Orlando Weekly: Fat Power
The Orlando Weekly's Deanna Sheffield interviewed The Rotund as part of an article called "Fat Power." It's mostly positive.
Marianne Kirby is fat. Not a bit chunky, not pleasantly plump, but fat. Or, to use a more precise term, morbidly obese. Her five-foot, four-inch frame tips the scales at 319 pounds. And she’s OK with that.
Kirby is part of what’s called the fat power movement – overweight people who denounce dieting, believe the alleged obesity epidemic is more hype than reality, and who work to protect fatties from discrimination and teasing. A recently laid off writer and editor, Kirby manages the widely read, Orlando-based blog www.therotund.com, which she started in April 2006 to promote fat acceptance.
"Recently laid off" - anyone hiring?
Anyway, the dissent comes from random scientician:
Dr. Cynthia Buffington, a Florida Hospital Celebration obesity specialist, says nothing could be farther from the truth. “That’s totally, totally not true,” she says. “It’s definitely a major cause for many leading causes of death. Studies have shown that the more obese an individual is, the higher the morbidity risk and the higher the risk for death. It’s an exponential relationship.”
A cursory Google search shows that Dr. Buffington is heavily involved in fat research and... uh, weight loss research. Swell. "Totally, totally not true!"
All in all the article is off-the-cuff and positive outside of the usual dreck.
[Edited this post twice for accuracy.]
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Posted by paul on February 4, 2008
scientician
BWAHAHA. That is so totally awesome.
"Dr. Cynthia Buffington" sounds like a soap opera doctor name anyway. Totally!
Yeah the term 'morbidly obese' is so accurate that many have 'escaped' alive only to be labelled 'super morbidly obese', heavenly fatties.
I couldn't for the life of me understand the assertion that the obesity boffin seemed to be replying to, but she could have just been lost in journalism. I like the commenter calling her Buffy the Fat Slayer though, I hope she never lives that one down!
Already posted this over on The Rotund, but thought I'd post it here, too. It was, for the most part, a good article, I suppose. Though I agree with what the comment left on the actual article by Miriam Heddy said. It seems like any fat acceptance piece that gets published is interrupted by some “medical expert” who ends up regurgitating the same old, tired bullshit about how fat = death, the end. And the so-called medical experts almost never seem as intelligent or as well-spoken as the fat acceptance spokesperson (which I would say works in our favor). Using this article for an example, this doctor claims that everything Marianne says is “totally, totally not true.” I mean… really? *Totally* not true?? Like, omigod.
**************
"A diet counselor once told me that all overweight people are angry with their mothers and channel their frustrations into overeating. So I guess that means all thin people are happy, calm, and have resolved their Oedipal entanglements."
It's really amazing how the media is putting so many FA people on television and interviewing them for articles. It was totally, totally time for that. Even if they have to keep putting on scienterrific people to counteract the possible encouragement fat people might get from it
Zero isn't a size, it's a warning sign. - Carson Kressley
I'm all about size acceptance -- I'm so hard-core that I wish NAAFA hadn't mentioned the ineffectiveness of dieting and WLS in its planned release, since that could be understood as implying that, if they did work, it would be incumbent on fat people to engage in them.
But I don't think it's necessarily useful to reflexively dismiss expert opinions -- or opinions that are likely, in any event, to be more expert than our own -- simply because they seem to undermine one part of our point of view. Someone involved in fat and weight-loss research may be presumed, I think, to know a little bit about it.
I don't know whether fatness is, in and of itself, a cause of or a corollary to major health problems or not. There seems to be research that runs both ways. But if being fat does involve increased health risks, where I'd disagree with Dr. Buffington, I imagine, is on the notion that intentional weight loss is a useful or productive way to address those risks.
For most people -- that old 95-98 percent -- significant intentional weight loss does not appear to be possible over the long term. Declaring necessary something that is not possible strikes me as more than slightly nuts.
What I'd prefer to see is research with the goal of dealing with and reducing any genuine increased health risks for fat people that is not premised on intentional weight loss. That seems a bit more to the point to me, perhaps.
Catrandom,
Given the replicated research that shows people who label themselves "obesity experts" harbor severe prejudice against fat people, I'm not too quick to accept the opinion of an "expert" who continues to be associated with weight-loss research. In my own graduate research, I have met few (read: no) such experts who have actually considered the flaws of anti-fat research (such as the fact that no study concluding that fat=death adequately controls for even the most basic of confounds such as nutrition, fitness, stigma, and past weight loss attempts). And I haven't encountered a single one who will acknowledge all the health benefits that can also be attributed to "obesity" or the health risks of being "normal weight." So I do tend to write them off if they are on the anti-fat bandwagon and not presenting the accurate scientific record. The one that states that ALL body sizes have weak correlations with certain health risks, body size is not the best predictor for any disease or health outcome, and when we control for the better predictors, body size becomes pretty much useless as a measurement of health.
I figured that stuff out with just a couple graduate courses in research methodology (and then had it confirmed by medical experts not affiliated with the weight loss industry). So I can hold weight loss "experts" accountable for their stupidity and dismiss them when they don't understand or present the full picture.