Marilyn Wann
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A Percheron is a horse, of course. Of course!

4/25/2014

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by Marilyn Wann

The Associated Press thinks people need to know about a new trend at dude ranches: bigger horses for fat riders!

The AP article attempted to weight-shame big riders and big horses, but ranchers weren't going for it. (Seriously, the reporter snarked about the shoe size of draft horses compared to quarter-horses.) Ranchers they interviewed said they'd lose thousands of dollars every season if they failed to welcome and accommodate fat customers. 
Marilyn Wann horse Percheron weight accommodation
Horse. Clay with brown glaze by Marilyn Wann, 1st grader. Photo, styling, and miniature carrots by Ella Lou Wann, the artist's mother.
"I felt bad about telling people they're too big to ride," one rancher said. Draft horses may cost more to maintain, but they take hunters into the backcountry in the fall and pull wagons with tourists in winter, while smaller horses hang around the stable eating muesli and comparing mane-and-tail-care products.

Why is this newsworthy? Because people think…
  • Too many fat people! Now they want to do fun stuff? Outdoors? Where we have to see them?
  • Fat people enjoying nature…shudder. Nature is thin! Horses, people, trees, chipmunks…only thin stuff allowed.
  • Weight limits are normal, standard, familiar, desirable, ideal, and better. Sure, they're unnecessary, discriminatory, and less profitable, but that's okay!
  • Draft horses weigh too much, eat too much, need doctoring too much, and wear sizes that are too large. So do fat people. The needs of thin people (or thin horses) are a given. The basic needs of larger people (or horses)? Impossible!
  • If more fat people go on horse rides, ranchers will buy more draft horses. Where does it end? What's next? Fat people sitting in comfort on airplanes? At work? Next to us?
  • We like scarcity. It defines who counts as a person and who doesn't.

A student in the kinesiology class that I spoke to this week at SF State made a similar comment. I asked the students: Do we need a line between fat and thin? Is it doing anything for us that we would miss if it were gone? He said, "The line defines you and lets you know what you need to do to be better."

But what if the thin ideal is actually harmful to health, for both fat and thin people? What if social hierarchies are killing us?

While AP reporters were warning about fat people riding horses in Idaho, I came across two links that say even more — if that's possible — about health and human rights.

First, I saw the Bill Moyers website post about how deadly income inequality is. They interviewed Steven Berzuchka, a former ER doc and public health professor who's a source in a new book on on the subject. Some main points:
  • One in three U.S. deaths (more than 883,000) could be avoided each year if we had more equitable income distribution, according to a Harvard meta-analysis of existing data.
  • The U.S. has shorter average lifespan than 33 major countries . Our general health ranks alongside poor countries.
  • "The behaviors that really matter for our health include a range of social connections and family support. The studies and meta-analysis show they're way more important than smoking and exercise and those kinds of things," Berzuchka said.
  • In one survey, people in the U.S. reported the fourth highest level of stress in the world. Even people who are white, rich, educated, and practice healthy behaviors die younger than their counterparts in other countries. (Kinda reminds one of the classic Whitehall Studies, which looked at the health impact of social status and stress.)

Then, I saw these findings from Stanford Biz School researchers, about how feeling of attractiveness strongly predict people's opinions on inequality:
  • People who see themselves as beautiful or attractive think they belong in a higher social class, think that social hierarchies are good, and think people in lower social classes deserve to be there. They are less likely to give money to address social inequality. (Same results, regardless of gender or ethnicity.)
  • Attractiveness mattered more to people's view of their social status than integrity or empathy.
  • Attitudes toward inequality shift rapidly in relation to people's view of their own attractiveness: People who had just recalled feeling attractive saw inequality as less of a problem, while people who recalled feeling unattractive viewed inequality more negatively.
  • Americans spend more on personal appearance than on reading material, and keep up that investment even during economic downturns.


I can't resist comparing the level of concern our world shows when fat people dare to go on pony rides ("But, they're 'obese!'") to the level of concern in our world for the health impact of weight-based social inequality (and its interconnection with other oppressions). 
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"I'm a dancing fatty, short and stout"

4/24/2014

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When I was four years old, my mother took me to a local Parks & Rec class called Tiny Tots Ballet. That whole first lesson, I couldn't cross the vast, wood-floor auditorium to join the other pre-schoolers learning toe positions from Miss Patti. I sat with mom in the folding chairs along the wall. How did they so readily join in? Unspoken, unnamed concerns kept me in my chair. I imagine it was part shyness and part weight stigma. I knew I was different. I knew that when adults said, "You're getting big!" it wasn't always praise. I knew that dance class was simple fun for other children, not me.
PicturePhotobombing Brittany Marie Oliphant and Celeste Davis.
The deep irony of this feeling — of being the outsider — is that nearly everyone has it at some point. One of my favorite joys in fat activism is when the pain of isolation becomes our point of connection and we laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Somehow, I performed in the Tiny Tots recital 10 weeks later. We did the classics:  "I'm a Little Teapot" and "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, Turn Around." I made a friend who became a playmate. While I'm far from shy as an adult, weight stigma is still pervasive and I'm still finding ways to dance despite it. Researchers have no trouble finding 5-year-olds who say they're feeling weight stigma. It was part of my earliest memories as a mildly chubby (barely not-thin) pre-schooler in 1970.

I hadn't thought about Tiny Tots Ballet in years, until I was reminded of it last weekend at Pitzer College. I was there to speak on a panel about weight diversity. The day's events included a performance by Ragen Chastain and two of the dancers from More Cabaret. They did some fabulous numbers (including Ruth Brown's "If I can't Sell It, I'll Sit on It!") and told stories of the weight stigma they'd encountered in dance: 
  • Ragen told the story of a ballroom dance judge who tried to impose a no-spaghetti-straps rule, prompting her realization that being a fat dancer meant being a fat activist. 
  • Brittany Marie Oliphant talked about always being cast in unromantic roles in musical theater and how she reclaims the power of sexiness and charm now, when she performs burlesque or dances with More Cabaret. 
  • Alice Fu talked about her childhood ballet classes, the body shaming the teacher did, and her heroic reclaiming of joy in dance, with both More Cabaret and flamenco.

Marilyn Wann Weight Diversity panel Pitzer College
After the dance performance, LA-based fat activist Julianne Wotasick, Ragen, and I did a panel discussion about weight stigma and its connections to other oppressions. I was sad to miss Pia Schiavo-Campo, creator of Chronicles of a Mixed Fat Chick, a panelist who was unable to attend. It was moderated by Zoey Martin-Lockhart, the ambitious student who organized the day's events and invited us to her campus. Presenting with other weight-radical people, rather than as a lone proponent, changes the power dynamic and makes it way more fun. Ragen made great points about healthism and about being in solidarity with people who face all forms of oppression. Julianne gave a brilliant description of her path from self-loathing to liberation and about what it's like to do weight-blaming-free self-care even — and especially — during health and mobility challenges. Of my comments, my favorite moment was the reaction when I asked the audience, "If you can't be at home in your body, where can you go? What if we all felt completely at home in our bodies and welcome in society?"

Glimpse that world during the Fat Flash Mob 2014, organized by Rubenesque Burlesque founder Juicy D. Light, with choreography from EmFATic Dance troupe member Alanna Kelly. It happens on Saturday, May 3, at noon in San Francisco, LA, and other locations. A herd of wild "obesity" researchers couldn't stop me from dancing with this Fat Flash Mob. I'll point my toes a few times, too... for everyone in Miss Patti's class who felt like an outsider.

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'Find Your Weigh to Yay!' workshop at CSU-Chico

4/13/2014

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weight Yay! Scale growth workshop Chico empower
With Sylvia Seroff.
Yay! Scale™ Chico Embodied
By Crystal Vasquez.
by Marilyn Wann

The Embodied club at CSU-Chico is a new student organization that celebrates weight diversity and Health At Every Size®. They invited me up for Love Every Body Week to share the hack for turning bathroom scales into Yay! Scales™. People were eager for more body lib fun after fat activist Ragen Chastain gave a talk and got people dancing.

I'm pretty sure this workshop set a world record for 'Largest Number of People Making Yay! Scales at Once!' A few passersby even joined the workshop and made their own Yay! Scales, which they seemed to find an unexpectedly delightful. A total of 36 new Yay! Scales are out there now, giving compliments instead of numbers. And people will be able to teach the hack to others, for a body-love ripple effect. More of us feeling at home in our bodies and welcome in society...YAY!

One woman said she plans to keep her scale in her closet, where she most often does negative self-talk...so she can Yay! herself instead. Two lovely lads made a Yay! Scale for their frat house, with all sorts of inside jokes. (Go, Free Towels! aka Phi Kappa Tau.) One scale will join the healing scene in a therapist's waiting room. Others will be put to good use by Embodied activists at outreach events.

Here's a scale-hacking tip: Although I warn people not to open their scales while they're upside down, it happens...and I've done it myself often enough to be familiar with wiggling the moving parts back inside correctly. I fixed scale innards several times during the workshop, until Embodied officer Kasey nicknamed me the Scale Whisperer. I'll take it!

Big fat thanks to Michelle Morris, Crystal Vasquez, Debbie Devine, Kasey Madison Davis, Jemmae Reddish, Natalie Butler, Gricel Oropeza, Sylvia Seroff, and all of the Embodied people at Chico!!!
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Yay! Scale Embodied Chico Debbie Devine therapy
Yay! Scale by Debbie Devine.
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DIY workshop: How to make your own Yay! Scale™ — CSU Chico

4/10/2014

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Yay! Scale compliments bathroom weight fat acceptanceYay! Scale making supplies.
Find Your Weigh to Yay! — 
Scale Making Workshop

Friday, April 11
1pm - 3pm
CSU Chico
Selvester's 100

Imagine stepping on a bathroom scale and getting a compliment instead of a number...

At CSU-Chico, I'm going to show students how to hack the ubiquitous bathroom scale to make their own tool of liberation: a Yay! Scale. 

One of my favorite things as a fat activist is warping the minds of the youth, or rather, pointing out so they can see for themselves how warped our society is by weight bias. When young people become aware of the extent of the damage, and recognize how it has affected their lives, they come up with fabulous ideas for making things better.

This campus is home to a strong and growing Health At Every Size®/weight lib community. It's great to be invited back, after the wonderful time I had doing a weight diversity talk there in 2012.

Big fat thanks to awesome HAES pioneers at CSU-Chico: Michelle Morris, Debbie Devine, Crystal Vasquez, and the HAES student group Embodied, for making this event happen! I'm proud to be part of Love Every Body Week, along with fat activist Ragen Chastain and other presenters.

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