Today's Fat & Happy Music: "Happy Being Fat" (Big Dee Irwin), "Freedom" (Suzee Waters Benjamin), "Big Red Caboose" (Kristie Agee & Big Potential) & "Roly Poly" (Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys).
Food for Thought: "A Big Woman's Passport to Best Health," the wonderful brochure created by Woman Care Plus of Oakland, CA, and readings from & discussion of articles criticizing government campaigns to address "childhood obesity."
The Woman Care Plus Project was created "to reduce health disparities related to weight bias and ensure equal access to preventive cancer screening and other health care for large women and their families," as their website states. Pat Lyons, RN, MA, co-author (with Deb Burgard, Ph.D.) of Great Shape: The First Fitness Guide for Large Women, is the project director. The project is conducted in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Center for Weight & Health and is based at the nonprofit CHT Resource Group in Oakland. The WCP "Big Woman's Passport to Best Health" was developed in collaboration with the African American Community Health Advisory Comittee of San Mateo, and printed with a grant from Genentech.
In case you're wondering why large women might need -- or benefit from -- such resources, consider this quote from a WCP focus group member included in the Passport:
After a friend bugged me, I finally went to get a PAP test, but the doctor said I was too fat for a proper exam and to come back when I lost weight. That was 10 years ago and I haven't been back.
One of the sections in the Passport says "Let this passport help you avoid problems some women have faced."
- Women of all sizes say they've delayed going to a doctor to avoid being weighed or given a weight loss lecture.
- Women at high weight are less likely to obtain cancer tests such as a PAP test or mammogram.
- Women who've dieted most often are most likely to delay seeking care. (Source: WomanCare Plus Research Project (WCP) Nancy Amy Ph.D., Principal Investigator.
More from the Passport:
Know Yourself. Know Your Rights.
- Know your own body and what's "normal" for you--belly, breasts and all of you--so you will recognize any changes that might be a problem.
- If you tend to avoid care because you'll be weighed, know you ccan decline the scale and that it is your choice to discuss your weight or not. Gaining or losing weight unintentionally is an important issue to discuss with your medical provider.
- Don't let any negative feelings about past weight loss attempts keep you from getting health care today.
"The cure for shame is self-acceptance." -- WCP Focus Group
The Big Woman's Passport to Best Health also recommeded being an advocate for yourself and others where health care is concerned.
Big women who've found quality care say:
- Know you deserve a positive partnership with a health care provider. Remember, you are the "customer." Expect respect...and speak up if you don't get it.
- Call ahead to ask if they have gowns, equipment and accepting attitudes to fit you. Wear a 2-piece outfit; your top and their drape will cover you if the gowns don't fit.
- Take a friend with you for support and be a friend for someone else.
"If a medical provider keeps focusing only on weight loss ask: 'What test or treatment would you recommend for a thin person with my condition? Let's start there.'" -- WCP Focus Group.
I also read from & discussed an article reporting a British Medical Journal report that expanding definitions of "obesity" may harm children by increasing stigmatization, eating disorders, and exercise avoidance. The BMJ article's author, Ray Moynihan (co-author of Selling Sickness) also points out the links between the pharmaceutical industry and the organization encouraging expansion of the guidelines. The proposed change woulc reclassify as "overweight" children who are currently classified as "at risk of overweight."
Those familiar with these definitions say that such a change could lead to a dramatic expansion of prevalence estimates, with 25% of American toddlers and almost 40% of children aged 6 to 11 years portrayed as having a medical condition called "overweight and obese."
The more children (and adults) who can be labeled as having a medical condition, of course, the bigger the market for drugs and other "treatments" for that (alleged) medical condition. (In Moynihan & Alan Cassels's book Selling Sickness, they write about pharmaceutical companies hiring advertising firms to create new "diseases" -- like "Social Anxiety Disorder" and "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder" -- that they can market to American consumers. The plan: convince people of the problem, then sell them the supposed drug "solution.")
I also read a related article from Spiked, "Stop Bullying Fat Kids" by Dr. Michael Fitzpatick, about UK plans to start weighing all schoolchildren as part of the "war on obesity."
In the next few weeks children aged four and ten are all going to be lined up at school for measurements of height and weight.... The plan is to repeat these measurements in 12 months’ time and then to write to the parents of obese children to warn that they risk long-term health damage unless they lose weight.
Even the government’s own health advisers have warned that the mass weigh-in will inevitably stigmatise overweight children and will provoke widespread anxiety and distress among both children and parents....
The politicians are now gripped by the dogma that exhorting people to eat less and exercise more will banish obesity. One of the few things that emerges clearly from half a century of research is that this approach simply does not work. While the scale of the problem of childhood obesity remains controversial -- and both its causes and consequences are uncertain -- it is widely recognised that no form of intervention has been found to be effective.
The crusade against childhood obesity has become dangerously irrational....In the childhood obesity panic, the insecurities of the nation’s elite are projected into our primary schools, reflecting, as American academic Paul Campos observes, a culture that is ‘ultimately all about fear, self-loathing and endless dissatisfaction.’
....Obesity is presented as a modern plague, as a source of contagion and risk, which therefore justifies the sort of authoritarian measures considered necessary to protect society from extreme danger. These metaphors provide new forms of expression for deep-rooted prejudices against ordinary people, particularly against poorer people, who are more likely, in most Western societies, to be overweight. As the Australian educationalists Michael Gard and Jan Wright observe, ‘the idea of the"obesity epidemic” appears to lock commentators into a view of people as childlike in their stupidity, short-sightedness and utter self-centredness’. To be overweight is to be regarded as being ‘out of control, undisciplined, deviant, dangerously unhealthy.’
The label of obesity legitimises the public monitoring of behaviour and provides a licence for ridicule and harassment....The shift in focus of the obesity panic towards children is a particularly invidious development.
Announcements: The fourth annual Fat Girl Flea Market will be held in New York CityJuly 8 & 9. Donated new & gently used clothing in sizes 1-6X will be sold. The flea market, held at the Center, 208 W. 13th Street, NY, benefits NOLOSE (the National Organization for Lesbians of Size), but you don't have to be gay -- or female -- to shop & buy; all are welcome.
The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) is holding its annual convention in Boston, MA August 9-13, 2006. Cruise their conference website at www.bigsummerfun.com for more info.
Affirmation from Cherie K. Erdman, Ed.D.'s book Live Large! Affirmations for living the life you want in the body your already have: I am a large and healthy person.
Erdman notes that "Fat people experience good health when they live in cultures where their size is not stigmatized....Take care of your body as if were the culture's perfect size."
Next week's show features Kristie & Roy Agee as guests. Tune in to join the fun.
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