Entries Tagged 'miscellaneous' ↓

Check out this cartoon at PhD Comics on how correlation and causation works. The confusion of which seems to be the cornerstone of any study even vaguely to do with fat people.

You may or may not know by now that Google Images now has over a million photographs from the LIFE magazine archives available for viewing. I love photograph archives and was all over that looking for some never-before-seen Margaret Bourke-White, and then I thought to look up ‘fat’ and ‘obese’ and the like.

Well, I came across what looks like a proto-NAAFA meeting, with a roomful of fat people rockin’ their awesome 1951 outfits. Search Google Images with <“fat people” source:LIFE> and wow. I’m fairly sure it’s not a fat camp promotional seminar, there are no skinny people in white coats up the front at the speakers’ table and none of the fat people looks terribly ashamed, but I don’t know for sure. I wonder what it was?

Check out this woman’s amazing hairdo! And dress!

I want to go out swing dancing and drinking cocktails with these women!

Who says there were approximately three fat people (Alfred Hitchcock and two Coney Island performers, obviously) before the “obeeeeesity crisis”?  Obviously there were enough in one city for interested parties to fill a ballroom for some kind of meeting.

And once again proving that weight loss is never particularly new or fresh reporting, there are also pictures of joyful successful dieters and appropriately-remorseful-looking chubby people at fat camps.

If you search for <obese source:LIFE> you get two pictures of singers at the Bower Follies, both of whom look kickass. A search for <obesity source:LIFE> gets you a lot of before-and-after pics on an “Obesity Sotry”, a few others of fat people going about their business, and some fat camp pics. Like this 1938 gorgeous babe, Jewel Mauclaire:

If  you click on the Related Images with that one, you get pictures of other women at the camp exercising in high heels, and “low calorie vegetable plates”.

Then there’s this awful one tagged “weight loss”. A woman is in hospital on a weight loss program, presumably a liquid diet where she gets to suck a disgusting-looking concotion out of a jug in her bedside fridge. But we don’t do that these days! All our modern weight loss diets are sensible lifestyle changes! Yeah, right. [OK, I was going to link there to one of those "medically-supervised very low calorie diets" which is all meal replacement shakes all the time, but decided against it. They don't need any more clicks and you don't need to see any more vile shakes.]

There’s thousands of other topics to look up the archives, and it’s a great internet timewaster research tool.

(ETA: Sorry, videos keep getting pulled from YouTube – I keep fixing the links though. Arrr.)

Check out the smokin’ hot Vânia Fernandes, Portugal’s representative at the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest, who’s made it into the final:

She faces stiff competiton from a variety of Euro-pop acts, including another Finnish metal band and the spectacularly awesome Pirates of the Sea from Latvia:

Just a note, prompted by a comment on another post.

I am in fact quite fat. I don’t know exactly what I weigh but it’s a lot. I estimate it at about 120kg (265lbs) (going by various clues), and I’m 155cm (5’1″) tall, making me about 60kg “overweight”. That’s a BMI of 49.9, well into Super Extra Morbidly Death-o-matic Obese category. I wear a size 26 on the bottom. I’m fat. I know what it’s like to nearly always be the fattest person in the room and have a thousand assumptions made about my life by strangers.

I’m fat and it’s ok with me. Sure, if there was a magic wand to wave and I would wake up in the morning all slender without any side effects, I might well do it, just to get some damned respect. But that’s not fixing the real problem, is it?

Here’s an interview with Gina Kolata (mp3, 23mb, 25 minutes long) from Kelly Brownell of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Brownell and the Center are by no means fat positive, but thankfully he just sits back and lets Kolata do most of the talking – which is mostly about the topics in Rethinking Thin, and a bit more on how studies are funded and the bias that produces.

At the end they both mention a bit about how perhaps public health policies should focus more on obesity prevention rather than trying to get everyone to lose weight. I’ve got a big fat tip for that: get rid of the commercial weight loss industry and educate people on how deliberate weight loss attempts will probably just make you fatter. Also, make Health at Every Size the public health policy and abandon the goddamn BMI fetish.

If you hurry you can still get a submission in for the Australia 2020 summit. The deadline is 5 pm, Wednesday 9 April, and you can submit one online – maximum 500 words, no minimum.

You can view the document outlining long-term health strategy discussion points, and of course obesity is right in there, being blamed for causing chronic disease and such. No distinction is made between risk factors and risks.

Interestingly, the chart they include to show obesity and overweight prevalence shows a rise of only a few percentage points per category between 1995 and 2005, hardly a hand-wringing crisis if you ask me.

They ask the question

Why are healthy lifestyle messages regarding exercise, diet, smoking and alcohol abuse not being heeded more?

and my submission will be pointing out that fat people getting abused on the street and laughed at in the gym and so on would be but one of may reasons fat people may not exercise, and maybe thin people don’t exercise much because they’re getting the message that thin always = healthy. Also that the diet industry isn’t actually helping anyone gain health. That health at every size, not focusing on the BMI or number on the scale, is a much more realistic model for individual and public health. And so on, however much I can pack into 500 words yet remain focused on Fat People Are People Too, You Nincompoops.

If you’re an Australian citizen or permanent resident, I strongly encourage you to write. It’s short notice, but every bit helps.

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town has tipped us off to the excellent book Australian Feminism: a companion on sale for just $20 at Clouston and Hall. Also at the ever-fabulous C&H are three books on fat rights and fat womens’ experiences:

• Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression edited by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco, $9.95
• Fat Girl: A true story by Judith Moore, $7.95
• The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life by Wendy Shankar, $12.95

They also have the updated double edition of Fat is a Feminist Issue 1 and 2 by Susie Orbach for $9.95, which is not quite size-acceptance – it’s mostly about compulsive overeating and Orbach’s method of overcoming it – but it does have some worthwhile observations in it.

I was in the store today and they have a pretty good range of feminist books – including one on women in the Renaissance, which I might also pick up later as I spent my book budget for this week on Australian Feminsim and Bodies Out of Bounds. If you’re in Australia, the postage is pretty cheap: buy now!

Whew, work’s finally slowed down enough for me to do something else! (And a big PHHHTHTHTHHTHBBT! to those people and diet books foisted upon me as a young ‘un that said fat people never ever get good jobs so lose weight now, fatty.)

Right. There’s an as-ever fantabulous post over at Shapely Prose on some of the more recent WTF? moments from the media on fat and diets.  The willingness of supposedly fully-grown, educated adults to engage in magical thinking and related ways never ceases to amaze.

Here’s another scientifical snacky-cake:

Heavy moms who shed pounds still have big babies.

“However, overweight women who lost weight before their second pregnancy did not eliminate their increased odds of having an oversized newborn. This, the study authors speculate, could mean that a woman’s excess pounds have a lasting effect on subsequent pregnancies, even after she’s slimmed down.”

Gee … do you think it could have anything to do with body size having a genetic component? If you’re naturally a large woman and you manage to lose some weight for a while, it doesn’t actually change your genes and therefore your chances of having a big or small baby. Unless you have doctors who live in magical fairy land, or something. I especially like that last bit. Your excess pounds could haunt you even after you’ve become slim! Zombie fat: you can never be rid of it even if you cut its head off.

As a side note, if you’re fat and pregnant or thinking about it, head on over to the wonderful Plus-size Pregnancy Website. Hell, even if you’re not planning on any kids, it’s a very informative read anyway, and has information useful for all fat people, such as how to get an accurate blood pressure reading. (It’s more than just cuff size.)

And as a special bonus, now not only do we have cats and dogs and horses and birds getting in on the obesity crisis action,  now it’s the turn of inanimate objects. Yes, the vehicle world is suffering from fat cars! Read all about it: Carmakers face obesity challenge. At first I thought it might be about car makers actually thinking about installing seat belts rated to more than 200lbs, but no. “Market forces have sparked an obesity epidemic in the car industry.”

A shiny new blog. It’s about fat acceptance and feminism, so if you are not a believer in fat acceptance or feminism, go find some wingnut blog to play in instead. I reserve the right to moderate and delete comments deemed unhelpful or spamlike.