Did you read that article in Scientific American yesterday? I know Kate did and she had a great response.
And this morning, so did Paul Campos.
Hi! I'm Marianne Kirby! I'm fat!
How are you?
I'm on a mission here to let you know that fat people are not your enemy. And skinny people aren't your enemy either.
Here, the body is a political one no matter its size or shape. We are going to unpack society's standards of beauty, the oppression of the dominant social paradigm when it comes to body conformity, and talk about clothes. Maybe even makeup. Because I do love makeup.
Here, I hope, we will come to a place of acceptance. Acceptance for our own bodies and for the bodies of others.
Got something to say? Contact me. All hate mail, particularly fat-phobic rants, is subject to mocking.
8 Comments
I love me some Paul Campos too — “assuming he’s an incompetent journalist” — woohoo. Someone finally nailed one of these lazy flacks publicly. It’s not only this sort of pseudo-expert health crap coverage that attracts bad journalism – how many other gen-u-wine hard core journalists are there out there that are not swallowing junk and regurgitating it – whether it’s in terms of politics (Bush, Tony Snow, et al), the economy, etc.? Sometimes it seems that if we did not have the blogs, we would not get fact-checked stuff AT ALL.
Oh, how I love him. That is all.
Oh, yeah. My Fangirl Reading for the guy is pretty much pegged at the “Ohmigawd” level, both for pointing out the links between racism & fatphobia that have been in front of my nose for decades, and for the ongoing high quality of his arguments (even that time I didn’t agree with him about the steroids.) I recommend following his column regularly — lotsa good stuff.
In that last paragraph, is Campos saying Willett himself is a fatass? Or merely that he comes by his own gauntness without any serious effort?
Either way, he does it again. Damn, I wish there were more of him to go around, every daily paper should have one!
Willett is quite thin — of course it takes a naturally thin person to spout all this shit about how staying borderline underweight is totally easy-peasy. I think Campos is implying that Willett does something besides work out and pop ephedra, which is pretty much what it would take for any naturally fat person to achieve a 21 BMI.
Meowser, I was wondering that too. I thought maybe he was saying that Willett’s BMI is greater than 21… after all, on most people a BMI of 21 is pretty freaking skeletal.
Oh, I highly doubt working out and popping ephedra would get me that thin. Not unless you throw in a year-long bout of giardiasis.
Of course, conveniently ignoring all the wonderful data provided in Gina Kolata’s book, “Rethinking Thin.” Then again, who wants to plug a competing health reporter?