Fat People Are Stupid Because They Can't Get Thin

Everyone's talking about it. It's all around feminist spaces and the fatosphere. Have you heard yet? Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico sent out a tweet saying: "Dear obese Ph.D. applicants: If you don’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth." TRUTH, y'all. Once his employers got wind of the backlash Miller issued an apology. One Tweet read "My sincere apologies to all for that idiotic, impulsive, and badly judged tweet. It does not reflect my true views, values, or standards.” And a second tweet followed: “Obviously my previous tweet does not represent the selection policies of any university, or my own selection criteria.” Obviously Geoffrey? Because it doesn't seem that obvious to me. What seems obvious is your own bigotry. 

He later claimed that this was all part of some social experiment. If it was, I doubt he would have deleted the tweet and made his twitter private (can't take the heat Geoff?). The University is looking into the claims, but hopefully will see fit to fire his bigoted fatphobic ass. 

So lots of people are working to prove his claim wrong. There's a new tumblr, Fuck Yeah! Fat PhDs which includes grad students from around the country. What I want to talk about is the elitism in this tweet and the idea that fat people are inherently stupid because they can't become thin. First of all, full disclosure, I never finished college. Because of my untreated bipolar I had a breakdown my second semester and never went back because, to be honest, my bipolar is still not fully under control. I didn't not finish college because I'm fat. 

More so, fatness is correlated with lower income so at least a portion of fat people likely don't have the resources to go to college. So this tweet gets into classist areas as well. But really there's an overwhelming stereotype of the fat stupid person (think the simpsons or family guy). As Miller's tweet implies, fat people are just too stupid to get thin. You know, we can't count calories because math is hard. Or carbs as Miller says. Science has even tried to prove it. Of course, "science" also said that black women were "objectively" less attractive than other races. Oh look, another evolutionary psychologist (feign surprise).

The ignorance and bigotry in these stereotypes is astounding. Fat people come in all types- body wise and intellect wise. Just like thin people (fat people are just like thin people?! Tell me it ain't so!). It's, very simply, another oppression method. One has to wonder if it plays into the fact that fat people are less likely to be hired or promoted and that thin people make more than fat people. For Miller to potentially roadblock a student's education based on how hot they are is disgusting. 

And of course, this whole thing implies that anyone who doesn't attend college/get a PhD is just a less worthy person than someone who does, which is why I think that proving fat people can be intelligent only goes so far. We need to have an open discussion on these elitist attitudes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that higher education isn't a great great thing. I'm saying that not everyone has the same resources- physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, time-wise, etc and that we can't blame or devalue people based on that. 

So, what are your thoughts on the Geoffrey Miller incident? 

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day to everyone. Today I want everyone to take an extra moment to appreciate their bodies, especially women. Women are the primary victims of constant body stigma and policing. We're told what to wear, what to do with our bodies, how much to weigh and what to eat (or don't eat). It's cute to see a woman eat "like a man" as long as she stays skinny. We're told to constantly make ourselves prettier, skinnier, smarter (but not too smart now!), to be perfect homemakers while also bringing home an income. Every part of our lives is policed from getting dressed in the morning to how to have sex with your lover (thanks Cosmo!).

Women are objectified and over sexualized. Our bodies are always wrong no matter what they look like. All women are under immense pressure to conform to sexist and outdated expectations while also being a modern woman. It's impossible to achieve. Fat women have an extra dose of discrimination and oppression heaped on them. From making less money compared to thin people and men, being passed over for jobs, having medical problems ignored, and extra body policing (should you really be eating that?). Fat women are both overly sexualized and fetishized by some groups while being desexed entirely by others.

In a man's world and a thin person's world (and let's not forget a straight, white, cis, wealthy, able bodied person's world) it's difficult to stand up for oneself. It's difficult to stand up and say "I am here. I take up space and that's okay". Doing so it's an act of rebellion. It's a giant middle finger to the patriarchy. To the society that would pathologicalize your body, to dehumanize your body. To stand up and say "I am a beautiful, sexual being, with my own autonomy and responsibility for myself" is a full scale attack on a culture of hate. To exist, is to take part in taking down a system of oppression. Your voice is important, it's necessary, it's essential! And that voice is the voice of body acceptance and love.  It's a difficult voice to raise over the roar of advertisements for perfection and obedience, but together we can do it.

So on this important day look around you, see the women around you, in your life, and appreciate them and their uniqueness. They deserve it. We deserve it. You deserve it.

It's hard to be a little girl when you're bullied

I realize this is the billionth post you all have seen about the Georgia ads which bully fat children. In case you've just happened to have had a prior engagement under a rock and are only now emerging from the gala, here are the ads that the fatosphere has been buzzing about:

The videos on the website show Bobby (above) in black and white sitting across from his (also fat) mom asking, "mom, why am I fat?".

Tamika, the girl in the last photo above is seen in her video fidgeting uncomfortably in front of the camera with her (supposedly) mother saying, "Being thick runs in our family. As her mom, I never noticed Tamika eating any different from the rest of us. She likes junk food, but what kid doesn't? When the doctor said she had type two diabetes, I never thought what we eat made her sick. I just always thought she was thick like her mama.

Tina, the girl on the right in the third photo above says, "I don't like going to school because all the other kids pick on me. It hurts my feelings."

Maritza (not pictured) is a girl of color and says, "My doctor says I have something called hypertension.. I'm really scared"

Lastly, Jaden (also not pictured), a boy of color says, "Playing video games is what I like to do by myself. I don't have to be around the other kids.. cause all they want to do is pick on me"

If this is the first time you've seen these ads, it may take you a moment to take it all in. Other than the fact that fat people can be just as healthy as thin people, some of these are downright absurd. They're not based in fact and they're downright stigmatizing and bullying. These things are why fat children are more at risk for eating disorders and suicide. Let's go through these things one by one.

"Chubby kids may not outlive their parents"
This is a bald faced lie. Firstly, "chubby" is not the same as fat as we already know that those in the "overweight" category live the longest. But when they say chubby they mean fat, right? But according to the same study (as the 'overweight' live longest study) obese people live just as long as normal weight people- the same study says that obese patients are even less likely to die from heart disease and that the healthiest fat people were people who were fat when they were.. *ding ding ding*!... kids! More so, according to the predictions on life expectancy- it's still going up.. no worries.

"Fat kids become fat adults"
Excuse my language but, no shit sherlock. That's because genetics play a pretty big role in weight and there's more than one gene that helps out. This is what makes this kind of fat shaming particularly cruel and useless.

"Big bones didn't make me this way. Big meals did"
Ahem- except that no study has ever shown that fat people eat more than thin people, although a few have shown that fat kids eat less than thin kids. In other words: liar liar, pants on fire.

"He has his father's eyes, his laugh, and maybe even his diabetes"
Considering that diabetes is genetic then yeah, he just might. If the kid was thin (controlling for lifestyle) he'd have the same risk. Did anyone see Captain Obvious sail by?

"75% of parents of overweight kids ignore the problem"
Well this is the first good news I've seen- that means that 75% of parents are (hopefully)  not being assholes and fat shaming their children, instilling in them lifelong body image issues. Of course, we have campaigns like this to do this for them.

"Fat prevention begins at home. And at the buffet line."
I'm sorry, but what...? Because thin people never eat at buffets? Or are we just assuming they have more self control? Wait.. didn't we just say that fat kids eat less than thin kids? Yes.. yes we did.

I'm skipping the next two because I want to talk about them a little more in depth. So the next one is, "My fat may be funny to you, but it's killing me." Excuse me, please show me any evidence that fat directly kills anyone. Lack of exercise, poor food choices, lack of health care, discrimination, bullying, weight cycling, weight loss drugs- those things may be killing you, but fat certainly isn't. How many times do we need to repeat that one can be fat and healthy or thin and unhealthy? The thing is- this is Georgia's poverty rate is at 14.4-  it ranks #5 in states with the highest poverty rate. In fact, if you look at the fattest states and the most impoverished states, there's quite a crossover. Stress, depression, lack of medical care, lack of access to nutritious foods or safe areas for activity are all issues that may contribute, but one thing is for sure; the war on obesity is also a war on woman and a war on the poor.

Okay, let's go back to the two we skipped:
"It's hard to be a little girl if you're not"
and "being fat takes the fun out of being a kid"

These two really caught my attention because I was a fat kid and I have an excellent memory. Being fat never interfered with me being a kid. I wouldn't have even known or cared that I was fat if people didn't point it out to me. To me, I was just a kid, swinging, climbing trees, and playing Star Trek during recess with my best friend. If you take out all of the bullying, the abuse, the attacks, and the nasty "well meaning" comments from adults ( in other words, still bullying), then being fat has absolutely zero impact on my being a kid or a little girl.

What did make it hard to be a little girl and what did take the fun out of being a kid was fat stigma, discrimination, and bullying. In other words, ads like this. This campaign accomplishes the very thing it speaks out again- making kids miserable. A lot of their campaign hinges on how fat kids get bullied and how much that sucks. Yes, it does suck. But let me tell you, fat kids aren't the only ones who get bullied. When the news picked up stories of gay kids killing themselves and homophobic bullying did we see state and nation wide campaigns to cure homosexuality? Did I see any ads that said, "I don't want to go to school. The kids make fun of me for being gay" with "stop the homosexual epidemic now" stamped across the bottom? As a member of the lgbt community I would have been outraged just as I'm outraged now at this kind of fat hate. In any other circumstance we create sensitivity programs, anti bullying campaigns, and massive awareness campaigns to combat the problem. But with fat kids? We blame them, blame their parents, tell adults that it's their job to bully them (and other adults) and all because it's good for them. I can't think of a single form of bullying that is as socially acceptable and even encouraged as the bullying of fat people. I hope the parents of these children realize how detrimental this is and I hope the children themselves can grow up to find the fat acceptance movement and throw off the horrible abuse that Georgia has perpetrated against them.

When it's the system abusing the children

We all remember the recent hubub when Dr. Lindsey Murtagh and Dr. David S. Ludwig made a suggestion in a Journal of American Medicical Association issue that perhaps "obese" children should be taken away from their parents for child neglect/abuse. The obvious idea being that these parents must be shoveling food in their kids' mouths and letting them watch TV and play video games all day. This particularly hits home for me because I would have been one of those kids, weighing in at over 150lbs by age 10 which made me clinically "obese". I can't remember my exact weight, I only remember being in grade school and looking at a scale thinking "if I can just stay this weight and not gain anymore as I grow then when I get to be a grown up I won't be fat". My diet consisted of the exact same meals, snack, and exercise as my brother and my sister who were both slim. But my mom was obviously abusing me into fatness, right? I just wonder what would have happened if I had been placed in foster care and they had failed to make me thin too? 

the three youngest children seen on the right holding an adult's hands are
at risk for being taken away for being too fat

In the UK we're seeing this suggestion put into practice. According to the Daily Mail three children have already been taken away and placed in foster care for being too fat. They were later reunited with their parents but had every single thing they ate monitored and even had a check in sheet for bed time. The parents were forced to move into an apartment run by a state program and were only allowed to live with 3 of their 6 children at a time. They were told to enroll their kids in dance and football and now that their kids have failed to slim down they're at risk for being taken away again, permanently, and without visitation. The oldest boy, who's 12, weighs about 224lbs, the 11 year old girl about 150 lbs, and the three year old weight around 55lbs (it doesn't mention heights, but the youngest looks fairly tall for a 3 year old).

Yes, all of these kids are on the larger side, like their parents. That would make sense considering obesity is primarily genetic, but they're also all within the range of normal and they're not done growing. Can you imagine the strain of having a social worker watch your every move? The mother even came under fire for letting her 7 year old fall asleep and stay at her father's because she didn't want to disturb her. What the system is doing to this family is far more abusive than any "over nourishment" that may be happening.

The mother said "The pressure of living in the family unit would have broken anyone. We were being treated like children and cut off from the outside world. To have a social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable"


These children have been emotionally and psychologically tortured by a system that is supposed to be acting in their best interest but, instead, act with feat, judgement, and bigotry. Any chance they may have had at health or happiness may very well have just gone out the window. What this family has been put through is inexcusable and they're not the only ones. The UK social services department will be looking at more cases of failure to produce thin children and what has happened to these poor parents and children may very well happen to many more UK citizens. 


And there is, as always, the issue that no one is looking at what is being fed to thin kids, regardless of whether it is damaging their health. I can't even express the sadness and anger and frustration that this story has brought me. I have a feeling that the worst fat hate and bigotry and discrimination is still ahead of us. I hope that feeling is wrong. No one, no one, here cares about our health or well being and they sure as hell don't care about the facts or the science. Anti fat policies like this are based solely in fat hatred and ignorance. We need to figure out a way to fight this. 


*thanks to Neil for sending me this story

Don't They Know How Unhealthy It Is?

That's right, I'm talking about tall people! According to a recent study, tall women (women over 5'9") were almost 40% more likely to develop ten different cancers! And your risk of cancer increases by 16% with every four centimeters of height! It's time to talk about this tallness epidemic and it's consequences. According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer care accounted for an estimated $104.1 billion in medical care expenditures in the United States in 2006. So why are we getting taller? Height has been increasing consistently in industrialized nations for the past 150 years and scientific resources all agree that nutrition plays a big part in that. In other words, people are eating themselves to a cancerous death! Tallness is a huge burden on the health care system and people who are overly tall are just plain immoral for putting their friends and family through the emotional turmoil of their possible early deaths.

While it's true that there's a genetic component to height, nutrition is an important factor. It's clear that we have to do something about this. Children and adolescents specifically who are at an increased risk for tallness should be put on nutrient deficient diets in order to try and hinder dangerous vertical growth. (Won't somebody please think of the children?!) Some people may claim that they can't help their height or even that their are illnesses that cause tallness such as pituitary problems but it's just a cover up for their gluttony. They're simply in denial that they have control over their height.

I'm anticipating the creation of a whole new industry to help these people who don't seem to have the willpower to help themselves (and really, tall people are just gross to look at). From pills that help you get shorter to diets that help you from getting tall to begin with. The diet industry makes 60 billion a year- think of all those jobs! It's simply unAmerican not to create an industry around making tall people shorter or keeping short people short... for their own good of course. I'm really super concerned about their health and the well being of their families. Do you know how expensive cancer treatment is? Tallness is simply irresponsible, despite what people in the "height acceptance" movement claim. Heightism is completely BS- there's nothing wrong with discriminating based on height- they're doing it to themselves anyway!

Stay tuned for my next post on lefthandedness! Studies show that being left handed can take up to a decade off of your life! Those disgusting lefties!

On Safe Spaces

Safe spaces are controversial. Usually contested by the privileged majority against the oppressed minority. Fat acceptance and body acceptance as a whole is unique in the sense that one does not have to be a part of the privileged in order to oppress. I don't know what it is, but we have a fantasy issue. This fantasy issue is why fat people, drowning in the fantasy of being thin, can actively engage in oppression of other fat people. It's why they don't understand why safe places for fatties often include no diet talk, no weight loss talk, and no "but health!" talk. The "but I'm fat too" argument just doesn't work here when you're still operating on a notion that you can and should be thin, even if you're not at the moment.

So the idea of a safe space is seen as "a circle jerk" as one person put it to me. Of people who agree with each other sitting around patting each other on the back for agreeing with each other. This is framed as a bad thing. It's called dictatorial and a repression of information and free speech. Maybe it is, but I can't say that I have a problem with it. Yes, we have to confront the bigotry and we have to work hard to change minds and to change a culture of sizism, fatphobia, and body hate, but where's the rule that says we have to do it all of the time? All day every day?

There are literally thousands of places on the web to discuss these issues and I feel there should be at least one place where people aren't guilted, shamed, accused, or judged based on their bodies. There are very very few places (and when i say few I mean a handful only) where people can go and be safe from body shame.. I'll divulge to you this: many of the people who have to defend against those accusations have to do it constantly in the rest of our lives.. and i don't just mean bloggers.. i mean all of us BA activists/advocates. We have to defend body acceptance to friends, family, strangers, internet trolls, seemingly concerned citizens, our doctors, and everyone else. We have to constantly worry about bullying and discrimination and the very real and damaging effects thereof. It's nice to have one place- just one! (because I haven't found many others believe me!) that we can go and just chill. To be in good company with other people who are all for body acceptance and to just pat each other on the back and say "yeah.. you're fine the way you are.. sit back and take a break". This also sometimes means that spaces are designated just for fat acceptance instead of overall body acceptance (I know from experience that a lot of thin privilege denying sneaks into body acceptance areas- hence the need for a space just for fat people).

 This isn't about someone's right to their bigotry, it's not about the right to free speech, it's not about the need to intellectual and civil discussions. It's about the importance  of looking after our own health, including our mental well being. It is not okay for anyone to force constant emotional stress upon us, including complaining about our attempt  to get away from emotionally draining and never ending abuse. It is our right to take a mental health day every once in a while.

A barage of fatphobia

I think, sometimes, that those of us in the fat-o-sphere (the fat blog-o-sphere) who stand up against sizism and fatphobia and promote body acceptance often are seen as people who can handle any type of bigotry, people who are secure and confident and impenetrable. While I do like to think of myself as a confident person since opening my eyes to the world of body acceptance, everyone can still be hurt by those mean and awful comments, looks, jeers, and behaviors that are so common. I don't want anyone to think that I'm a rock, that things don't hurt me. They do- they shouldn't as it comes from sheer ignorance and immaturity of unquestioning minds, but they do.

Halloween was a great time. I took my son trick or treating. He was a super hero; I made the cape and mask myself in the colors he asked for. This may be the first Halloween he remembers. One a social networking site I posted a quick journal entry which said how happy I was that he had so much fun. It was maybe half a dozen sentences in a single paragraph. Now, anyone can comment on your journal if you so allow even if they're not on your list- and I had always managed disrespectful comments in the past by simply deleting them and there were very few problems.

However....

Somehow this simple paragraph attracted a disproportionate amount of attention (my other posts rarely got comments) and over the coarse of a single day I ended up with over 130 comments of sheer hatred and bigotry. One person even took it upon themselves to post "you are a pig" in every single journal post I'd ever written- then again once I deleted them. There were threats of physical violence and all of the disgusting and ignorant assumptions about my diet and lifestyle that we've all experienced along with the typical insults.

I managed to stay flustered though irritated through the first 30 comments, but soon I was overwhelmed by a panicky feeling- we all know that feeling. Like you're surrounded by a ring of bullies ready to pelt you with stones.. or even bricks (something I've actually had happen to me before but it makes a wonderful analogy as well). A few of the more mild comment included:

"HUMANS ARE NOT COWS EVEN THOUGH YOU LOOK LIKE ONE."

"What do you eat to get so fat?"

"the way she is a pig is much worse than just the bloated unexercised body."

And I'm not kidding when I say these were the nice comments. Ultimately I had to ban commenters from every single journal entry I'd made on that site. A few days later when I tried to login to blogger to write this post I found I had to verify everything because there was suspicious activity on my account- perhaps a coincidence but I don't think so as I did link to this blog from my profile. People feel the need to attack when they feel insecure- we all know this, yet it's hard to keep in mind when you are in the middle of an attack. Certainly fat people are one of the last groups which is socially acceptable to attack and abuse.

In a hotel lobby this past weekend, in a news story covering a race to fight childhood obesity, a woman claimed one of her biggest reasons for participating was that fat children were more likely to experience mental and emotional problems. Instead of simply addressing the problem of abuse from bullies, her solution was to blame the victim- to ask them to change. It's like asking the gay kid to just act more straight instead of actually telling kids homophobia is wrong (ditto with transphobia which is often tied in to that kind of bullying).

A few years ago I never would have seen myself fighting a civil rights battle. Like most young people I thought the bulk of civil rights issues were over. But then, I never realized what I went through wasn't my fault, that it was discrimination, and that my view of the world was completely and utterly wrong. With years come knowledge, and unfortunately that includes the realization that human rights are being violated every day- for the LGBTQI community, for minorities, for children, for the disabled... and yes, for fat people. For most people, even for human rights activists, sizism isn't even on the table as a valid form of oppression and discrimination- we have to get it on the table. Our fight has only just begun- but it's getting better and we all have a say in that.

Dear Mom, You Don't Know

I want to address this because it's something that keeps coming back to my mind again and again- and that is that people assume they know your eating habits or exercise habits depending on your weight. This works both for thin people and fat people. I'm going to address it in more of a personal manner though and talk about why it was completely false in my case.

When I still cared about my weight, when I still thought being fat made me worthless and lazy and glutinous, I did everything I could to lose weight (Now I know better). At one point I decided I needed my thyroid checked because it was just ridiculous that eating healthfully and restricting calories, and exercising wasn't working (gee, maybe that's because diets don't work.. but I didn't know that). I confided this to my mother who didn't believe there was anything wrong with me, pointing out that I don't exercise much anymore due to multiple injuries. "What about in high school, mom?", I asked. "I know how you ate in high school." was her reply, obviously implying that my eating habits had to do with my weight. I'll be honest- I was shocked. There's very little my mom knew about my life in high school and my eating habits were definitely not part of her knowledge.

grade 6 shortly before first suicide attempt

Now, I want to be clear that my mom worked very hard and very long trying to support three children after my father skipped out on child support completely so I'm not blaming her for not knowing my eating habits as it's clear why she wouldn't. Either she was working or I was at school, with friends, etc.

So why did she claim she knew how I ate in high school when she rarely was privy to the knowledge? Because she assumed she knew what I ate because I was fat.  What she didn't know if that I hardly ever ate at all and, thus, often had fainting spells (which my now husband can attest to). I never ate breakfast, rarely ate lunch, and when I ate dinner at home I ate side dishes because I became a vegetarian when I was 14 (freshman year) and we didn't cook many vegetarian meals- therefore I was stuck with corn and potatoes most of the time. This starvation diet that I was on may account for me being at my thinnest in high school (a size 15/16 US).And certainly starving myself would be the only way to get back there (if you are even thinking of suggesting that then you are one sick fuck).

In addition to eating very little for about 5 or 6 years I also was incredibly active. I love walking. I really want to emphasize just how much I love it- I would walk everywhere I went in high school and would still do so today if I didn't have an ankle injury which causes severe pain when I walk. I woke up, walked 20 minutes to my best friend's house so that we could ride the bus together, went to school where I had marching band practice every day, rode the bus back to my best friend's house, walked 20 minutes home, did homework/watched TV for a couple of hours then walked back. Then we'd walk to our other friend's house (another 20-30 minutes)  just so that we could walk around the neighborhood more. Not to mention that I had additional marching band practices, games, competitions, etc as well as frequently starting new exercise programs with my friend, Beth.

All of this walking with very little food and, for a couple of years, diet pills every day three times a day, throw in the occasional periods of bulimia and it would amaze anyone that I wasn't very thin. I would simply not eat for days at a time- once for two weeks. When presented with this information most people would say that I'm lying. I find it funny that when a very thin person says they eat non stop, no one disagrees, no one calls them a liar, and no one argues.

There are all sorts of assumptions made about fat people which are shown for being ridiculous when the same things are applied to thin people. "Fat people just eat too much" would mean that thin people eat less- so all of those thin people who eat junk food in high quantities should be morbidly obese by now shouldn't they? "fat people just don't exercise" ignores all of the thin couch potatoes out there snacking on pizza and all of the fat people, like me, who were or are incredibly active.

So I want to emphasize, no mom, you have no idea what I ate in high school. You are just as guilty of making false assumptions as anyone else in society. Think about what my brother ate and you'll realize he ate far more than I did. Next time you decide to make an assumption based on facts that you don't even have, please rethink it.