What's Wrong With Fat? (29 page)

We have already seen that, in the case of fatness, a disease frame coexists quite comfortably with a personal responsibility frame. Yet, surely a
biological
frame would remove the blame and moral opprobrium of fatness. Right? There is indeed some evidence for this. For instance, one researcher asked participants to read either: (1) a two-page persuasive message stressing that one’s weight is caused primarily by genes or (2) a control article on stress. Those participants who read the genetics article expressed less dislike of fat people and less support for the idea that fat people lack willpower, compared to the control article. 73 Another study had research subjects read a personal statement with a photo of an “obese” or average-weight peer. Some of the respondents were told that the “obese” peer had a thyroid condition. Those who were told of the thyroid condition rated the “obese peer” as more likeable, more self-disciplined, more attractive, and more similar to self than those who were not told of the thyroid condition. 74

Jeffrey Friedman explicitly argues that results from his laboratory suggesting that obesity is genetically determined show that “obesity is not a personal failing.” 75 Moreover, my news media analyses suggest that weight-based discrimination is more likely to be discussed in news articles that also mention biological contributors to body size. Specifically, among the news media sample of articles published between 1995 and 2005 in
The New York Times
and
Newsweek
described in chapter 3, 26 percent of the small subsample of 38 articles that mention biological contributors to body weight, compared to 8 percent of the larger subsample of 224 articles that do not, also discuss weight-based discrimination. 76

Moreover, while fat acceptance activists reject the idea that their body size is itself a disease, they have nonetheless benefited from new institutional opportunities that are available to representatives of patient groups, largely a result of AIDS activism. 77 Fat acceptance activists have gained seats at the table at NIH and FDA meetings, as representatives of the obese patient group. Fat rights activist Lynn McAfee says in an interview that she thinks that she often has an impact in these settings, even when she says nothing, because her “physical presence as a very fat woman there changes the dynamic a little bit.” Fat activists have taken advantage of the inroads made by the AIDS movement in terms of consumer representation at the FDA to push for regulation of the most egregious weight-loss claims and products. 78

Yet, while a person cannot be blamed for having conditions that are biological in origin, parents can feel guilty (and even blamed) for passing on “bad genes.” Sociologist Linda Blum has found that some parents blame themselves for transmitting to their children flawed genes for mild to moderate social-emotional-behavioral or “brain” disorders. 79 Increasingly, pregnant women view genetic testing as an important element of responsible mothering and feel responsible for providing their off spring with an optimum prenatal environment. 80

Even if it does remove blame, a biology frame does not, in and of itself, undermine the obesity or disease frames. Moreover, as we have seen, framing fatness as a disease reinforces
stigma
, or unwanted difference. 81 In the words of Lynn McAfee, Director of Medical Advocacy for the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination:

Obesity researchers keep working so hard to turn this into a disease. And when I complain, they go, “Well I don’t understand the problem, Lynn, because if you have a disease then it’s not in your control and people won’t harass you.”
I say, “Well you’re so wrong.... ” This is exactly the issue that handicapped people [and] people with disabilities face.... By having something biologically wrong with them, number one they’re biologically inferior and then number two, they’re caught at that liminal position, where they’re not adults and they’re not children [and... ] you have to be taken care of by society.... So it’s not a free ride.

In other words, McAfee recognizes how labeling a person as biologically flawed reinforces stigma, even if it does not blame them.
82 Drawing attention to the health risks associated with corpulence may also worsen the discrimination faced by fat people, even if “obesity” is seen as largely or entirely beyond individual control. As McAfee says: “Who’s going to hire me if they think it’s so expensive to have me on their health plan?”

Moreover, theories of genetic inferiority can provide justification for structural inequality and persecution, as is demonstrated by the history of racism and anti-Semitism. The eugenics movements of the early twentieth century provides a cautionary tale that, if a trait remains socially devalued, doctors and parents may attempt to use genetic markers to screen out babies with a propensity for that characteristic. Furthermore, if being fat is a disease, fat people are considered to have a moral obligation to seek medical treatment, even if such treatment is risky or has a low probability of success. This is what sociologist Talcott Parsons referred to as the “sick role.” 83

CHALLENGING FRAMES

As we have already seen, fat acceptance activists, fat admirers, health at every size researchers, and others challenge the medical and public health crisis framing of fatness. They, instead, frame fatness as beautiful, healthy, and the basis for civil rights claims, often with dramatic results. I remember, for instance, the first time I attended an annual conference of NAAFA in August 2001. I arrived during breakfast, which was being held in a large ballroom with about 10 tables, each seating 8 to 10 people. I looked around and saw a sea of very fat, and mostly white, women. As is often the case when encountering unfamiliar-looking groups of people for the first time, at first their faces and bodies blurred together. Within a couple of hours, however, I began to notice individual differences. Some women were old, some were young, some had dark eyes, some red hair, and some, I came to see, were quite beautiful.

Within this context, where everyone was fat and where fat (female) beauty was celebrated in a fashion show and at the poolside, it was interesting how quickly my own perspective shifted. Before attending the conference, I personally felt huge because I was seven months pregnant. I had naively thought that this might help me fit in. That afternoon, I went to my hotel room to change into my bathing suit. Gazing at my reflection in the mirror, after spending the morning and early afternoon talking to NAAFA members, my swollen belly now seemed trivial, inconsequential, like a big mosquito bite.

As I took part in a synchronized swim class with other NAAFA members, I couldn’t take my eyes off of two young women sitting near the pool in bikinis. They were both in their early twenties, at most, and were strikingly beautiful. They were also extremely fat, considerably fatter than the average NAAFA member. They were sitting on the laps of two conventionally handsome and muscularly toned men, who were, I realized, fat admirers. Two other handsome men sat nearby, vying for their attention. These women were hot stuff, and they knew it. I think my memory of this moment has stayed vivid more than a decade later both because it stands in such contrast to other experiences and because it revealed the potential of a fat-beauty frame to change how we think about fat bodies. While fat women have historically been celebrated as beautiful, doing so today runs the risk of being criticized for sending women and girls an unhealthy message, as Illustration 5.1 below illustrates.

Yet, researchers and activists committed to promoting a health at every size approach have had some successes, at both a local and national level. Scores of NIH publications, acknowledging feedback from fat rights activists, discuss anti-fat stigma on the part of health care professionals, stress the importance of having medical equipment that can accommodate patients weighing more than 350 pounds, promote the idea that even very large people can be physically active, and emphasize the importance of self-acceptance. 84 Individual fat acceptance activists and researchers proudly mention small personal victories, in which they, for instance, prevented their hospital from embarking on “an Optifast-type program to make money” or squashed a workplace weight-loss contest.

In 2003, fat acceptance activists got wind of a San Francisco Board of Supervisors task force to combat “childhood obesity” and, through their involvement, transformed it into a “childhood nutrition and physical activity task force.” 85 The final official resolution (#522–03), signed by Mayor Willie Brown, establishing the task force, emphasized the health risks that children of all sizes face from “poor nutrition,” “dependence on unhealthy foods,” “limited physical activity,” and “increasing time spent in sedentary activities,” making absolutely no mention of obesity or overweight. 86 Moreover, it explicitly said that it was “important that a health-centered solution is implemented that does not lead to the stigmatization or harassment of young people.”

Illustration 5.1:
Sending the wrong messages? Illustration by Ian Patrick.

Fat rights activists have also harnessed a fat rights frame to exert meaningful change at both an interpersonal and a political level. By embracing the word
fat
as a basis of identity and rights claims, fat acceptance activists refuse to let it be used to humiliate, shame, or silence them. For instance, one woman I interviewed told me how she responded when a woman tried to cut in front of her in line and called her a “fat ass” when she protested. She “just smiled and said, ‘Yes, I’ve got a fat ass, but you cut in line and I’m first.’”

On a collective level, the idea that people should be protected against weight-based discrimination has been used to extend rights for fat people, most notably with the passage of a San Francisco statute banning discrimination on the basis of weight in June 2000. According to fat liberation activist Marilyn Wann, who was one of the five activists who championed the bill, the impetus for the new statute was a San Francisco billboard posted in February 1999 by the commercial gym 24-Hour Fitness.
The billboard announced that fat people faced a grave risk that had, until then, gotten little attention: being eaten by space aliens. Specifically, the billboard announced that, when space aliens arrive, “they’ll eat the fat ones first.” The company said the advertisement was meant to be humorous and inspirational. 87

Wann saw it differently. She heard about the billboard from another fat rights activist who had been contacted by a TV news reporter. The other activist had told the journalist that if this billboard were about any other group of people—women, blacks, Asians, or gay people—it would never have been put up or would have been taken down immediately. Yet, despite this “great sound bite” the story had no news peg, timeliness, or hook, explains Wann, who had worked as a journalist and understood the importance of these elements. She explained to me that the story “sat in the can for two or three days and it didn’t air and it didn’t air, and I thought, [24-hour fitness is] going to get away with that.” Then, she “had this flash,” a “little image in [her] mind [of] happy fat people exercising outside the gym waving giant signs that said ‘Eat me.’”

In February, Wann sent out an e-mail to several fat rights e-mail lists, saying “wouldn’t it be funny if we held up giant ‘eat me’ signs outside their gym?” She explains that she was “just kind of sharing the joke, not even really consciously hoping that people would want to do it, even though I thought it would be great to do.” However, people enthusiastically e-mailed back. Wann explained that this all happened over the long Valentine’s Day and President’s Day weekend, at a time when the impeachment of President Bill Clinton was winding down. She decided to organize the demonstration for Monday at noon, figuring that “as a journalist, I know that if you’ve got an ongoing story like that, you get really lazy. You don’t have any leads in the hopper; you don’t have any idea what to do the first day after that ends.”

Her strategy paid off. “Jeez!” she exclaims. “We got huge media coverage; it was in the
International Herald Tribune
!” She comments ironically, “Evidently, happy, fat people exercising on the sidewalk is newsworthy, right? And again, that’s absurd, you know, but use it, right?”
The Examiner
reported that “30-some protesters in front of 24 Hour Fitness at Van Ness Avenue and Post Street chanted as they held an aerobics class and waved signs that read, ‘Bite My Fat Alien Butt,’ and ‘I’m Yummy.’ Some handed out lollipops. Passing motorists honked in appreciation.” 88 Wann said she was holding a sign that said “eat me” and was “wearing some fabulous outfit, and having people driving by just like honking and waving.” She said that an older woman who was “slightly larger than average” joined the protest because “she had been looked at funny all the time when she goes to 24-Hour Fitness because she’s not young and perky.” Wann said there was a fire engine that kept circling the block and ringing its bell and that “it was very fabulous and fun and silly.”