That would be the four-year Healthy Moms study, which wants obese participants to gain between zero and 3% of their body weight, or 5 pounds for a 170-pound woman. The New York Times coverage of the study, by Roni Caryn Rabin, doesn't explicitly state what women are supposed to do about the weight of the fetus and placenta, but the implication is that they should actually be losing some of their own weight to make room for them. Rabin says experts think women only need an extra 300 or 400 calories a day to have a healthy pregnancy, and that many obese women deliver healthy babies with no weight gain at all. The researchers in charge of the study hope to show that zero weight gain makes for easier delivery and decreases the baby's chance of obesity later on. But the advocates behind reducing pregnancy weight gain may also hope to set obese women on a path to weight loss. Says Prof. Kathleen M. Rasmussen, who worked on this year's earlier 11-15 pound guideline, "Pregnancy is what we call a teachable moment, a time when women are willing to make positive behavioral changes, because it's important for their own health and their babies' health."

But there's some evidence that pregnancy isn't the time to make big behavioral changes, at least not if they involve weight loss. If women burn fat during pregnancy, they may increase their blood levels of ketones, which in turn may lower a baby's IQ. The Healthy Moms study apparently doesn't plan to track the mental development of babies and children after birth, but some argue that it should. Then there's the risk to mom and baby of unhealthy weight loss. As Kate Harding pointed out in October, "the health care providers pregnant women visit most often aren't necessarily trained to recognize and address body image issues and eating disorders - but they are trained to track expectant mothers' weight and instruct them to keep it within a certain range. For women who struggle with disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, that can be problematic." And eating disorders can cause problems for the developing fetus as well as the mother.

There's also the more existential question of whether we should really be using pregnancy as a time for behavior modification. The reason it's a "teachable moment," the reason women are willing to quit smoking or drinking or eating soft cheese, is because many of them are anxious to do everything they can to have a healthy baby. Is it really a good idea to capitalize on this anxiety to try to make obese women thinner? Yes, the Healthy Moms study is in part geared toward healthier babies — but it's also about creating a population of moms who don't have to "lose the baby weight," because they already lost it during pregnancy. And should you doubt that women's worries about their babies and their bodies might be exploited as part of the new movement, note that two of the top three comments the Times Well blog post about this issue are hawking personal training services. One reads,

Very important also is to exercise the abdominals and pelvic muscles post pregancy. These muscles get turned off and stretched out. They don't just return to normal post partum. Specific core exercises are required. For exercise advice or training in nyc [link redacted]

Women are already getting the message that pregnancy, rather than a life stage that many women go through, is a sort of affliction that will totally fuck up their bodies, and that they need special products to recover from (Kourtney Kardashian has already chosen QuickTrim!). Teaching them that it's a time for weight loss — which zero weight gain during pregnancy essentially is — will almost certainly amplify this message. Combine that with the potential risk to babies' brains, and it doesn't really seem all that healthy.

New Goal For The Obese: Zero Gain In Pregnancy [NYT]
Zero Weight Gain During Pregnancy [NYT Well Blog]

Earlier: Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat?

In a piece for Newsweek's website, parenting writer Po Bronson explains that his 5-year-old daughter is excited for the Princess And The Frog. But:

My daughter's been infatuated with Disney princesses since she was 3, and she's also now showing some early concerns with her body image. It's important to her to "look pretty," or "look cute." She's said things like, "Those sneakers make my feet look fat."

Bronson admits that he doesn't know where the body-image stuff comes from, but wonders: "Do Disney princesses make young girls obsessed with thinness?"

A study released this week by Drs. Sharon Hayes and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn attempted to answer that question:

Hayes and Tantleff-Dunn brought 121 girls aged 3 to 6 into their lab and showed them video clips for 14 minutes. Half the girls watched princess clips; half watched nonprincess cartoons like Dora, Clifford, and Dragon Tales. Then each girl was given 15 minutes to enjoy herself in a play room, and the scholars recorded how many of those minutes were spent in appearance-related play, such as sitting at the vanity or changing clothes in front of the mirror.

You're probably thinking that the princess-inundated girls immediately went to play dress up and admire themselves, but they didn't. The reasearchers found no statistical difference between the girls who watched princess scenes and those who watched Dora and Clifford. Bronson writes, "Watching Anastasia and Cinderella and Belle didn't make them play longer at the vanity or try on more dresses afterward. It didn't make them more likely to pick the thinnest figure as the 'Real Princess.' It didn't exacerbate their desire to be thinner."

Despite the results of this study, staring at wasp-waisted cartoon ladies has to have an effect — maybe it's subtle, cumulative? Because 31% of the little girls said they always worry about being fat; 18% sometimes worry about it. If Disney's not giving them ideas, who is? Someone closer to home, perhaps? Bronson claims the girls said things like, "Being fat is bad." And, even more telling: "My mommy thinks she's fat."

The good news is that thinness wasn't the biggest concern on the minds of these 3, 4, 5 and 6 year-olds. The bad news is:

Asked what they would change about their physical appearance… these girls wanted to change their hair color, their clothes, and their skin color. According to these young girls in Orlando (40 percent of whom were nonwhite), it helps to be a princess if your hair is blond and skin is white.

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty: Looking at you.





Do Disney Princesses Make Young Girls Obsessed With Thinness? [Newsweek]

Earlier: Disney Princesses Rely On Good Looks, Little People & Men For Salvation
"Practical Character Reader" A Lesson In Xenophobia, Racism & Disney Villains
Is The Princess Problem Even A Problem?
Age Of Innocence? 3-Year-Olds Think They're Fat
Addressing The Princess Problem
Researchers: Disney Movies "Elevate" Heterosexuality
Playing Princess Is Just A Phase... Except When It Isn't

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]

Edward Wyatt of The New York Times writes that Ryan Benson, who lost 122 pounds to win The Biggest Loser's first season, has gained the weight back and "thinks he has been shunned by the show because he publicly admitted that he dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood." Indeed, show officials have tried to keep other former contestants from talking to the press, and trainer Jillian Michaels says, "Contestants can get a little too crazy and they can get too thin. [...] It's just part of the nature of reality TV." However, Dr. Charles Burant of the University of Michigan says "the nature of reality TV" may not be compatible with the nature of, you know, health:

I have had some patients who want to do the same thing, and I counsel them against it. [...] I think the show is so exploitative. They are taking poor people who have severe weight problems whose real focus is trying to win the quarter-million dollars.

The gimmick of many reality shows is to take something that usually happens slowly — like finding a spouse or losing a large amount of weight — and speed it up for the benefit of the audience. Producers shoehorn whole periods of people's lives into a handful of TV hours, and it's no wonder that they squeeze out a little blood in the process. Gawker's Hamilton Nolan says that rather than watching The Biggest Loser, overweight people should "eat a few hundred calories less than you burn every day; exercise for no more than an hour five days a week, with a sensible mix of interval cardio workouts and basic weight training; lose a couple pounds a week; continue until satisfied." But for a lot of people, it isn't really that simple, and it would be kind of nice to see a TV show that promoted Health At Every Size. Jill at Feministe says, "a real show about health - where in the end there would still be some healthy fat people and some healthy thin people and some healthy in-between people - would make really boring TV," and she may be right. The truth is, what entertains us is rarely what's good for us, and the subtext of Jillian Michaels's statement is that the nature of reality TV is to exploit suffering and pain.

I don't want to be all get-off-my-lawn-y — really, criticizing reality television is so passé it's almost retro — but I will say that back in the days of scripted programming people only pretended to do things that were bad for them. Now we get to watch real people — people who, in the case of The Biggest Loser, probably feel marginalized by society — abuse themselves for free. It's probably too late to turn back the clock on this phenomenon, but it's not too late to call it what it is: a cheap way of exploiting the vulnerable. Not to mention a shitty way to lose weight.

On ‘The Biggest Loser,' Health Can Take Back Seat [NYT]
Shocker: "The Biggest Loser" Promotes Unhealthy Weight Loss Practices [Feministe]
Biggest Loser: Basically Killing Fat People For Your Amusement [Gawker]

The bad news: A new study, reported today in Eurekalert, confirms what everyone already knew, that increasingly younger girls are worried about their weight and appearance. And we do mean young: while the statistics were already depressing, this study dealt with children aged 3-to-6. Indeed, according to a study by University of Central Florida psychology professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn and doctoral student Sharon Hayes, nearly half of these pre-schoolers "worry about being fat." And a third of those tested said they were dissatisfied with their appearance. According to Vernisha Shepard, a psychotherapist and clinical coordinator for the eating disorders clinic at Texas Children's Hospital"It is getting more and more common for young girls to begin to have concern regarding their bodies," she says. "Girls as young as 8 are now talking about their bodies and show a concern related to their weight and shape. When summer comes and people begin losing the layers of clothing, more attention is drawn to how we look. Young girls are learning this and basing their entire self worth on their bodies and beauty."

Here's how the test worked:

After chatting for several minutes, the playmate asked each girl how she feels about the way she looks. Thirty-one percent indicated they almost always worry about being fat, while another 18 percent said they sometimes worry about it....Half of the girls watched parts of animated children's movies such as Cinderella that featured young, beautiful characters and appearance-focused comments, such as Gaston telling Belle in Beauty and the Beast that she is "the most beautiful girl in town, and that makes her the best." The second group watched parts of animated children's movies such as Dora the Explorer and Clifford the Big Red Dog that do not contain any appearance-related messages....In a room that featured a dress-up rack of costumes, a vanity, dinosaurs and more, children then spent about the same amount of time on appearance-related play activities, such as brushing their hair at the vanity, regardless of which set of movies they watched.

The good (sort of) news? The kids weren't more affected by a film featuring a svelte princess, like the Princess and the Frog, than by anything else. So limiting princesses and Barbies alone isn't going to do the trick; indeed, they seemed to feel equally bad regardless of what they watched. And one can't help but wonder if conversations like those the children engaged in for this study weren't one more confirmation that this stuff is Important.

I'm glad, though, that this study got the princesses off the hook a little: it's always seemed to me too easy to blame Snow White when the pretty princesses are a constant that pre-dated the dramatic upswing in young kids' eating disorders. Do such films promote a conventional standard of beauty and equate it with virtue? Sure. But it's this in combination with Bratz, Pussycat Dolls, Obese and Pregnant and Man Versus Food that conspires to create a world of what the Atlantic aptly termed "moral panic." Ironically, if the problem with fairy tales is that beauty was "good," we need to realize that obesity has become even more resoundingly "bad," nowadays, and if kids pick up on one, they'll pick up on the other.

'Too Fat To Be A Princess?' [Eurekalert]
Bikini Babies [Recipes Today]
America's Moral Panic Over Obesity

Earlier: Girls And Body Image: It's Apparently Worse Than Ever

Researchers asked 5,893 people, 54% of them women, to choose their present body size and ideal body size from a chart depicting nine human figures. The discrepancy between the two was used to measure how satisfied the participants were with their bodies. Two to three percent of the subjects overall chose an "above-normal" size as ideal, but close to one in 10 obese people apparently felt that their size was normal and healthy.

However, say the study authors, 35% of obese people who felt this way had high blood pressure, 15% and high cholesterol, and 14% had diabetes. Time to freak out, right? If these people only knew they needed to lose weight, they'd be so much healthier. Except according to lead study author Tiffany Powell, these problems occurred at comparable rate in obese people who did feel like they were too fat. They just occurred along with a "healthy" dose of guilt.

The study did reveal a few benefits of "knowing you need to lose weight." Those who wanted to drop pounds were more likely to have seen a doctor in the past year (and yearly checkups are smart for many people), and also more likely to exercise. But since neither exercise nor going to the doctor has been proven to result in weight loss, isn't it time we stopped using fat-shaming to force people into these behaviors? Couldn't we find some way of promoting a healthy lifestyle that doesn't start with classifying people as abnormal?

Some Obese People Perceive Body Size As OK, Dismiss Need To Lose Weight [EurekAlert]

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

Maybe, sorta. Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner profiles a group of human guinea pigs whose feed seems a lot less spartan than the Quorn-and-asparagus regime Julian Dibbell described in his 2006 New York article. Participants in the Calerie (Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy) study are supposed to reduce their caloric intake by 25% for two years, so researchers can measure the effects on the aging process. But they still get to eat potatoes, pasta, even Häagen-Dazs. And most of the subjects say their biggest problem isn't hunger, but the fact that counting and reporting calories is a pain in the ass.

Then again, Gertner talks to Jeffrey Peipert, who occasionally woke up in the middle of the night because he was so hungry, and couldn't go back to sleep without a bowl of cereal. These incidents, researchers determined, were caused by his active lifestyle, and their advice was just to move around less. While calorie restriction is apparently better at increasing lifespan than exercise, it seems a lot less entertaining. And, of course, a few people had to drop out of the study because of anemia or bone loss. Everybody needed sweaters. People deemed prone to eating disorders were excluded at the outset.

This exclusion, along with a number of others, may point to the biggest problem with the Calerie study. Not only do participants have to be of "normal" weight and free of any tendency towards anorexia or bulimia, they also have to be the kind of people who are willing to restrict their diet for two years for only a few thousand dollars. In fact, those who were motivated by even this small amount of money were excluded from the study, so basically everyone participating had to kind of want to eat way less for a long time, which sets them apart from most people.

One investigator in the study, John Holloszy, says 99% of people aren't capable of calorie restriction. He also thinks the participants will quit doing it when their two years are up. And neuropsychologist Robert Krikorian says, "I don't think humans are designed to pay attention to how much they eat." Participants in the Calerie study have enviable blood pressure and cholesterol readings, and other research indicates that if they stick with it, they may enjoy longer live. But they're also the kind of people who say things like, "I've never gotten so much pleasure in my life. I'm wearing a medium shirt now. I haven't worn a medium since high school." Some people may get more pleasure out of not having to weight their potatoes.

Back in 2006, the media cliché about calorie restriction was that it was so unpleasant it wasn't worth the added lifespan. The Calerie study may be less extreme than what hard-core, arugula-counting restricters do, but its participants' diets are still pretty rigid and circumscribed. And if anything, this now seems unfashionable. Three years ago, eating next to nothing might have seemed like a cool rebellion against excess. But now excess is harder to come by, and eating like a pauper seems a lot less hip if you are one. Not only that, but the obesity crisis has been so variously trumpeted and debunked that the Times Magazine's whole Food Issue (tagline: "putting America's diet on a diet") seems a little dated. Diet is such a dirty word now that even Weight Watchers won't admit it is one, and something as, well, restrictive as calorie restriction just seems pretty passé.

This doesn't mean America isn't still obsessed with weight and weight loss, just that the buzzwords now tend to be things like "sustainable" and "lifestyle changes." And while one calorie restricter claims the practice just "teaches you how to eat normal foods but make better choices," it's pretty clear that it's not sustainable for most people. Which might be fine. American food culture is still pretty fucked up, but in the last couple of years there has been a little more emphasis on eating food you enjoy with people you like. This may not increase anyone's lifespan, but compared to a lot of recent diet fads, it seems pretty healthy, not to mention fun. Holloszy says hard-core calorie restricters are motivated by "fear of death," but someone once told me that people fear death more if they're not enjoying their lives. And except for a select few, logging every calorie just isn't enjoyable.

The Calorie-Restriction Experiment [New York Times Magazine]

Previous studies have shown that gay men were at higher risk of eating disorders than straight ones, but this is one of the first studies to look at gay teens. Interestingly, the study divided its population into homosexual, bisexual, "mostly heterosexual," and heterosexual groups, showing a little more acceptance of orientation fluidity than one might expect from mainstream science. Lead researcher S. Bryn Austin and her colleagues found that lesbian, bisexual, and mostly heterosexual girls were about twice as likely as heterosexual ones to report binge-eating. Bisexual and mostly heterosexual girls (though apparently not lesbians) were also more likely to purge. Homosexual boys were seven times more likely to binge and 12 times more likely to purge (behaviors Frank Bruni, pictured, wrote about in his book Born Round) than straight boys, with bisexual and mostly heterosexual boys facing a lesser but still elevated risk.

Austin said, "We know that gay, lesbian, and other sexual-minority kids are often under a lot of pressure," and that they can be "treated like outsiders" at home and at school. She added,

This kind of isolation and victimization can take its toll on a young person, and one of ways it can play out is in vulnerability to eating-disorder symptoms and a host of other stress-related health problems.

Unfortunately, one of the ways eating-disordered teens may try to combat isolation is through pro-eating-disorder websites, which may seem to offer support and understanding that kids aren't getting elsewhere. Last year France tried to ban "inciting thinness," and now Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to more closely monitor the effect of pro-ana and pro-mia sites. Professor Ulrike Schmidt, chair of the College's Eating Disorders Section, says,

This is not a rare problem; it affects a significant number of schoolchildren. Studies have shown that girls who looked at these sites had low self-esteem, felt bad about their bodies and were miserable. Patients in eating disorders units spend up to 20 hours a week looking at [the websites]. There is a vulnerable group of women who are being sucked into this.

Schmidt's message is important, but it leaves out boys — it now seems that gay boys and men who suffer from eating disorders are marginalized both by a heteronormative society and by a culture of eating disorder treatment and prevention that focuses mainly on women. The Royal College of Psychiatrists doesn't advocate banning pro-eating disorder websites (Schmidt says, "These sites are probably set up by people who are themselves vulnerable. Criminalising the problem would not be helpful."), but rather asks the Council for Child Internet Safety to "specifically target pro-eating disorder websites in its monitoring and educational activities." Perhaps gay, bisexual, and, as Austin says, "other sexual-minority kids" could use specific outreach and education as well.

Gay, Bisexual Teens At Risk For Eating Disorders [Reuters]
Doctors Demand Action On Anorexia Websites [Independent]

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]

According to a study of British women's measurements interpreted with great nuance and restraint by the Daily Mail's Victoria Lambert, women are bigger in almost every dimension than they were the last time such a study was conducted, in 1951. With measurements of 37-27-39, the average British woman in 1951 "was the classic hour-glass, not far off Hollywood standards." But now "our hour-glass has rolled into a barrel-like 38-34-40." Says Lambert, "our vital statistics don't just carry implications for how we look - they are crucial to our health."

She goes on to write pretty much the obesity-panic piece you might expect. Despite the fact that average BMI has actually gone down in Britain over the past 60 years, and is still in the healthy range, British ladies still need to worry about those "vital statistics" because their waists are now unhealthily large. Even an increase in foot size is apparently cause for concern: "It's definitely a bad thing if the reason is weight related because it can lead to increased pressure exerted through the foot and lower limbs and back, causing additional wear and tear on joints and soft tissues such as ligaments." And of course, men don't make passes at girls who look like barrels — British hips haven't kept pace with waists, and "wide hips have been traditionally seen as attractive to men because they denote fertility."

British women's life expectancy has risen by 10 years since the 50s, but Lambert's message is clear: the average female body is unhealthy, and unattractive. By all rights, it seems, women should be filled with self-loathing. But at least according to her fellow Daily Mail writer Lucy Taylor, women today are totally full of themselves! Taylor uses a painfully oft-cited US study on narcissism as a jumping-off point to make some questionable claims about women and their egos. Did you know that narcissism has grown by 67% in the last 20 years, "mainly among women?" Or that a full 10% of the population now "suffers from narcissism as a full-blown personality disorder?" Apparently all this self-regard is bad for women, because we actually kind of suck, and will never get a man if we don't acknowledge it.

Dating service founder Margot Medhurt tells Taylor she's seeing more and more women who don't understand where they fall in "the eligibility stakes." She says,

They tend to be in their 30s, and there is a wide discrepancy between how they perceive themselves and how others see them. They are often very plain, but see themselves as being absolutely fabulous, exceptional people. They invariably reject every guy's profile I send them. But if a guy rejects their profile, there is all hell to pay. There is disbelief. They are really saying: "I'm so fabulous. How dare he turn me down?"

Men are noticing this "phenomenon" too. Says management consultant David Baxter, who admirably admits that "he's not perfect, but is told he's an eligible and pleasant guy with a lot to offer," says,

I've had three successive dates recently with ladies in the late 30s to early 40s age bracket that have left me dumbfounded. [...] You sensed that they absolutely worshipped themselves, though none of them was drop-dead gorgeous or had amazing personalities, jobs or anything else to set them apart and elevate themselves into some superior position. I also thought it was quite telling that none of them had ever been married, engaged or had recently - or perhaps ever - been in a long-term relationship. I got the feeling that these women were living in a Sex And The City-inspired fantasy world. I also sensed that nobody would ever be good enough for them.

If you're a woman, being overcritical or getting angry at rejection makes you narcissistic. But if you're a guy, it makes you a sociologist. Taylor lets "professional golfer-turned-financial consultant" Neil Hay close out her article. He says,

I spent three hours on a date with one woman. I thought we got on brilliantly, but then she said she didn't want to meet again. This has happened a few times. It makes me think that if you don't live up to their perfect fantasy, then that's it. It's game over before you've even had any chance to begin to get to know each other. It does dent your confidence. I'm left thinking either that there's something wrong with me or that I'll just never be whatever it is that these women are looking for.

It's tough to be a man these days, forced to live up to impossible standards. If only there were some way to make women feel a little worse about themselves, so they'd recognize how plain they were and stop turning down perfectly good blokes. Perhaps some sort of study that scrutinized every aspect of their bodies, all the way down to the feet, and pronounced their very measurements dangerous and unappealing. Then again, those deluded women would probably just ignore it — as Hay says, "it's easier for them to believe their own myths than to face reality - that they are completely ordinary."

How Women's Bodies Have Been Transformed In The Past 60 Years... With Huge Implications For Our Health [Daily Mail]
The Ego Epidemic: How More And More Of Us Women Have An Inflated Sense Of Our Own Fabulousness [Daily Mail]

If you've ever read a word I've written, you've already guessed that I come down on the side of the second argument. Which is basically this, in the words of Jeffrey Friedman, who wrote the op-ed:

The heritability of obesity — a measure of how much obesity is due to genes versus other factors — is about the same as the heritability of height. It's even greater than that for many conditions that people accept as having a genetic basis, including heart disease, breast cancer, and schizophrenia. As nutrition has improved over the past 200 years, Americans have gotten much taller on average, but it is still the genes that determine who is tall or short today. The same is true for weight. Although our high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle contributes to the approximately 10-pound average weight gain of Americans compared to the recent past, some people are more severely affected by this lifestyle than others. That's because they have inherited genes that increase their predisposition for accumulating body fat. Our modern lifestyle is thus a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the high prevalence of obesity in our population.

But Friedman had already pissed me off before he even got to that. In an apparent effort to prove that he's a Serious Person and not just some delusional fatass with an axe to grind (hi!), he acknowledges that obesity is a risk factor for a bunch of diseases, claiming it has "consequences that include diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, and that cause nearly 300,000 deaths in the United States each year."

Y'ALL, THE 300,000 DEATHS THING WAS DEBUNKED IN 2005. By the CDC, not delusional fatties with axes to grind. Same folks who came up with the original stat, in fact. They just fucked up the first time:

According to the [second] study, obesity and extreme obesity cause about 112,000 deaths per year, but being overweight was found to prevent about 86,000 deaths annually. Based on those figures, the net U.S. death toll from excess weight is 26,000 per year. By contrast, researchers found that being underweight results in 34,000 deaths per year.

Emphasis added.

Seeing that error — four years after that crucial revision came out — automatically makes me think I can't take the person talking seriously. Which sucks, because in this particular debate, Friedman is, generally speaking, the one dealing in reality.

Ken Thorpe and Christine Ferguson, on the other hand, get it wrong from the headline: "We Have the Power to Change Our Weight" (And no, they probably didn't write the headline, but they wrote the op-ed that made that a logical summary.) Sure, most of us have the power to change our weight, temporarily. I was a champion dieter for a while there, losing 65 lbs. the first time I got serious about it, and 45 lbs. the second time. Haters will go to their graves believing that's because I gave up, both times, and started mainlining powdered sugar delivered to me via an elaborate pulley system constructed so I'd never have to leave the couch, but those who have even a passing interest in facts might consider looking at the research on long-term weight loss. Such as the 2007 UCLA study (PDF), in which researchers reviewed 31 earlier studies and concluded that on the whole:

[D]ieters were not able to maintain their weight losses in the long term, and there was not consistent evidence that the diets resulted in significant improvements in their health. In the few cases in which health benefits were shown, it could not be demonstrated that they resulted from dieting, rather than exercise, medication use, or other lifestyle changes. It appears that dieters who manage to sustain a weight loss are the rare exception, rather than the rule. Dieters who gain back more weight than they lost may very well be the norm, rather than an unlucky minority."

The part about not being able to identify which variables actually produced the (few demonstrated) health benefits is crucial. Thorpe and Ferguson write, "We know that as little as a 5 to 10 percent weight loss can significantly reduce risk factors for chronic disease, including lower blood-glucose levels, lower blood pressure, and reduced cholesterol levels," but they don't question how those studies proved it was the weight loss itself, as opposed to the lifestyle interventions that elicited it. In fact, other research suggests that a Health at Every Size approach — focusing on intuitive eating, exercise and (wonder of wonders) self-acceptance, all without regard to weight loss — delivers better health outcomes than dieting. No one disputes that a steady diet of junk food and a sedentary lifestyle are bad for your health. But A) Many fat people can and do eat balanced diets and exercise just as much as thin people without losing weight — that's where the whole genetic thing comes in — and B) plenty of thin people suffer from health issues related to lifestyle choices, but the default assumption is that they're "taking care of themselves" because they don't happen to have fat genes. Eating a balanced diet and exercising can be beneficial for all of us, but they will not cause permanent weight loss in most of us — and there's no real proof that we'd be markedly better off if they did. (Even if being thinner is theoretically advantageous — and again, "overweight" people win the longevity game — we must keep in mind that a fat person who's lost weight is not the same thing as a person who's always been thin.)

Friedman gets this mostly right:

There is no evidence that obese individuals need to "normalize" their weight to reap health benefits. In fact, it is not even clear whether there are enduring health benefits to weight loss among obese individuals who do not suffer from diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, or liver disease.

But then, once again, he blows it, basically reiterating Thorpe and Ferguson's point about losing 5-10% of your weight:

What is known is that the obese who do suffer from these conditions receive a disproportionately large benefit from even modest weight loss, which together with exercise and a heart-healthy diet can go a long way toward improving health.

Apart from what I've already said about the variables involved in weight loss and the fact that permanent weight loss is a pipe dream for all but a few statistical outliers, here's the obvious question about the "just lose 5-10%" thing: What happens when I do that and am still fat? Losing 10% of my weight (+/- 19 lbs.*) would leave me squarely in the obese category, not improving their statistics one little bit — so even if my health improved, would anyone actually quit bitching about the "obesity crisis"? Oh, but wait — enough people are on the cusp of BMI categories that if we all lost 5-10% of our weight, we'd see a dramatic drop in "obesity" and "overweight" population-wide, at which point we could all congratulate ourselves on no longer being a nation of embarrassing fatties who are going to die younger than our parents, even though individual losses would generally be quite small. The important thing is, on paper, that would look fantastic. At least until everyone gained it back.

Thorpe and Ferguson argue for many of the public health interventions I addressed in an inexplicably controversial post last week, and as always, I'm in favor of several of them, e.g., "lowering copays on preventive care... reinstating physical education and requiring school lunches to meet nutritional standards... ensuring that all Americans have access to a place to be physically active and purchase healthy foods." What I'm not in favor of are undefined "programs to help overweight Americans" (unless they mean programs to help us overcome the ill effects of relentless fat-hatred, see above about diets not working) and "tax credits to employers that offer wellness benefits and encourage health inside and outside of the workplace" — which sound fairly unobjectionable until you consider that this is what leads to demeaning "Biggest Loser" competitions at the office, employers badgering their workers to join specific commercial weight loss programs, and hysteria about a plate of cupcakes in the break room. If we're talking about tax credits for offering employees free or discounted gym memberships — and then leaving them the hell alone to work out as they please, or not — then great, have at it. But that's never all we're talking about. We're talking about diet culture invading the workplace even more than it already has, and a whole new layer of shame for fat people who aren't interested in joining Weight Watchers — probably because they've already been on it multiple times, and gained back everything they lost.

"[T]o win the fight against obesity," Thorpe and Ferguson write, "all of us need to be individually committed." Really? All of us? What role do people who aren't fat play in this, exactly? If you mean they need to be constantly reminding fat people that we're disgusting, unlovable, smelly, lazy, undisciplined, and above all, unhealtheeeeeee, then as a whole, they're doing a bang-up job already. (This does not, of course, apply to all thin people. Some of my best friends are thin!) So I'm pretty sure what you mean is "Fat people need to be individually committed" to fighting their own bodies. To which I'd point out: Most of us already are. Who the fuck do you think is keeping the $50 billion dollar weight loss industry afloat? Magic sprites?

Oh, and about that. You know that population-wide weight gain that happened in the last 30 years? (Friedman says the average is about 10 lbs.; I've heard anywhere from 7 to 20). Check out that last sentence from the UCLA researchers I quoted above: "Dieters who gain back more weight than they lost may very well be the norm, rather than an unlucky minority." Not only does dieting not work, but a lot of times it makes you fatter. And the weight loss industry has been growing right along with our asses all that time. Is that the only reason for the gain over that period? I have no idea, probably not. But it's something obesity alarmists never, ever factor in, even though common sense suggests somebody really ought to explore that correlation.

If you're a regular reader of mine and you feel like you've heard everything in this post a million, billion times, you have my apologies. I am so sick of making these arguments, I cannot even tell you. Unfortunately, people can't even get it through their heads that diets don't work — despite both a mountain of scientific evidence to that effect and a friggin' "results not typical" disclaimer on every ad — let alone that it is possible to be fat and healthy, that it is equally possible to be thin and unhealthy, that correlation does not equal causation, that there is strong evidence that obesity is highly heritable, that calories in/calories out is a ludicrously simplistic equation unless you think human beings are Bunsen burners, and that, above all, fat people are human beings. Which means we can hear you. And our continued fatness is not a personal attack on you or our country or our healthcare system, but the result of complex factors science is only beginning to understand, and in very many cases, something we have already tried our damnedest to change.

Or, as Friedman puts it:

While research into the biologic system that controls weight is moving toward the development of effective therapies for obesity, we are not there yet. In the meantime we must change our attitudes toward the obese and focus less on appearance and more on health. In their efforts to lose weight they are fighting against their biology. But they also are fighting against a society that wrongly believes that obesity is a personal failing.

I've stopped fighting against my biology, but I am still fighting against that society every goddamned day. And I don't just mean the trolls who swing by to tell me things like,

My fear that a woman with the legal power to take half of my possessions might some day become so fat and sexually unappealing that I'd sooner cut my own penis off than have sex with the manatee that used to be my wife is unfortunately all too common and blogs like this one that dangerously suggest to naive future fatties that it's ok are only leading your victims down the primrose path to a battle they can't win."

Or:

I personally dislike most fat people for their lack of will power or mental strength. If fat people would just have a strong mental will power, then they would either be able to deal with the jokes, or become skinny by actually sticking to their dieting and exercise plan without giving up.

Or:

FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS FATTIES ARE GROSS

(I truncated that one. By a lot.)

It's not just those shitheads, who are incredibly easy to dismiss. I'm talking about the people who swear they are really only concerned for my health, without ever having heard of Health at Every Size. The people who write screeds on how much obesity (theoretically) costs our healthcare system, and exhort individuals to fix that problem, without acknowledging that pile of research showing permanent weight loss is virtually impossible. I'm talking about the people who try to sell good ideas for improving public health as cures for childhood obesity, making fat kids feel like enemies of their entire communities, and yet not making them noticeably thinner. I'm talking even about people like Friedman, who are starting to get the message about the basic intractability of fat — and kudos to him for spreading it — but still repeat debunked, alarmist statistics in an effort to boost their own credibility before daring to suggest that fat people might not be a bunch of lazy slobs. I'm talking about everyone who's ever said, "I don't think we should treat fat people badly, but..."

Because that right there? Is treating fat people badly. It's still treating us as a problem to be solved, not as human beings.

To win the fight against fat hatred and discrimination, we all must be individually committed.

*I've said many times that I weigh around 200 lbs., though I haven't weighed myself since I jumped on a dog scale at the vet's office to prove a point 2 years ago. I weighed 185 then, after which I gained a pants size, which probably represents 10-15 lbs. But as it happens, I have recently dropped a pants size, so am probably somewhere around 190. Yes, the Queen of the Fat-o-Sphere has lost weight! And because I love you, I will share the secret of how I did it: I went off the pill.

The Real Cause of Obesity [Newsweek]
We Have the Power to Change Our Weight[Newsweek]

More precisely, people with thighs more than 60 cm (23.6 inches) in circumference have a lower death and cardiovascular disease risk than those with skinnier legs. This result held true even after scientists controlled for total body fat, smoking, and blood pressure. The study authors say people with small thighs may have low muscle mass, which can contribute to insulin resistance and thus to heart disease.

Somewhat confusingly, one write-up of the study says researchers measured "fat-free thigh circumference," and it's unclear if cellulite counts toward the magic 60 cm total. And while a nurse at the British Heart Foundation says, "There is insufficient evidence to confirm that a low thigh circumference affects a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease," the BBC goes ahead and offers some quick tips to "increase your thighs." It would be nice if this finding reduced pressure on women to be tiny and to work out without being "too muscular," but the accompanying picture of a lady in underwear (without big thighs) isn't exactly hopeful.

A similarly mixed blessing is a survey (by research giants Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com), in which 85% of men agreed that, "A couple of extra pounds are fine by me." We're not sure if "a couple of extra pounds" means "as long as you're not fat or anything," but it's nice to be reminded that most men don't expect women to look like the cover of Self magazine.

Not so nice: the fact that 80% of men supposedly think overweight women are "less bitchy" than thin ones. First of all, this means the survey asked them this question, which is gross. Second, way to enforce the notion that men should date fat girls because they're so nice, and have "good personalities" — you know, because they were forced by their physical hideousness to develop other qualities. This is related to the idea that guys should seek out girls who were "ugly in high school," because they won't be full of themselves. Basically, the stereotype of the "nice" fat/ugly/ex-ugly chick implies that women who have or had low self-esteem make better partners because they're willing to take more shit and less likely to dish it out. Oh, and the survey question implicitly disses "skinny bitches" too. Thanks dating-ologists!

The survey also found that 90% of women think "men find extra weight unattractive." Says Shira Zwebner, "relationship adviser" for Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com, "Unfortunately, these types of misconceptions between the sexes are extremely common, and result in a lot of missed dating and relationship opportunities." So don't miss an opportunity! Join our dating sites today! Or, you know, love your body, and don't try to make it smaller based on what you think men want — or bigger based on science that has yet to be confirmed.

Large Thighs 'May Protect Heart' [BBC]
Large Thighs Protect Against Heart Disease And Early Death [EurekAlert]
Men: Heavier Women Better In Bed [UPI.com]

Although Krieger, who tells his story in the New York Times magazine, has never worried much about his weight, their comments make him understandably self-conscious.

After borrowing a Winnie-the-Pooh scale from a neighbor under the pretext of weighing "something," I stood facing my bathroom's full-length mirror and mounted it. Above Pooh-san's serene, smiling face and the overflowing honey pot he held in his paws, the red digits on the scale's display climbed and flashed and finally settled. I was 21 pounds over my "official" weight.

But contrary to what he thinks, this isn't the tragedy - or the grievous insult - he's imagined. A friend clues him in.

"Oh, yeah," he said, "when I first came to Japan I couldn't believe how women teased me about being chubby, poking me and whatnot." But he said he figured out that it wasn't a put-down or an insult but actually more of a playful thing. "When they say a man has gained weight, it implies he's got someone new in his life," he said. "Some woman is feeding him and making him feel comfortable enough to let himself go a little. It makes him look healthy, because he's happy."...My Japanese tutor later told me that there's even a term for this - shiawase butori, "happily plump." It took me a while to get used to the concept, but over the next few weeks I began to think of my augmentation not as fat but as the stateliness of a bon vivant who defiantly shows the world he can suck the marrow - and the fatty tuna - out of life without fretting about caloric content.

In some ways, this playful attitude towards weight seems counterintuitive in a culture that, in the last few years, has instituted government-mandated weight standards to combat the spread of "metabo," or "metabolic syndrome." Eating disorders are on the rise amidst young Japanese women and in general a western attitude towards weight has followed close on the heels of western beauty ideals - and western junk food. But does this acceptance of shiawase butori extend to both sexes? Would a woman comment on another woman's weight gain with the same levity? I'm really interested to know - because hereabouts, while a man's gut is perfectly acceptable (some would say, fashionable!) and a man's ego can, in the popular imgination, survive a jibe at his physique - such a thing would be absolutely verboten if addressed to a woman, an implicit condemnation. When we talked about the alleged "gut trend" in young men, readers were quick to point out that such a fad would never be sanctioned amongst women; is the dichotomy as stark here? Is this attitude indicative of healthy acceptance - or ingrained double-standards? This is a charming piece - but it leaves me wanting to know more of the story.

A Weighty Matter [NY Times]
Eating Disorders on the Increase in Asia [Dimensions]
Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions [NY Times]
Changes In The Physiques Of Japanese Women [My Nippon]
Metabolic Syndrome May Affect 1 In 3 Japanese [WhatJapanThinks]

Earlier: New Trend: The Gut

The study looked at fifth-graders, whom UPI.com calls "part of the age group increasingly known as tweens by those in media marketing" (you don't say!). 7.3% of girls and 7.8% of boys disagreed with the statement "I like the way I look." For girls, the higher their BMI, the more likely they were to be dissatisfied — 5.7% of "normal weight" girls disliked the way they look, compared to 10.4% of overweight girls and 13.1% of obese ones. Boys' body satisfaction was a little more complicated — boys with the lowest and highest BMI tended to feel more dissatisfied than those in the middle. Study author Bryn Austin says, "Poor body satisfaction among males with a low BMI may reflect the cultural ideal for males to attain both muscularity and leanness."

Interestingly, girls whose parents had low levels of education, and those who lived in rural areas, were more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies — even after researchers controlled for BMI. Austin speculates "that appearance-related pressures may be higher within rural areas, or perhaps that girls in urban areas benefit from existing programs that may protect against decrements in body satisfaction." This goes against the conventional notion of eating disorders and pressure to be thin as urban, middle- and upper-class problems, faced by white girls at prep schools and colleges. Given that urbanites sometimes subscribe to the stereotype that rural people are fat and eat poorly, it's possible that girls in rural areas feel extra pressure not to conform to this stereotype. Whatever the case, it's important to note that body dissatisfaction isn't just a problem for fashion-obsessed women in LA and New York. It hits young girls far from media hubs as well — and, it seems, it hits them harder.

10- And 11-year-olds Feel Pressure To Have A Perfect Body [ScienceDaily]
'Tweens' Feel Pressure For Perfect Bodies [UPI.com]
As Early As Age 10, Kids Feel Pressure To Have A "Perfect Body" [Time]