Fat – Page 10 – Feministe

Old Navy to plus-sized customers: We’ll take your money, but keep your fat asses out of our stores

One of the things I always loved about Old Navy was that I could buy clothes there, regardless of my size. Their misses’ sizes go up to 20, which was great when I was up to a size 20, because the cut of misses’ clothing fits me better than anything at Lane Bryant. Then I went above that, but by that time, they’d introduced a women’s plus line, which was pretty darn cute, and still fit my shape pretty well.

Now, they’ve decided that they don’t want fat women in their stores. So their Women’s Plus line, which now goes up to size 30, is now exclusively online.

The stores will continue to carry men’s sizes up to XXXL.

Oh, I suppose I should be thankful that they’re bothering to offer me clothing at all, especially since H&M long since ditched their plus-sized line entirely (after exiling it to the back of the store, under the escalator and in the way of the dressing rooms, so you had to push aside everyone’s discarded clothing draped all over the place and deal with the lines snaking through the “department,” which was really a couple of rows of racks). But it really galls me that Old Navy’ll take my money, just as long as I don’t set foot in one of their stores.

Heaven forfend I might want to try something on before I buy it, after all.

Big fat news

Some quick hits, with the only thing in common being that they all deal with fat, real or imagined.

If you’re fat, you’re not fit to be a parent, even if you subject yourself to dangerous surgery: Gary Stocklaufer and his wife Cynthia are the state-certified foster parents of several children, including an adopted son, Bobby, and an infant, Max, who’s the child of a cousin who couldn’t care for him. She placed the child with the Stocklaufers, and signed away her parental rights so that the Stocklaufers could adopt him.

Problem? Gary Stocklaufer is about 500 pounds. A family-court judge decided that was too fat to be a parent, so he denied the application of the Stocklaufers to adopt then-3-month-old Max in July. And took Max away. Desperate, Mr. Stocklaufer accepted an offer for pro bono gastric bypass surgery, undergoing the procedure in August.

He just lost his appeal for a rehearing, despite being willing to undergo dangerous surgery.

The story from the state has changed somewhat: apparently, in addition to his weight, Missouri officials have decided that the Stocklaufer family is a single-parent one because Gary, a truck driver, is on the road a lot.

Which of course should mean that his weight shouldn’t even be a factor, right?

The real kick in the head is that the judge who denied the Stocklaufers’ application to adopt Max is the same one who approved their application to adopt Bobby seven years ago — when Gary was the same weight, and in the same occupation. Of course, over the last seven years, the “obesity crisis” moral panic has gained a lot of traction. I have to agree with Hausfrau that this may be the thin (heh) end of the wedge:

How is it in the child’s best interest to take him away from the parents with whom he’s already bonded? Why is the double standard acceptable with regard to adoptive parents—would the courts take a three-month-old baby away from his obese biological father? His biological mother?

Or does the increasing inability of obese parents to adopt children actually serve to put obese biological parents on notice?

H/T: Kat.

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A perfect example of why weight should not be used as a proxy for health

I was reading this article the other day about how many states are changing the rules about snacks, junk food, candy for fundraisers, and school lunch programs to address the “obesity crisis.” And it hit me: why did it take anxiety about fat kids for the schools to address the way that they’re feeding kids while they’re in school?

School districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in schools healthier because of new federal guidelines and awareness that a growing number of children are overweight.

In California, deep fryers have been banned, so chicken nuggets and fries are now baked. Sweet tea is off the menu in one Alabama school. In New Jersey, 20-ounce sports drinks have been cut back to 12 ounces.

Food and beverage companies have scrambled to offer healthier alternatives in school cafeterias and vending machines, and some of the changes have been met with a shrug by students. The whole-wheat chocolate-chip cookies? “Surprisingly, the kids have kind of embraced them,” said Laura Jacobo, director of food services at Woodlake Union schools in California.

You know, it’s not just fat kids who benefit from better nutrition. ALL kids benefit from fewer fried foods, fewer sugary drinks, more fruits and vegetables, and candy as a treat rather than an everyday occurrence. What does it say about the way that this country views fat and health being linked that nobody really made a concerted effort to feed kids better as long as they stayed thin?

The federal guidelines, by all accounts, are not only antiquated but based more on what’s beneficial for farmers who benefit from agricultural subsidies than what’s beneficial for children. Which is the way a number of food assistance programs work (they don’t call it “government cheese” for nothing). In addition, according to Fast Food Nation, school lunch programs often get substandard food through federal programs designed for farmers.

Add to that the vending machines and candy sales that have proliferated in the past 20 years or so as school funding gets cut (not to mention the ads that kids are barraged with) and school districts have to make up the money somewhere.

And look! Who’s been holding back changes to the federal school nutrition guidelines that would allow the federal government to issue guidelines for food sold outside the cafeteria, which is currently left to the states?

A bill sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, that is pending in Congress would authorize the Department of Agriculture to update its rules for what could be sold at schools throughout the day. Several previous attempts by Senator Harkin have failed because of opposition from the food and beverage industry.

This time around, however, the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda industry, does not oppose the bill but is trying to iron out differences with Senator Harkin’s staff about rules on beverages. The Snack Food Association favors guidelines rather than a mandate.

Fancy that.

The real kick in the pants of it is, it took the moral panic about kids getting fat for the government to even think about doing anything — and that moral panic is probably the only reason Harkin’s bill will have even a prayer of passing. Who cares that we’re giving kids substandard nutrition, as long as they all look thin?

Oh, wait! I sense a chill. Who could it be?

And while some parents bristle at cupcake crackdowns, others argue that such guidelines are reasonable because children can be inundated with junk food at school.

MeMe Roth said she tried in 2005 to persuade other parents to ban Twinkies, doughnuts and other treats from celebrations at her children’s school in Millburn, N.J. While some parents supported her, Ms. Roth, who is president of an nonprofit organization called National Action Against Obesity, said that some were openly hostile. Her effort ultimately failed.

“Until healthful food stops competing against junk food, it doesn’t stand a chance,” Ms. Roth said.

Ah, it’s the joyless MeMe Roth. Note that the snacks and baked goods she is objecting to are meant for special occasions, like birthdays. Not for every day. And even if you get 30 kids in a class, that’s at most 30 cupcakes over the course of a school year, less if you lump all the vacation birthdays together. Hardly something that’s going to harden the little dears’ arteries right then and there.

More importantly, though, taking away cupcakes on birthdays seems unnecessarily punitive, especially if it’s linked to the fat kids in class. Could you imagine being the fat kid in a class where everyone’s upset that they can’t have cupcakes anymore, and everyone knows it’s because of your fat ass? Moreover, Me!Me!’s approach makes eating healthy seem like punishment or duty, something you do not because, hey, this tastes pretty good, but because you’ve been bad and you need to atone for your sins.

In any event, what’s wrong with a birthday cupcake now and again? Special occasions are supposed to be special, which is why you get cupcakes.

Worker’s right to not starve to death for the job

I received a note reminding me to introduce myself. So here it goes. I’m Trudi Evans. I hail from Nova Scotia, Canada. I volunteer with an organization that works on body image, self-esteem, and eating disorders issues. I publish an online magazine (shameless plug). I’m fumbling through the whole publishing arena and making it a viable business with great plans to grow from that one publication into a feminist publishing house with an aggressive marketing department and a woman-focused workplace. Right now, I work in various rooms of my home, share my keyboard with my cat, raise a child, smooch on my partner, and chase the squirrels out of my teeny tiny garden. And feel a lot of pressure to blog interesting things here at Feministe.

On with the show…

The modeling industry has been under scrutiny for pushing models to attain unnatural thinness by any means, and in the end, seeing them die for their profession. So what’s a government to do to protect its workers? Investigate the models instead of the industry, of course.

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Happy “I Hate Fat People” Week!

No, it’s not actually I Hate Fat People week, but it kind of feels like it. A (very questionable) new study says that obesity spreads like a “virus,” and having fat friends can make you fatter. Another says that mothers who work outside the home make their kids fat. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, obese girls are less likely to go to college. And now Dick Cavett has a thing or two to say about obese people daring to show their faces on television (or just about anywhere). It’s an incredibly hateful piece, and it demonstrates just how bigoted people can be towards overweight people — something further illustrated in a recent Zogby survey which found that 26 percent of Americans believe most people would least want to work with a morbidly obese person.

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Sayonara, Fat Friends

Having fat friends will make you fatter. But of course you wouldn’t want to dump your friends just for being fat — that would be shallow. Instead, you should pick friends who are thin because that’s good for you and your fat friends:

You don’t want to lose a friend who becomes obese, Dr. Christakis said. Friends are good for your overall health, he explains. So why not make friends with a thin person, he suggests, and let the thin person’s behavior influence you and your obese friend?

I’m with this guy:

“I think there’s a great risk here in blaming obese people even more for things that are caused by a terrible environment,” Dr. Brownell said.

But it’s so much more fun to blame fatness on an actual person who often can’t do a whole lot to alter their genes and their living situation than to take steps to actually increase overall health and access to healthy foods and habits.

This week’s social ill caused by feminism is?

Magic 8-ball says: Childhood Obesity. Oh, noes! It’s because feminists hate children, isn’t it? No, not quite:

Middle-class mothers who work long hours increase the risk of their offspring being overweight or obese, according to an astonishing new study.

Astonishing is right, but some women have always worked:

Research revealed by The Independent on Sunday for the first time will turn perceived wisdom on its head with the revelation that the nation’s higher-paid working mothers bear much of the responsibility for the country’s ticking obesity time bomb, and not the poorer working-class families who are usually blamed.

You hear that, all you highly paid professionals with children(women only, sorry men)? Not only as feminists are you responsible for the destruction of families, but you make them fat too!

More shockingly, the risk of childhood obesity soars in direct correlation with family income. Children in families where household income is greater than £33,000 are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese than youngsters from families with the lowest incomes, the new study shows. And in higher income households, the longer a mother worked each week, the greater the risk of the child being overweight.

More shocking is that they are just now figuring out that families with low incomes have less disposable dollars to spend on things like soda and chips. Those conscious working mothers who chose childcare facilities because of the nutritional programs that they offered, you don’t get off so easily either:

Compounding the misery for working mothers, the study found that children’s weight problems got worse if mothers relied on a nanny to hold the fort while they pursued their careers. Children in childcare are 24 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than children cared for by their mother or her partner.

Ladies, if you are not aborting them, abusing them by not marrying the father, or abandoning them in childcare then you are plumping them up with your selfish work hours:

Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “I do not wish to condemn these women but I do think the priority has to be the health of the child and its continued health into adulthood. We are in danger of raising a generation of young people with a much shorter life expectancy than previous generations.”

Next week’s edition of Blame Feminism/Working Women: Alzheimer’s, how parents with working daughters are at a higher risk.

Gentlemen Prefer Bones

A new ad campaign for Fit Light Yogurt uses well-known sexy images of famous women (Marilyn Monroe in the white dress, Mena Suvari naked and covered in rose petals in American Beauty, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct), manipulates them to make the women heavier, and includes the tagline “Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.”

The message, apparently, is that men have always and forever preferred skinny chicks, and they always and forever will. The women in the ads are supposed to serve as a contrast to what men really like, since the women in the ads aren’t skinny. Their disgustingly fat bodies are supposed to make us all run for the fat-free yogurt.

At least, I think this is what the ad is supposed to do, based on its tagline. It kind of loses in its delivery, though. Check it (may not be safe for work):

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If pooping your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis

oops
Oops! I crapped my pants.

A newly approved over-the-counter diet drug called alli is flying off the shelves — and I’ll predict a spike in black pant sales, because a primary side effect of the drug is anal leakage.

In a theoretical 3,000 calorie-a-day diet with about 100 grams of fat, the drug would eliminate about 225 calories.

But it can also result in what the manufacturer describes as loose stools and gas with an oily discharge. “It’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work,” the drug’s official website says.

Mmmm, loose stools, gas and oily discharge! Now, I love scatalogical humor as much as the next girl, but I’m not sure I’d want to make myself a walking advertisement for it just so I could drop 5 pounds.

The bright side: I get to file this post under “assholes.” Ha ha.

Black women are promoting obesity with their big booties

But it’s the reporter who’s the biggest ass. The tagline of the article hints at things to come: “Many blacks love big women, but having a rump the size of Buffie the Body’s can put women at risk for disease.” And it only gets better:

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and need not justify itself. I love (non-steroidal) body builders’ physiques and, pre-kids, I was that hardcore gym rat haranguing co-workers over the contents of their lunch sacks. My own mother found my buff body distasteful, though it would have taken Gitmo to make her admit it (my family deputized a representative to ask me if I was gay). So, my issue is not with a butt fetish per se. Fetishizing large rumps (though “large” doesn’t tell you the half of it without the pix) is, of course, no better or worse than fetishizing plastic blimp-breasts, except that the latter could be considered safer. Their supply can be halted, surgeons are regulated, patients are monitored and, of course, the bearers themselves can have the implants removed. But the best way to get a gargantuan ass of urban-lad-mag size is to be obese; this is also the path to ill health and early death for black women, as Buffie’s lifestyle amply demonstrates.

Yes, you read that right: It is healthier to undergo surgery where a doctor slices your breasts open and stuffs two saline-filled baggies into your chest than it is to have a naturally big ass.

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