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]

Though anorexia and bulimia are already in the APA's diagnostic manual, with proper descriptions, diagnostic criteria, and potential treatment options, binge eating, the process of consuming large amounts of food in a compulsive manner without purging, is often lumped under the vague "ED-NOS" or "eating disorder not otherwise specified," a diagnosis given to those who display symptoms of disordered eating but don't fit the standard eating disorder diagnostic criteria.

As Melissa Healy of the Times writes, "In light of new research and a seemingly growing population of patients who fit the broad description of binge eaters, psychiatrists must decide whether "binge eating disorder" should stand alongside anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa as a separate psychiatric condition — identifiable by a distinct set of symptoms, a recognizable pattern of progression and a track record of response to certain treatments." Supporters of this inclusion feel it would help sufferers of binge eating disorder to get proper treatment, while critics, Healy notes, fear that the diagnosis would be overused and given to people who aren't necessarily suffering from compulsive overeating as much as a "lack of willpower."

"In short," Healy writes, "the specialists involved in the deliberations are picking their way through a minefield of controversies: the causes of a national obesity crisis, personal responsibility versus the medicalization of risky behavior, the nature of addiction and compulsion, even the respective roles of nature and nurture in shaping who we are and how we behave."

As someone who has been fortunate enough to receive proper treatment for an eating disorder, I find it somewhat troublesome that the concern over including binge eating disorder in the DSM comes back to worrying about doctors over prescribing medication or patients who rely on the diagnosis as some excuse to continue engaging in unhealthy behavior. As anyone who has been through a period of binge eating can tell you, binges are often terrifying and filled with a great deal of shame and sadness. This is not about just wanting to hang out and eat four boxes of cereal; the mental and emotional processes that go into overeating are much more complex than that.

I was able to get proper treatment because my eating disorder was clearly defined in the DSM, and the treatment plan for someone struggling with my symptoms was laid out and continues to be perfected by researchers dedicating to studying the disorder. Will binge eating disorder be overdiagnosed if it is included? Perhaps. But that's a phenomenon that occurs on every end of the mental illness spectrum, and it rings a bit false to blame those who are struggling for the psychiatric community's tendency (and big pharma's push) to write a prescription for those who might not need it. As they always told us in the hospital: it's never about the food, and it's never about the weight. It's the behaviors that need exploring, the behaviors that need to be treated. If including binge eating disorder in the DSM ensures that proper research, treatment, and understanding is given to those struggling with the behaviors, it might make all the difference in the world.

Is Binge Eating A Psychiatric Disorder? [LATimes]

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]

Rubaum-Keller begins by recapping the recent Ralph Lauren PhotoShop scandal and noting Karl Lagerfeld's "No one wants to see curvy women," comment before posing an image of an extremely thin model, whom she deems "neither healthy nor attractive," and asserting, based on nothing at all, that the only people who would find said image to be attractive would have to be gay men.

I don't doubt that Rubaum-Keller's intentions were good, and that she was attempting to call out the fashion industry for continuing to push super-thin images on the runways and in magazines, but that one line really bothers me, as claiming that "only gay men" are drawn to such an aesthetic is both ridiculous and insulting. Her argument is baseless and overlooks the fact there are millions of men and women, both gay and straight, who work in the fashion industry and promote and celebrate these images, as well as millions of people outside of the industry who admire and attempt to emulate said images in an attempt to fit into a somewhat impossible mold. To assume that only gay men would find super skinny models to be attractive (or that all gay men would find super-skinny models to be attractive at all) is absurd and unfair and based on nothing but sweeping generalizations.

The notion that super-thin automatically equals beautiful is an issue that the fashion industry may propagate, but it's also an issue that has long since been absorbed by the general public, and to undo this type of thinking is going to take more than changes on the runway and in the magazines, though continuing to push for those things may prove to be quite helpful in the end. To blame gay men for all that is wrong with the fashion industry and the public's struggle with weight and beauty, however, certainly isn't helping anyone.

Would You Buy An Overweight Barbie [Huffington Post]

"Why is Stephenie Meyers [sic] drawn so skinny in the upcoming Female Force biography of her life?" our reader asks, "The woman is plus sized for goodness sakes! Strange choice for a series meant to inspire girls." I'm not quite sure what to think of this, to be honest, as my first instinct was "well, yeah, but it's a comic book," followed quickly by, "but does that make it okay?"

There is something a bit off about presenting a comic book meant to celebrate women and inspire girls wherein the heroine's body is presented in a somewhat dishonest manner, and the message being sent does seem to be, on some level, that we even need to airbrush and PhotoShop cartoon images of famous women in order to make them presentable for audiences. Still, I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. What do you think, commenters?

Twilight's Stephenie Meyer Immortalized...In A Comic Book [LATimes]
Stephenie Meyer Reveals Details Of New Dream About Edward Cullen [Twilight Gear]
[Female Force]

Fast's Managing Director, Amanda May, tells BBC News that "There was a team change and we're glad we stuck to our vision. "The decision to use the fuller girls is something we have been talking about."

Fast had previously worked with model Hayley Morley, who wears a size 12, for a photography exhibition, titled "All Walks Beyond the Catwalk," which, according to the Guardian "features models aged 18 to 65, in sizes 8 to 16, wearing outfits created by young London designers," and "aims to change the narrow vision of beauty offered by the fashion world."

Part of Fast's motivation for putting larger models on the runway, aside from making a statement regarding the celebration of all body types, might have been to make a point about his own clothing line, which Alice Fisher of the Guardian notes has been criticized in the past for only appearing to be wearable by the super-thin. "It was interesting to be shown how wrong that is," Fisher admits, though she also says that the addition of larger models also served to point out how thin some of the other models were (and the need for different undergarments/better support bras for women with larger breasts, which apparently weren't provided.)

Still, though the casting might not have been a perfect success, it's encouraging to see designers like Fast stick it to both critics and naysayers within his own creative team in order to put a wider range of models on the runway. In doing so, he's able to showcase a variety of models—and, perhaps, attract a variety of customers, as well. As May notes, "There's this idea that only thin and slender women are able to wear Mark's dresses and he wanted to combat that. We wanted women to know they don't have to be a size zero to wear a Mark Fast dress - curvier women can look even better in one."

London Fashion Week: Catwalk Row Over Size 12 Models [Guardian]
Larger Models Spark Fashion Row [BBCNews]

"I read about that girl!" said the woman. "It's like, I think she was anorexic, and then she gained all her weight back, but she's still a top model." Crystal's agent, Gary Dakin at Ford, smiled wryly.

Crystal and the other two models in Lane Bryant's current campaign were at the store to film, viral-video-style, a snippet of a segment of them all trying on clothes and shopping. "Do you Twitter?" asked Gary, of a sales assistant. "Tell them to Twitter that the Lane Bryant girls are all at the store getting new clothes."

They did many takes of the trio stepping out of the dressing rooms in new ensembles, and styling each other's outfits: jumpsuits with belts, lingerie, and boyfriend blazers over long t-shirts. Crystal was on her way to catch a flight to Canada to shoot for Elle magazine, and of course the video shoot was behind schedule. So when it came time to talk, we jumped in a cab to her neighborhood, Williamsburg, so she could pack. Five o'clock traffic gave us plenty of time to talk — about her experiences starving herself to be a straight-size model for years, the point at which she broke down and had to enter recovery, and the amazing ignition of her plus career, all of which is chronicled in her new memoir, Hungry, co-written with Marjorie Ingall.

After returning to her natural size, Steven Meisel booked Crystal for American Vogue — the "Shape" issue, of course, because American Vogue still fails to feature plus models any other month of the year — and then, the famous photographer shot her for an editorial in Vogue Italia. Since then, she's worked with photographers like Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, Ruven Afanador, and Ellen Von Unwerth. She's walked the runway for Jean-Paul Gaultier, been in campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana, and she's made the covers of international editions of Elle and Harper's Bazaar.

A handful of other models have gone from disordered misery at straight-size, to self-acceptance and a new career at what the modeling industry calls plus. (Kate Dillon and Carré Otis are notable examples.) But perhaps most importantly, Crystal seems to be slowly helping the notoriously sizist industry change its ideas of what a plus size model can be: she rarely looks like the typical friendly, smiley, approachable stereotype of the larger model. Although she can look adorable styled as a pin-up, she's also booked for jobs that require a confrontational look, an overt sexuality, or a darker kind of beauty — it's probably no coincidence that she says she was a high school goth, and that when we met, she was wearing complicated black paper-bag-waisted pants, a deconstructed black t-shirt, and a cropped black vest with serious shoulder pads. (She particularly likes the designer Rick Owens.)

Crystal and I played a long round of model geography, locating mutual friends and photographers we'd worked with. We compared everything from childhood hobbies — collecting unopened Barbies, bottlecaps, and Star Wars figurines (her), collecting Kinder Surprise toys and not swapping stickers with the other girls at primary school (me) — to favorite kinds of chocolate ("I'm very particular about my chocolate," says Crystal) before we started bonding by swapping industry horror stories.

CR: But you know what: I made a decision to do this job. Nobody tied me to a treadmill.
JS: It's true, it's true.
CR: Or locked me in a closet, and forced me to not eat. Although — I got a contract to go to Japan, and I refused it, because this model told me, They locked me in a closet for three days…So I mean, I'm sure somewhere, maybe someone is being forced.
JS: Japan can be really brutal. I never worked there, because I heard similar kinds of horror stories. A friend actually told me that she got off the plane, and she was immediately booked on four jobs in one day. That was Day 1. She got to sleep for five hours, and then she was booked on another three jobs. That was Day 2. No client had any food, because they were all booking her in four-hour increments, with no obligation to even let her take a break. By Day 3, he'd had basically nothing to eat since arriving, and she collapsed on set. She had to be taken to hospital, and as the EMTs were putting an IV in her arm, the client was trying to stop the ambulance from leaving, and screaming into his cell phone to her agency, ‘I'm going to charge you for the time your model is wasting!' While she was being taken to hospital.
CR: That's so gross. That's incredible...I actually heard something similar the other day, I was at a studio and this client said, ‘Oh my God, I booked this girl for all this money, and she's outside crying into her phone. Ugh!' I'm thinking, well, why can't you guys shoot one half of the story now, and her part later? I mean, who knows. Maybe the girl is like, ‘I didn't get enough drugs and I'm freaking out.' That's the stupid reason — but maybe something serious happened? Maybe someone passed away? And this woman, as opposed to going up to this girl asking, ‘How are you?' she was screaming down the phone to her agency about how unprofessional the model was.
JS: And the poor girl has to walk back in there, try and recover from whatever personal crisis she's been dealing with, and—
CR: Because if you're a model, you're not a person, and you can't have feelings.
JS: It's true, it's true. Some people in the industry, it's just like they're missing an empathy chip.
CR: Right! Some people. Not everyone, there are good people.
JS: Oh, absolutely. Not everyone. But there's an attitude that's like — it's girls to order. You pick one out of the lineup, and you want that one, and you want her to do these poses, and you want her to wear these clothes.
CR: Right. And you're going to get her exactly how you want — like she's a doll. You have to remember there's a soul and a heart in that person, and feelings…

Crystal shares a story about a time on a shoot when, after telling the client that she was dealing with a personal crisis, instead of being understanding or thankful that Crystal had still turned up ready to work, the client promptly made a private situation into a huge deal, and loudly questioned her professionalism. Crystal complained to her agency, and they talked to the client. Which, in modeling, is exactly how the system is supposed to work: Model is treated unfairly, model contacts her representative, representative deals with situation appropriately.

JS: There are these people who are going to take some kind of an ‘In' that you gave them, and use it against you. As some kind of leverage.
CR: Definitely missing the empathy chip. Totally missing it. Did you have any experiences like that?
JS: I did, actually. I told a story of when, during the sad break-up of a long relationship, I went to work for the first time in a new market, having gained a few pounds above my fighting weight. And I got to Milan, and the agency was upset. Extremely upset. The woman — it wasn't my booker, my booker was great — but the woman who was in charge of doing all the measuring, was viciously unkind. You know, it's your first day, you're on your way home from the airport and they whip out the measuring tape to see where you're at.
CR: It's so uncomfortable.
JS: You're standing there naked in front of strangers. After stepping off your long flight, it's the first thing they want to do. And this woman said, ‘Ugh. These hips…' And I made the mistake of telling her the basics of what was going on. I made sure to say, But I am getting back on track! She just looked at me and said, ‘We had another girl who just broke up with her boyfriend, and she's not been eating at all. It's strange how some people react.'
CR: Are you serious?
JS: Yep. She was like, Shame you aren't one of those girls who stops eating during times of emotional strife! Because we'd really prefer that!
CR: We would prefer you to handle stress in a different way, Jenna! Can you manage to change your way of handling stress? And depression? Can you do that? Yeah, that makes sense. Wow.
JS: It was ridiculous. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I just wanted to cry.
CR: Of course…I can't even believe people are like that. I remember being on this shoot once, and this was when I had put on the weight, you know, after starving for so long.
Crystal is talking about the period when, while still working as a straight-size model, her metabolism slowed and she started, slowly, gaining weight even despite her extremely disordered eating and near-constant exercising. Crystal used to maintain two gym memberships to avoid detection as a compulsive exerciser.
CR: I was working on a commercial with this girl who was 6' tall, and there's me, who's 5'9". We wore the same bathing suit, and the stylist said...‘Oh honey, it's OK. You just have a fat ass!'
JS: No.
CR: That's what he said. So I go into the bathroom. I have a fucking fit in the bathroom. I am so angry, I'm like — steaming hot tears are pouring down my face. I'm like, this freaking guy, has just pushed my wrong button.
JS: Let me find your weak point and jam it in there!
CR: You just have a fat ass.
JS: That's disgusting. That he would say that. To anyone.
CR: I just remember being like, dying inside. And then I had to go be on camera in a bathing suit. I have never felt so disgusted with myself or with everyone around me.
JS: That's terrible.
CR: That rubbed me the worst. And that was right before I made the decision to stop what I was doing. I was like, What do you want? What do you want from me? I am doing everything I can. There's no food. There's exercise only. And I am still not the size that you want.
JS: I think it's — I think the relationship that you have with your own body is the thing that's most under threat when you're modeling.
CR: Yeah. Yeah!
JS: Because you're forced to analyze your body, as if from a third-person view.
CR: Totally. I love that you know that…You're an object.
JS: You objectify yourself...You know, when I was reading your book, I was just struck with the thought, How is it possible that your old agency never noticed that this girl had an eating disorder. They asked you — they told you — to lose a vast amount of weight. Like, 40% of your body weight.
CR: I don't think they really understood what they were asking. I want to think that they didn't really understand what they were asking me, a 14-year-old girl, to do. I mean, [when someone is asked to diet down to a certain measurement] nobody knows for sure how many pounds that will actually be.
JS: It's so fucking naïve though. And, Jesus Christ, when you're dealing with such young girls, irresponsible.
CR: I think so. They have certain requirements, and I don't think they want to think about how the girl meets those requirements…A lot of girls never come forward to their agencies and say, Hey, I starve myself to maintain the standards that you've set for me.
JS: Yeah.
CR: You know, they're not going to do that. I'm one of the only ones. And that's the reason I got a book.
JS: True. And congratulations.
CR: They're literally unaware. And that's, I think, what is the problem. People look away. They are unaware. Not only of themselves, but of the wider problems.
JS: It's true. Everyone sees some little piece of it, but nobody — yet — has stepped forward to take ownership of the problems in fashion in any kind of a holistic sense. I'm curious, how did that feel to walk in to your old agency — after taking that last set of Polaroids, and them still wanting you to lose weight after having an eating disorder for years — how did that feel to walk in there, and say —
CR: I literally had a breakdown. I was like Really, Really? I started to get hysterical. You think I should ‘Maybe go on a diet?' Oh, maybe! Maybe I should go on a diet! Let's see, what am I doing: Eight hours, twice this weekend. Sixteen hours in the gym. Maybe go on a diet! I am eating only vegetables. Maybe go on a diet! What do you think I should do, because I would like to know! Tell me what I should do that I am not doing already! Because I think I have gone above and beyond what any normal person would do for their job! Please, tell me!
JS: Jesus.
CR: Right! Tell me! So that's when my old agent said, Well, you have two options. That's when she understood — she realized, obviously I had done everything…So then she obviously offered me the two options: do commercial work, or do plus size modeling. And she wasn't too keen on the idea of plus size modeling. She was like, It's for old women.
JS: (Laughs)
CR: And I'm thinking, but I can be any size I want and still model!
JS: (Laughs)
CR: (Laughs) Do you know what I mean? Settle for commercial work and still starve myself to be this size?
JS: Plus, she was basically asking you to give up the dream of modeling. Which is that you might book that job with Steven Meisel.
CR: That was exactly it. That was 100% it. I didn't want to lose the dream. Because they would have never supported me in sending me to those people. And I would have been still miserable, in a horrible emotional state, still looking terrible, still starving, and for no dream…Choosing the unknown, but still the dream, was of course the option. I'm not going to lose my life. Wonderful! I know it sounds so casual to say that —
JS: But it was a real concern.
CR: It was a real concern! Where do you go from there? If I'd continued eating as I did even for another couple of months, I would have been in a hospital. I was really starting to be sick.

(Here, having arrived in Williamsburg and sat down outsider her building, we were interrupted by one of Crystal's elderly neighbors, who wanted to warn us not to sit on the curb, and also to tell us to eat at a certain Italian deli around the corner, where he once brought "someone from the Governor's office — because we know all them people." He talked for five minutes.)

JS: (Laughs) That's a real piece of Brooklyn right there.
CR: That's the guy on the block. And he tells me about the same restaurant every time. He'll say, ‘You know that restaurant over there…' And I'm like: I already know what you're going to say. Yes, I know the restaurant. And Armando says, ‘Hello.'
JS: (Laughs)
CR: It's sweet, but like, the twentieth time…
JS: Retirees, man. You move away from Florida [where Crystal grew up, before moving to Clinton, Miss.], and you think you're out of the woods.
CR: In Miami, it's more — you see these kids walking around at the malls. And they wear these really skimpy outfits, and I — cus I told you, I was the Goth girl, wearing my huge glow-in-the-dark JNCOs—
JS: When I read that part of your book, I felt such recognition. Because I used to make my own pants, in high school. I was after that whole silhouette of the road cone. My friends and I were all into sewing and just making whatever we could...we would make these pants with hems out to here.
CR: That's cool. That's really cool! I would have to say that I liked people like that in high school. Who would do interesting things, as opposed to — I guess ‘conforming,' and wearing the same old Gap sweater. Nothing wrong with Gap, Gap's great — but everyone having the same sweater? Really? You and I would have been great friends.
JS: I think so, too. One of the things I always loved about the fashion industry was that sense that it was all the high school misfits, put together in one room.
CR: Totally! Yeah. I actually feel, weirdly enough, now that I'm my normal size, that I'm actually more accepted now than I've ever been in my entire life.
JS: That's really heartening.
CR: It's true. Because, God, I was so uncomfortable in high school. I felt like I was — just a complete outsider…Now that I have accepted myself, and I'm in the fashion industry, I totally feel more accepted by others.
JS: What a wonderful irony!
CR: I think that I've found my place. That's why I'm so happy — the people I work with, my peers, are accepting of me. I came into the industry and I was pulled apart because of my weight, but now, I don't have to worry about such things anymore. I'm in the best, most magical place that can be. It's great.

And then she went inside to pack her suitcase and go to the airport.

Hungry: A Young Model's Story Of Appetite, Ambition, And The Ultimate Embrace Of Curves [Amazon]

But they dragged that shit OUT. So. First Tali had a little chat with Luke's devout Christian grandma, who, upon hearing that Tali was from Israel, was like O RLY? But turned out to be cool, because she is cool like that. (Clip above.)

Then Tali had to endure conversation with Luke's dad, who wanted to talk about Jews and Christians and "conflict." All of his body language said, You mean to tell me my son is thinking of marrying a durn furriner and a JEW for cryin out loud? Dad: Let the kids be!

Luke's dog Max did not get enough screen time.

Next Luke's family met Malissa. You could almost see the relief in their faces: She's blonde, all-American, probably not Jewish, yay!

For Luke's dad, it was love at first sight.

When Luke's dad found out Malissa likes beer, he was all, WOW. Then he proclaimed that she had "Irish eyes," which I guess is a huge compliment? Or maybe she smiles with her eyes? Smeyes?

Next the ladies met Luke's mom, who is sharp as a tack and can smell bullshit a mile away. She talked to both ladies about why they would even be on a show called More To Love, and while Tali said it was because she wanted to prove something about big girls and size doesn't matter and so on, Malissa said "on a whim." Malissa also told Luke's mom that she wasn't a chubby kid growing up and had only recently gained weight.

Luke's mom's diagnosis: Tali = awesome. Malissa? Silence.

Later Luke went for his last dinner with Tali and they got a little boozy and so forth and she was like, "I love you. I love you so much. I wanted to wait, but I couldn't." Luke said, "I love you too."

They made out.

Then Luke went for his last dinner with Malissa, who was all, "If you ask me to marry you, yes, yes, a thousand times yes." Luke was like, "You're such an amazing woman, yadda yadda." Then she said: "I love you." And he said: "I love you too, Malissa." SCANDAL!

Next Luke went ring shopping, and because the producers wanted to fill two hours, he looked at TWO RINGS…

…And described TWO women to the sales clerk who was just excited to be on tee vee.

Finally, in one last ring ceremony, Luke said to Malissa — and I'm paraphrasing here — you're a great gal, but see ya.

He asked Tali: "Will you marry me?" She said "Yes." The moral of the story is that a 300 pound Christian dude can date a whole bunch of fatties and end up with a hot stacked Israeli Jew. The end.

Oh wait: Tali would like to shout-out "the big girls out there."

Stay tuned for More To Love Too: There's Enough Of Me To Go Around — Malissa's Journey or whatever crap Fox will almost definitely cook up next.

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]

But duh, of course it was. Luke and chunky dudes like Jack Black, Kevin James and Seth Rogen always get the ladies, where as women are supposed to be THIN THIN THIN! Anyway: Malissa doesn't care how much Luke weighs. So Luke took her back to his hotel room…

…Where his bed was strewn with flowers.

And they made out.

I really enjoyed this Frankensoundbite of Malissa saying that she was shocked that a dolphin could support their weight. Kudos to someone in the editing room for cobbling those sounds together, because those words may have come out of Malissa's mouth, but not in that order.

The next day, Luke had a date with Tali, who, can I just note, is STUNNING?

Hot. Period.

Luke informed Tali that they'd be going snorkeling, and Tali, though she'd been in the Israeli Navy, informed him that she had a fear of water.

So Tali was scared.

And sad.

But she went snorkeling anyway!

And somehow Luke talking her through getting in the ocean made Tali fall in love with Luke and so on. And even though he's dating two other women, which Tali finds "annoying and disturbing"…

Luke took Tali back to his hotel room, where the bed was strewn with flowers.

And they made out.

Lastly, Luke went out with Mandy.

He told her he could picture himself being married to her. Then they made out on a bed strewn with flowers.

The next day, he eliminated her from the show.

Only two ladies left: Who will Luke propose to?

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]

But first: did anyone notice that this episode began with a close-up shot of waffles?
Just in case you forgot that fatties EAT.

There have been signs all along that Kristian is a bit cuckoo for cocoa puffs, but when she got an invitation to go dancing with Luke and Mandy and said, "Hopefully, Mandy falls and breaks an ankle…" that was more than a hint. I mean, the producers can edit footage to make you look kooky, or you can just talk to them and say wacko stuff. Your choice!

In addition, when Malissa got a one-on one date with Luke, Anna jokingly did a little "headdesk" move. Kristian took her "headdesk" a little farther, right down the path of self-abuse.

Malissa's date with Luke involved a helicopter ride to a vineyard, and then a ride on a bicycle built for two, which busted. Luke took responsibility for that, saying, "The fat kid broke the bike. I wish I could say it was the first time."

When Malissa came back from her date, she announced that she was in love with Luke. But Kristian wanted everyone to know that SHE was ALSO in love in Luke.

Luke invited Anna, Heather and Tali on a beach date, which annoyed Tali. She was like, great, "Another date in a bathing suit."

Of course, Luke had this to say: "I'm taking Heather, Tali and Anna to the beach. I feel anytime they can show off their bodies it's awesome; it kind of shows me how confident they are and that's a real turn-on for me." Yeah, it's awesome for you. When they got to the beach, none of the ladies took off their dresses, preferring to remain covered. But Luke went ahead and took off his shirt. And then asked the women to slather him with sunscreen.

At the mixer at the end of the episode, krazy Kristian did a krazy thing and told Luke that she loved him. In 3 languages. His response? "I'm flattered." Never a good sign. Then, as seen in the first clip, she was eliminated from the show. And she cried. A lot. And she also mentioned that she was "the biggest girl in the house," as if that had anything to do with it, and not the fact that she was delusional about her "love" with Luke.

Heather, who was also eliminated, also cried. But she had a better attitude about he experience on the show: she said she wore a bathing suit in front of people and didn't even care. And: "It's made me realize who I am despite what size I am."

Writer Neal Justin is trying to make the point that the rash of plus-size TV shows — Drop Dead Diva, Dance Your Ass Off; Ruby, More To Love and The Biggest Loser — are getting great ratings, and writes: "Fat is suddenly fabulous, at least on TV." Not in real life! In real life it's still totally gross, okay?

But what Justin wants to know is why. Why would people want to watch shows with plus-size characters? He writes, "Why this appetite for fuller-figured personalities?" But it almost sounds like: Why would you want to watch fatties?

You'd think, since according to one study, "adult obesity rates increased in 23 states last year," it's about American audiences seeing a reflection of themselves.

But Paul Telegdy, who oversees NBC's reality programming (including Biggest Loser) says: "I think it embraces a concern and a worry that keeps a lot of Americans awake at night." Hear that? You're lying awake at night, afraid to get fat, which makes you watch The Biggest Loser.

Yeah, I'll just go ahead and say: Bullshit! If you're watching these shows, it's because there's drama, and a human story. We love a personal story, and if it's personal, it's universal. Even if you've never been overweight, you can understand the range of human emotions showcased on these programs: Frustration, heartbreak, dedication, triumph. As Loser host Alison Sweeney says: "[The show] strikes at the heart of the human spirit.You see people being able to overcome this obstacle that seems insurmountable. Miracles can happen."

And honestly? It's not like plus-size, overweight, fat or large people all live sequestered from society. In many cases, they're your mom, your dad, your aunt, your uncle, you, me. It's not strange that people are interested in seeing plus-size people on TV; it's strange that up until now, plus-size people have been mostly ignored on TV.

A Growing Appetite for Plus-Size Personalities [WaPo]