The procedure was to look people up and down, label them “obese” and put them on a 1200 calories a day, stat. I saw several men who had BMIs of 22 or so, but were labeled “obese” because some 26 year old cardio resident thought they looked like they could lose a little weight around the belly.

Fodder for discussion? Scarlet Magazine’s anti-fatism petition.

The UK mainstream women’s mag is royally cheesed off at the prevalence of fat folks being demeaned on TV. You’ll need to hold your nose through the fatties-gonna-die stuff, but I believe their hearts are in the right place.

The editorial is here: http://www.scarletmagazine.co.uk/fatism.pdf

The petition is linked on the main page, below the welcome: http://www.scarletmagazine.co.uk

Forgive me if this info has been posted elsewhere already.

It was particularly crazy because she had severe issues with her digestive system already, which have landed her in the hospital for several days at least yearly for the last few years. I have NO idea what kind of irresponsible doctor agreed to put that thing in. I hope that the damage is correctable.

I’m sorry you had to go through that.

Dudes, I don’t even know what to say. Yeah, BMI is a stupid, back-asswards number that has fuck-all to do with health, but apparently some docs are shifting to a system of considering your weight as a number independent of your height, and arbitrarily deciding whether you’re “too heavy” or not, without even freaking looking at you, or knowing the first thing about your history.

I had brought The Beauty Myth as waiting room reading material, and considered pressing it on her as a parting gift. Next time I’ll bring Susan Bordo instead.

I hope she’s able to get the help she needs in recovering, because you’re right, it sounds like something went very wrong in her surgery.

Zappos carries them, so that’s an easy return process if it doesn’t work out. They tend to be sold at decent shoe stores, too, where the employees are trained on how to fit shoes well and will actually, like, assist you.

I don’t see her much (we don’t get along for unrelated reasons), so I was very surprised when I saw her at my father’s funeral in February. Her stomach had swollen to probably two or three times the size of the last time I had seen her, and her face was only slightly heavier. It must have gone horribly wrong.

While we’re at it, can we discuss how much the rash of ads for the lap-band on my t.v. lately have been pissing me off? Seriously, it’s like every other commercial, and I am fucking sick of it. It’s the commercial where they have people (who are not even that fat!) talking about how if they lost the weight, they could do all these things, like fly more often and shop for clothes, and it makes me want to mail all of them Kate’s post on The Fantasy of Being Thin. Also, it makes me want to punch the motherfuckers who think that it’s cool to make people a bunch of false promises about how awesome their lives will be to get them to agree to unnecessary, dangerous surgery. Assholes.

Oh, and also? Dan Marino? It pains me to say this, because I respect and admire both your tremendous athletic accomplishments and your work for raising autism awareness and services for children with neuro-developmental disorders, but STFU. You are a former professional athlete. The fact that you gained a few pounds and then lost them on NutriSystem has no bearing whatsoever on, like, 95% of the population. Seriously, stop embarrassing yourself.