People have moo’d at me and called me a cow, and that’s annoying, but not as annoying as the number of people, businesses, and industries who call my fat friends I cash cows. That cash may not be coming to us since statistically we get paid less than our thin peers and are less likely to be hired.  Ironically that’s part of a mass hysteria and prejudice that is perpetuated by a group of people and industries who make Billions of dollars off our backs. Now, people who I respect believe that the people behind the diet industry and Big Pharma have the best of intentions and truly believe that what they are doing is best for people’s health.  I have a hard time believing that. Here are some reasons why:

Despite the fact that the American Diabetes Association tells us that most overweight people will never get diabetes, the concepts of obesity and diabetes have been so conflated that the term “diabesity” has come into vogue. Except it’s not by crazy random happenstance – the term “diabesity” was  trademarked by a group called Shape Up America. According to their website, they are supposed to be “high profile national initiative to promote healthy weight and increased physical activity in America”.  So why do you think for-profit diet companies like Weight Watchers International, Jenny Craig and Slim*Fast, not to mention pharmaceutical companies including Wyeth Ayerst, Ortho-McNeil, and Novartis, have donated millions of dollars to this initiative?  An initiative  which, if they thought it would actually work, would put them out of business?  Do you think it’s possible that they know that the fat panic created by Shape Up will drive them customers who will have a 95% chance of failing and then becoming their customers again?

Speaking of diet companies, it wasn’t their idea to put disclaimers up every time they say that their product works.  Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and other weight loss companies have been successfully sued for deceptive trade practices by the Federal Trade Commission, and their disingenuous practices have lead the FTC to create regulations specifically for their advertising. So they didn’t change their very profitable behavior of selling a product that they know has limited success,  they just disclaimed it.

Weight Watchers in particular has been caught doing some really shady research. Counting people as successes twice when they lost weight, gained it back, then lost it again, making it seem like people who succeed on their first diet to lose the 10 pounds they gained after a break-up prove that people on their 20th diet can lose over 100 pounds, counting people as “successes” for statistical purposes as soon as they lose 5% of their body weight, even if that leaves those people in the same BMI category in which they started (and therefore, based on their own literature, at the same health risks as when they started.)

The Strong4Life campaign put up billboards, bus shelter signs and commercials showing healthy confident fat kids acting like unhealthy unhappy fat kids who don’t have clothes that fit them, with slogans like “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid”.  They claimed that it was necessary to shame, stigmatize and humiliate fat kids in order to make them healthier.  The program is the brainchild of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  They are a not-for-profit organization and in addition to taking donations from Waffle House, IHOP, and Dairy Queen while denouncing the food that they serve, they also took over $145,000 in donations from Coca-Cola and Pepsi.  I notice that on the Strong4Life campaign’s Quick Start tips page, they caution against drinking juice, but say nothing about soda. Is it because the juice companies could not come up with $145,000?  They are also running a weight loss clinic for kids including performing partial stomach amputations for weight loss in children despite the fact that the practice is considered highly questionable.

If these are their best intentions I’d hate to see their worst. Here are some of the many companies, industries, and people that benefit financially from the conflation of weight and health, the stereotype of thinness as beauty that lead to stigma and shame being heaped on fat people in our society, and from making sure that we focus on weight and not health:

• The diet industry – Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, MediFast,Slim*Fast, Jess Weiner etc.
• Pharmaceutical Companies that manufacture weight loss drugs
• The Biggest Loser Franchise (advertising for the show, DVDs, supplements, soundtracks, t-shirts, and more)
• Women’s magazines who depend on a staggering number of weight loss articles to sell issues
• Weight loss surgery centers, weight loss surgeons
• Companies, like Allergan, that sell weight loss surgery implements
• Doctors who specialize in weight loss
• Researchers who specialize in researching weight loss (to the exclusion of other health practices)
• Publishing companies who publish books about weight loss
• Authors of weight loss books
• And more…

One of my favorite things about the Support All Kids billboard campaign is that it gets money flowing in the other direction.  It makes me happy to buy books about Health at Every Size and take workshops about Health at Every Size because it sends my money in the other direction.  It makes me happy when I or one of my colleagues is paid as a speaker by universities and by those who attend our workshops. I am happy whenever I see that someone has created a product to help people live a HAES life because it allows people to get good information, and send their money in the other direction.  I can’t stop everyone from calling me a cow, but by voting with my wallet I can stop being a cash cow for industries that perpetuate hysteria about, and shame and stigmatization of, my friends and me all the while claiming that it’s “for our own good”.

iVillage Update

I did a piece for iVillage about Stacy Irvine, the girl whose collapse from anemia and breathing problems led to the discovery that her diet consisted almost entirely of chicken nuggets. Every article mentioned that she was at a healthy weight, although you would think that the situation would help them see that there is no such thing as a healthy weight.  Anyway, you can find the article here,  it is unapologetically HAES without the usual “of course, obesity is still  bad blah blah blah” paragraph and so publishing it was a kind of a bold move for iVillage –  so if you feel like reading and commenting then go for it!

Georgia Billboard Update

Speaking of that Georgia Billboard Campaign, we are only 98 donors away from hitting the 1,000 that we need to unlock our $5,000 More of Me To Love matching grant.  At that point we’ll close donations and begin implementation.  If you haven’t donated there is still time to stand up for bullied kids and be part of this. If you have donated then consider asking a friend to donate.  You can link to  https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/enough-is-enough-the-big-fat-money-bomb/      to give them all the details and the donation links, or send them directly to the solidarity dollar site at http://tinyurl.com/solidaritydollar.  It would be awesome to get this done today!

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

Yesterday a federal appeals court ruled against California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.  The basis of the ruling is that the ban unconstitutionally singles out gays and lesbians for discrimination.  One thing that really struck me was an argument made by those in opposition that federal judge Vaughn Walker (now retired) should have stepped aside and let another judge hear the case. Walker is the judge who found Proposition 8 unconstitutional in 2010.  After he retired he came out as gay and in a long-term relationship, and so Proposition 8 advocates argued that he should not have heard the case.

Their belief, then is that in order for a group to get civil rights, everybody but the oppressed group gets a vote, but the oppressed people must recuse themselves from the fight for their own civil rights. To paraphrase the brilliant Dr. Deb Burgard, that’s rather like saying that if someone is stepping on your foot in an elevator, the rest of the people in the elevator should be polled to see if the person should stop. It’s even more problematic than that since typically the oppressing group is gaining something from their behavior.

That’s not how civil rights work – no oppressed group has ever won their civil rights by waiting for everyone else to decide to stop oppressing them, treat them with respect, and give them their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It breaks my heart to see fat people who believe that they deserve the shame and stigma that are heaped on us by society, that they deserve to pay more for insurance, to get lower wages than their thin counterparts, an dbe discriminated against in the hiring process.  I don’t need polling data to know that I deserve better than that. In fact, I don’t care if 99% of people think I don’t, someone is stepping on my foot and they need to get the hell off, period.  If we want to be treated better, we have to be the first ones to stand up and say that we deserve better, and then demand it.  You are, of course, under no obligation to become a fat civil rights activist.  My point is that you can if you want, you don’t have to wait for anyone’s permission.

Speaking of insurance and workplace benefits (see what I did there with that segue…) I did an article for Texas CEO magazine about the dangers of “carrot and stick” benefits programs that punish employees who are perceived as unhealthy because of their body size.  You can check it out here if you would like! (And as always, comments are appreciated because they make me look popular!)

The Georgia Billboard Project is SO CLOSE – We just need 169 people to find $1.00 in the couch cushions and these kids get $5,000 worth of support from the More of Me to Love Match donation. Large billboards, small billboards, bus shelter signs and tons of media to support these kids are all just 169 donors away. If you haven’t donated there is still time to stand up for bullied kids and be part of this. If you have donated then ask a friend to donate.  You can link to  https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/enough-is-enough-the-big-fat-money-bomb/      to give them all the details and the donation links, or send them directly to the solidarity dollar site at http://tinyurl.com/solidaritydollar.  It would be awesome to get this done tomorrow!

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

 

And I have some! This blog is a bunch of cool things, really not very related to one another. Read on because I’m about to reveal the super secret blog project that we’ve been talking about for a couple of months, I also have some cool news about levels of obesity.  But first, as I write this (and remembering yesterday’s blog) I’ve just finished  watching a show called “NFL Films – In Their Own Words”.  It’s a show for which they have compiled clips of a player being mic’ed on the field, being interviewed etc.  I’m watching it because I  like anything that has to do with athletes and this episode is about Warren Sapp.  At 6’2 and 330 pounds I watched him him run drills and play in games and he is amazing! His explosiveness off the line, his agility, his strength and speed are all impressive for an athlete of any size.  A reporter asked him about his size and he said “I don’t have to look like some kind of god.  It’s about going out and performing for three hours, it’s about your will.”  You tell ’em Warren.

So, the good news that I wanted to write about today is that studies are showing that, despite the crazy doom and gloom ohmygoddeathfatzarecomingforeveryone predictions that we will all be obese within the month or whatever and how horrible that is, in actuality rates of obesity are leveling off.  Now, let’s not forget that part of the rise in obesity happened when a panel of people with strong financial ties to the dieting and pharma weight loss industries were able to convince the National Institutes of Health to lower the weight that is considered “normal”, making about 25 million people overweight overnight.  Also, it’s interesting that the articles about this leveling off are finally admitting that nobody knows what caused the rise in obesity and nobody knows why it leveled off.  Of course there were also reports that it had leveled off between 2003 and 2008 so the whole thing is highly questionable (especially when the conversation is driven by those who profit from a weight centered approach to health, and obesity hysteria). Now, we know that bodies come in all sizes, and I don’t actually care whether there are more, less, or the same number of obese people. What makes it good news to me is that every article that I’ve read about this has mentioned that dieting has not resulted in thinner people.  What I am excited about is that maybe this will halt some of the obesity fear mongering and cause a retrospective look at the last 10 years, which I think will show the epic failure of the dieting industry and hopefully that will lead to people to being open to a discussion of a health centered paradigm.  A girl can dream.

Super Secret Project Revealed!

You may remember me asking for pictures of fatties doing cool physical things.  Here’s why.  I became really frustrated with the lack of active online conversations about fitness where I felt comfortable.  Forums about fitness ranged from subtle fat bashing to outright hostility, even in the best of circumstances I had to wade through a ton of weight loss talk to get to the actual fitness advice, and there was no advice to be had by people my size.  At the same time I get a whole bunch of e-mails from people asking for fitness advice – everything from weight training questions to what do to about chub rub.  I started thinking about what I could do to solve this problem so I talked to a couple of the awesome women who I’m lucky enough to know – Jeanette from The Fat Chick and Jayne from Slow Fat Triathlete – and we hatched a plan. On March 3rd we will be launching the Fit Fatty Forum.  This is for anyone, of any size and any ability who wants to talk about fitness in an environment free from weight loss talk.  Whether someone’s goal is to walk to their mailbox or run a marathon, there will be a place for them on the Fit Fatty Forum.  This will be free to use, moderated to be a safe space, and will include discussions, a picture gallery, a video gallery, and an Ask A Fit Fatty section where you can ask your questions to an expert.  I’m super excited about this.  I’ll be giving you more information as the launch date comes up.

Support All Kids Billboard Project Update

Y’all we are so close to getting that $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching donation which will pay for small billboards in downtown Atlanta and signs at bus shelters. We just need 217 more individual donors.  Today is “Ask a Friend Day”.  If you’ve already contributed, consider asking a friend to donate a Solidarity Dollar  (or posting http://www.SupportAllKids.com on your Facebook and/or Twitter) and asking people to Stand Up for these kids.  I know is that when our giant billboard and all of our posters go up to support the kids of Georgia who’ve been shamed, stigmatized, and humiliated for the last 9 months, I will be so proud and grateful to have been part of it.

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

When I saw the name of Paul Hunter’s article my blood immediately started to boil “Are very hefty NFLers like Vince Wilfork real athletes?”  This is right up there with “Can you be fit and fat?”  as questions to which the answer is “Yes. Spend 10 minutes researching on Google, and stop asking”.

First let’s tease out the four different things that this article seems to think are interchangeable. Stereotypical beauty,  weight, athleticism, and health. These are four separate concepts and people can be any combination of the four including all of them or none of them.

Let’s start with stereotypical beauty.  We shouldn’t even have to mention this since the article is supposed to be about being an athlete but when Hunter chooses to quote a TSN football analyst saying “From the outside, not being derogatory, this guy looks like a fat pig” then we have to talk about it.  One wonders what Chris Schultz would have said if he WAS being derogatory?  In this article an elite athlete who keeps up a training tempo that most people couldn’t possibly match is also called “he poster boy for those who look like butter sculptures”.  Why do these reporters persist with the belief that everyone in the world need to fit their stereotype of beauty?  Vince isn’t asking Paul Hunter a date, he’s an elite athlete who is at the top of his game. I counted 12 fat jokes in this article. Try harder Paul.  Stop talking about his looks – it’s disrespectful and has nothing to do with anything.

Weight.  This is a big flaming sack of who cares.  The article comes very close to accusing him of lying about his weight. Let’s keep our eye on the ball here people – Vince can run the 40 in just over 5 seconds.  Go ahead and try to match that time, I’ll wait. Most people will not make it. Athletes come in all sizes, this is the size that Vince comes in.  Back off.

Health. The article does say that he does not have diabetes.  Other than that we don’t know anything about his health.  There is some talk about how when these guys stop playing they become much less active but eat the same amount of food and have health problems.  That seems to speak to the need for some optional transitional coaching to help these guys figure out life after football, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not he is an athlete.  There are athletes of all sizes and all abilities with all kinds of health issues.

Athleticism:  Let’s get this into perspective.  He can run a 5 second 50, he is one of the .2% of high school football players who ever make the NFL, and he is one of the even smaller group whose team made the damn Super Bowl.  What else do you want from this guy? Happily amidst all the fat jokes are quotes from people who actually know what they are doing who say that he and other athletes his size are unequivocally athletes. Hey, look over there, it’s a big flaming sack of Duh!

Throughout the article various “experts” call athleticism in people this size “puzzl[ing], absolutely stunning, shocking, really amazing, inspirational in some ways.” These are examples of weight bias. These things are only shocking because people have incorrect preconceived notions of what people of size can do.  If you’re struggling with this concept, try to imagine the feedback to an article that said “in spite of being women, they were really good at math.  It was shocking, puzzling, and inspirational in some ways.”

This is another example of the bullshit idea that the only “correct” outcome of exercise is thinness, when in fact many studies show that exercise mitigates most of the health issues correlated with being fat, but is not likely to make us thinner.

Let’s take a minute to examine this lose/lose scenario:  If we are fat they make fat jokes about us and tell us to exercise.  If we exercise and become successful professional athletes but fail to become thin, then we have to deal with articles that ask if fat people can be called athletes and a barrage of fat jokes, (instead of what should happen which is an apology and respect from people who are seriously rethinking their stereotypes).  Did anybody else see the movie “War Games”?  The only way to win is not to play.

But that doesn’t mean don’t move your body if that’s what you want to do, or give up on being an athlete.  It just means to remember that Paul Hunter and writers like him are hacks who go for the cheap fat joke, and those who choose to maintain weight biases are bigots and they can do that but we don’t have to buy into it.  We’ve already discussed the ridiculousness of the idea of a dancer’s body or a swimmer’s build, this is an extension of that.  If you want to be healthier, most studies say about 30 minutes of moderate exercise (which you can absolutely break up throughout the day) about 5 days a week will do it. If you want to take it farther and train for a sport, let me suggest that you ignore idiots and jerks, focus on your training and athleticism, and let your body size sort itself out.

Billboard updates:  It’s Manic Monday!  We only need 280 more people to donate (in any amount) in order to get our $5,000 More of Me to Love Match. That gets us our big billboard in a high traffic area, small billboards in downtown Atlanta, and plexi-glass covered back lit signs at bus stops so that as many kids as possible can see them and know that they are respected and valued.

Please consider giving 1 minute of your time to donate 1 dollar to stand up for these kids, a donation in any amount brings us closer to our goal of 1,000 individual donors which gets us our $5,000 MOMTL Matching donation.

DONATE A Solidarity Dollar NOW!

If your donation is more than $5.00  it is also greatly appreciated and you’ll donate through our GoFundMe site.  Click Here!

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

I had a weird day.  Sometime around 4am the adrenaline rush of the last 2 days wore off and I became aware that I had fallen asleep at my computer.  I went to bed and, I thought, very carefully set my alarm to get up at 9am so I could make a 10 o’clock meeting.  You know that feeling when you wake up and realize that you are way too rested for how much sleep you were supposed to get?  That was me.  I look at the clock, it’s 10:14. Alarm was set for 9pm.  Damn.

On the other hand my day has been really awesome. You all kicked the fundraising campaign for Georgia kids in the ass.  We raised over $12,000 on our first day and at this moment we’re only 356 individual donors away from unlocking the More of Me to Love Match grant of $5,000.  In addition to a big billboard we’re going to be able to do small billboards in downtown Atlanta as well as backlit, plexiglass covered bus shelter posters that we’ve heard from people in Atlanta are the most hurtful.  Plus we’ve got a major national news show and BBC news making inquiries already and we got a write up in SF Weekly.  (If you want to get involved you can donate a Solidarity Dollar here!)  We’re going to positively affect a lot of people, including a lot of kids, with this and I’m so proud to be a part of this community right now.

So I’m having this weird day and I kept thinking of reasons to postpone working out or not to work out.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with skipping a workout, but I also had this feeling like I wanted to go.  I had skipped yesterday to coordinate the campaign and so I really thought that my body might like to get out and move around today.  So at 1am I got dressed and headed to the gym.

I did a light workout and my body did feel good, and I felt happy that I had gone. It started me thinking about the different ways to measure success of movement. When I was in a diet mentality I would do a workout designed to burn a specific number of calories. It didn’t matter how I felt, I did the entire routine every single day, sometimes more.  Then once a week, always at the exact same time, I got on a scale to see if my exercise had “worked”.  If the number was right, I could be happy for a minute but it was short-lived since the cycle started all over again for the next week.  If the number wasn’t what I hoped for, then that meant a week of feeling bad, guilty, and spending the next week punishing myself.

Dieters are warned not to expect “results” too soon. I remember seeing a poster at the gym that said “If the gym was meant to make you feel better right away, it would be called a bar”.  I guess it was supposed to be motivational, but I wonder – why do you have to feel bad about yourself to start out with? One of the best things about my Health at Every Size (r) practice is that I get to like myself whether or not I work out.  I move because I feel better when I move but I like myself on the way into the gym, I workout based on my dance goals but also based on how my body feels on any given day.  I celebrate my physical accomplishments, but I also celebrate the fact that I worked out.  There’s no scale to consult, I get to claim victory immediately.

One of the things that I love about HAES is that you get to have success early and often and I think that success breeds success.  I used to have the experience of not getting the number I wanted to the scale and thinking “Why do I even bother?  If this is how it’s going to work I’m just going to quit!”.  Now I move my body and I say “I moved my body, yay me!” and then I do my instant gratification butt-shaking happy dance.

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

I was lucky enough to be on one of the fantastic Golda Poretsky’s Body Love Revolutionary Telesummits with Dr. Linda Bacon tonight.  It was an honor to work with both of them (Golda has more amazing telesummits coming up, check out the schedule here!)

Unfortunately my phone mysteriously lost signal at the end and I didn’t get to answer a final question from one of the people who had called in.  She was a dancer and she asked me something like do I feel that when I dance I have to be better than others to overcome stereotypes.

It’s a really good question, and it took me a long time to gain perspective on this:

When a fat person chooses to do something, and that thing happens to challenge someone else’s stereotypes of people of our size, we are not asking for their approval, we are doing them a favor.  We are giving them the opportunity to question their stereotypes.  Their choice to believe those stereotypes and prejudices, and whether or not they choose to challenge them, is on them.   We can’t control that.

As an artist I can choose that one of my goals is to afford people an opportunity to rethink their stereotypes and prejudices about people my size.  I can also decided “fuck ’em if they can’t take a fatty” and simply do whatever I want to do just, because I want to do it.

One of the dance workshops I teach is “Lyrical Movement for Larger Bodies”.  A question that comes up pretty often is “how can larger dancers express frailty when people can’t see us as frail”.  There are a lot of ways to do that technically and we go through them in the workshop. But I think the biggest part of it is, at least for me, was the realization that people can only see what they choose to see. There are people who cannot see a fat person as frail, that’s not the fault of the fat dancer, it’s the choice of the audience member. It does become our problem if we are auditioning etc. and addressing that is a whole other blog.

We are not obligated to live up to someone else’s expectations or to challenge their stereotypes.

Extremely Exciting Update!

Our Fundraising campaign for kids in George raised over $12,000 in the first day during our Big Fat Money Bomb.   Now we just need to get to 1,000 individual donors and we will unlock our $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching donation.  So today is solidarity dollar day!  If you are reading this I’m asking you to take 1 minute of your time and donate $1 to show that you support standing up for this kids and against bullying. The GoFundMe page doesn’t accept donations of less than $5 so we’ve set up a pay pal account just for this:

DONATE A Solidarity Dollar NOW!

If your donation is more than $5.00  it is also greatly appreciated and you’ll donate through our GoFundMe site.  Click Here!

Every donation, no matter how small, bring us closer to getting 1,000 individual donors and unlocking our $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching Donation.  Every little bit TRULY helps!

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

For the last 9 months, every single day, children in Atlanta have seen billboards, commercials, and signs at bus stops like this:

If you are thinking “it’s not that big a deal” I want to tell you that, as a former bullied fat kid, I think it is a very big deal.  The messages couldn’t be clearer.  If you’re fat – you should be ashamed.  If you’re not fat – you should be terrified of becoming fat because fat people are diseased gluttons by choice and it’s ok to publicly shame them.

If Atlanta was a gymnasium, fat kids would be standing against the wall while older, bigger kids from CHOA hurl dodgeballs at them.

I couldn’t stand not to do something.  Something big enough to show these kids that, even if they feel all alone, someone has their backs.

Enough is enough. It’s time to stand up for these kids and give them a tangible symbol of support and hope.  It’s time to stand up for the powerless bullied fat kids some of us used to be.  It’s time to stand up for our current fat selves,  friends, family and neighbors.

It’s time to do something big.  Today is Big Fat Money Bomb day. We are raising the money to put up billboards and print media campaigns from a Health at Every Size® perspective to show kids of all sizes that they are valued and respected.

Thanks to the More of Me to Love Match, we are already half way to our first billboard. They have donated $5,000, and to access that money all we need to do is raise the other $5,000 and get 1,000 individual donors, so every little bit helps and your donation goes twice as far.

Does $5,000 sound like a lot?  Let’s put some perspective on this number. If each of my followers gave $10, we would raise $21,220 – enough for 2 billboards and a large media campaign with the MOMTL match.  If each visitor to the blog from yesterday donated $10 we would raise $41,680, enough for four billboards and a massive media campaign.  To meet goal we only need $5,000.  We can do this!  And when those billboards go up and as the publicity around them gets our experts into the media talking about the Health at Every Size(r) Approach, we can all be proud.

I remember what it was like to be bullied as a kid.  Right now there are fat kids in Atlanta doing the very best they can to deal with the shame, stigma, and humiliation being thrown at them.  Let’s stand up and help them fight back.

Update: We raised over $12,000 in our first 24 hours on 2/2/12.  Now our goal is to get 1,000 individual donors so that we can unlock our challenge donation of $5,000 from More of Me to Love!   Wo today (2/3/12) is Solidarity Dollar Day.  If you are reading this I’m asking you to spend a minute of your time and a dollar of your money to show that you care about these kids and help us get another $5,000 to run a massive media campaign with bus stop signs, ads in newspapers etc.

DONATE A Solidarity Dollar NOW!

If your donation is more than $5.00  it is also greatly appreciated and you’ll donate through our GoFundMe site.  Click Here!

Every donation, no matter how small, bring us closer to getting 1,000 individual donors and unlocking our $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching Donation.  Every little bit TRULY helps!

By now you may have heard that the children in the Strong4Life child shaming campaign who talk about being sick and teased because of their weight are actually healthy, confident kids who happen to be large.  Recently another ad campaign showed a headless fat man with his leg amputated with pictures of crutches and soda, claiming that large fast food portions can lead to Type 2 diabetes which can lead to leg amputation. Not only does the photograph’s subject have a head, he also has both legs.  What he doesn’t have is diabetes.

Some are asking “So what? They are actors.  Actors pretend”.  The problem here is that the entire reason that these pictures are used is so that people identify with them and become fearful.  “I look like the man in the picture and I drink soda.  I’m going to have to have my leg amputated!” “My kid looks like the girl in that commercial, she’s going to get diabetes!” Kids are meant to look at those pictures and be scared that looking like that means that they have diseases. I think that we need to be very careful about instilling a fear of being fat into kids considering that hospitalizations for eating disorders in kids under 12 are up 119% over the last decade.  So these ads shame, stigmatize, and humiliate those who look like the people in the ads, and instill a fear of being fat in those who don’t.  Would those people feel differently about the ads, or about themselves if the ads told the truth “This is a healthy, happy, outgoing child who is fat” or “This is a successful, happy, healthy man who is fat”?  But there is something more insidious…

These ads send the disingenuous message to society that those of us who look like the people in the ads are sick, or going to get sick, that when we do it will be our fault, and that the way to prevent this is to shame us publicly for our perceived behaviors.  Then comes the ridiculous “won’t somebody think of my tax dollars” argument and we’re off to the races as the food police don their badges and head out.  People are encouraged to see a fatty drinking a soda, assume that we drink gallons of soda every day, and that they are going to have to pay for a leg amputation, and that this somehow makes it their business, and acceptable to “educate” us via confrontation. Because surely the best way to make people healthy is to shame, stigmatize and humiliate them at every possible opportunity.

Obviously the bottom line is that it’s not anybody else’s business what we do and that, at least in the US, your tax dollars go to pay for a plethora of things and unless you have a list of all of them divided into things that you are okpaying for and things about which you are currently engaged in an active campaign against, then you don’t even get to start this conversation with me.

But let’s be honest, they are using using healthy people to create shame, fear, and stigma around health problems those people do not have.  That’s questionable at best. Just like diet ads have to say “Results not typical” every single time they suggest that their product might work, these ads should have to have a disclaimer “actor is healthy, successful and happy at their current size”.

Very Exciting Billboard Update!!!!

Get ready for the More of Me to Love Match.  The awesome folks over at MOMTL (www.moreofmetolove.com) are supporting the billboard project with a matching donation in the amount of $5,000!  That means we only have to raise $5,000 more to put up the first size positive billboard in Atlanta! In order to qualify for the grant we just need to raise $5,000, and get 1,000 individual donors (there’s no minimum donation so every little bit really does help).  The amazing Marilyn Wann has graciously offered to send autographed copies of the Fat!So? Dayplanner to the first 10 people who donate $50-99, and autographed Fat!So? books to the first 10 people who donate $100 or more.

The Big Fat Money Bomb, which is our fundraising kickoff, is Thursday.  You can find out all of the information here.  If you want a reminder on Thursday just send me an e-mail at ragen at danceswithfat dot org and I’ll put you on the list.

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

When I was in 6th grade I did a science fair project to simulate nuclear fission.  It involved a plexi-glass box,  100 mousetraps, ping pong balls with holes drilled in them, and  bbs of different colors.  Setting 100 moustraps and “baiting them” with bb-filled ping pong balls was becoming hard on my poor sixth grade fingers, so I devised a method that used my mother’s kitchen tongs.  As I took my project and her tongs off to the science fair she said “Don’t lose my tongs!”  I don’t remember exactly what I said but I’m sure it was something like “mooooooom, why don’t you trust me to be responsible, I’ll bring back your tongs!”  The project was a big hit and won the the science fair (although the second place kid had set fire to bits of hair to test the flammability of various hair sprays so I didn’t so much have to clear the bar as just trip and fall over it.  Also, you probably shouldn’t light a match while wearing Aquanet but that’s a different story.)

I lost the tongs.

I don’t know how I did it or where they went.  I know that my mom freaked out.  She was so angry. Even when the anger died down I heard about it until I left for college.  And when I went to college I started shopping for myself.  And I found out that tongs cost $2.  And I called my mom and she laughed and laughed.  Based on her reaction I thought that tongs must be incredibly expensive, that I had caused my family financial hardship by losing them.  I didn’t do my own research and so I walked around for a long time under a very misinformed assumption.

That whole story is very similar to the current obesity hysteria. It started with the idea that fat is bad, and the finding that therefore making people thin could be profitable.  Then it got all blown out of proportion because people accepted the premise without really looking into it and then set forth to “prove” it with healthy doses of confirmation bias, guesses, confusing weight and health, and confusing correlation and causation, all driven by a diet industry that makes 60 Billion Dollars a year.  If we don’t do our own research its easy to believe that hype, but the truth is that tongs cost $2, and there are healthy and unhealthy people of all sizes and no amount of hysteria will change either of those facts.

Healthy habits give us our best chance for health, although not a guaranteed chance since health is multi-dimensional and not entirely within our control, and not an obligation under any circumstances. I think that one of the most damaging things about the obesity hysteria is that fat people are told that healthy habits don’t “work” unless they make us thin so when people start healthy habits and don’t lose weight they quit doing things that could very well make them healthier because they don’t make them thin.  It also gives thin people the dangerous misinformation that their weight makes them healthy no matter what their habit are. We can pick ourselves up out of the pile BS that the diet industry and the obesity hysteria have created and make informed choices for ourselves.

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

Pierre Dukan is a French diet guru.  He thinks that, in their last two years of high school, students should be awarded extra exam marks if they maintain an acceptable Body Mass Index (BMI). He makes no mention of the vast shortcomings of BMI (including that it does not, in any way, measure health).  He makes no mention of what would happen to students who are very tall or very muscular who would be punished academically for their strength and height.

He claims that it will be “a good way to sensitise teenagers to the need for a balanced diet.” I think it is just as likely that it will sensitize them to the ability to use dangerous behaviors to try to “make weight”.  It’s not like he’s suggesting an education program about a balanced diet (one that, were it evidence-based, would likely denounce the low carb high protein diet that has made Pierre millions.) He doesn’t want to measure kids’ health, or the health of their diet (which would be problematic in and of itself).  He wants weigh kids and grade them on their weight. That’s not educational, and it’s not about health, it’s punitively punishing fat kids.

Pierre says that it would not punish fat children: “There is nothing wrong with educating children about nutrition. This will not change anything for those who do not need to lose weight. For the others, it will motivate them.” It sounds an awful like what he’s saying is that it won’t punish thin kids or kids who manage to get thin.  Of course it punishes fat kids – that is the point.

Those aren’t my biggest problem with this however.  My biggest problem with this is the same as my problem with the Georgia child-shaming billboards and all of the campaigns whose goal is to end “childhood obesity”:

Where is the evidence? Where the frickity fricking frick is the evidence?

Where is the evidence that punishing fat kids with poor grades “motivates” them and makes them healthier or thinner in the short or long term?  Where is the longitudinal study with the statistically significant sample, and the controlled variables? What is he basing this on…rectal pull?

Where is the proof that nutrition education leads to kids eating more nutritiously?  Where is the proof that eating more nutritiously will make them thin?

Where is the evidence that billboards that shame kids under the guise of making their parents “aware” that they are fat lead to them becoming healthier or thinner?  Where are the studies to back up this method?

Where is the evidence that sending home a BMI report card from school will positively affect kid’s health?

Where is the damn evidence?

The current “logic” that we’re working under seems to be “Fatness is such a horrible problem that we can’t stop to prove that it’s a problem or see if our intervention will make things worse before we start solving it!”  And that’s just dumb.

I would call this a grand social experiment but it’s not.  An experiment would be way better than this.  First because they would need to get IRB approval.  This might be difficult since they’re messing with the physical and psychological health of kids. But let’s pretend that they get this approval.  They would then have to do all the scientific method stuff that’s apparently just too much trouble for these people – form a hypothesis, design an experiment, institute controls, blah blah. It’s just science, how important could it be?

But here’s the kicker: Let’s say the hypothesis was “punishing fat kids with bad grades will make them thin”.  (Now, it would probably also behoove them to prove that that making kids thin would cause them to be healthier but that’s a different deal.)  At the end of the experiment, they would evaluate the results and if kids didn’t get thin they would say “this intervention doesn’t work.  Our hypothesis was wrong.”

But that’s not what happening.  Anybody and their French brother can apparently say “I think this will work” and then treat their brainchild as if it’s a proven intervention and foist it onto children.  Then when kids don’t get thin they don’t say that the idea failed, they say that the kids failed. And that’s unacceptable.  You can file it under T for “Things that are total bullshit”

We need to stop letting people do this to kids, and while we’re at it we could stop doing it to ourselves.  There is not a single study of a weight loss method that works for more than a small fraction of participant long term, not one.  So when we don’t succeed at losing weight and we blame ourselves, it’s like putting a roast in the microwave and blaming ourselves if it doesn’t brown.  If there is absolutely no evidence that something will work (and in fact a mountain of evidence that it won’t) why would we blame ourselves when it doesn’t work for us?

We, and our kids, deserve access to evidence-based health interventions.  I believe that the burden of proof is on the person who wants to implement the intervention.  First they have to prove that there is a problem, then they have to prove that they can solve it, then they have to be honest about the pros/cons/side effects of the solution.  Then, and only then people get to choose if they want the solution.  You’ll notice there is no step where someone gets to force other people to implement their best guess of a health strategy.  I think if people really cared about kids health, they would take the time to find out what works before risking irreparable physical and psychological harm.

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen