Shriver writes that her older brother is "a sadly good test case for the claim that one can be 'healthy at every size.'" He weighs 330 pounds, and suffers from compressed vertebrae, diabetes, emphysema, and heart problems. Shriver says he received serious injuries that left him unable to exercise, but that "he also eats too much." And while she has "buckets of sympathy for the obese" and "respect [...] for their feelings, for their humanity," she also writes,

I won't simply accept that my brother is fat. And his only chance at a future is to refuse to accept himself that his weight gain is irrevocable. [...] My brother is only 55, and without drastic intervention – gastric bypass surgery or a sudden resolve on his part that I fear is unlikely – I doubt he'll see 60. My brother is eating himself to death. I love him dearly, and I can't support any political movement that would have him believe he can be "healthy at any size."

Shriver's piece is heart-wrenching to read in light of its coda — her brother died of cardiac arrest soon after it was written. Even without this information, Shriver's concern for her brother's well-being is palpable — she's not that family member who says "I'm just worried about your health," but really wants you to fit into a size 4 dress. Not all fat people are healthy, and it's possible that losing weight would have improved Shriver's brother's life.

But. Health At Every Size did not kill him. First of all, fat acceptance doesn't mean believing every fat person is in perfect health — fat people with cancer obviously still have cancer, no matter how you feel about their weight. Being fat does seem to raise the risk of some health conditions — but so does being thin. Ultimately, the message of Health At Every Size isn't that fat people suffer no health problems, it's that the way to combat health problems (usually) isn't major weight loss — because most of the time it doesn't work. Would weight-loss surgery have extended Shriver's brother's life? Maybe, but the surgery carries risks too. And whether or not he might have benefited from some sort of drastic intervention, the message of Health at Every Size isn't that he was healthy, or that he should have simply ignored his diabetes or heart issues. In fact, it's possible to believe in fat acceptance and have weight-loss surgery. What's not possible: that a movement that teaches that you can be healthy and fat made a man unhealthy.

The trailer for Fat Girls Float, currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, is a good place to get the truth about fat acceptance. (Thanks to the tipster who sent it in this morning.) The film, by self-described "300lb. filmmaker" Kira Nerusskaya (pictured) lets "fat women from four countries (England, France, Russia, and the United States) tell their tales of sorrow and success, wow and woe; discussing size discrimination, political activism (fat and size acceptance), and social networking communities." Interviewees include Velvet D'Amour, who points out that fat characters in Disney films are always evil, and asks, "when is fat Cinderella?" But the real show-stealer of the trailer is a woman named Colleen (pictured above), who says,

If anyone thinks that they are so important and so special that I will give them the power to change my life, to change my attitude, my smile, my frown, if you think you are going to have any effect on that whatsoever, you're mistaken. You have no power. You have no power over me.

Shriver's essay is more moving and personal than the mainstream media's typical anti-fat screeds, but at bottom, its message is an old one — that if we don't keep harping on the idea that fat itself is unhealthy, fat people are going to keep dying. Unfortunately, this is true. Fat people are going to keep dying no matter what we say to them. So are thin people. Everyone dies. While Shriver's brother's death is tragic, stigma definitely wouldn't have saved him. When Shriver calls HAES a "political movement that would have him believe he can be 'healthy at any size,'" she misses the point — nobody could truthfully call her brother healthy when he wasn't. All HAES and fat acceptance aim to do is to decouple health from fat discrimination, and to help fat people protect the self-respect that society tries to take away. Shriver says she has "buckets of sympathy for the obese," but Colleen doesn't need her sympathy. She's secure enough in herself that stigma can no longer hurt her — and she is the real face of fat acceptance, not some notional fatty feeding a sick man lies.

Lionel Shriver: My Brother Is Eating Himself To Death [Guardian]
Get In The Pool! With Fat Girls Float [Kickstarter]

[Reedley, California; October 21. Image via Getty]

REEDLEY, CA - OCTOBER 21: Seventeen year-old Marissa Hamilton (L) and her friend Mary Healy sprint during a timed one mile run during fitness training at Wellspring Academy October 21, 2009 in Reedley, California. Struggling with her weight, seventeen year-old Marissa Hamilton enrolled at the Wellspring Academy, a special school that helps teens and college level students lose weight along with academic courses. When Marissa first started her semester at Wellspring she weighed in at 340 pounds and has since dropped over 40 pounds of weight in the first two months of the program. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 percent of children in the US ages 6-19 years are overweight or obese, three times the amount since 1980.(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

David DiSalvo of True/Slant offers this explanation:

Presumably this is because underweight women compare themselves equally to thin models and favorably to overweight models, but overweight women compare themselves unfavorably to thin models and find their similarity to overweight models depressing.

But this sounds a little simplistic to me. Must it be that "overweight" woman look at plus size models and think, "Gross! I look like that? How depressing!" Or might it be that, as Kate wrote,

[P]lus models are still models. They're still tall, well-proportioned, clear-skinned, shiny-haired, able-bodied and usually white, on top of only being "fat" relative to size 0s. The standard is basically the same as it always was, just notched up to a somewhat more common range of dress sizes - which is to say, the standard is still impossible for most of us to meet.

When the whole beauty-industrial complex is basically designed to exscript them, and the few models who are supposed to represent them just look like that complex's ideal "notched up" a little bit, it's no surprise that plus-size women might feel just as bad looking at Crystal Renn as they do at Kate Moss. This isn't to say that including more models like Renn and Lizzi Miller on magazine pages isn't a good thing — it is. But it doesn't magically make these magazines friendly to all shapes and sizes, or make fat women forget that lots of other cultural forces are still conspiring to devalue them.

The study's finding about underweight women is interesting too. The idea that underweight women actually feel better after looking at models contradicts an earlier study that showed all women felt worse about themselves after viewing skinny ladies in ads. It's a little hard for me to believe that underweight women compare themselves "equally" to models any more than overweight women do — like Kate said, they're still models. They're still closer to the beauty ideal than most women, regardless of weight, and they still get help from the powerful forces of hair, makeup, and airbrushing. It would be interesting to learn what percentage of the underweight women in the study were eating-disordered, and how that affected their response to the images. I'd also like to know what was going on in the underweight subjects' minds during the study — whether they actually thought, "yes! This model looks just like me," or whether they got a more modest boost from seeing a woman of similar size presented as an ideal, even if that woman was different in other ways. Perhaps this boost is easier to get if you are of privileged (ie. thin) size — although the study did find that overweight and underweight women had similar self-esteem at the outset of the experiment.

Ever since Lizzie Miller was in Glamour, the inclusion of plus size models has been trumpeted as a way to make magazines more friendly to all women. But it's clear that this might not be enough. Internalized fat prejudice goes deep, and just showing women a few bigger models isn't going to erase it. The fact is, images whose purpose is to sell women shit — whether those images look more or less like them — are probably never going to be on the forefront of social change. Including plus-size women in ads and fashion spreads is an important step not just for social good, but for aesthetic value — magazines would be more interesting if they contained a greater diversity of models. But they wouldn't magically make overweight women feel perfect about themselves, or erase all the other influences making them feel bad.

Women's Self-esteem Affected By Magazines [UPI.com]
Warning: If You're Overweight, Don't Read Women's Magazines [True/Slant]

Earlier: Memo To Women's Magazine Editors: White Women Hate Themselves After Reading Your Magazines

Schorn (that's not her above) describes going to the emergency room with a black eye from her karate class. She mentions that women with karate injuries should go to the ER "in your uniform" and "covered in sweat," to avoid being questioned about possible domestic violence. "I don't enjoy answering questions from concerned nurses and social workers," she writes, "but I sure as hell understand why they ask those questions." She's (rightly) less understanding about her doctor's question, "Why would a woman like you want do a thing like that?" And then, she goes here:

Now, this man weighed well over three-hundred pounds, and barely fit in the exam room with me. So I decided not to give the easy answer: "Fitness benefits." I wasn't about to insult the only person standing between me and a lifetime of monocular vision. OK, technically, he wasn't standing. He conducted the exam from his little wheeled chair, which was barely visible beneath his bulk and thus gave the impression that he was hovering eighteen inches off the floor.

She asks "why is a man who weighs twice what he ought to questioning my lifestyle choices?" then begins to speculate about fighting him:

I found myself wondering about the physics of kicking a seriously overweight person. A rising front kick under the chin would lift a seated man of average size a few inches up off his chair, I figured. I've never fought anyone much over two-hundred pounds, though, and I wondered what the effect of the extra weight would be. Certainly there would be more resistance when his head snapped back. Could you actually decapitate an obese person with a kick, I wondered? How much easier would it be than decapitating a normal-sized person?

Schorn assures us that "I had nothing against the man. That he was large, and full of doubts about me, was neither here nor there. Target observations are just part of the background noise of my mind." Then she goes right back to talking about his "chins." His question to her was offensive, in that it implied baseless assumptions about her, about fighting, and about women. Unfortunately, Schorn responded by forming her own assumptions — that a 300-pound man would be offended by the very mention of fitness, and that he "weighs twice what he ought to."

Elsewhere in the essay, Schorn writes persuasively about her reasons for fighting. She says,

There is a common perception that women can't fight, or won't fight-at any rate, that we don't fight. That perception is one reason we are targets of violence, and I fight in part to prove that perception wrong. But I also dislike the perception that women only fight because we have to, that it's an unnatural, unfeminine behavior we're forced into, to protect ourselves from all the big bad violent men. The truth is, some of us fight because we like to. Even if we're bad at it. It's just fun.

It's too bad that someone who fights — literally — to change ill-informed perceptions still has some of her own.

The Rules [McSweeney's]

Dear Aretha & Susie,

A year and half ago I was put on Paxil to treat my crippling panic attacks and ever-worsening agoraphobia. It worked great! No more panic attacks...but also no more orgasms and a seriously decreased libido.

I read that those side effects usually went away within a couple months, but with me, they didn't. Earlier this year I went off the Paxil for a few reasons (like my orgasms and libido) and it was amazing. I was afraid I'd lost the ability to orgasm, but after I'd been medication-free for a few weeks, I was able to come hard, and multiple times. For a couple of months I masturbated every day, and enjoyed it so much. However, the panic attacks and anxiety came back. I went back on the Paxil.

I've been in a new relationship for the past two months. It's the best sex I've ever had, and I get a lot of pleasure out of it, but it is frustrating not to orgasm. I would love to be able to come with my new partner. Within the past month, I've even decreased my dose of my medication from 20mg to 10mg, hoping it would help— it hasn't.

The only way I can come is if he goes down on me and I need a lot of stimulation- clitoral and vaginal. Even then I don't always get there. I've had a few orgasms this way— it takes a long time, but I am always ecstatic when it does happen.

I suppose my question is, why do SSRIs have this side effect? What can I do to combat it while on the medication? I'm 22 years old; I don't want to be having sexual problems right now!

I cannot switch my medication or see my doctor. I am off of my parents' health insurance because I'm not a full time student this semester, so I'm restricted from my doctor and switching my medication. Ideally, I would like to see a therapist and deal with my panic disorder through therapy, but that's not a possibility right now.

-Grace

Aretha: You had to READ about the side effects of Paxil? They should have been the first words out of your doctor's mouth when you discussed an anti-depressant.

Paxil freaks me out. I had some friends in high school who were on Paxil until everyone found out that Paxil caused a lot of children and young adults to have suicidal thoughts, and in some cases, suicide. You're under 25? You should read this.

Frankly, if you're only having problems with your libido, I think you are getting off light.

Susie: Don't forget the birth defect issues. And you're newly in love with your boyfriend… you have motive to be concerned about your relationship's future.

Grace, there's a reason you haven't easily found out the why's and wherefores of SSRI's. These drugs and their mental health effects were discovered almost by accident, and physiologists are still arguing about why they work they way they do- or why the results are so different for each patient. Everyone taking SSRI's today is a guinea pig.

I am NOT cavalier about your mental health issues- panic and anxiety can bring your life to a halt. The irony is, Paxil itself is something to be anxious about.

Aretha: The best thing you can do is SEE A DOCTOR. And get your prescription changed. Period. And I would recommend seeing a different doctor next time! I understand you don't have any health insurance, so unless you can pay for a doctor's visit out-of-pocket- you are indeed in a fix.

Susie: You're dependent on your parents for health care. They probably care for you dearly, and you may have other devoted family, as well. These people give a damn about your health. Your panic attacks are of great concern to them- they would care if the treatment you're receiving is making you ill.

Face it, if you broke your leg, your family wouldn't say, "Too bad, you're only a part-time student, you can just stay home and make your own cast."

I know you're thinking, "I can't tell my parents, 'it's an emergency, my sex life is bumming out on Paxil.'" I understand that sexual dysfunction is considered a trivial pursuit by some, not essential to your physical or mental health. Even you act like, "Hey, I can get by."

I would encourage you to think of your entire brain stem and cerebral cortex with more care. Your difficulty with orgasms is symptomatic of enormous changes. Your testosterone may be down, your prolactin may be up, your Paxil is a vaso-constrictor that affects your blood stream as well as your synapses. The action of SSRI's suppresses the engorgement of erectile tissue.

If you tell your family, "I'm getting some relief with Paxil, but there's some weird side effects that are sickening me and I've been reading things too… I want to see a doctor ASAP" — would they refuse you?

If they do refuse (!!!) you need to investigate your school's health clinic. Find out what kind of nutrition, aerobics, meditation, and life-coping skills classes are being offered on your campus at little or no cost to students. Each one of these topics is a SERIOUS BOOK on response to anxiety and panic attacks. Your school's medical staff deals with thousands of students who are battling to stay in school because of mental health problems; they discuss these issues all the time. What about low-cost therapy?

Aretha: I'm familiar with your story about taking "drug holidays" where you STOP taking their drug for a couple of days to get their libido back. Sounds like you already took a long vacation, and you saw what happened. Ideally, all these different approaches should be consulted with a doctor before you do anything, of course!

Susie: It can be problematic to wean off Paxil. You were lucky.

Aretha: I notice you say you're having the best sex you've ever had.

Susie: Long luxurious cunnilingus… yeah, other people are drooling at your sexual dilemma.

Aretha: So, maybe things aren't too bad in the present.

Susie: -At least the short term sex effects. I'm more concerned about the big picture. If I was your mommy, I'd have you in a qualified psychologist's office faster than you can say "dopaminergic neurotransmission."

Aretha: Until next semester!

Dear Aretha & Susie,

I am 20 years old and I'm a virgin. Usually it doesn't bother me, but lately I've had the feeling that something is wrong with me. The problem isn't that nobody will fuck me, or even that nobody I'm attracted to will fuck me.

I'm 5'4", 240 pounds, and it makes me feel completely neutered.

I can honestly say I've never felt sexy in my life! If someone tries to get close to me, I become so self-conscious that I withdraw. I don't know what to do.

The obvious answer is lose weight, and I'm working on it, but part of me knows that the weight is just the peak of my self-esteem iceberg. How can I get over this? Do I just need a ton of therapy?

Luv,

Bummer City

Aretha: I think you are smart to point out that it's not your weight that's the base problem; it's a self esteem issue.

Susie: There are fat women who are digging sex and falling in love. There are 36-24-36-type individuals who are alone in their room, depressed, so shy they don't know where to begin.

Aretha: You just gotta say, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh-darn it, people like me!"

Susie: I think seeing the entire Stuart Smalley movie is essential, at least once a year.

Aretha: Look, fuck the weight calculations for now. Look around at what else is going on in your life… are you getting outside and getting enough exercise? Do you feel rested in the morning; do you have a fulfilling diet?

Susie: I'd encourage you to think of your "neutered" feelings as a health symptom. Are you depressed in other respects? Have you talked to any health-care pros about your medical history? How is your weight- or other issues, which you haven't mentioned- affecting your life? The sex stuff is one clue.

You have to go at this thing holistically… it's not your size versus your sexiness. Your "absence of feeling" is distressing. But you don't need a "TON" of therapy... you need a plan and small steps. And some help to do it. Your weight is just one part of it. These things are too hard to do alone. Aretha and I are so far away… I want you to have people on your side, listening and helping you, who are closer than an email.

Aretha: Do you masturbate? If you don't, I would recommend that you try it. The first step should be all about finding pleasure with yourself before you start tangling with other people and all their issues. When you're alone and you're feeling horny, there's no one else in the room to make you feel self-concious, right? I say, get wild!

Throw away all your icky expectations about what you should be like, what you should be doing, and just try to enjoy being yourself.

I KNOW, easier said than done.

Susie: But what else is there? You're on the verge… you already know you can't go on like you've been.

Aretha: The next time you're with someone and they try to "get close" - and you find yourself pulling away- try to notice what you're doing and PAUSE, just for a second! Ask yourself, "Do I feel safe?" "Do I want to withdraw or do I feel like I need to withdraw because that's what I always do?" "Am I going to be okay if I just stay in the moment with this other person?"

And if you end up pulling away, that's fine. The point would be that you knew what you were doing, and you made a conscious decision instead of just letting your self-esteem steer you around.

Susie and Aretha Update:

Aretha has been demonstrating for social justice, goddammit.

Susie's favorite review of her new book, Bitten, is the line that says: "Strange? Yes. Incredibly hot? Absolutely." Now that's justice for you.

Naturally, NAAFA has its critics. Time magazine pulls a quote from Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard's School of Public Health. Recently he told the New York Times: "There's been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn't matter. But the data are clear." The thing is, that's not even what NAAFA is about. The group is more into defending overweight Americans on issues like Simon Cowell's fat jokes on American Idol or obese airline passengers who have to pay for a second seat. Willett seems to think NAAFA is promoting fat. But as we've said before: There's a difference between promotion and acceptance. It's ridiculous to think that overweight people are out there pressuring people to gain weight.

NAAFA's public relations director, Peggy Howell, says her group doesn't endorse leading an unhealthy lifestyle: "We don't encourage people to get fat." She's more concerned with weight discrimination, which studies show is now as prevalent as race or gender discrimination. "As a citizen of the U.S., just because I carry more weight on my back doesn't mean I should have any fewer rights than anyone else."

What's interesting is that the fat acceptance movement started in the late '60s, when issues of race, sex, war and feminism were also in flux. Since then, the draft became a contingency plan; the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the U.S. Senate; we went from getting past segregated lunch counters to a black President. But despite the rash of plus-size TV shows on the air right now, the NAAFA convention today in Washington, D.C. will surely meet with opposition, like the commenters on Marianne Kirby's piece about More To Love, one of whom wrote:

It is time to stop giving people a pass by using politically correct terms such as "plus-size or full-figured."
Enough already.
You are obese. You are fat.
There is NOTHING healthy about " your lifestyle. "
Overeating is NOT a " lifestyle. "
Nobody forces you to enter that fast food restaurant.

That comment was met with a barrage of responses from enraged overweight people swearing that they are vegetarians with low cholesterol who do not overeat, but the attitude of the original poster persists. This is a battle not easily won.

A Brief History Of The Fat Acceptance Movement [Time]
Earlier: On Beth Ditto, "Promoting" Obesity & Fat Shame
More To Love Premieres Tonight; Two "Fat" Writers Weigh In
Related:
Really Big Love [The Daily Beast]

The email reads, in part:

At breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even on the go, you can take the gym with you when you eat! Knife and Fork Lift is a handsome, stainless steel, custom made combo knife and fork set, each protruding from a two-pound dumbbell to remind a person that eating puts weight on. One can actually exercise while dining as cutting and lifting food to your mouth is like doing curls with barbells. A great gift for your dieting friends.

Italics are theirs, although we are totally excited about taking ridiculous bulky utensils on our next trip too! Megan says, "Actually, that would be a great gift from the kind of 'friend' who would give you one of those, as a 2 pound dumbbell would allow you to give her a good beating without actually risking her death." Hortense adds, "And you'd also have the opportunity to use a Marx Brothers-esque line: 'Well, it takes a dumbbell to give a dumbbell.'" Oh, but they beat you to it! From the website:

By lifting these heavy utensils, even a dumbbell gets the message that what you eat puts weight on.

See, your friends are fat because they are too dumb to stop eating! Remind them of that fact with this thoughtful present. To be fair, though, the guy in the website graphic does seem to be having some cognitive troubles. He's wearing a football on his head, and appears to be eating popcorn with a fork. Perhaps he's auditioning for a cartoon version of The Stupids?

But seriously, everyone knows that diet and exercise sometimes fail. The only foolproof way to prevent fatness is complete abstinence. Sadly, according to science writers at The Onion, this approach has problems too:

Despite the popularity of abstinence-only meal programs in schools across the country, the study found that children who were provided with no food at lunch and cautioned against eating at an early age were no less likely to become overweight than those who were provided with a well-rounded nutritional education.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the findings could adversely affect federal funding for all programs that tell kids "lunch is worth waiting for."

"There's no evidence to suggest that instructing teens not to chew, swallow, or even think about food is actually going to stop them from eating," Sebelius told reporters. "Let's face it: Kids are already eating. And not only during lunchtime. They're eating after school, at the mall, in their parents' basements. Pretending like it's not happening isn't going to make it go away."

Clearly the Knife and Fork Lift is the answer for these dumbbell teens. In the same vein, I'm going to market a line of condoms with baby dolls attached, to remind people that sex causes pregnancy. And while I'm at it, I'm just going to staple calendars to everything, because after all, living "puts years on."

Knife And Fork Lift [Official Site]
Study: Abstinence-Only Lunch Programs Ineffective At Combating Teen Obesity [The Onion]

Karolchyk wore a "No Chubbies" t-shirt on Fox — yes, really — and told host Neil Cavuto that Benjamin is "50 pounds overweight, she is obese." When Cavuto questioned the seemingly arbitrary figure, Karolchyk replied, "I have a lot of experience with this." Sounds like he should work for US Weekly, gauging celebs' weight just by looking at photographs. In fact, he might have to — because he's basically the male Tracy Anderson (minus the celebrity clients, plus some real silly hand gestures).

According to a profile in the magazine 5280, Karolchyk idolizes Holden Caulfield and, in his heyday, gave out condoms as business cards and enjoyed filming commercials where he slammed pies into overweight women's faces. He used to run the Anti-Gym (link NSFW, due to pics of a guy taking of lingerie with his teeth, the word "sex" in huge letters, obnoxious music, and being generally horrible), which boasts that "With live DJs, cage dancers, and our elite co-ed Ravish Room, Anti-Gym boasts the hottest facilities and clientele in Denver." And which, in fact, we've written about before! Moe said,

The Ravish Room turns out to be a sauna that admits only members who have reached a sufficiently low body mass index, but you also have to be screened to so much as join his gym, where motivational techniques include having cupcakes hurled at you on the treadmill

But Karolchyk apparently hurls cupcakes no more — his gym/sex-cliche horror show was shut down in January for nonpayment of "at least $184,078.76" in taxes. After the shutdown, stacks of documents about Karolchyk's clients — including not just their names and credit card numbers but also personal information about their cancer diagnoses and helpful descriptors like "fatty lazy" and "lazy piece of shit" — were found in a dumpster. Karolchyk swears he didn't dump his clients' personal information in such an unsecured location, but since he's the kind of guy who describes his customers as "fatty lazy," we somehow doubt he has all that much consideration for them.

Karolchyk says (based, again, on the scientific method of Watching Video Footage) that Benjamin is "lazy" and makes "poor food choices." He asks if we'd want "the head of the Fed Reserve to be a guy in a cardboard box" or "Michael Jackson's doctor" as the head of the DEA. By the same token, we don't want a cupcake-hurling, tax-evading, self-described "chubbyist" to tell us who's qualified to be Surgeon General.

Fox News: Surgeon General Too Fat [Talking Points Memo]
Fox Lashes Health Pick As 'Too Fat to Serve' [Newser]
Anti-Gym's Michael Karolchyk Gets Flayed In Channel 4 Report [Westword]
'Anti-Gym' Personal Records Found In Dumpster [Channel 4 News, Denver]
Anti-Gym [Official Site]
How Much Does Anti-Gym's Michael Karolchyk Owe To The IRS? [Westword]
This Man Thinks You're Fat [5280]

Earlier: Is Your BMI Low Enough For Michael "No Chubbies" Karolchyk's Co-Ed Sauna?? Oh No!
Female Nominees Continue To Face Scrutiny Over Their Size, Weight

Writer Mandy Katz's analysis of the zeitgeist is a little silly (is the show More to Love really an example of Fat Acceptance? Is Oprah, with her public confessions of "embarrassment" about her weight, really a paragon of Health At Every Size?), but the basic message of her article is worth repeating. "A loose alliance of therapists, scientists and others," she writes, believe,

that all people, "even" fat people, can eat whatever they want and, in the process, improve their physical and mental health and stabilize their weight. The aim is to behave as if you have reached your "goal weight" and to act on ambitions postponed while trying to become thin, everything from buying new clothes to changing careers. Regular exercise should be for fun, not for slimming.

It's not a new concept, as Katz acknowledges, but it's still a controversial one. Katz quotes Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, who says,

Virtually everyone who is overweight would be better off at a lower weight. There's been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn't matter. But the data are clear.

Leaving aside his dismissive tone, Willett doesn't mention how "everyone who is overweight" is supposed to get to "a lower weight" and stay there, probably because there's no reliable answer. Given the fact that trying to change your weight often leads to yo-yo dieting (Kathryn Griffith, interviewed in the article, has been through Weight Watchers 27 times), it's no wonder a variety of people have decided to just eat what they want already — that is, to choose "intuitive eating." A companion article, also by Katz, defines intuitive eating thus:

Intuitive eating involves returning to basic drives, dispensing with the notion of "good" or "bad" foods and rules about when to eat. Absent a fear of deprivation, the philosophy holds, one's hunger and taste cues - rather than cognitive rules - provide the most trustworthy guide toward balanced, healthy eating.

Some claim (this is Corinna Tomrley's critique of Susie Orbach) that this kind of eating will make you thin. But Kate Harding of Shapely Prose tells Katz that when she quit dieting,

I thought, ‘O.K., maybe I could be a size 10, and it won't be so bad.' As it turned out, I ended up as roughly an 18, which was exactly where I started.

Really quitting dieting may mean not just letting that Weight Watchers subscription lapse, but also giving up thinness as a goal. It's still incredibly difficult, because people like Willett (and every women's magazine ever) continue to insist that it must be everyone's goal. But psychologist and eating disorder specialist Deb Burgard says, "the pursuit of thinness as a dream is a place holder. It gets in the way of asking, ‘What is it I am dreaming of?' "

This may be true not just for individual dieters, but for our diet-obsessed society in general. Also in the Times, Roger Cohen writes about the recent study that shows that calorie-restricted monkeys live longer. The child of a primate expert, he examines a now-famous photo of two monkeys, Owen and Canto — and thinks Owen, the well-fed one, is probably happier. He writes,

It's the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, "Ripeness is all." You don't get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.

"When life extension supplants life quality as a goal," he continues, "you get the desolation of Canto the monkey." Long life and even health have become goals in themselves, and we seemed forgotten that a long healthy life is for something — enjoyment. When we take health, longevity, or thinness for that matter, as ends rather than means, we get our priorities screwed up. We think it's acceptable to tell people to starve themselves so that they can fit Willett's definition of what's healthy — or Vogue's definition of what's attractive. We'd be better off remembering that health is about being able to do things with your life — including eat — and that thinness is about, well what is in thinness about exactly? If you look at a women's magazine, it's about health, yes, but also attractiveness, happiness, and personal empowerment — all of which can be achieved at any size.

Tossing Out The Diet And Embracing The Fat [NYT]
To Eat Well, Be Instinctive [NYT]
The Meaning Of Life [NYT]

Ms. Roth — who was, unsurprisingly, more interested in mocking the width of the seat of a size 24 pair of pants and showing off how small she is by comparison — ended up sputtering by the end, no doubt wondering how it is that she came on Fox News expected to provide reasonably cogent commentary on the issues or back up her assertion that fat people don't deserve to work. Can we finally just accept that MeMe Roth's entire "anti-obesity" shtick has nothing to do with health and everything to do with her own obese, diseased ego?

McMahon, who is flacking a study done by the private medical provider Nuffield Health, says that the advent of fat celebrities who aren't constantly on rollercoaster diets and publicly flogging themselves for their inability to live up to societal standards are responsible for people thinking they can live normal lives without either being or trying to be skinny.

Professor McMahon, of the Nuffield Health private healthcare chain, said: 'The increasing profile of larger celebrities means that being overweight is now perceived as being 'normal' in the eyes of the public.

'We talk about the dangers of skinny media images but the problem actually swings both ways.'

Well, not to get all etymological on McMahon's ass, but the definition of "normal" is actually what most people are, which is not celebrity-style thin but rather something else. According to the CDC, for instance, more than 20 percent of the population of every state but Colorado qualify as obese with a BMI of greater than 30 (though the debate about BMI and its effectiveness at diagnosing health-risking obesity is a question for another time), which means that, in fact, obesity is increasingly "normal." Whether it's a health risk for everyone — or even for as many people as we're all constantly being told — is not the same thing as "normal," though many people with the audacity (or genes) to be remotely larger than McMahon's idea of "normal" are often told that they are not.

McMahon adds that overweight celebs should never, ever be regarded as role models. (Where have we heard that before?)

"The danger of celebrities who flaunt their weight is that viewers admire them and do not take their own weight as seriously as they should," said Professor Michael McMahon, Nuffield's consultant.

Yes, because being content with one's size is the same as "flaunting" it. Oprah long ago established that the best way to deal with one's weight in public is to struggle valiantly against it, regardless of the health consequences of yo-yo and fad dieting.

The Daily Mail's Fiona Macrae adds this wonderful piece of commentary:

The high profile of larger stars such as TV presenter Eamonn Holmes, comedian Johnny Vegas and singer Beth Ditto has shown that being plump is no barrier to success.

James Corden and Ruth Jones, of award-winning sitcom Gavin and Stacey, are also of generous proportions.

What everyone failed to Google, however, is Dr. McMahon's professional credentials as an "obesity expert." Those credentials, of course, include being a bariatric surgeon who makes his money off performing risky and expensive procedures on obese people outside of Britain's National Health System (i.e., for cash). Who signs up for surgery that includes, according to the Mayo Clinic, the following risks (if you survive the surgery and don't get a life-threatening infection, blood clots or a permanent case of the runs)?

* Vitamin and mineral deficiency (iron deficiency anemia, vitamin B-12 deficiency and vitamin D deficiency)
* Dehydration
* Gallstones
* Bleeding stomach ulcer
* Intolerance to certain foods
* Kidney stones
* Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) related to excessive insulin production

People, of course, who are truly unhappy about their weight!

Other risks of bariatric surgery include broken bones; gaining every last pound back, and little reduction to one's mortality and morbidity.

But, hey! McMahon's employer also operates a series of fitness centers to help its customers lose weight.

Anyway, if one were operating on logic, one might assume that the obesity "epidemic" — which the CDC chronicles as going back more than 20 years — might be completely unrelated to the recent arrival on the celebrity scene of a small handful of celebrities who are not actively bemoaning their bodies and trying to lose weight. Apparently, though, logic isn't part of the weight-loss plans at Nuffield Health.

Note: The comments on this post have been closed.

How Chubby Stars 'Are Feeding The Obesity Epidemic'... By Proving It Is Possible To Be Fat AND Famous [Daily Mail]
Fat Stars 'Make Obesity Normal' [BBC]

Related: U.S. Obesity Trends 1985–2007 [CDC]
BMI Not An Accurate Obesity Measurement [Red Orbit]
Prof M J McMahon [Nuffield Health]
Gastric Bypass Surgery: What Can You Expect? [Mayo Clinic]
Bariatric Surgery Patients At Higher Risk For Broken Bones [Ortho Super Site]
Gastric Bypass Surgery: What Happens If I Regain The Weight? [Mayo Clinic]
Bariatric Surgery [Wikipedia]

Earlier: On Beth Ditto, "Promoting" Obesity & Fat Shame

MeMe Roth has made her name "calling people fat" (example: Jordin Sparks) and throwing away ice cream toppings at her kid's YMCA. But that name is in fact "a brand extension." Her real name is Meredith Clements, but she uses MeMe, her great-grandmother's name, because it expresses her goal to "change the cultural MeMes that have ushered in this era of obesity." MeMe is a pretty strange name for someone who thinks our culture is self-absorbed, but, as the Guardian's admirably hard-hitting Gaby Wood reveals, Roth isn't too good at analysis, of herself or anyone else.

When Wood asks Roth whether government food subsidies play a role in rising obesity rates, Roth replies that "high fructose corn syrup" is the real enemy here — which is sort of like believing that the evil oil creature in FernGully is responsible for global warming. Even more wacked-out — and downright offensive — is this statement:

The defence has been made in the case of sex criminals that there is pleasure on the part of the victim. The same is true with what we're doing with food. We may abuse our bodies with food, but it's incredibly pleasurable. From a food marketer's point of view, when your quote unquote victim is so willing and enjoying of the process, who's fighting back?

Anyone who thinks eating is like being raped probably has some serious food issues. Although Roth swears she's never been anorexic, or even been on a diet, her relationship to food and body image is clearly a pretty diseased one. She talks about being ashamed of her "fat" mother when she was in kindergarten, as though this shame were normal and appropriate. She also insists that Wood meet her "after lunch" at one p.m. When Wood asks what she actually ate for lunch, this exchange ensues:

She squirms visibly. "You're taking me where I don't want to go ... What works for me doesn't work for a lot of people."

Well, you've said that, I insist, so taking that into account: lunch? Roth hesitates. "I discovered when I was in college that I work best when I get a workout in and eat after that. Sometimes I'll delay when I eat until I get a workout in. But I don't let a whole day go by without running four miles."

OK, I go on, but supposing you couldn't work out until four o'clock in the afternoon - would you not eat until after that?

"I might."

I look at my watch. It's 3.30pm. Alarm bells start to ring in my head. How about today, I ask. Have you eaten at all today?

Roth is a little quiet.

"No," she says.

There is a pause.

"But I feel great!"

Roth may not be anorexic, and she may not think of what she does as dieting, but if "what works for her" is not eating anything until after 3:30, she's right that it's not going to work for most people. Nor should it. To liken the pleasure one gets from food to something as toxic as sexual assault isn't just illogical and insensitive — it also demonizes something that nourishes, brings people together, and produces some of the greatest and most uncomplicated joy in life. Rather than accept food for what it is — something that, like many good things, is wonderful in moderation and problematic in excess — Roth wants people to think of it as some kind of evil rapist who will make us fat and therefore shameful. It's a judgmental, unhealthy, and ultimately unsustainable way to live.

The Woman Who Hates Food [Guardian]

Earlier:Anti-Obesity "Activist" Tells Elle That Women Are Fat, Stupid

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg says to Kessler (who is the former head of the FDA), "At times I couldn't decide whether you felt that the overweight were victims or undisciplined. Which is it?" Kessler replies:

The answer is probably neither. Nobody has explained to people what is going on with them, or given them the tools to cool stimuli. Yes, you are bombarded throughout the day. You respond. And that creates torment for people. But just because we are activated and stimulated doesn't mean that that there aren't things we can do. Yes, their brains are being hijacked. But once we understand what is going on, we can change.

In addition, Kessler says many people have a syndrome of "hyper-eating" — "the loss of control in the face of highly palatable foods, lack of feeling full." It's especially interesting in regards to kids:

Is it nurture or nature? You expose children who are eating fat, sugar and salt all day. They've never been hungry a day in their lives. Once you lay down that neuro-circuitry, it's there for life. The actual act of consumption isn't as strong as anticipation. It's the conditioning associated with a cue. Once you are cued and you're activated, it amplifies the reward value. It torments you. You want it more.

Businessweek notes that in Kessler's book, he documents a conversation he had with a food industry consultant:

Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling, said the consultant. They make it indulgent. They make it high in hedonic value, which gives us pleasure. "Do you design food specifically to be highly hedonic," I asked. "Oh, absolutely," he replied without a moment's hesitation. "We try to bring as much of that into the equation as possible."

Businessweek's Cathy Arnst says we can't just blame the food industry: "As parents, we are all too guilty of stimulating our children's hedonic cravings early and often." She continues: "In the last few weeks my 10-year old daughter and I have eaten with several friends, and every time the children have been offered either mac n'cheese, hot dogs or pizza, usually accompanied by potato chips and soda and followed by ice cream. Adults too easily assume that kids won't eat anything else. My daughter actually likes healthy foods and doesn't like soda (when we got home from one dinner she asked why she couldn't have any grilled salmon). But when offered the option of fat-laden pasta or salt-infused hot dogs, guess which she chooses?"

Dr. Kessler swears that overeating is not a disease. But it is something that alters your brain chemistry: Everytime a kid eats food laden with sugar, fat and salt, it "it strengthens their neuro-circuitry to eat that food again." And we're living in a world in which we're constantly stimulated: "[Hyper-palatable foods are] available 24/7 and we've added the emotional gloss of advertising," Dr. Kessler says.

The big question is, should the government step in? Cathy Arnst says, "You would never give a child a cigarette. Or a drink, or a snort of cocaine. But everyday we American parents are giving our children something almost as addictive-meals laden with sugar, salt and fat." It's illegal to give a child a cigarette, alcohol or drugs. But even though there's a soda tax in the works in New York, do you think that the government should be regulating other junk food, especially if it is targeted to children? What if you couldn't buy McDonald's, Krispy Kremes or Hostess Cupcakes until you turned 18? (Kessler's view on that? "It's about how we as a country view the product. What was the real success of tobacco? We changed how we viewed the product. It was a critical perceptual shift. That's the key.")

The Science And Psychology Behind Overeating [WSJ]
How Mac N' Cheese Is Like A Cigarette [BusinessWeek]

Related: The End of Overeating: Taking Control Of The Insatiable American Appetite [Barnes & Noble]

A new study in The Journal of Sex Research shows that men who self-identify as "fat admirers" not only find overweight women exceedingly attractive, they have an more robust appreciation of feminine beauty than men who don't identify that way. The former men (dubbed FAs) and latter were both shown 10 pictures of women of various body types and asked to pick the woman they found most attractive and to identify the heaviest and thinnest women they found attractive.

The FAs were most attracted to the photo of a woman with a body mass index of 29.24....Furthermore, the study found that FAs considered a wider range of figures to be appealing, including those of two emaciated women (with BMIs lower than 15).

Scientists involved in the study speculated that it was because once those men has rejected "sociocultural norms of attractiveness" by self-identifying and being involved as FAs, they were more readily accepting of a wider range of female beauty.

The control group, meanwhile, supported those conventional ideals, finding the figure with a BMI of 18.45 - which, technically, qualifies as underweight - the most attractive. They also rated the overweight and obese images more negatively overall than the FAs did.

In other words, the other dudes still thought even normal-sized, healthy women were less attractive than underweight women.

To capitalize on this trend, Fox is preparing to launch a new reality series called "More to Love."

[It is] a new reality dating series produced by The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss that will star a plus-size bachelor as he attempts to woo several plus-size bachelorettes

Because, really, what "normal" size guy would ever fall in love with a "plus-size" girl, amirite? And, even if he did, who would want to watch it?

Some Men Prefer Fat Women [Live Science]
Fox To Debut New 'More to Love' Plus-Size Reality Dating Show On July 28 [Reality TV World]

Three new studies published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine confirm that adults have stores of adipose tissue that burns energy, rather than storing it like better-known "white" fat, reports Time. Scientists have known for years that rodents and newborns have large deposits of the fat, which contains a high concentration of dark-colored mitochondria. The tissue burns sugar and releases the energy as heat, which allows mice and babies to shiver to keep warm in cold temperatures.

As humans develop the ability to regulate their body temperature, they lose the brown fat cells, which are mostly present in a sheet on a baby's back. Now scientists have found that adults actually retain large stores of brown fat in deposits around the neck. Scientists studying cancer patients have known for years that there are spots on the neck that burn a large amount of glucose, but they didn't know what they were looking at. Usually, that indicates a growing tumor, but biopsies would show the spots were not cancerous.

"It is, in a sense, the discovery of a new organ," said Sven Enerback, lead author of one of studies, reports The Washington Post. People with the most active brown fat are cancer patients and people with hyperthyroidism. Women, thinner people, and younger people, also had more brown fat than men or people who are older and fatter. The studies showed that brown fat is activated by cold. Subjects left in an ice bath or a 61 degree room for two hours showed more brown fat activity than those in warm conditions because their bodies were trying to generate heat. The New York Times reports that the fat can also be triggered by catecholamines, hormones that regulate part of the fight or flight response.

Currently the drugs that stimulate those hormones have too many side effects, but doctors hope that in the future a drug that will safely trigger brown fat will be developed. However at this point, scientists are not sure that brown fat will necessarily lead to burning white fat, since the body tries to maintain equilibrium and may alter other metabolic systems to try to make up for the loss.

[Image via Flickr.]

Study: A Fat That Helps You Lose Weight? [Time]
Studies Find A Way Adult Bodies May Fight Obesity [The Washington Post]
Brown Fat Identified As Heat-Yeilding Cells In Humans [The New York Times]

Casey Schwartz writes for The Daily Beast:

Studies suggest that changes in the state of the economy can influence what men find sexually attractive in women— and when the economy's bad, it's good to be fat. Or, at least, a tiny bit fatter.

Researchers polled students about the size of their ideal woman. Male subjects who were made to feel insecure about their finances reported a preference for women who were, on average, roughly two pounds heavier than their financially confident counterparts. Subjects on their way to lunch wanted a woman who was three pounds heavier than guys quizzed when they were full. Whether or not any of this actually translate into the real world, whether or not dudes are actually accepting of women with three pounds more on their frames is not the point. This story is designed, really, to make a woman carrying some extra weight feel a little better. Like her time has come. And in a world where we're bombarded with diet ads and skinny models, some soothing is welcome. (Schwartz writes: "Pass the enchiladas.")

But on the other hand, Mindy Laube penned a scathing piece for a blog associated with Aussie paper The Age, in which she writes, "The human body is meant to be lean and fit." She claims "the fat lobby" attempts to "re-rate our body shape standards to suit an unattractive mean."

The average Australian woman is 5'4" (163 centimetres) and a size 14. These dimensions may be typical but they do not make a woman normal, they make her FAT. […] A fat body is not a normal body. It's an aberration that we countenance to the detriment of our looks, health and self-esteem. Shifting the aesthetic goal posts to normalise a disproportionately high fat-to-muscle ratio on the basis of that figure type's ubiquity is equivalent to rewriting home building regulations to accommodate shoddy workmanship. Prevalence is no justification for acceptance.

Laube references the bestseller Why French Women Don't Get Fat and argues that the real reason French women are not chubby is because they don't let themselves get fat. "French women - and men - prize looks and style over gluttony and sloth," she says. Don't you love it when being fat is equated with being lazy?

While it's true that humans were not designed to eat fast food and sit at a desk all day, this is the reality we live in. Times have changed, so the human body has changed. And some of the most industrious, hard-working people are overweight. Our environment is not what it was in the 1950s, so why should our waistline be?

So which is it? Should overweight women be proud and happy of their size, especially in a recession? And since each generation keeps getting bigger and bigger, will we eventually have an "average" size that is 20 or 24? (Wall-E, anyone?) And is there anything wrong with that? Or is the average (overweight) woman doing herself — and the world — an injustice by keeping the pounds on?

Hot And Heavy [The Daily Beast]
The Pudgy Country [The Age]