I'm delighted to share an excerpt from a new anthology that makes an important contribution to the fat studies bookshelf, "Queering Fat Embodiment," edited by Cat Pausé, Jackie Wykes and Samantha Murray. From Cat's essay, "Causing a commotion: Queering fat in cyberspace"…

* * *

The Campaign

The I Stand campaign was begun by Marilyn Wann, a well-known fat activist in the San Francisco Bay area and the author of Fat!So?. It was a response to a fat shaming campaign that targeted children in the state of Georgia, USA. The Georgia campaign, Strong4Life, featured ads of fat children and the phrase ‘WARNING’ in red lettering across the bottom, along with a statement about childhood obesity (e.g., ‘It’s hard to be a little girl when you’re not’). The purpose of the ads, according to the campaign, was to bring attention to childhood obesity and encourage parents to take the issue seriously. Concerns about the negative tone and shaming nature of the ads, however, were raised by those in the public health sector, the eating disorders community, and fat activists alike.

Wann’s response, the I Stand campaign, took direct aim at the image and message of the ads themselves. Wann invited individuals to submit a photo of themselves and their position (a statement about what they ‘stand for’ in relation to weight/stigma/health), which were then made into a poster for the I Stand campaign. Each poster has a picture of an individual and a statement about what they stand for. The phrase ‘I STAND’ is found in bright pink lettering across the bottom, along with fat positive statement. The first poster, featuring Marilyn Wann, read ‘I STAND against harming fat children. Hate /= health’.

Figure 7.1    I Stand
Source: Courtesy of Marilyn Wann.
Most of the submissions came from fat individuals, but a range of body sizes can be found among the collection. The posters may be found on the ‘I Stand Against Weight Bullying’ Tumblr. Contributions range from ‘I STAND for body diversity’, ‘I STAND against teaching kids to hate their bodies’, ‘I STAND for doing what you love in front of those who doubt you’, ‘I STAND for taking up space’, and ‘I STAND for doing what you love in the body you have now’. Each poster ends with, ‘Stop weight bigotry. Health at Every Size’

Wann’s I Stand campaign allows for individuals of all sizes to present positive messages about fatness, body size, and physical health and well-being. Using the same format as posters intended to fat shame children, but changing the context to fat positivity, queers fat. By allowing others to produce the pictures and text, I Stand fosters user created content within a larger campaign for social change. The campaign, however, was not without critics.

As noted in an open letter from the people of caucus of NOLOSE, ‘A response to white fat activism from People of Color in the fat justice movement’, too many fat activist projects represent only a singular point of view. Shuai et al. cautioned against allowing the fat justice movement to become separated along class and colour lines, and they noted that the power of social media allows for connections to be made, conversations to be had, and for a diverse group of individuals to engage in the planning, execution, and promotion of any work being done.

Within the letter, the authors present many ways that those who engage in fat activism may work towards being inclusive. Being aware of differing kinds of privilege is one, as well is reflecting on an individual’s own privilege and actions which reinforce oppression against others. Being mindful of the impact the work may have on those from other racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds. Another step would be to not fall into the trap of asking others, outside of our own groups, to educate about the issues of oppression faced by them. Most importantly, those who claim commitment to these issues must assume responsibility for ensuring that a range of voices are included.


Used by permission of the Publishers from ‘Causing a commotion: Queering fat in cyberspace’, in Queering Fat Embodiment eds. Cat Pausé, Jackie Wykes and Samantha Murray (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 77-78.  Copyright © 2014

by Marilyn Wann

This week, Lisa Du Breuil alerted people to the New York Times' "Invitation to a Dialogue: Talking about Obesity." From the name alone, you know it's going to be bad. The so-called dialogue begins with a lengthy letter from someone who pulls a classic Susie Orbach maneuver: decrying dieting and negative appearance talk as damaging for average-weight girls but urging them as necessary for fat girls because…health.

My response wasn't picked for publication, but I was still eager this morning to see which fat community person or Health At Every Size® proponent they included…

• 1 letter from the Obesity [sic] Action Coalition (which believes fat kills)
• 1 letter from two MDs who believe fat kills
  
• 2 letters from teen girls who believe fat kills
  
• 1 letter from a woman who believes all women prefer being a size 10 to a size 16
  
• 1 letter from a woman who believes "overweight" [sic] children should not be shamed, but should get diet/exercise advice from pediatricians
  
• 1 letter that a woman who describes the negative impact of weight stigma, then writes: "Does being fat have health risks? Maybe, though the jury is out on whether it is weight or lifestyle that matters. Clearly a fat fit person who eats healthfully is in a much healthier place than a thin couch potato with an unhealthy diet." [Insert 'good fatty' critique here!]

Where was a letter from a fat civil rights group, for balance? Where were letters from HAES-based medical experts, for balance? Where were letters from fat teens, for balance? Where were letters from fat adults who have a wholly fat-positive worldview, for balance? 

In case it wasn't already obvious: We live in a society in which a publication of record can give prominent space to people who are encouraged to criticize an entire demographic group as if we're all sick and wrong, while making sure to exclude any voices of people who are proud to be part of that demographic group…and call that dialogue. Such choices are not even questioned, much less treated as career-ending errors.

by Marilyn Wann

This week, Oz (he's not my doctor!) was called before the Senate's subcommittee on consumer protection for his promotion of ostensible weight-loss products.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the subcommittee chair, said, "The scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of the three products you called 'miracles.'…I don't get why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true." 

Oz's excuse, basically: "You gotta give 'em hope." (His version is a toxic mimic of Harvey Milk's rallying call for queer pride.)

Oz testified: "My job, I feel, on the show is to be a cheerleader for the audience, and when they don't think they have hope, when they don't think they can make it happen, I want to look, and I do look everywhere, including in alternative healing traditions, for any evidence that might be supportive to them."

Does he imagine that without false hope from a magic bean, people will give up on eat-less/exercise-more weight-loss efforts?

Or is his weight-loss advice a classic shell game: Keep people leaping from one magic bean to the next magic bean. Instead of stopping to ask why magic beans fail so predictably, people who regain weight after buying the purple-with-yellow-spots magic bean will still be eager to buy the orange-and-fuchsia-striped magic bean, or the lime-green-with-black-chevrons magic bean, because...HOPE.

During the Senate hearing, a Federal Trade Commission official testified that their surveys find more consumers are victims of fraudulent weight-loss products than any other type of fraud they ask about.

The very existence of a $66 billion/year (and growing) weight-loss industry is proof that their products fail to produce on their promises. If any one of them worked, wouldn't they all go out of business?

Even with ostensibly sensible eat-less/exercise-more approaches, we know that nearly everyone who loses weight will regain it within a year or two. And many people will gain back more.

Instead of a misnomer like "weight-loss" industry, why not call it what it is:  the weight regain industry?

How about a more reliable definition of hope? The hope of living well in our very own bodies.

by Marilyn Wann

Apple has a new ad for the iPhone 5s and its fitness-related apps. Shots of people exercising — no fatties of course! — are edited to the "Chicken Fat" song, an institutional horror for people who were children in the 60s and 70s. The ad gives the impression of people in constant motion, hoping and striving to avoid the worst possible fate: being fat. This ad should be a thoroughly embarassing career-ender for its creators. Apple should immediately retract the ad. Both Apple and the featured app makers should apologize and learn how to value weight diversity.

The "Chicken Fat" song is a Cold War-era relic. JFK commissioned it from "Music Man" creator Meredith Wilson for the 1961-62 school year, as part of the presidential physical fitness program. Because fat children put democracy at risk. Now, First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move program is  "dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation" and has schoolchildren dance to G-rated versions of a Beyoncé song. Because "obesity [sic]…is the terror within," according to one recent Surgeon General.

After 50 years, how is vilifying fat children still an exciting new idea?

I first heard the "Chicken Fat" song in third grade. In Southern California, rainy days meant recess was in the media center, not on the playground. We did callisthenics to a vinyl LP of Robert Preston singing, "Go, you chicken fat, go!" (If he had turned up the verve another notch, he'd have sounded like an evil villain.)

At the time, I remember my face flushing with shame at each of the song's cheesy putdowns. It was patriotic, outdated, eager to enlist joiners...and wished me gone. I was a slightly chubby child with a round face. I remember even now where I stood, and the color of the burnt orange institutional carpet, in that moment when our brilliant and energetic teacher Mrs. Lyday ( a fat woman) lowered the needle on the library's institutional grey record player. What was she thinking? What were my classmates thinking? Nothing good. I had never seen chicken fat and didn't understand what it had to do with me. Not only does the song compare people to an animal part (one associated with traditional Jewish cooking), in a classic dehumanizing move, but it calls people chicken too. How many children suffered through this song, with its toe touches and jumping jacks, over the decades? 

Just the previous year, in second grade, Mrs. Handy played the "Free to Be You and Me" album for us and we sang along. I already knew that the groovy, we're-all-in-this-together, your-feelings-matter populism of that album didn't include me. I'd known since the first days of kindergarten. I was the fat kid.

Meanwhile, Apple is proud to air an ad that makes anti-fat bigotry seem nostalgic and cozy and a civic duty.

I suggest writing to Apple and the makers of the apps featured in this ad. Better yet, write reviews in iTunes or wherever you buy apps. Let them know that their affiliation with prejudice-promoting content damages their reputation and their appeal. Post any responses you get, in comments here.

To quote Apple's tag line from this hateful ad: "You're more powerful than you think."

Contact:

Apple
408.996.1010
https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Wahoo Fitness
877.978.1112
http://www.wahoofitness.com/contact
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wahoo-fitness/id391599899?mt=8

Argus: Your Personal Tracker
http://www.azumio.com/contact/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/argus-motion-fitness-tracker/id624329444?mt=8

Misfit Shine
http://www.misfit.com/contact
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shine/id564157241?mt=8

SprintTimer
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sprinttimer-photo-finish/id430807521

Nike+ Running
800.806.6453
https://help-en-us.nike.com/app/ask/session/L3RpbWUvMTQwMjcwNTIzNy9zaWQvNGVpbW1MV2w%3D
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nike+-running/id387771637?mt=8

7 Minute Workout
[email protected]
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-minute-workout/id650762525?mt=8

WeMo: syncing with your bathroom scale
http://www.belkin.com/us/contactus/support/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wemo/id511376996?mt=8

Health Mate: steps tracker
http://withings.zendesk.com/anonymous_requests/new
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/withings-health-mate/id542701020?mt=8

miCoach smart ball by Adidas
800.982.9337
[email protected]
http://store.apple.com/us/product/HFQQ2ZM/A/adidas-micoach-smart-ball

TRX Force: military conditioning program
888.878.5348
https://www.trxtraining.com/contact-us
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trx-force/id575378654?mt=8

Zepp Golf
[email protected]
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zepp-golf/id738428692?mt=8

StrongLifts5x5
http://stronglifts.com/contact/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stronglifts/id488580022?mt=8

"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). 

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.

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.

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.

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.