I just want to expose my biases because as a journalist I think there is always on the one hand on the other hand. You know, I've spent my entire life gaining and losing the same 10 pounds and being fully self-loathing for that. So I understand that's how the question. On the other, I recently for a normal weight obesity story, did something that women maybe would be adverse to doing, which is I have my body fat percentage counted. Thirty-seven percent was the answer. And they say women of my age should be somewhere between 23% and 35%, so mine was above that and I was told basically that I could be at risk for some of the same diseases associated with obesity. So I ask you from that perspective, isn't there a weight to be too fat, isn't there a weight to be overweight?
If you want to talk about where a line is for our bodies no longer becoming acceptable, I think we get into some really scary waters, you know, it's, it's not changing the paradigm at that point, it's just shifting and saying you know what, these people are now okay, but you are still not deserving of doctors that treat you well, of clothing that fits, of the same pay rate that your thinner co-workers get, you know, it runs into really incredibly socially problematic waters when you start drawing those lines. I mean obviously Crystal and I have very different bodies, and we both equally deserve, you know, access to healthful foods, doctors that treat us with respect, to be able to, you know, take public transportation and not worry that we are gonna be hackled or treated poorly just because of our bodies.
And who gets to define, Mimi, who is fat and who is not fat, is it the government, is it our employer?
Well, I think what atypically go with this is the health insurance standards, that the risk analysis that has come back and where they decide body fat percentage seems to pose greater risk for chronic disease thus expenses. When you talk about from Crystal's business, I don't even know where to begin; we are all plus-size models and learn some from your business, so I can't even imagine the pressures you are under and what, who says what is and isn't fat in your industry, but I think if you look at what body fat percentage starts to really increase the risk for chronic disease thus the cost, and that's why I think we are, we are atypically swimming in what we call fat or not fat.
It's a good question, though, Crystal, who gets to decide, who gets to define what's fat?
See, I don't, I try not to think too much about what fat really is. I try to think about health. You know I found that, you know, having had an eating disorder I was so obsessed with numbers and percentages. You know, how many minutes have I been on the treadmill? How many calories have I consumed today? Whether it was, you know, five or less calories in a stick of gum, I would excuse myself and go to the bathroom and run in the store. And I think that you know when you start obsessing about numbers you get nowhere. It really is about, you know, finding balance and moderation within yourself and are you healthy.
Kim, you clearly felt that you are fat, you made that decision, you did something about it, you think others should too.
Well, I have to, I have to say that, um, it was broken in me to know to have just a sense of fullness. I mean I had yo-yoed for so long and for so many years. I was over 200 pounds, I was over 300 pounds and if I could have just cut back and magically just, or even work at it, not magically, I could have just cut back on my food and take and eat until I was full and increase my activity level, I would have loved to have done that to get to a healthy way, but that was broken, I didn't know fullness; I didn't understand that fullness, I was so full at head hunger instead of physical hunger, that's what drove me. So what I needed was a diet I needed to obsess about. I guess you can call it obsess about, but I needed to plan out my day ahead of time figuring it all out breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, know many calories I was getting in the beginning to kind of get a sense of what my body really needed, because I couldn't tell myself that.
Maryann, you are clearly passionate about the way that you view your body and the way you feel about your self-esteem, but why it's so important to you that everybody else except you for fat?
Well, I mean, it's not my goal to have everyone, you know, be fat or think fat is attractive, that I really don't even care. I worry when I turn on the television and there is constant negative messages about women's body that increasingly smaller sizes.
You're at a controversial position about the word itself because somebody say fat is a dirty word.
Well, I think, I have been in the, you know, the fat activism community for long enough, we serve the word around a lot and we have a lot of fun with it. It's a funny word and it's a fabulous descriptor. And it's just a word. You know, it has no inherent connotation that means lazy, smelly, dirty, worthless, without any sort of self-discipline, all of these stuffs get loaded onto it.
Is it the last bastion of discrimination, though, you mentioned, I mean, the whole foods give a steeper discount to its skinnier employers.
I think this is absolutely not the last bastion of discrimination, I mean, if you've ever had coffee with atrans person, obviously it's not like we've cured racism in America just because Barrack Obama is our president, but it is a form of discrimination in America. And I think that we have hit a point culturally where it is kind of getting so ridiculous that more and more people are talking about it.
You say that society discriminates based on cost, that's just... I haven't said discriminated at all, I am curious how obesity falls under discrimination when are you, is your position at obesity is an innate state like race or sexual orientation.
Well, there is a strong genetic component to obesity, as you, yourself know with your, you know, with your family. It's, it is almost impossible I think to sum up the reason why people are fat. You can't say it's always, it's high for … We just get rid of that everyone will be thin. There are a huge number of complex factors that go into human biology and they go into the way our bodies process food and store fat, and respond to activity and to believe that we have some sort of, to believe that we have sort of conscious control over that through the power of like absolute will or something is, I think, a very socially irresponsible position to take.
I think defeatism is a social irresponsible position and what I would say is that if that were genetic, we would have seen a tripling in obesity in just a few decades. It wouldn't make a pet, cats and dogs 50% of them overweight. And what we all have if we all have the fat gene, is that for eons we had just to survive scarcity. We have been programmed through survival to eat all food available and do a good job storing fat, we are all really good at that or it wouldn't be alive today. Now we have to see who can survive abundance because we are certainly in an environment where foods are available for us to choose, to eat or, or constantly around us. So I agree with you the environment is tough, but I don't agree with you that we don't have the ability to be strategic about how we eat and not constantly gratify ourselves with food when we see the results are unhealthful.
I think that you have a very limited view of what makes people fat. And I think that happens to a lot of people like you haven't experience with emotional eating or binge eating disorder or some sort of obesity that is influenced by overeating or by constant eating, but I think that you can not look at every person and think they are all involved in the same kinds of behaviors in this same situation.
No, I agree with you, I, that would never be my position, I would never argue that, so... |