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Sorry, RogerEbert.com, It’s Not Okay that Sadness is Fat

Guess which one is Sadness. Go on. Guess.

Recently I saw a piece by columnist Olivia Collette Roger Ebert. com called “Why Can’t Sad Be Fat?” The piece was written in response to the recent backlash regarding Pixar’s recent release “Inside Out”. In the film, which takes place primarily inside the head of an 11 year old girl, there are characters embodying various emotions including anger, disgust, joy, fear and sadness. In particular, the article skewers Joni Edelman, editor-in-chief at Ravishly.com, feminist and body-positive activist, about a piece she recently wrote for The Huffington Post.

Let’s first address the fact that Joni admits she wrote the article without having seen the movie first. In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea. I don’t believe it invalidates Joni’s argument. It just makes it awfully easy for the opposing side to take cheap pot shots at her. And they did. Yes indeedy.

I did see the movie. And in many ways, I liked it. But immediately afterwards, I asked my hubby, why did they have to make Sadness fat? You see, the character called Sadness is blue, wears a frumpy sweater and glasses and is, well, fat. This is in contrast to the character called “Joy” who is thin, yellow, tall, twirly and wears a gorgeous green Doris Day dress.

I was frustrated. Because I liked the movie quite a lot. The movie featured a female lead who loved to play hockey, came from the Midwest, also loved unicorns, and was all around cool. I loved the fact that sadness was recognized as an important human emotion, and that when the main character Riley is told to put on a brave face regarding a cross-country move to San Francisco, and tries to squash her feelings of sadness, all heck breaks loose. It’s important to acknowledge that we need to feel sad sometimes.

In many ways the movie is great.

But why did they have to make “Sadness” short, frumpy, bespectacled and fat? Why did they feel the need to pair fat with lazy? In the movie, Joy actually picks up Sadness’ leg and drags her around because she’s “too sad to walk”. Check it out (if you want) in the clip below:

And I can’t help but shake my head at Olivette’s critique of Joni. In the article on RogerEbert.com, she suggests that Joni is the one equating fat with bad. Olivette suggests that since Joni hasn’t seen the film, SHE’S the one projecting negative stereotypes onto the fat character and therefore missed the nuances of the film.

Firstly, if she’s a body-positive activist, I wonder what led her to assume that the fat character is a bad one. Not in an evil way, of course, but at least in a way that’s not as uplifting as Joy.

To which I reply:

right animated GIF

Look. I love the fact that Sadness is important and that Joy misjudges her. But (and this is a big but) you are still portraying sadness as a character who is fat, and lazy and frumpy. There is a very, VERY strong notion in our country that being fat is an outward manifestation of being emotionally unbalanced. That we are fat because we are sad and then we are sad because we are fat. If I had a dollar for every time I came across an ad or a program or a person in my life who insisted that once I learned how to be happy, once I learned to be emotionally fulfilled, I would stop eating and the pounds would just melt away. “Fat people shouldn’t be hated. They should be pitied. Because they are sad which makes them eat, which makes them more fat, which makes them more sad, bless their hearts.” Grrrrr.

I understand fully that the Joy character initially misunderstands the Sadness character in the movie. And I am really clear about the transformation that happens as Joy understands the importance of Sadness to Riley. But it still doesn’t do anything to take away from the Fat=Sadness=Fat trope in the movie and in the world.

And I don’t buy the argument that if we made Joy fat, the movie would be criticized for furthering the Fat=Jolly stereotype either. (I.E. you just can’t make those fat people happy no matter what you do, so why try?) I am glad that this film gets so many things so right. But it doesn’t take a away a little feeling of Sadness that they had to do it by showing very young girls that the fat girl and the thin girl can be friends, but the fat girl can’t ever really be happy.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to hear me speak about body positivity at YOUR school? Check out my speaking page HERE.

Newly Published Paper says Social Media Campaigns Balloon Up Stereotypes and Stigma associated with Fatness

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Eric needs a new job–preferably one that doesn’t stigmatize an entire population.

I’m pleased to share with you that my colleague Lily O’ Hara has recently co-authored a paper in the journal Media and Culture. The article offers a critique of two major anti-obesity media campaigns that ran in Australia. These campaigns include “Measure Up” and “Swap It, Don’t Stop It”. The Measure Up campaign promotes health management through body weight and waist circumference. It included television advertising, posters, a community guide and a handy 12-week planning kit complete with, you guessed it, a tape measure. Highlighted headlines included “The more you gain, the more you have to lose.” and “How do you measure up?”

Not surprisingly the images that accompanied these campaigns were troubling for many and triggering for some. In the Measure Up campaign, there were video ads that showed a young man looking sadly at a waistline that expanded as he digitally aged. Naturally dire warnings about disease accompanied the video. In still images, both men and women were shown, head bowed, looking dejectedly at a tape measure slung around their waists. These people were shown clad in their underwear (similar to the shorts/sports bra getup in The Biggest Loser) to add to the “public shaming” aspect of the campaign.

Ad copy for the Swap it Don’t Stop It campaign used fear and panic words, highlighting diseases and phrases like ballooning weight. In fact the star of the campaign, Eric, is made of a balloon. In the campaign he says,

over the years my belly has ballooned and ballooned. It’s come time to do something about it — the last thing I want is to end up with some cancers, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. That’s why I’ve become a Swapper! What’s a swapper? It’s simple really. It just means swapping some of the things I’m doing now for healthier choices. That way I can lose my belly, without losing all the things I love. It’s easy!

So aside from the panic inducing words and shame producing “balloon image” we have the assertion that swapping just a few foods in a person’s diet will significantly change weight, BMI and waist circumference, despite the fact that there is no concrete evidence that this result would indeed happen.

The paper concludes:

Through the use of textual, discursive and social practices, the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study perpetuate the following concepts: everyone should be alarmed about growing waistlines and ‘ballooning’ rates of ‘obesity’; individuals are to blame for excess body weight, due to ignorance and the practice of ‘unhealthy behaviours’; individuals have a moral, parental, familial and cultural responsibility to monitor their weight and adopt ‘healthy’ eating and physical activity behaviours; such behaviour changes are easy to make and will result in weight loss, which will reduce risk of disease. These paternalistic campaigns evoke feelings of personal and parental guilt and shame, resulting in coercion to ‘take action’. They simultaneously stigmatise fat people yet serve to invisibilise them. Public health agencies must consider the harmful consequences of social marketing campaigns focused on body weight.

So let’s take this apart for a moment, shall we? I’ve spoken before, at great length, about how shame fails to make people healthier, happier or thinner. In fact, I’ve spoken about how shame tends to make us, less happy, less happy and larger than before. I’ve talked about how obesity levels are actually flattened out, and the obesipanic doesn’t really make sense in that context. I’ve talked about how hard our bodies fight to maintain our weight and that in most cases, a few simple changes will not result in significant (if any) weight loss. So everything about these campaigns are doomed. They are much more likely to cause harm than to help. But let’s look at one other aspect of this. The taxpayers of Australia paid for these things. They are government sponsored.

We’ve all heard the argument that fat people can be fat as long as they don’t cost you tax dollars.
And there are many reasons why this is a ridiculous argument. But one eloquent comeback I see after reading this paper is this:

Your fat hatred is costing me far more tax dollars than any money you are supposedly losing caring for people of size.

We have ample evidence that these campaigns do no good. We have ample evidence that these campaigns are actively causing harm to the people targeted by them. And to me, the worst part is we are making people pay for the very media that is stigmatizing, brutalizing and depressing them.

The only thing ballooning here, is my rage over this particular state of affairs.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones But Words Can Hurt You Forever

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I was recently having lunch with a beautiful and talented young woman, one who was enrolled in a good school getting a professional degree at a good school, who had a wonderful boyfriend who adored her, who was working at a decent job to help pay her school bills and is kind. I was somewhat surprised when I heard this woman say that she had seen a television commercial showing a lazy chubby young boy, calling his grandma on the phone to ask her to bring something to him from the other room. Not surprised that she had something to say. But rather surprised that she had something so vicious to say about that pudgy, fat kid. That if she was that fatty’s parent, she would smack him. I was surprised not only because this seemed a little out of character for her, but also because she knew very well about my work as The Fat Chick and my views on this subject. She went on to say, she used to be thin but then this happened (pointing to her stomach) and this happened (pointing to her butt). I told her that she was of course beautiful, and further more, she was under no obligation to look any particular way for anybody’s approval. Then she burst into tears. At a recent family gathering, a close family member of hers had commented about whether or not she should wear a bikini and whether or not she would keep her boyfriend in light of her current weight. She was devastated. She didn’t eat for the rest of the day until her worried boyfriend brought her some food and asked her please to eat something. Apparently this same family member had given her grief some time before for not eating, for being too skinny and suspecting she had an eating disorder.

As I talked her through the pain and drama, my heart was in my throat. It brought me right back. I was 15 again and listening to haranguing by family friends and family members about my weight. About how I would never find a man, or if I found one, he would cheat on me and ultimately leave me because who wants to be with a fatty. I was listening to people constantly asking if I “needed to eat that?” if I was sure I “should wear that?” and if I knew “what I looked like?”. I was there with the constant self doubt, the devastating and crippling crash in self confidence, the firm desire to wait until I looked the right way to pursue the life I wanted. I remembered how many years I wasted, obsessed about the size of my weight. And I got monumentally pissed off.

How dare people do this to aspiring young women with so much to give in the world. How DARE they pass off their insecurities and bullying as concern for a woman’s well being. HOW DARE THEY? Once my little PTSD moment passed, I told my friend in no uncertain terms that if people feel the need to spread their own insecurities around this way, it is her job to tell them to stuff it. She is the gatekeeper for her own soul. She gets to decide who she lets in. And perhaps, if people are going to behave in such a toxic way, they don’t get to talk to her any more. Not until they learn how to behave.

I honestly don’t know if she will find my comments helpful. But I sincerely hope she does. Because the world needs bright, young, talented, kind young people. And it would be sad to think they won’t leave their house and make their way in the world because of how somebody feels about how they look in a bikini.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

Boy Was My Face Red–Exercise and Flushing

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It can feel so embarrassing. You’re just working out and minding your own business, and somebody or several somebodies stop by to ask if you’re okay. When you look in the mirror after (or during) your workout, you notice that your face is beet red and sweating. Super awesome! Combine a fat body with a flushed face and you can become the target of genuine concern (which includes a bevvy of fitness instructors calculating their liability fitness rates) or (even worse) concern trolling.

What to do? Should be red faced with embarrassment over your red face? Should you be concerned? How do you deal with other folks that are worried about you? This discussion came up on the Fit Fatties Forum and I thought it warranted a blog post of its very own.

First, having a red face is nothing to be embarrassed about. It happens to many exercisers of all shapes and sizes. In most cases, it’s simply the body’s way of working to cool itself. When you begin to exercise and your body starts to get warm, it begins to sweat to help cool things off. As your muscles begin to heat up, your body tends to move the heat from your muscles to your skin which causes the blood vessels in your face (and elsewhere on your skin) to dilate. This is a perfectly normal process which helps keep your body cool as you work out. Naturally, this effect is more pronounced when you exercise somewhere warm and humid. This process moves a lot of super oxygenated blood around in your skin which not only helps keep you cool but helps maintain healthy skin.

For the most part, flushed skin is no big deal. If you are feeling great during your workout, there is probably no cause for alarm. However, if you start feeling dizzy, extra tired, nauseated or are sweating an amount that is very unusual for you, this could be a sign of impending heat exhaustion. As always, take time to listen to your body. If you’re experiencing these symptoms, stop exercising immediately, loosen tight clothing, get indoors, and drink some cool fluids.

Also, in some cases, this red skin could be a sign of rosacea–a common skin condition which causes your face to periodically get red especially across the nose. Also, if you notice that your face is flushing repeatedly without exercise or spicy foods or any other trigger you might want to check with your health care professional. It could be a sign of a more serious condition.

But for the most part, being red in the face is simply your body’s way of cooling off your muscles and enriching your body’s largest organ (your skin). If you know that you tend to get flushed, it can be helpful to let group fitness instructors or personal trainers know ahead of time. This can stave off some of our concerns and stave off some of those worried looks. If somebody asks you about your red face, you can simply tell them that you are in the middle of a great workout, and this is simply your body’s way of keeping you cool.

Finally, you can’t necessarily prevent getting red skin, but you can minimize it by not getting so hot in the first place. Work out in dry cool places or indoors. Work out in shorter bouts (where your body has a chance to cool down) and drink plenty of fluids.

But for the most part, I encourage you to just accept your flushed face as a sign of super cool fitness accomplishment. Cause you are just hot!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA the Fat Chick)

Fitness is for ALL of Us

Functional Fitness Means LOTS More Painting

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I get asked a lot about functional fitness. What does it mean? How does it impact Quality of Life? What is Quality of Life? To me, Quality of Life, means the ability and energy you have available to do the things you love to do with the people you love. Quality of life is not guaranteed. It is not a status that you unlock or a level you achieve. Quality of Life like “health” is a continuum. It fluctuates from day to day. And each of us has a different default level from which we fluctuate. Many things impact our quality of life including genetics, family, socioeconomic status, age, gender and fitness level and social network. And only some of our quality of life is under our control. We can, if we wish, work to improve the things over which we have some control. Fitness level is one of those things. And functional fitness is the process of using exercise to increase our abilities to do things in our everyday lives.

This has come home to me in a very personal way as we engage in the “eternal, internal, house painting project”. I am not kidding you. This has taken a week longer than forever. There are days when I never want to look at a texture gun or a roller or a paintbrush EVER AGAIN. However, I can state in no uncertain terms, that this bloody, everlasting, wall pigmentation project would have never even gotten off the ground if I hadn’t worked over the years on my functional fitness. I primarily teach dance classes, but I do some yoga and resistance training and walking/running as well. And all of this has helped prepare me for the rigors of home remodeling. Whether it’s lifting one end of a 14-foot-long 2×12 board or rolling paint on to a ceiling or climbing a ladder or performing the equivalent of 100 squats in a two hour period in the course of spraying texture on the wall (using the power tool that my husband and I have affectionately dubbed the “poo flinger”) my more traditional fitness program has made this possible. I’ve increased my aerobic endurance, upper body strength, flexibility, balance and sheer bloody-mindedness so that I can do this painting stuff with my hubby for approximately eleventy billion hours per day. I even have the strength (in theory) to bludgeon him to death with a HVLP sprayer.

Which makes me wonder, “Is this a good thing?” Why don’t we just hire somebody to do this? Hey, HUSBAND! Why don’t we just HIRE SOMEBODY TO DO THIS? I guess the main reason is that my husband really loves to do this kind of thing, and he wants us to do it together. And even if I don’t love painting quite as much as he does, I do love him. And I am deeply grateful that I currently have the strength to do that.

Does that mean everybody has to exercise this way? Does that mean everybody is even capable of getting to the point they can exercise this way? Of course not! Everybody is in a different place on their fitness continuum and everybody has different priorities for how they fit exercise into their lives. There is no moral imperative to work out or to ever wield a painting implement. But I will say that exercise helps move you towards a point on the Quality of Life continuum which may give you more energy and more choices about how to spend that energy. And that my friends is why I exercise. Oh, and of course, because it’s fun. Well except maybe the painting part.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. ‘m SUPER excited to announce that after months of planning, Courtney Marshall, Candice Casas, Ragen Chastain and I are launching the call for proposals for a new anthology about fat people in the fitness/exercise/athletics/dance world. We plan to include first person stories, interviews, academic pieces, poetry, and art. You can get all the information (including about how to submit a proposal) at www.fatfitnessanthology.com Let me know if you have any questions, deadline for proposals is July 15!

Weight (Stigma) Affects School Children’s Grades

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My dear friend and colleague Angela Meadows recently penned this important article for The Conversation discussing the issues surrounding weight, school children and academic performance. There have been a number of studies over the years linking higher weights with lower performance in school–particularly among female pre-teens and teenagers. Many of these studies have sought and eliminated co-variables in other health issues, potential depression and the onset of menses in women. However, many of these early studies seemed to avoid what would seem the most obvious connection between school performance and weight–the impact of weight stigma on school children of all ages (especially girls).

Angela then shared with us the results of a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health specifically documenting the results of weight stigma on kids in school. For the most part, the study which followed over 3,000 kids for over 10 years found no significant difference in test scores for the kids who became fatter. However, the study indicated that as the students weights went up, the teacher’s evaluation of the kids abilities went down. (Primarily for reading in girls and math in boys). And to a certain extent, as weights went up, the students evaluations of their own abilities went down. Although, the studies didn’t specifically measure attitudes of weight bias in teachers, Angela pointed to other studies that do just that.

Angela goes on to discuss important research linking weight stigma to bullying by other children as well as studies that indicate that much of the lag in academic achievement by fatter kids can be explained by bullying from both fellow students and educators.

I have not been shy in the past in saying and saying and SAYING that stigma does not make people healthier, happier or thinner. In fact weight stigma makes people less likely to seek medical treatment, leads to disordered eating and risky behaviors, leads to more stress, anxiety and illness and yes, leads to lower academic performance. And since there is literally no scientifically proven way to help most people lose a lot of weight and keep it off, perhaps telling people to lose weight to avoid this stigma is ill advised.

We know that weight-based stigma is harmful for people of all ages, yet we continue to march in the war on obesity for the fatties’ own good. We continue to fight body fat and ignore the plain fact that it is our societal attitude towards fat people that is causing much of the damage. We continue to wring our hands and shout “What about the children?” as an excuse for maintaining this war on big bodies, without addressing the simple fact that the number one casualty of the “war on obesity” seems to be from “friendly fire” on the folks we are purporting to help. At what point will we finally realize that stigmatizing children into a fruitless attempt to change their body size so that they can avoid weight stigma is at best, seriously messed up?

I hope that moment is coming and I hope it is coming soon. Our kids have enough to deal with just trying to grow up in this world without being victimized by the very people who we engage to help them. I hope that we can start some efforts to seriously help our educators and child caretakers recognize weight bias in themselves and work to push past it. I hope that we can stop allowing our kids to be collateral damage from a war that it is nearly impossible for them to win.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

150 Minutes

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I just ran across this article online that talks about some new studies that talk about how much exercise you really need to do to significantly increase the chances of having a longer better life. What it found is pretty encouraging. You don’t need to do hours upon hours of exercise per week in order to see a benefit. The largest gains were seen for people who exercised about an hour per day. (Just over 400 minutes per week). Any amount of exercise beyond this (even up to 1,000 or more minutes of exercise per week) didn’t move the needle beyond 400 minutes per week. But if an hour per day seems like too much, don’t despair. The benefits of 1 hour per day were really only slightly higher than those of people who exercised just 150 minutes per week. And the study indicates that virtually any amount of exercise improves your chances over people who are completely sedentary. And these benefits happened regardless of whether or not the people doing them lost any weight.

And you don’t even need to exercise that hard to get the benefits. In fact, one of the new studies shows that moderate exercise is nearly as good as vigorous exercise in improving longevity. Adding some vigorous exercise gives a slight bump, but you get plenty of benefits from simply walking, dancing around, gardening or other low impact, potentially low velocity activities. So you can really get an awful lot of benefit from just including 30 minutes of gentle exercise per day to your daily activities. This video covers a lot of this information. (TW: Obesity is briefly risked as a risk factor and as having negative consequences when mixed with sedentary).

Let me be clear here. Exercise is not morally superior to any other activity. (Nor does everybody need or want to hear graphic details about every moment of your run or other form of exercise). Nobody is morally required to exercise. But for those who are seeking ways to extend and improve their lives exercise is one of many effective steps they can choose to take. They can also choose to practice mindful meditation, or engage in other enjoyable activities that help reduce their stress levels, find ways to get more and better sleep and spend quality time in social activities if they want to. But the good news here, for folks who are specifically interested in engaging in exercise in order to gain health benefits is they don’t have to do a whole lot or do it at a very intense level to enjoy those benefits.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

Don’t Exercise

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Last night I gave a speech at Kaiser provocatively entitled, “Don’t Exercise”. It was a big hit, so I thought I would share some of the highlights with you today. The whole idea of the speech is that so often people begin to exercise because they believe that if they do so, their body will look a certain way, as if we could change our body as easily as changing our hairstyle and we could match our new body to a picture in a magazine. Except this hardly ever works. Most people are simply not genetically blessed in a way that makes huge biceps or six pack abs realistic or sustainable for them. Sure there is a very small group of people–like 5 percent or even 1 percent who are genetically blessed in a way that makes big biceps or 6-pack abs reasonably likely. That is not to say these folks don’t work hard to maintain those traits. They do. But there is no question that genetics makes big biceps and six-pack abs a lot more difficult for some people than others. And sure there is an even smaller group of people who are not genetically blessed but still manage to sport big biceps and six-pack abs for a time. They do this by being obsessed with big biceps and six pack abs. And I’m cool with that. Following Ragen Chastain’s famous underpants rule, they are allowed to spend whatever free time they are privileged to have in any way that makes them happy. They are the boss of their own underpants.

Where we get into trouble is when we insist that most people can expect big biceps and six-pack abs as a likely outcome from their fitness efforts. Because frankly, that’s a lie. In fact it’s so much of a lie, that when you look at many modern ads for fitness equipment and weight loss schemes, following any of their more outlandish claims you may find an asterisk. This asterisk typically refers to a tiny line of script at the bottom of the ad with three words: results not typical. This disclaimer is there for an important reason. The FTC and other governing bodies have sued so many of these companies for insisting that huge permanent weight loss and bodybuilder-sized biceps and butts upon which you may bounce a quarter are typical and even expected results that these companies are adding the disclaimer to A) avoid lawsuits and B) stay in business. Because while these results are certainly, technically possible with any of these schemes. These results are anything BUT typical.

So at this point a lot of people ask me what is wrong with those aspirational pictures? If it gets people to go to the gym it’s a good thing, right? Well, there’s a problem–which I like to illustrate with this picture:

Quite often I see this image held up as a great example of motivation. To which I reply–“ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?” This is a terrible example of motivation. Here we have a rhino running on a treadmill looking at a picture of a unicorn. If that rhino runs really hard and really fast and really long, is he going to become a unicorn? Anybody? Anybody? OF COURSE NOT–and for two really good reasons. 1)Unicorns and rhinoceroses are two completely different animals. There is no documented case of a rhinoceros EVER turning into a unicorn because 2)Unicorns don’t exist. So, my friends, what happens after that rhinoceros spends several weeks or months at the gym and doesn’t look anything like a unicorn?

Yup, the rhino quits–usually just 4-6 weeks into their workout program (on average). So DON’T EXERCISE in order to change your rhino body into a unicorn. If you do that, your exercise program is most likely, statistically and in all probability doomed. Because unicorn bodies are “*results not typical” for most fitness programs.

There are thousands of good reasons to exercise–many of which I have talked about extensively on this blog. Exercise because it helps you feel better. Exercise because it improves your mood or improves symptoms of depression or helps you avoid getting sick. Exercise because it feels great and is fun and allows you to socialize with awesome people. Exercise because it improves your quality of life in so many important ways. Exercise for all of these reasons and so many more that are typical.

And if you want a picture to get you going, might I recommend the Flying Rhinos? We have a brand spankin’ new store where you can get hats and mugs and posters and stickers and stationery and stuff to inspire you. Get out there with your rhino body and just get rock ON with your rad rhino self.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want me to come talk to your group? Click HERE to learn more.