away a surgery whose possible complications include death, has consistently pushed to have the weight at which a lap band is approved lowered, and created an organization to urge “Congress to recognize obesity as a disease and support legislation to provide greater access to and acceptance of all effective treatments, including weight-loss surgery”.  In other words, creating a problem that they will then sell their product to solve.

• Amlyn: a pharmaceutical company which, until August of this year, was seeking approval for the weight loss drug pramlintide/metreleptin.  Per Christian Weyer, M.D., Senior Vice President, Research and Development “With our partner, Takeda, we look forward to continuing to explore new options for the obesity market.” (Although they are listed as a source of funding on the May 2009 press release, they are no longer listed on the STOP website as a source of funding since they abandoned approval attempts for their diet drug.)

As Dr. Weyer points out, these companies look at obese people as a market for their product.  Obviously they stand to profit from a health paradigm that treats body size as a disease since no actual health issues will we be required for prescription of their products, and insurance companies may have more reimbursement requirements.  I’m concerned that you are partnering with a group that was founded and is funded by those who stand to profit from the pathologizing of a group of people based on their body size and regardless of their actual health.

People of size face tremendous stigma in our society – stigma that may already be negatively effecting our physical and mental health.  For that reason and those above I respectfully request that you reconsider your partnership with the STOP Obesity Alliance, and cease using all language that uses body size as a proxy for mental or physical health.  I would also implore you to take the utmost care to avoid stigmatizing or pathologizing obese people as part your work, and to instead endorse a Health at Every Size® Philosophy that puts focus on health rather than body size.

Sincerely,

Ragen Chastain

www.danceswithfat.org

Want to get involved?  Sign the petition to tell NEDA to STOP working with the STOP Obesity Alliance