This sounded like gleeful condemnation to me. But then, what do I know. I certain do not wish any complications on people who have opted for a choice I myself found barbaric. Also, I’m not sure if would deter people anyway.

I feel empathy for Carnie, in the sense that I very much know what it’s like to drop a chunk and pork back out. It’s humiliating and shameful and it feels as though the world has snatched away all the goodies it dangled in your face. It is not fun.

When you’re struggling to find a place for yourself at the table it often clouds judgment. It’s really easy to assume we’d make different choices, but since I’m not in her fat shoes, I would dare be so arrogrant.

What I saw in Carnie’s face was terrible shame and grief, mourning what she lost. And that’s heartbreaking and something that needs to happen, if she can hopefully get to the other side of things. She’s a women in the media who has been vilified for being fat and. I don’t think she made wise choices, but ultimately they were hers to make.

While I am anti-diet/WLS as they come, I don’t carry around sugar cubes to keep my high horse well fed.

Meowser said:
Yeah, I know life had to suck for her in a lot of ways, having a gorgeous thin sister (and another blonde gorgeous bandmate) she was constantly compared to, not to mention having to suffer artistic comparisons to a cracked-genius father she’d never be able to live up to creatively because almost nobody has, and who was probably also pretty much impossible to live with.

What breaks my heart is that she was just lovely when Wilson Phillips first hit the scene, and she seemed much more comfortable with herself than the other two (thinner) ladies were with their own bodies. But at her heaviest she looks really uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable – I wonder if she is like me and hit a point where dieting made her gain weight (the only two times in my life I gained weight it was through dieting – cut calories and my metabolism drops like a stone), but unlike me she was surrounded by people who kept pressuring her to ignore her own experience and continue to diet so she kept dieting and gaining until her body was in a Very Bad Place.

I swore off diets after the first time I dieted (and gained) in high school but then after I got married I wasn’t getting pregnant and my MIL kept telling me she never got pregnant until she lost some weight, plus I was dealing with a past sexual assault so the idea of gaining weight through dieting wasn’t that intimidating; at that point I could have ended up dieting until I gained to the point of really uncomfortable if my husband hadn’t deliberately and continually pushed me in the other direction (he’s a natural thin kinda guy from a family of natural thins and just could not see dieting as a healthy approach to life). He finally convinced me that my initial conviction that diets were counterproductive was the truth and I then discovered that I only get pregnant when I’m already “eating for two,” if you will. Never did use any formal sort of birth control but if I wanted I could always avoid pregnancy by dieting. This despite the fact that the infertility books agreed with MIL on that front…

I just can’t fault Carnie Wilson for believing what everyone was telling her, y’know? I’ve got no one in my life giving me grief over my weight and I have someone actively discouraging me from dieting and I *still* fight to believe it’s okay to eat; I have no doubt she was getting pressure from all sides. I also wonder if the guy she ended up marrying may have been more hung up on weight issues than the guy she was with earlier, or if she felt that the weight issues had something to do with that break-up – she was amazingly grounded at one point and I wonder if something happened that knocked her off kilter on the FA front. Unlike most other popular beliefs where people will back off once they realize you’ve got a better researched position than they do, the “cut calories and exercise” approach to fat is not merely pervasive; it’s passionately taught and defended even when strongly challenged. It’s a hard position to hold to without some support somewhere.

Cindy said:
I don’t assign Carnie Wilson responsibilities that rightfully lie with doctors

Yeah, that. She believes what the “experts” have been trying to pound into all of us; the fact that I am confident enough in my own ability to track down and to understand studies in fields I haven’t trained for doesn’t mean she has the responsibility to feel the same way.

I sympathise with the trap that Carnie Wilson is in, you are condemned to go round and
around in circles, never getting anywhere, never learning anything.
I can honestly say I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

Having said that, actually watching Miz W. and her ilk is annoying and boring. I’ve no
sympathy for her upset over people watching and commenting over the size of her arse,
because it’s purely about investing thinness with goodness and fatness with badness if you
do this you will pay.

I’m not trying to have the WLS debate again, but I for one do not accept any moral
difference between those who have it for ‘vanity’ and those who have it because their
__________ hurts (fill in the blank).

I read it. I’m not sure if you misunderstood my original post, but it was just that I felt striving for health rather than skinniness – and remaining a large woman enjoying her voluptuousness to boot – was a message unexpected and pleasant from a diet company. I pointed out I don’t know anything about the evils of Jenny Craig nor any other diet food company, having never used any nor looked into said companies. I’m fully aware underfeeding oneself is not the path to health of body or mind. (In fact, the more Omega 3 fat I have.. the better my little ol’ mind and body works. That’s one bit of food science I’ve found works well for this body!)

Tangentially, I think it was a NutriSystem commercial parading overtanned, overthin women and their former more womanly selves where I found myself saying to my husband, “Jesus, they looked better when they started.” I feel downright sorry for the top lady here, and I hope she’s back to being more “healthy” now. ;)

So, yeah, Carnie. Carnie’s a beautiful woman and I hope she knows it.

From what I’ve read, Brian Wilson is a genius, but he’s also crazy and is/was under the thumb of a guru. Not exactly all that helpful in building a stable family life.

But yes, she is beautiful, her clothes are beautiful, and she can build her own family now.

Victoria C: Sorry to burst your Jenny Craig/Queen Latifah bubble, but I think you should read this:
http://tiffabee.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/cheeseburger-rule-13-weight-stopped-being-about-health-a-long-time-ago/

I feel bad for Carnie Wilson, not because of the public attention she’s getting (because I do think she sort of brought that attention on herself), but because I feel bad for anyone who doesn’t like themselves or who is unhappy with his or her life. Carnie was tricked into thinking that she’d become some whole other person once she was thin, and was probably shocked when she realized that many of the problems and issues she’d thought would miraculously be lifted from her by becoming thin were still there.

Society wants us to believe that all of the problems in our lives stem from being fat and that being thin will miraculously make all of our problems go away. Because apparently no thin person is ever depressed or lonely, or suffers from eating disorders or has sick parents or any one of the other things that happen in our lives. We know better. Too bad Carnie Wilson and so many others chop up their insides before learning that lesson.