Yet More Anna

I would be remiss if I didn't follow up on everyone's favorite weight-loss trainwreck, Anna-Nicole. She's apparently posing nude in a magazine to "prove" she didn't have surgery. I am not saying she had surgery, necessarily, but I am saying that there's a such thing called airbrushing, people. There's Photoshop. It ain't difficult. You'd be amazed; working in advertising, I've seen what can be done. Those pictures prove nothing. And the representative of the magazine, vouching for her? Also proves nothing. Get her to strip for Howard Stern. Him, I'd believe.

Afraid To Be Fat

I was struck by the wonderful George Carlin quote that Marla posted in the lexicon thread and went searching for it online. I found this page, which has a lot of good quotes, but I was especially struck by this one from Our Bodies, Ourselves:

Many of us are convinced that making women afraid to be fat is a form of social control. Fear of fat keeps women preoccupied, robs us of our pride and energy, keeps us from taking up space.

There's a certain amount of energy that each of us has to spend in making sure we are healthy, making the best choices, and feeling good about ourselves. But this quote still gave me a chill. Because not a single one of my male friends obsesses about weight or has ever obsessed about weight to the extent that women do. And here I mean most women, not just women who have legitimate health issues. We obsess about weight to the exclusion of what? Equality? Is it possible?

Maybe men do feel the same preoccupation, except without the societal permission to talk about it. Or maybe we, women, are allowing ourselves to be controlled by this fear, as the quote above suggests. Maybe we are wasting our energy on something that ultimately isn't that important, and is in fact even more insidious than we imagine.

He Was Also Kind Of A Nutjob, Though

At last, a post that isn't about anyone named Kirstie or Anna Nicole. Jack Nicholson has written a touching obituary to Marlon Brando for Rolling Stone, and I liked this quote: "It disturbs me that toward the end, all some people could speak about was his weight... What Mr. Brando does for a living ain't done by the pound."

Once Again, Kirstie Alley

She was interviewed for an upcoming issue of People (which of course, for the sake of journalism, because I bring the news of Kirstie and her fat to the people, I will be forced to read) and there are articles about it all over. Probably there will be nothing to report after I read the issue itself, but I hope at least they include some flattering pictures of her.

The reporter who interviewed her, the ever-sympathetic Jess Cagle, says that Alley "doesn't look horrible." You hear that, fat people? We might not look horrible! That is so empowering!

And in this article with the unfortunate title of "Kirstie Weighs In," Cagle says that "Kirstie Alley as a fat person sells issues... [i]t's a strange thing, but the tabloids love to show pictures of her looking fat." That article also reveals her weight (203 pounds, not in the 300s) and the fact that she recently spent three weeks at a spa trying to lose weight.

Kirstie Alley herself says, "I'm not happy with the way I look, but I've never been happier with myself." Which is not quite the message I wish she was going with, but can you really blame her?

Oh, Jared

Because I work in advertising, I was particularly interested in this article, about how Subway is doing a new ad campaign targeted to, presumably, overweight children and their parents.

On one hand:

They aren't shown eating food, there aren't any "before-and-after" pictures, and the ads don't promise that you'll be more beautiful or popular. They don't even reveal how much weight each kid lost.

And on the other:

[Jared] closes all of these kid-targeted spots... by smiling and expressing a heartfelt 'We want your children to live long and healthy lives,' while holding up the fat pants. (The fat pants have to go. Sure, they are huge, but that only adds to the dissonance of the non-diet message.) Some of the kids are shown holding up their fat pants as well, which doesn't work either.

It actually sounds like a very positive commercial campaign, and I applaud the fine folks at Subway for it--it's just that anything involving Jared and his fat pants is probably a bad idea.

More Anna, More Kirstie

Anna Nicole Smith defends Kirstie Alley is the headline on this, but the article is mostly about Smith defending herself. ("They're being mean to her" is about the extent of the Kirstie Alley thing. Which is true, but not exactly blistering rhetoric.)

Anna Nicole claims to have lost 70 pounds with Trimspa and a healthy diet, but no exercise. I've heard that Trimspa is mostly a whole lot of nothing (except, as noted in the comments, an irritating tagline), and I'm not quite sure I believe such a drastic change to be possible in such a short time without Kate Hudson-like exercise. Anna Nicole looks really toned, doesn't she? I guess if she's shilling for Trimspa though, there's no way she can admit if there were other factors involved.

Thanks to DinoNeil for the link!

You Can Never Be Too Rich

Here's a gallery of celebrities who were once scary-thin, but have returned to normal weights, as well as celebs who have gotten "too thin" (although Selma Blair for one looks fine to me in both pictures, not unhealthy at any rate). The picture of Portia di Rossi especially creeped me out, and no surprise to find Lara Flynn Boyle on that list.

I guess there's a certain amount of fairness here; we like to ogle celebrities who are too thin as well as celebrities who are too fat. I don't know if either one is better than the other, but I would give John Goodman and Whitney Houston similar odds in the death pool. I am always rooting for them to get healthier, whatever that means for them.

Thanks to Megan for the link!

Lexicon

Language is powerful.

Knowing what to call someone who is overweight is tricky. I personally think "chubby" and "plump" are cute words, but "chunky" and "hefty" are not--your mileage may vary. I think "porky" is funny, though not when used seriously. I think "curvy" is my favorite way to be described, despite the whole personal-ad-euphemism thing.

I was thinking about this because in one of the comments below, I was going to refer to Kirstie Alley as "fat" since she has gained a considerable amount of weight. But I was afraid of offending anyone who was that same weight but did not like to be called "fat." I think I went with "overweight" instead, my favorite neutral term.

Then I started looking up synonyms for "fat."

Synonyms with negative connotations include: chunky, chubby, corpulent, blimpy, gross, lardass, fatty, flabby, tubby, roly-poly, pudgy, plump, and unwieldy. And "fat slob," "fatso," and "two-ton" are even listed in my thesaurus, which is lovely. Oh and I remember "Krispy Kreme" got a big laugh in Erin Brockovich, so much so that the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly counts it among the best movie lines. Yeah. It was funny in context, I guess, but notice that I don't own Erin Brockovich.

Animal-related terms: cow, whale, elephantine, porcine, porky, and piggy. And for anyone who read Judy Blume as a kid, there's blubber.

Personal-ad euphemisms: voluptuous, Rubenesque, curvaceous, curvy, full-figured, plus-sized and zaftig. Those are all positive terms, but there's a certain amount of disingenuousness in some of them. I mean "Rubenesque" is a great word, but to me it comes off a little like someone who is afraid to own her own shape.

Positive connotations: Interestingly, many of the terms used to describe overweight men could be considered positive. Like "beefy" or "burly" or "brawny" or "stocky," these words imply physical strength and substance and are only applied to women when we want to say "big and butch," whereupon they become negative again. (Obviously, it is more acceptable to be an overweight man than an overweight woman. N.B. Jack Black vs. Camryn Manheim.)

As neutral as it gets are the following terms: heavy, overweight, large, big, stout, fleshy, rotund, thickset, heavyset, ample, obese.

So which of these words should we use? I personally hate the word "heavyset" and certainly don't want anything to do with "obese" although it is medically correct.

The word "fat" as a descriptor might be the best we're going to get, except for the fact that it's considered an insult. But what if we try to reclaim the word fat?

The land mine about that can be found when examining at other words that have been reclaimed, such as "fag" and "n----r." [Edited to add little marks. My aversion to that word is too strong.] These words have been reclaimed by people who identify with those groups and therefore it's acceptable for them to use those terms. Whereas someone like me (neither homosexual nor African-American) would avoid those terms as slurs.

But with the word "fat" there is no clear-cut way to determine whether you do or do not fit in that group. Especially if you're gaining or losing weight--where's the borderline? When do you have to stop using it? When can you start?

And in fact if you identify as fat, but other, fatter people look at you and think you're not fat, using that term to apply to yourself would not be seen positively. I am not immune from this; if a size two person is going to call herself fat, I am going to call her someone with a wildly distorted body image.

So how about you. How do you feel about these words? Which one (like me and "heavyset" really sets your teeth on edge? What's the worst thing you've been called? (I think I got called "Wilson Phillips" once, which was creative I guess, but wouldn't work anymore. Why do strangers feel the need to yell out fat slurs, anyway?) What words do you like? What words are empowering? What words should we use?

Kids Should Not Diet

I read this article with absolute recognition. Every single thing this article warns parents not to do are things that my mother did to me, and believe me when I say it directly contributed to my lifelong overweight. I gained weight as a form of rebellion against parents who sat me down and told me, at thirteen, that my "ass was spreading" and that I had to stay the same weight and not gain a single pound and then I would "be okay." I wish someone had given her this advice twenty years ago.

Edited to add another link with similar advice for parents.

Comments, Comments, Comments!

I think I figured out the problem with the comments. Everyone who left comments should see them now; I republished the site and they all appeared, as if by magic. I'm going to try and leave a comment on this post to test it out. For some more interesting content, you guys can go read the many interesting comments that have just appeared.

Hot, Vapid Chicks Come In All Sizes

Lard Biscuit, the personal site of Donald Trull, is a little antidote to the fixation on hot, skinny women. He's fixated on hot, curvy women instead! It may be slightly pervy, but it's progress. (Please note that the Lard Biscuit name is a reference to the whole site, not just the part about women. In case you were concerned.)

Here is his personal list of hot chicks. I agree that Mia Tyler and Kate Winslet and Monica Lewinsky are hot, but I am not sure what he was smoking when he decided to worship Anna Nicole Smith as a goddess. Does personality mean nothing to you, Donald? I had to laugh, though, when I read his latest essay on Anna Nicole.

"People ask me what I think about Anna Nicole's drastic weight loss. Anyone who knows me, and anyone who's read my annanicological ramblings, should fucking well know the answer already. I hate it. She looks absolutely terrible. It sears my soul with agony to see what this supremely beautiful woman has done to herself. She was once an icon of classic feminine sexuality, the harbinger of an aesthetic restoration in an era of darkness and lies. Now she has thrown it all away. She has cast aside her singular, defiant beauty in favor of joining the legion of anonymous scrawny boob-job blondes who already infest our cultural landscape like cockroaches, while the world moronically applauds her achievement."

So what do you think? Are you happy there's a guy like Donald out there? Do you find it all vaguely disturbing in a way you can't quite put your finger on? Do you think he's a fat fetishist or just a guy with preferences-- is there a difference? And do you think I'm crazy for being right there with him with the Lewinsky thing?

Star and Star

Is it sad that one of my sources of pop culture information is Star magazine? Actually I already know the answer to that. But it's the New Glossy Star! How can you not love the New Glossy Star?

I was reading up on the latest MK news (that's Mary-Kate Olsen, who is rumored to be coming home from rehab any minute now) and found an article about Star Jones, specifically about how she's lost circa 100 pounds, going from 300-ish to 200-ish. This is according to the "experts" who are looking at her pictures and guessing her weight.

On the plus side (ha ha! the puns just keep on coming!) they have a picture of her that is captioned enthusiastically: "Now Fabulous at 200 lbs!" She must be fairly short, because at 200 pounds she is not especially slender. But I would agree with the caption: she does look healthy and vibrant and fabulous. And yay for celebrating her still-full figure with such a positive adjective!

(Even if this is the same magazine that points out how "fat" Britney Spears is getting, but I'll save that for another time. But you had better believe there's some relativism happening here. If Star Jones's "before" picture had been 120 pounds and her "after" picture was the current 200 pounds, I am sure the fine folks at Star would have used an adjective other than "fabulous" to describe her.)

On the down side, there is a quote from the same unidentified "expert" speculating that she may have had gastric bypass surgery, because "people her size usually aren't capable of losing weight on their own." So yeah. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Generalizations about people of a "certain size" and what they can and cannot accomplish do not sit well with me. Evidently this person is an "expert" at talking out of his or her ass.

Off the top of my head, there are several people I can think of who have lost approximately 100 pounds without gastric bypass surgery, and the bullshit message that people like them are "not capable" of doing it might have been a dangerous one to send at the beginning of that long, long road. At the very least it's an irresponsible one.


[Update: More Star Jones posts are here and here, and don't miss out on the comments of that second post.]

News Tidbit

Kirstie Alley (I knew I'd be mentioning her sooner rather than later) has signed on to do a Showtime reality series called Fat Actress. My first thought is that's tremendously brave, and I will be pissed if it's all just a big winking excuse to laugh at the fat lady. My second thought is, does our advocate really have to be Kirstie Alley? Because we've all seen those Pier One commercials. Man, she is irritating.

I'll Be There At 9

Old Navy has started making plus-sized clothes available in their stores. Wouldn't it be great if other clothing manufacturers followed suit? I've always thought it was so inane that sizes stop at 12 in so many places. Is it that the "prestige" of the brand suffers when they make extended sizes? Is it the cost of the fabric?

Because the idea of hip, boutique clothiers making extended sizes (when so many people can't wear the smaller sizes and would love an adorable bcbg dress or whatever) screams "cash cow" to me. "Cow" maybe being an unfortunate word choice there, but still.

That said, I was in Old Navy not long ago, and took a quick look at the clothes. It's as if they picked their ugliest styles and those were the ones they chose to upgrade to plus-sizes. I have no idea why people think overweight women have terrible taste in clothes. Still, it's a start.