Posted on 08/02/2004 11:54:38 PM PDT by ambrose
Fat activists take stand against obesity ‘witch hunt’
By Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Unashamed of their size, fed up with fat jokes, and angry at the national obsession with dieting, overweight activists are mounting a feisty protest movement against the medical establishment’s campaign against obesity.
“We’re living in the middle of a witch hunt and fat people are the witches,” said Marilyn Wann of San Francisco, a militant member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. “It’s gotten markedly worse in the last few years because of the propaganda that fatness, a natural human characteristic, is somehow a form of disease.”
The association, known as NAAFA, holds its annual convention starting Wednesday in Newark, N.J., bringing together activists for social events and workshops on self-acceptance, political advocacy and the “fat liberation” movement.
“I hope we can be a viable force of sanity in the midst of hysteria,” said NAAFA spokeswoman Mary Ray Worley of Madison, Wis. “I’ve found allies in all kinds of unexpected places, but overall there’s a lot of animosity. Some people act like obesity is the next worst thing after terrorism.”
The convention comes as the movement is scrambling to counter federal government pronouncements that obesity is a “critical public health problem” costing more than $100 billion and 300,000 lives per year.
Jeannie Moloo, an American Dietetic Association spokeswoman who counsels overweight clients at her nutrition practice in Sacramento, Calif., empathizes with the activists’ fight against bias, but says they should be wary of oversimplifying obesity-related health issues.
“Some people can be overweight all their lives and not end up with diabetes or heart disease or hypertension,” Moloo said. “But the majority are probably going to develop one of these life-altering conditions.”
Fat-acceptance groups were dismayed when federal officials announced last month that Medicare was discarding its declaration that obesity isn’t a disease. The policy change will likely prompt overweight Americans covered by Medicare to file medical claims for treatments such as stomach surgery and diet programs.
“Obesity is not a disease,” insisted Allen Steadham, director of the Austin, Texas-based International Size Acceptance Association. “All this does is open the door for the diet and bariatric surgery industries to make a potentially tremendous profit.”
Most fat-acceptance activists endorse the concept of eating healthy food and exercising regularly, but they oppose any fixation on losing weight and contend that more than 95 percent of diets fail. They also decry the rapid growth of stomach-shrinking surgery; the number of such procedures has quadrupled to 100,000 annually since 1998.
Wann depicts bariatric surgery as “stomach amputation” that imposes anorexia on patients and exposes them to long-term risks. Kelly Bliss, a self-described “full-figured fitness instructor” from Lansdowne, Pa., predicts that future generations will disapprovingly look back on stomach surgery as “comparable to lobotomies.”
Bliss, who coaches clients by phone and in fitness classes, subscribes to a philosophy called “health at every size” — preaching that health, fitness and self-esteem can be achieved independent of weight.
“There’s a war on obese people, and I’m treating the casualties — people whose hearts are being ripped out,” Bliss said.
NAAFA and others have tried to combat what they see as rampant discrimination against fat people, but progress has been sporadic. Southwest Airlines, for example, resisted protests targeting its policy of requiring large passengers to purchase a second ticket if they can’t fit in a single seat.
“People want to fight for their rights, but there’s a lot of shame involved,” Steadham said. “It takes a whole lot of determination to stick through it to the end.”
A few cities, including San Francisco, explicitly outlaw weight discrimination. Michigan is the only state to do so, but its Civil Rights Department said only five of 1,696 job discrimination complaints filed in 2003 involved weight.
Walter Lindstrom, a San Diego attorney specializing in weight-discrimination cases, said overweight plaintiffs usually must prove that acts of bias against them are covered by federal laws prohibiting discrimination against disabled people.
“These cases are more difficult from a proof standpoint, and also because you’re dealing with a very unpopular class of clients,” Lindstrom said. “Juries are generally disgusted with your average size-related plaintiff. You have to get past that, and have them see the plaintiff as someone with a true medical problem.”
Many fat-acceptance activists were heartened by this year’s publication of “The Obesity Myth” by University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos, who contends that diet promoters, drug companies and weight-loss surgeons have whipped up an irrational panic over weight.
Campos shares many of the activists’ views but says their effectiveness has been limited.
“The movement has found itself marginalized by drawing its membership and leadership from the far extreme of obesity,” he said. “It will be more successful if it can attract the two-thirds of Americans who are being told by the government that they weigh too much — the I-want-to-lose-20-pounds crowd who are starting to feel a certain amount of resentment from the constant haranguing they’re getting.”
Take a stand? If they could stand there'd be no problem!
A woman I work with had this procedure done earlier this year. Although she did have some complications, she's fine now and she looks great. She also looks at least 10 years younger.
Health Club's Ads Spark Protest in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO--More than 30 overweight women and men chanted "Eat me!" while some performed aerobics on the sidewalk in front of a health club to protest a new ad campaign they say demoralizes fat people.
The "fat advocates" banded together to protest a 24 Hour Fitness billboard campaign that depicts a hungry space alien and reads, "When they come, they will eat the fat ones first."
Company officials say they didn't intend to offend anyone.
"Sometimes humor helps make things easier, and can even be motivational," 24 Hour Fitness said in a statement.
Portly protesters said they saw little humor in the ad that sought to entice new members at the expense of human feelings. "It's really hard for fat people to get into the gym anyway. To alienate them before they even walk in the door is cruel," said Rebekah Bridges.
"I may be fat, but I'm fit, I'm happy, I'm sexual, I'm all of those things. How dare an ad man decide for society that we're not allowed to be someplace," Bridges added.
Others waved handwritten signs that read, "Bite My Fat, Alien Butt," "Fat and Fit" and "Honk If You're Fat," which received loud support from traffic on the busy downtown street.
A fitness trainer for rival club World Gym even ran a low-impact aerobics session at the sidewalk protest, leading four hefty participants through a rigorous high-kneed, arm-pumping routine complete with crossover grapevine steps.
Marilyn Wann--author of "Fat!So?," a book that seeks to strip away the notion that fat is bad--organized the event. Wann said the 24 Hour Fitness ad is not funny and took her "fat rebels" to the front lines to be seen and heard.
"We've got an epidemic of eating disorders, an epidemic of exercise disorders, people who have to work out twice a day or they're not worthy human beings," Wann said. "It really makes me sad to think the fitness isn't about health, they're just about looks."
Wann said she'd like to see the company retract the ads and work with fat advocates to fill out its membership.
Carlsbad-based 24 Hour Fitness has 284 gyms in 10 Western states, Europe and Asia.
Fat ones need love too!
As long as I don't have to pay for their pleasures (my health insurance premiums are high enough), if they want to eat themselves into an early supersized grave, fine by me.
This just struck me as funny.
Now I'm not one to talk, (being a few pounds overweight myself) but even I had to laugh at this one.
I could've gone all day without seeing that.
I wonder if Mrs. Edwards will throw her weight behind this group.
Its hard to deny that there is a "body-worship" aspect to our culture today. Many people do sneer at the overweight as one might sneer at a child abuser. Surely the two are not comparable.
That being said the idea of denying yourself the benefits of good health and vigor that come with being in shape seems stupid.
Memo to FAT PEOPLE:
We could feed an illegial immigrant family of 8 for a week on what you eat in a day.
I don't know about sneering, but I don't know any slender folks with Type II diabetes. And the folks I know with Type II could control it with diet and exercise, but don't. They'd rather take the meds. And they are running up a big bill in terms of doctor visits and medication costs.
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