This Week Is Busy
So posting will be sporadic. Sorry about that.
In the meantime, you can use this as an open thread to talk amongst yourselves.
Suggested topics:
1) Some companies are taking more out of fat people’s paychecks to cover health insurance. We hate those companies. Discuss.
2) William Saletan is a big giant tool.
To resist a fattening norm, you need willpower. To reverse it, you need to promote responsibility, which implies blame. You almost certainly need stigma. And realistically, to add normal or underweight friends to your circle, you have to relegate others who are overweight. That may be bad for your fat ex-friends, who will lose your friendship as well as your thinness. But it’s fine for you, since you’ll have just as many friends as before.
Maybe it’s not nice to speak these truths. But maybe being nice, when you should be speaking the truth—especially to your friends—is the problem.
Discuss.
3) Rob Lyons in Spiked: The war on obesity is a war on the poor. Discuss.
Thanks to Susan, divschooldyke, and Louise for the tips!
Dick Cavett is a giant tool, too. Did you see his hateful op-ed in the NYTimes a few days ago? When I read his piece and Saletan’s, I thought, I wonder what it will be like for these bigots to go back and reread what they’ve written in a couple of years when it finally and hopefully becomes universally shameful to try to shame fat people.
Slate becomes grosser and grosser every week, in my opinion. I used to read them pretty regularly, and I’ll still tune in once in a while for their television articles, or Ad Report Card, which is a fun read.
But my goodness, they have a difficult time separating news from opinion, and editorials from prejudice and bias. It’s not news just because one of your overpaid, pompous, self important news writers thinks it is.
Jesus Crisco, but I hate the MSM sometimes. I am a journalism major myself, and it really hasn’t done anything but teach me how to look for all the icky, awful ways journalists abuse their position.
And realistically, to add normal or underweight friends to your circle, you have to relegate others who are overweight. That may be bad for your fat ex-friends, who will lose your friendship as well as your thinness. But it’s fine for you, since you’ll have just as many friends as before.
Is he really fucking serious? God, am I glad I’m not friends with him. Something makes me think nobody else is, either.
Is he really fucking serious? God, am I glad I’m not friends with him. Something makes me think nobody else is, either.
Dude, I know. Guess what, I’ve made a lot of new friends in the last year. AND I’M STILL FRIENDS WITH THE OLD ONES. How can it be??
Evidently, William Saletan was never a Girl Scout.
That may be bad for your fat ex-friends, who will lose your friendship as well as your thinness. But it’s fine for you, since you’ll have just as many friends as before.
Except that… people aren’t interchangable like that? Your fat friends might have qualities you like and appreciate that you’re not going to find in the first thin person who crosses your path? He can’t be serious, can he?
Oh and Kate, were you a Girl Scout? Me too!
It could backfire on him, though… Presumably he’s picking all his friends because they’re skinnier than him. But that’s means he’s their fat friend. They’ll drop him like a hot potato!
Once again, Saletan begs the eternal question: HOW DOES THIS SHIT GET PUBLISHED FOR MONEY? HOW? HOW? Why can my fat ass not make a living as a writer, and I have to go to work typing what other people say, and he gets to make a living telling thin people to tell all their fat friends to go away? (And as an added bonus, note Saletan’s supposition that being “underweight” would be healthier than being “obese,” when we all know that’s absolutely false?) Need I ask?
I love what La Di Da on Fat-o-Matic had to say about it. To wit: If fat people are all supposed to covet thin friends, and thin people are all supposed to literally avoid us like the plague…ern…no compute, sorry.
Oh, and these companies that are fining people up $30 a week because of “bad” numbers? Where exactly do they think people are going to take money out of to pay those fines?
For a lot of people it isn’t a matter of not going to Starbucks for a $4 Frappuccino — which isn’t financially feasible for most working-class people on a daily basis anyway. It’s a matter of not buying vegetables, buying the cheaper, fattier, less salubriously produced cuts of meat and poultry, buying cheapo white bread instead of the $3-a-loaf multi-grain stuff. That’s what’s going to get sacrificed. Soooo healthy. They care sooooo much about their workers’ health and their families’ health, I am so moved by their benevolence. Love and kindness just drips from these actions, yessiree.
regarding the fat health care penalty … by that rationale employers should also penalize those who suffer from alcoholism and depression. their medical woes also put a huge drain on the system and are fall within the murky realm of “behavioral health issues” that can be managed. hell, while we’re at it, why not penalize pregnancy … it too is costly and optional.
Are they going to penalize the thin person who has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and is unfit?
Ok, they’re breaking it down into so much for overweight (whatever that is), so much for high cholesterol, so much for high blood pressure. Now, to me, that’s penalizing a person for having good numbers on everything except weight. How about if they take into account how many sick days you take, how many doctor visits you make, how many worker’s comp claims you file, how many times you’re hospitalized? Let’s not just target the fatties, let’s target EVERYONE who uses health insurance for ANY reason. After all, that will save tons of money, and put more money in health care providers pockets…..NOT! If you can’t afford to see the doctor, he isn’t going to make any money. Thank the powers that be that I’m healthy and only see the doctor once a year for a physical. I’m fat and I don’t get sick, other than colds, and there isn’t much a doctor can do for a cold that you can’t do on your own and cheaper.
This last paragraph of the “war on obesity is a war on the poor” says it all:
“The search for some form of moral superiority, rather than a real concern with health, is the driving force behind the authorities’ War on Obesity. That is why a campaign ostensibly against fatness can easily shift its attention from feckless ‘chavs’ to working mothers: because it is underpinned by moralistic judgements about our lifestyle choices rather than hard scientific facts about our eating habits. First ‘white trash’ families and now mums who dare to work – the War on Obesity is a war against those who make the ‘wrong’ choices, who refuse to play by the rules laid down by the new elite, and who instead do things their own way. In this sense, the demand that we ‘eat healthily’ and have the correct body shape (whatever that might be) is at root a demand that we conform.”
Sorry, I have no intentions of conforming to anyone’s idea of what I should be. I will be who I am, the size I am, with my own ideas of right, wrong, and indifferent, and those who don’t like it, well, all I can say is they’re missing out on knowing a pretty decent person. As my husband says, “Don’t judge me, you don’t know me.”
From the LA Times article:
The cutoffs [for one company]: a body-mass index over 29.9; blood pressure over 140/90; or LDL cholesterol over 130.
My mom, who’s 64, has no history of serious health conditions other than hypothyroidism, has never been over a size 6 in her life and currently wears a 4, has an LDL > 130. She also has an HDL over 100. Her mother, same deal. Her mother lived to be 83 despite having smoked heavily up until the last 10 years of her life, too. At the time she died of a heart attack, she had had no prior history of heart problems or any health problems other than the pre-emphysematous lung condition that caused her to quit smoking.
If my mom was working for this company, would they “make” her take a statin that would lower her LDL but also lower her HDL, so that she was actually at more risk for heart disease than before? Similarly, is making people panic and go on crash diets to conform to “guideline” weight the greatest thing evah for their health? Nah, nobody ever has vascular problems or gallstones or osteoporosis or anything from doing that, not nevah. ARGH.
colio2007 – pregnancy can be penalized. I had a friend who had received a job offer, then they found out she was pregnant and withdrew the offer. Insurance companies can deny you coverage if you are pregnant when you apply for coverage (as a pre-existing condition).
What I wonder about with the issue of fining people for health status is what happens if I refuse to allow my employer access to my test results? I can say that I’m complying with my employers request to monitor my health by getting weighed by a doctor, having blood drawn, etc., but it is well within my rights to decide that my medical records not be released. I would guess that if someone made a challenge to this as a violation of rights under HIPPA, there might be a good case.
As for friends…if I lose friends because they are afraid that they will catch my fat, then they weren’t really friends.
Spins, that is an excellent point about HIPAA. Doesn’t signing over medical records have to be completely voluntary now? Of course, the company could spin it as, “It’s still voluntary, you can choose not to work here any more if you don’t agree to do it.” But that’s a pretty slippery definition of “voluntary,” if you ask me. It’s like saying you “agreed” to be raped in exchange for not getting stabbed.
What’s next, do employers also get to read our therapists’ and psychiatrists’ notes? Shudder.
And YEAH on what that Spiked article said. Especially the part pasted in by vesta44.
But maybe being nice, when you should be speaking the truth—especially to your friends—is the problem.
Wow. Who knew William Saletan was an internet troll? How come nobody told me? Is this what I get for not reading Slate?
Seriously, that last line there just smacks of those dickweed-y 19-year-old “Libertarian” guys who go on and on about how “honest” they are, and how the world is so full of lies and liars, when really they don’t give a damn about truth – they just like being cruel.
(BTW – 13-year Girl Scout over here!!)
http://gothamist.com/2007/07/31/mta_dont_make_s.php
mentions that the #3 cause of subway delays in nyc is sick passengers, MOST OF WHOM ARE WOMEN ON DIETS FAINTING.
but, ya know, that’s okay, because they’re dieting.
I was struck by this quotation from Michael Gard (an Aussie academic) in the “War on Obesity is a War on the Poor” article:
“Unfortunately, many commentators talk about the war on obesity as a war between good and evil; good food versus bad food, wholesome physical activity versus evil technology; and responsible versus irresponsible parenting”
He’s hit the nail on the head: how we eat, what we eat, how we exercise, how much we exercise, what our hobbies are; all of these are the new ‘moral’ issues. Never mind whether you’re a philanthropist, a volunteer for charitable causes, a good parent, a caring human being, a dedicated worker, and an inspiring person to be around, if you aren’t the right shape, you’re evil. It doesn’t matter any more whether or not you attempt to live a good life, because if you’re not living the right *lifestyle* (and let’s be clear that these are different concepts) you’re damned to hell and back again. People who look larger than the accepted “norm”[1] are damned because we’re apparently wearing our sin on the outside.
It’s all part of our rather dysfunctional relationship with food as a culture – on the one hand, food means comfort, safety, sustenance and caring, while on the other, it means sin, indulgence, selfishness and danger. Until we, as a cultural group, work out how to reconcile these two dichotomous images of food, we’re going to have things like eating disorders. On the other hand, the growing social acceptance of the undemonisation of sexuality (and in particular female sexuality) is a beacon of hope, since it shows it is possible to remove the social stigma from a previously taboo behaviour or set of behaviours.
[1] I sometimes wonder whether the people who toss the word “normal” around as though it means “perfect” understand where the term came from? If I remember correctly from high school, it’s a statistical term, and what it means is the most common result – so if I had a group of numbers like this: 5, 8, 8, 4, 6, 12, 3, 1, 8; the norm of that group is 8. The range is 1 through 12, the median is 6, and the mean (or average) is 6.1. (Anyone who knows more about stats than I can currently remember is welcome to correct me on this – I’m well aware my memory is faulty).
Wow, that article about companies was equally frightening and infuriating.
I’m so tired of being scared and angry.
Why, oh, why can’t people see that limiting fat people’s access to health care — that is, charging them a $3000 deductible rather than a $500 one for going to the doctor, etc., is only going to CAUSE PEOPLE TO BE SICK, and thus COST MORE????
Why cut off basic preventative care for fat people? Are they CRAZY? No. They just hate us and want us to be sick and die.
Fat people can be healthy. But not when they are denied access to health care.
Saletan’s latest hateful piece of bigoted hideousness was the end for me. Slate’s off my bookmarks, and I wrote and told them so. It’s been months since I’ve read anything enlightening or even amusing there.
As long as we keep waging a war on obesity, we are ADDING to the problem, not solving it!
We need to make peace with our bodies with self-care and self-appreciation – INDEPENDENT OF WEIGHT!
Please see my full article on this subject here: http://www.kellybliss.com/lifestyle_coaching/real_problem.php
Be well,
Kelly Bliss
Kelly, I couldn’t agree more.
And Meg, I LOVE Michael Gard.
Understand this: your health insurer doesn’t care a flying fig about your health. Unless you’re covered by a not-for-profit health insurer (and there are some out there), your health insurer cares about making money. Period. That’s it.
And that is the fundamental problem with the US health”care” “system.” It isn’t designed to provide health care; it’s designed to make money for health insurers. To the tune of about $100 BILLION a year.
Seems to me that $100 billion could provide an awful lot of health care to a whole bunch of people … even if they are fat.
Kelly, I am confused by your comment for one reason – it seems to be aimed at Kate as though she is participating in the war on obesity.
When, in reality, as she and the people who read her blog KNOW, Kate is participating in the war on the war on obesity. *grin* I don’t know if you spend much time reading fat politics blogs but, and I admit a touch of vanity here, bloggers are working just as hard as fat acceptance organizations to spread the word about HAES and self-acceptance.
The War on Obesity IS a war on the poor, just as much as it is a war on the fat. I don’t think acknowledging that aligns one with the proverbial forces of evil here.
I didn’t take it that way, TR. I think Kelly was posting that as an independant reaction, not as one directed at Kate.
I’d also suggest that while for some, even many, the “war” on fat people is really just a proxy for class warfare, I don’t this explains all fat hatred. Its easy for us progressives to forget that plenty of people who oppose class warfare quite strongly and genuinely still find time to hate fatness. Class issues, race issues, and gender issues absolutely intersect with fat issues in profound and meaningful ways, but neither alone nor collectively explain all fat opposition.
Brian, I don’t think acknowledging the class compnent pulls the teeth of fat hatred at all. I don’t think anyone is saying that it does.
What it ODES feel like though is that every time an intersection gets mentioned, we have to backtrack and say, well, you know, these two things are not all-inclusive of each other – things don’t just depend on these conditions. And I feel like that derails the conversation and frames things in such a way as to take the emphasis off of those intersections. Those intersections are important to discuss. Unless someone says, hey, fat hatred is SOLELY AND TOTALLY related to calssism, I just can’t interpret a “you know, fat hatred is used to make war on the poor” as being an exclusive statement.
Meg, Your comments dysfunctional relationship we have with food in this country are right on the money. Every day, we’re saturated with messages, Eat, Indulge, Treat Yourself. But don’t you dare get fat. Images of children eating candy bars. Size 6 women sitting on a sofa eating Haagen-Dazs out of the carton. Those ghastly, mammoth-sized ice-cream-on-a-brownie-with-fudge-and-whipped-cream things dished up by chain restaurants. And every day, fat people are told “Except for you. You are not allowed to eat these things.”
Not if the desire to demonize moves to something else,-you’re unlucky and disappointed if you’re a fat woman that loves sex! What if fat people throw off fat hatred what poor sods are going to have to be demonized in our stead?
The sticky is that the ability to see the need to right one wrong, is not necessarily matched by the end of the NEED to do it.
One of the most surprising things about the ‘war on obesity’ is how many of these needy people are highly educated in the disciplines of rational and logical thought and yet so in need are they, that they actually use these disciplines to justify their investment in things that are simply, WRONG.
What also gives me pause for thought about your sentiments Meg, is that a lot of the WoO, is inherently sexist. It has been a hell of a lot of it’s momentum by discounting women telling them frankly that their experiences have not happened, don’t count for anything (yes even though they haven’t occurred), we have been TOLD we are liars, and cannot be trusted to speak for ourselves, even though we are not mainly suffering from an actual illness, mental or otherwise.
Class intersects with this, even though we have been treated outrageously the feminist mainstream doesn’t really get it, they should be hopping mad about this riding roughshod over the integrity of so many women, yet they are strangely ambivalent, lukewarm even, they certainly do not display their usual outrage and anger, sometimes they seem somewhat approving of certain aspects.