ASDAH Conference- Dr. Bacon (and the inner turmoil of ally cookies)

Although the first day of the conference was spent in my room, recovering from an anaphylactic reaction to perfume, I was able to make the second half of Saturday's speakers! I was able to get there just in time to see Dr. Bacon's talk. When I ran into Dr. Bacon as I entered the conference center on Friday, I squeaked and covered my mouth like a kid meeting their favorite Disney character. A good way to start out embarrassing myself! But after Dr. Bacon's talk, I felt even more lucky to just be in the same building!  Here's what Dr. Bacon did right:

We all know that Dr. Bacon wrote the groundbreaking book Health at Every Size, which is now a decade old. For many of us struggling with the scientific reasoning that people used to justify fatphobia, especially in the medical field, this book saved lives, and continues to do so. It gave us ammo to be able to say "no, i'm not automatically unhealthy because of my size, and I deserve proper medical care". It was page after page, chapter after chapter, of studies that we had never heard of. That most people had never heard of! For a science nerd like me, it was a revelation and made me an instant convert to intuitive eating and the HAES model.

BUT

A good bit of Dr. Bacon's talk on Saturday included what was wrong with that book. In Health at Every Size, there was a heavy focus on changing behaviors to change health outcomes, rather than focusing on body size, shape, or composition, which is most common in the medical field. Here's the thing Dr. Bacon realized though- Intuitive eating and behavior based health focus doesn't work for everyone. An example used was that if someone had an abundance of free food from the fast food place they worked, but couldn't take it home and had little or no access to food at home, then listening to hunger and fullness cues would not be the healthiest practice. Loading up on food to keep them going until the next work day is what would be appropriate.

I remember very clearly, after reading HAES, paraphrasing parts of the book by saying that no one would eat twinkies forever. Eventually you get tired of twinkies and your smart body craves a salad. This is what's wrong with the original book. Some people will always love twinkies and hate salads and we have to realize that that's okay. (And hey, fat and thin people can like both or either).Dr. Bacon, on Saturday, said that only about 10% of health outcomes are really effected by "lifestyle" and behavior and that this number is already readily accepted and agreed upon by people in the research field of health.

What's really impacting our health outcomes? So many things! From genetics, to stress in the womb, to how polluted your city's air is, to  what's in the food that you eat (hormones, antibiotics, mercury, etc), to food insecurity, to dieting... gosh I could go on and on! It's amazing how many things, how our experience, effect our bodies temporarily and permanently. It seems like every day we're discovering that something we thought was safe isn't, and something we thought wasn't safe is. College humor said it well in their Plasticine Diet bit when they said "health science notoriously unscientific!".

There was so much more that was talked about, but I'll never get to it all here! So Dr. Bacon talked about all this and acknowledged the problematic parts of the first book, as well as talking about Body Respect, Co-Authored with Lucy Aphramor in 2014. When Dr. Bacon was praised afterwards, many people clapped- including myself- and Dr. Bacon pointed out the disturbing fact that a thin, white, person was gaining so much praise at a conference meant to highlight marginalized fat people. And there was absolute truth to that.

Because then come the cookies...

And here I find myself in a tough spot. Dr. Bacon is right... we talk all the time in activist circles about allies performing for ally cookies. Basically doing the right thing for praise rather than doing the right thing because it's, you know, the right thing. We are so amazed, so enamored, by a thin person who isn't awful to us, that we don't even know how to act other than with abject praise and deafening applause.

I'm very glad that Dr. Bacon recognized and pointed this out. All that praise was unwanted and
undeserved given the huge amount of privilege that allowed Dr. Bacon to get to where they are today. To have three graduate degrees, to have been published, well received, to become a public speaker, to have their word taken as fact with credibility behind it. That takes privilege folx. And Dr. Bacon acknowledged every bit of it. And I feel so grateful that someone would do such an amazing, but basic, thing to help us.

Where are we at that a thin person being kind to us is so overwhelming that we treat them like royalty? We can't necessarily help our feelings. I feel grateful, I feel near tears, I feel overwhelmed with thankfulness. The question, I guess, Is what will I do with those feelings? How will I channel that back into the Fat Liberation movement to make it better tomorrow? Dr Bacon's talk gave me a lot to think about (and boy did I take a lot of notes), but the Dr's willingness to step aside and not take credit gave me even more to think about it. I hope, some day, that Dr. Bacon and I can have an actual one on one talk because I truly value what they have to say... and I'm interested to see where these cookies go.