2. Jokes that portray women are mannish aren’t funny.
3. A site that claims to be “liberal” would understand that.
Yeah, you can steer clear of them. They aren’t liberal in any meaningful sense of the word.
UPDATE: I guess we can at least be glad they pulled the part making fun of Paul Wellstone’s death — which they used to attack Minnesota State Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, Minn. Incidentally, where were Paul and Sheila going again when their plane crashed?
On October 25, 2002, Wellstone died, along with seven others, in a plane crash in northern Minnesota, at approximately 10:22 a.m. He was 58 years old. The other victims were his wife, Sheila; one of his three children, Marcia; the two pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess, his driver, Will McLaughlin, and campaign staffers Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy. The plane was en route to Eveleth, where Wellstone was to attend the funeral of Martin Rukavina, a steelworker whose son Tom Rukavina serves in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Wellstone decided to go to the funeral instead of a rally and fundraiser in Minneapolis attended by Mondale and fellow Senator Ted Kennedy
I haven’t paid much attention to the New Jersey governor’s race. Oh, it looks kind of close, and that might be marginally interesting, but the choice for residents of the Garden State appears to be the classic one between the evil of two lessers. Fighting from the blue corner is the incumbent Democrat, Gov. Jon Corzine, who is the kind of stalwart progressive one would expect the former head of Goldman Sachs to be. His challenger in the red corner, Chris Christie, is a former Rove bobo and U.S. Attorney who has the kind of ethics one would expect from a guy with that resumé. It’s a classic battle between the movable object and the resistible force, and while I suppose I’m predisposed to hope the Democrat wins, I certainly wouldn’t be dancing merrily to the polls to pull the lever for four more years of Corzine.
Now, as noted, the race between Corzine and Christie is close, and the campaign has turned relentlessly negative. And Corzine has launched a brand-new add hitting Christie on his driving record. And, unfortunately, something else:
Did you catch it? Maybe not. Frankly, it isn’t surprising if you didn’t; the message is so culturally ingrained that you’ve probably saw similar images a dozen times today. Still, think about what you just saw, and consider the words that the Corzine campaign used in the ad. Need a hint? They said Christie “threw his weight around” to get out of a ticket.
Interesting choice of words, that.
Interesting choice of video, too. Yes, we’re all aware that negative ads try to use unflattering images of opponents. But this was something else — not just a weird picture, but a classic fat-guy image, the guy slowly, awkwardly getting out of the car.
Yes, Jon Corzine has gone after Chris Christie because Chris Christie is fat.
Now, it wasn’t an overt smear. It wasn’t Corzine standing up and saying, “My opponent mainlines chocolate shakes and eats 23 Big Macs a day.” It was a dog-whistle. But it was a pretty freakin’ loud one. And pretty blindingly obvious to anyone not wanting to will away that fact, or excuse the behavior. Heck, the New York Timesclued right in to meaning of the ad, and their description is pretty accurate for those without YouTube:
It is about as subtle as a playground taunt: a television ad for Gov. Jon S. Corzine shows his challenger, Christopher J. Christie, stepping out of an S.U.V. in extreme slow motion, his extra girth moving, just as slowly, in several different directions at once.
In case viewers missed the point, a narrator snidely intones that Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid getting traffic tickets.
In the ugly New Jersey contest for governor, Mr. Corzine and Mr. Christie have traded all sorts of shots, over mothers and mammograms, loans and lying. But now, Mr. Corzine’s campaign is calling attention to his rival’s corpulence in increasingly overt ways.
Mr. Corzine’s television commercials and Web videos feature unattractive images of Mr. Christie, sometimes shot from the side or backside, highlighting his heft, jowls and double chin.
Meanwhile, Mr. Corzine, 62, is conspicuously running in 5- and 10-kilometer races almost every weekend, as he did last Saturday and Sunday, underscoring his athleticism and readiness for the physical demands of another term — and raising doubts about Mr. Christie’s.
Next, he and a fellow fitness buff, Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, will run through the streets of that city together next Tuesday.
Yes, Corzine is super-fit. Why, I hear he might swim in the Yangtze River next week, he’s so fit. Not like that fat Chris Christie, who probably has to use a Segway to go to the bathroom, the fat fatty.
But as much as I want to lampoon this, let’s face it, it probably will work, because it plays on the sort of ingrained stereotypes about fat people that already exist among the electorate:
In a recent survey conducted by Monmouth University, voters were asked to say the first thing that came to mind about Mr. Christie. “Fat” was one of the most frequent responses, said Patrick Murray, the director of the poll, who attributed the results to the Corzine ads.
And in focus group sessions conducted for the governor’s campaign over the summer, voters called attention to Mr. Christie’s size without being prompted, and those who were themselves overweight expressed the same concerns, said a Democrat who was briefed on the sessions.
I’m not surprised. Nobody hates a fat person like a fat person. We can never get away from fat — it’s covering us. If we’re lucky, we at some point stumbled on Shapely Prose and started to figure out that we weren’t horrible people, but even then the sense of personal shame remains, because it’s overwhelming in our society.
Now, some on the left have tried to preempt any complaining about these tactics by noting the old standby that “politics ain’t beanbag.” Big Tent Democrat over at TalkLeft makes the basic argument:
For some wonks, Republicans, who have called Dems, traitors, godless, gay, race baited, lied, stolen and cheated in elections, are to be treated with kid gloves. But NJ Dems don’t play that sh*t. Corzine has ripped the bark off of Chris Christie and now is in position to maybe win this thing. Matt Yglesias thinks the Corzine campaign is too mean and there will be a “backlash.” Yeah, right. The GOP is going to whine about Corzine picking on Christie? Really? Yeah, that’ll work. The good news is I am confident that Corzine’s people know what to do down the stretch - continue to rip Christie a new one right up to election day. The political arena is not for the meek. Look at Creigh Deeds.
Look, politics isn’t for the meek. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes. And it especially doesn’t mean it for Democrats.
In 1988, the Republicans ran an ad hitting Michael Dukakis on his furlough of William Horton, a criminal who while out of jail committed armed robbery, assault, and rape. Not a nice guy, Horton, and the program perhaps could be criticized. That said, you don’t know Horton as William, which was the name he used; you know him as Willie. Why? Because Republicans weren’t concerned about making a point on furlough programs, they were arguing that Dukakis wouldn’t keep African-American criminals from hurting good, God-fearing white folk. And William Horton doesn’t sound as scary as “Willie,” the hypothetical black criminal that GOP consultant Larry McCarthy called “every suburban mother’s greatest fear.”
The ad worked. Why? Because it fit into the GOP narrative. Minorities aren’t true Americans, they’re criminals who want to rape your white daughters and steal jobs from hard-working white American men. Who cares if an ad reinforces that idea? That only benefits the Republicans, only reinforces the Southern Strategy-approved message that all black men, everywhere are criminals, leeching off good white people.
Democrats do not believe in marginalizing people. We do not believe in creating an “us against them” America. When Democrats use appeals to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or other bigotry to win elections, we undermine the very principles our party is founded on, and do long-term damage to our party in the long run. Every argument that a woman is unqualified because she’s a woman hurts women, and hurts the Democratic message that women and men should be equal. Every argument that an African-American is unqualified hurts African-Americans, and hurts the Democratic message that people of all racial backgrounds should be equal. Every argument against any person’s qualifications simply because of who they are undermine the bedrock principle of civil rights, that one’s genetic code and familial heritage is not a basis for judgment — one’s actions and principles are.
So yes, politics is messy and tough, and by all means, Corzine can pip Christie for any one of a zillion offenses. But when Corzine argues, even obliquely, that Christie’s weight disqualifies him from serving as a governor, he’s saying by that argument that everyone who carries extra weight is ipso facto incompetent. There’s a word for that: bigotry. And Democrats should not countenance it for a second, even if it originates on our own side of the aisle.
This post uses Dollhouse as a way of examining some ideas. If you haven’t watched Dollhouse, but want to, then I recommend avoiding it, since it has some significant spoilers, and the show really will be better if you don’t know. But if you’re never going to watch Dollhouse then read ahead, you don’t need to know anything about the show to understand the post. Read the rest of this entry »
Marc Armbinder is enlightened, as “anti-obesity activists” go; he admits that obese adults aren’t going to be losing weight1 and he dismisses as useless any policy based on hectoring people to lose weight.
But he also writes:
And with obesity, we’re dealing primarily with children and prevention. Obese adults are not going to lose weight unless they decide to have their stomaches separated from their digestive tracts. Megan is pessimistic about any policy intervention and questions any such intervention from a moral level. But any sensible policy is designed to change the environment for children, not for adults.
I don’t really object to the idea of trying to reduce the frequency of obesity in the next generation; although I think the health effects of obesity per se2 have been greatly exaggerated, I do think there is legitimate reason to believe that obesity has negative effects on health for a sizable number of people. If it’s possible to make children healthier without stigmatizing fat kids or making their lives worse, then I’m all for that. (I don’t really believe that Marc or anyone else has a practical, proven method for reducing obesity in kids, but that’s another post.)
However, I can’t agree with Marc that because “obese adults are not going to lose weight,” it follows that “any sensible policy is designed to change the environment for children, not for adults.” This assumes that “changing the environment” is only worthwhile if it leads to weight loss. Just because obese adults aren’t (by and large) going to lose weight, however, doesn’t mean they should be written off. An obese adult who doesn’t regularly exercise — just like a thin adult who doesn’t regularly exercise — could benefit a lot from policies that encourage regular, moderate exercise, like making cities more walkable and bikable, creating public parks, or subsidizing gym memberships. A policy that increased the frequency of moderate exercise among adults, even if no one loses much weight, could lead to lower health-care costs in the long run.
The preliminary research on Health At Every Size techniques to improve health among fat people looks extremely promising; some NIH funding for further research along these lines would do a lot of good. But thanks in part to the myopic focus of anti-obesity activists, there’s no money for interventions that make fat people healthier but don’t promise to make them thinner.
Mark writes that “The idea that anti-obesity activists think the problem will be solved by putting grocery stories in urban areas is kind of a myth.” Well, there are plenty of anti-obesity folks who think that putting grocery stores in cities is part of the solution, although I’m sure none of them think it’s a magic bullet. But more to the point, even if policies encouraging grocery stores in urban areas doesn’t “solve” obesity, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be beneficial to health, by enabling urban people to eat healthier even if they don’t lose weight.
Which brings me to the title of my post. The problem with “anti-obesity activists” is that their goal isn’t a healthier population; it’s a less obese population. But treating “health” and “not obese” as synonymous is harmful, because it places many policies that would increase health for everyone — including the obese adults Marc writes off — out of bounds. “Sensible” health policy should attempt to improve the health of all people — including those “obese adults” who aren’t going to lose weight.
(A note about the top image: I hope the top image, by Flickr user ~Twon, doesn’t come off as a “headless fatty” image. There simply aren’t many non-mocking images of fat people exercising, or at least not many I could find. And even though the head is cut off, this photo doesn’t seem to me to contain the same “ew, gross!” subtext contained in most “headless fatty” media photos.)
As opposed to the health effects of factors that tend to be correlated with obesity, such as lack of exercise, and the stress from anti-fat discrimination. (back)
It seems self-evident to suggest that if schools that have eliminated physical education and recess reinstituted them, there would be fewer obese adolescents in America.
Evidence suggests adding phys ed isn’t the cure for fatkiditis the Economist imagines. Quoting Gina Kolata1in the New York Times:
In the 1990’s, the National Institutes of Health sponsored two large, rigorous studies asking whether weight gain in children could be prevented by doing everything that obesity fighters say should be done in schools — greatly expand physical education, make cafeteria meals more nutritious and less fattening, teach students about proper nutrition and the need to exercise, and involve the parents. One study, an eight-year, $20 million project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, followed 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where students were mostly Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. The schools were randomly divided into two groups, one subject to intensive intervention, the other left alone. Researchers determined, beginning at grade five, if the children in the intervention schools were thinner than those in the schools that served as a control group.
They were not. The students could, however, recite chapter and verse on the importance of activity and proper nutrition. They also ate less fat, going from 34 percent to 27 percent fat in their total diet. Alas, said the study’s principal investigator, Benjamin Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “it was not enough to change body weight.”
What I’d really like to know — but this article doesn’t say — is if the kids were healthier, as measured by blood pressure, cholesterol levels, ability to walk on a treadmill and so on. There’s an unfortunate attitude that an intervention that doesn’t lead to thinness is necessarily a failure, which leads us to ignore many important indicators of health.2
So why does “it seem self-evident” that we can make thinner kids by adding gym and stirring, when the evidence says otherwise? Well, part of the reason is that “self-evident,” in this case, means that the blogger is reciting conventional wisdom. And conventional wisdom is selective:
The paper appeared in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2003 to no acclaim, Dr. Caballero said. No press release, no media coverage, no invitations to speak about the results at scientific meetings. On the journal’s Web page, a search of articles that refer to the study comes up empty. It has not been cited anywhere.
If my last name was “Kolata,” I don’t think I’d name my child anything that rhymes with “Pina.” Just saying. (back)
Somewhat related, from the same Times article: “Nearly 49,000 women were randomly assigned to follow a low fat diet or their regular diet for eight years while researchers kept track of their rates of breast cancer, colon cancer and heart disease. Not only did the diets have no effect on these diseases, they also had no effect on the women’s weights.” (back)
Paul Campos is interviewed over at Megan McArdle’s blog. There’s a lot there worth reading, but I’ll highlight this bit in particular, since the study he’s discussing has been much in the news:
Consider the methodology of this study. It tried to calculate changes in health costs if everybody with a BMI over 30 had a BMI under 25. But leaving aside the preposterous assumption that all increased health risks associated with a level of body mass are caused by that level of body mass, the idea that somehow we could make fat people into thin people is bizarre.
A study like this isn’t talking about turning 180 pound women into 165 pound women, which at least in theory might actually be possible. It’s talking about turning 200 pound women into 130 pound women, on statistical average. The success rate for such attempts is about .1% Even stomach amputation does not turn fat people into thin people.
So even if it were true that we knew it would be beneficial to turn fat people into thin people (which we don’t) it’s not something we have any idea how to do. The statements in the study indicating that there are known methods for doing this are simply lies of the most egregious sort.
Now lets talk about excess health care costs. if you look at the study, nearly half of the excess health care costs associated with being fat are from higher rates of drug prescription. But why are fat people being prescribed more drugs than thin ones? Largely, because they have the “disease” of being fat, which is then treated directly and indirectly by prescription drugs!
For instance, statins. Statins are a multi-billion dollar business, but there’s very little statistical evidence that they benefit the vast majority of people to whom they’re prescribed. Basically the only people who have lower CVD [cardiovascular disease] mortality after taking statins are middle-aged men with a history of CVD.
But the heavier than average are prescribed statins at higher rates simply because they’re heavier than average, even though there’s no evidence this is beneficial for them. And of course this doesn’t touch on the costs of all the treatments for “obesity” itself, which are uniformly ineffective. [...]
I mean, there’s no better established empirical proposition in medical science that we don’t know how to make people thinner. But apparently this proposition is too disturbing to consider, even though it’s about as well established as that cigarettes cause lung cancer. So all these proposals about improving public health by making people thinner are completely crazy. They are as non-sensical as anything being proposed by public officials in our culture right now, which is saying something.
It’s conceivable that through some massive policy interventions you might be able to reduce the population’s average BMI from 27 to 25 or something like that. But what would be the point? There aren’t any health differences to speak of for people between BMIs of about 20 and 35, so undertaking the public health equivalent of the Apollo program to reduce the populace’s average BMI by a unit or two (and again I will emphasize that we don’t actually know if we could do even that) is an incredible waste of public health resources.
Also well worth your reading time is Megan’s followup post, in which she refutes the usual objections people posted in her comments. (Thanks, Sebastian!)
Years ago, my favorite part of the Drew Carey show was the opening credits, which featured Drew, who is fat, dancing.1 (Apparently Carey liked dancing — dance scenes were crowbarred into the story of several episodes, e.g..)
So if there’s a show featuring fat people dancing, I’ll give it a try, even if it’s a goddamn fucking weight loss show.
The dance part of the show is entertaining enough. The dancers aren’t as good as the dancers on So You Think You Can’t Dance (most of whom are professional dancers), so the choreography can’t be as interesting or challenging. But it was fun and perky, and often a lot of fun to watch.
So what about the fat politics? Well, for the most part, they’re awful. Being fat is constantly spoken of as the opposite of being healthy; that dancing, moving and eating well could be a good thing even for people who don’t lose weight isn’t even on the radar here. And, of course, the contestants are graded (or eliminated) based not only on how they dance, but on how much weight they lose. There are lots of tearful confessions connecting life goals (teaching their kids well, getting a girlfriend or boyfriend, etc) to losing weight, and the inevitable close-ups of the fat people eating fries, donuts, and the like.
So does it “work”? Do they lose weight? Of course they do. These fat people, for the weeks they’re on the show, are essentially full-time weight losers, in the most unrealistic environment imaginable. They don’t have jobs; they don’t take care of kids. They have a nutritionist, a work-out room with a dedicated trainer, and when they’re not in the work-out room, they’re dancing.
Like most weight-loss plans, it’ll work… for a while. The dancers will lose seemingly incredible amounts of weight — I’m guessing the ones who make it to the end will be 50-100 pounds lighter than their starting weight. But it’s not sustainable. Because, for the vast majority of fat weight losers, nothing is sustainable. Weight-loss plans don’t work. 2
And because this show is teaching contestants to measure victory mostly by their waistlines — not by a sense of accomplishment, or joy in movement, or good health measured in any way but weight — I worry that this will actually be bad for the dancers, in the long run, if they gain weight back and it makes them feel they’ve failed.
But it’s not all bad. Inevitably, despite itself, the show includes fat bodies moving, fat bodies being sexy, fat bodies being competent. Fat bodies, in short, dancing. It’s impossible not to notice that some of the fattest dancers, like Mara, are also the most talented. Heather MacAllister once said:3
Any time there is a fat person onstage as anything besides the butt of a joke, it’s political. Add physical movement, then dance, then sexuality and you have a revolutionary act.
I wouldn’t call “Dance Your Ass Off” revolutionary, or even really fat-positive. But it has fat-positive elements despite itself.
Actually, the show had a bunch of opening credit sequences over time, but at least a few of them were dance numbers. (back)
The show includes a professional con man — I mean, weight-loss doctor — as part of the cast. I’d really like to see a complete accounting of all his patients from prior to 2004, and how his services have helped them in the years since. (back)
Yeah, this is the second time I’ve quoted this in a month. (back)
By any measure, Dr. Regina Benjamin has had an enormous positive impact on our nation. The first African-American woman and first physician under 40 to serve on the AMA’s board of trustees, Benjamin is the CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in the small gulf coast shrimping village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a practice that she had to rebuild after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. She’s a recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, was listed as one of Time magazine’s “Nation’s 50 Future Leaders Age 40 and Under,” and has been awarded the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Benedict XVI. She served on the Florida A&M University Board of Trustees as an appointee of then-Gov. Jeb Bush, and was appointed to multiple committees of the Department of Health and Human Services the Clinton administration.
In short, it’s hard to see anything on Regina Benjamin’s resumé that indicates anything other than a strong work ethic, a keen intellect, a pure soul, and overwhelming qualifications to serve as America’s 18th Surgeon General. Yes, as a Democratic appointee, there are a few things that will cause her to run afoul of the usual suspects on the right, such as her commitment to abortion rights and her support for a radical overhaul of America’s broken health care system. But as a Democratic president is unlikely to appoint an anti-choice, pro-insurance surgeon general, there’s really nothing to suggest that Benjamin would receive anything other than overwhelming support for her confirmation.
Except for one thing.
She’s a bit overweight.
Now, you may think that it’s bizarre to suggest that a MacArthur Genius Grant-winning, papal award-receiving, universally respected physician should be denied the position of Surgeon General because she, like many Americans, is somewhat overweight. You might think it beggars belief that we could even be discussing the idea that someone should be denied a position because of her weight. But if you’ve been paying attention to the overwhelming fat phobia in our society, you can’t be surprised.
The balanced, mainstream concern-troll look at the story comes from ABC News, which is just wondering, you see, whether this could be a problem:
Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, Obama’s pick for the next surgeon general, was hailed as a MacArthur Grant genius who had championed the poor at a medical clinic she set up in Katrina-ravaged Alabama.
But the full-figured African-American nominee is also under fire for being overweight in a nation where 34 percent of all Americans aged 20 and over are obese.
Critics and supporters across the blogsphere have commented on photos of Benjamin’s round cheeks, saying she sends the wrong message as the public face of America’s health initiatives.
Indeed. If Americans see a healthy, hard-working — but overweight — surgeon general, we might get the idea that being fat isn’t horrible, and then we might actually wonder whether fatness is actually equal to health. We might have a discussion about fatness that is honest. Horrors! We can’t have that!
My favorite part of the story, though, is contained in a sub-header:
40 Pounds Over, Size 18, Blogs Speculate
Yes! Blogs speculate! It’s pretty much exactly like truth, especially since, last I checked, sizes weren’t specifically tied to weight!
Yes, there are a few voices of reason. Joanne Ikeda, a nutritionist at Cal-Berkeley, says, “Maybe now we will stop making the assumption that all fat people are unhealthy particularly in light of new data coming from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.” And Steven Blair, a professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina, quite reasonably adds, “The focus should be on Dr. Benjamin’s credentials and accomplishments. What difference does her size make?”
But of course, these questions are buried between people concern-trolling that Benjamin is a bad example to African-Americans, just like Oprah. Because for heaven’s sake, who would want their daughter to grow up to be a multi-billionaire talk show host or a world-renowned physician if she might be a little bit overweight? It boggles the mind!
Still, while ABC’s story is obnoxious, to really do completely unfair character assassination, you need the professionals at Fox News, who brought in Michael Karolchyk to discuss the issue.
Remember Michael Karolchyk? Sure you do! He’s the jerkface owner of The Anti-Gym in Denver, which, if you recall, featured such innovations as cupcake-throwing at people on treadmills, a “ravish room” for the men and women who had acceptably low BMIs, and “live DJs [and] cage dancers,” because, you know, that’s what the gym needs. If you want to feel worse about humanity, go ahead and check out his commercials.
Of course — funny story — in a rare example of divine retribution, Karolchyk is actually now the former owner of The Anti-Gym, because he lost it in January after failing to pay over $180,000 in tax bills. He then subsequently put his clients’ personal info, including credit card numbers and abusive comments about them, in an open dumpster.
You might think that a failed gym owner wouldn’t be the first person you’d turn to for a discussion of whether someone is qualified to serve as surgeon general, but alas, you’d be wrong:
Yes, he is wearing a “No Chubbies” shirt.
Doubtless, there is no shortage of racism and sexism feeding into this discussion. A similarly overweight white male wouldn’t be getting quite this level of opprobrium, and we wouldn’t be talking about what his waist size was. But more than that, it’s a sign of just how hateful attitudes remain about people who weigh more than the “ideal.” The idea that Benjamin could be accomplished, brilliant, and of superlative character is nothing compared to the fact that she’s overweight. It’s damn dispiriting.
1) We paid the extra couple of bucks to watch in 3-D. The 3-D was so well-done, so utterly natural and looked so good that we all stopped noticing it after the first fifteen minutes. Not really worth the money.
2) Why is everyone saying this film is such a weepy? Yes, right at the start of the film (in the film’s best sequence), the main character meets a girl, falls in love, gets married, has a long and happy lifetime with his love, and then she dies once they’re both in old age. We should all have misery like that.
Because I had heard so many “bring a hanky” comments, I really expected a major character (maybe the dog?) to die at the end of the film. This probably improved the film for me, since I actually thought a major character might die.
3) The bad: Even for Pixar, the lack of female characters in this movie is extraordinary; of two important female characters, one is the protagonist’s wife who dies in the first fifteen minutes, the other is a bird named Kevin. Why is Pixar unable to imagine a story with a female lead? Needless to say, it fails the Bechdel Test.
4) The good: The main character is elderly, which makes UP the only children’s flick I can think of to feature an old protagonist.
5) The even better: The secondary protagonist, Russell, is a fat little boy — and there isn’t a single joke about his size, anywhere in the film.1 A positive, non-buffoon fat character with no fat jokes — That’s pretty much illegal in a children’s movie, isn’t it?
Any time there is a fat person onstage as anything besides the butt of a joke, it’s political. Add physical movement, then dance, then sexuality and you have a revolutionary act.
6) In addition, Russell is a positive, non-stereotypical Asian character, and the actor who did Russell’s voice, Jordon Nagai (who was seven years old when they cast the part), is also Asian-American. In a more reasonable world the race of actors doing the voices in animated films wouldn’t matter at all; but with major live-action movies casting white actors to play characters that were originally Asian (as in “21″ and “The Last Airbender”), it’s nice to see Pixar go the other way.
7) And by the way, good story, good animation, and lots of great visuals. The dog characters were pretty consistently funny, as well.
He does have trouble climbing a rope, but the way they depicted that didn’t emphasize his fat. (back)
On another thread, Ron asks a 101-style question about the term “cis”:
So “cis-gender” would be that your physical and your … what, mental? … gender are the same…
Not mental and physical. Rather, it’s that the gender you were assigned at birth, and the gender you identify as, are the same. (See Julia Serano’s excellent FAQ on this subject.)
Except that “cis-gender” is pretty much the default, so there’s little need in normal discourse to use the term.
Maybe it doesn’t come up in your “normal” discourse, Ron, but I find that the term is useful in my day to day discourse.
Plus, as a political matter, it’s important that the unmarked “defaults” have names. Imagine if, instead of the words “Jewish” and “Christian,” we had only “Jewish” and “normal.” Or if, instead of “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” we had only “normal” and “homosexual.” We can’t discuss things on an equal basis without an equal vocabulary.
* * *
Which reminds me: We really need a vocabulary for weight. The current, official vocabulary is “underweight,” “normal weight,” “overweight,” and “obese.”
I’m happy to replace “underweight” with “thin” or “skinny” (although of course, the real question is if those people medicine labels “underweight” are okay with that), and “overweight” and “obese” with “fat.” But I really hate calling the medically/socially approved default body “normal” (or just as awful, “healthy”). Suggestions?
“In the boy scouts, they came first for the homosexuals,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a homosexual;
And then they came for the atheists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an atheist;
And then they came for the fat people,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a fat person;
And then… they came for me…”
Where the masculine ideal of as recently as 2000 was a buff 6-footer with six-pack abs, the man of the moment is an urchin, a wraith or an underfed runt. [...]
Wasn’t it just a short time ago that the industry was up in arms about skinny models? [...] The models in question were women, and it’s safe to say that they remain as waiflike as ever. But something occurred while no one was looking. Somebody shrunk the men.
“Skinny, skinny, skinny,” said Dave Fothergill, a director of the agency of the moment, Red Model Management. “Everybody’s shrinking themselves.”
The new male model is supposed to look younger, pubescent, rather than adult; and like with female models, that means casting them young and skinny.
It is disturbing that this is happening. I’d much rather see female models get more latitude; this is moving towards equality in the wrong direction.
The article makes a couple of “this was a big deal when women were thin, but no one cares that the men are now expected to be thin” comments. (”Far from inspiring a spate of industry breast-beating, as occurred after the international news media got hold of the deaths of two young female models who died from eating disorders, the trend favoring very skinny male models has been accepted as a matter or course.”)
The article should have pointed out that male models are still allowed to carry a lot more weight, proportionately, than female models. Which is probably why we haven’t yet had any young male models die of heart attacks (although if the thin trend continues, probably that will happen, alas).
According to the article, “Stas Svetlichnyy of Russia typified the new norm… about 145 pounds. He is 6 feet tall with a 28-inch waist.” Later, a booking agent says that a male model who is 6 foot one should weigh 155. Both of those work out to a BMI of 20, which is officially categorized as “normal” weight. But a BMI of 20 would probably make a female model unemployable:
Many suspect that some of the world’s top models, from Kate Moss to Jacquetta Wheeler, will be banned if a cut off BMI of 18 in enforced. [...] The average runway model is estimated to be 5 feet 9 inches tall and to weigh in at 110 lbs.– resulting in a BMI of just 16, according to the British newspaper the Evening Standard.
According to the standard BMI categorization, BMIs under 18.5 are “underweight.” That doesn’t make what’s being done to the male models acceptable. But for people who aren’t naturally superthin, trying to maintain a BMI of 20 probably isn’t as unhealthy as trying to maintain a BMI of 16.
Finally, the article’s language sometimes seemed to suggest that thin male models aren’t male. Not everyone will see it, but comments like “underfed runt” and “chicken-chested” feel loaded with sexism, implying that the models are not only thin but also inadequate as men.
Via conservative David Link, who liked it despite himself.
Demand Respectful and Accurate Reporting on Lateisha Green. Lateisha Green, a murdered trans woman, is being persistently referred to by mainstream news sources by her prior name and gender. This is offensive, and it also goes against standard journalistic practices, as described in both the AP and NYTimes style guides. Cara has email addresses so you can request that the news agencies refer to Ms. Green by her correct name and pronoun.
Oh, and do check out Queerty’s “10 best responses to The Gathering Storm.” Not all my favorites were there, but there were also a couple of good ones I hadn’t seen before.
While at Queerty, I noticed that M*A*S*H star David Olgen Stiers, an actor I’m fond of, has come out of the closet. Stiers, 66, says that he hasn’t done this before because he was afraid it could hurt his career if (Stiers does a lot of voiceover work for Disney cartoons). He’s coming out now, however, because “Now is the time I wish to find someone and I do not desire to force any potential partner to live a life of extreme discretion for me.”
Over at Polymorphous Perversity, “a discussion of the concept of sexual “deception,” inspired by the pernicious suggestions of some commentators that transgender hate crime victims such as Angie Zapata themselves committed criminal sexual assault by failing to disclose their anatomy/gender history to sexual partners.” Part one, and part two. Highly recommended.
Interesting history from David Link: “There are many reasons for the increasing acceptance today of same-sex marriage among the American public, but one has received virtually none of the acclaim it deserves: the invention, in the late 1940s, of Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer. The gay rights movement owes a lot to that little shaker.”
I think INDD has the best origin story of any holiday. From Wikipedia:
The concept of INDD originated at 1992, when British Feminist Mary Evans Young decided to fight the diet industry and to raise awareness of the dangers in anorexia and other eating disorders. In order to do that, Evans Young addressed the local media saying “Fat Woman Bites Back”. When she was interviewed on television, she “reminded” the audience to celebrate the International No Diet Day on May 6. This specific date had no specific reason other than its proximity to the television interview.
Followed that interview, feminist groups around UK celebrated the INDD, and as the years went by, groups in other countries around the globe started to celebrate this day, especially in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Israel.
From an Associated Press story, reporting on the widespread objections among mom-bloggers to the “new Dora” doll planned for October:
Mattel and Nickelodeon both say there are two major misconceptions about the new Dora, which is not replacing the “Dora the Explorer” cartoon, but will be a new interactive doll aimed at the five-to eight-year-old, or tween market.
“People care so deeply about this brand and this character,” Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon Viacom Consumer Products, says. “The Dora that we all know and love is not going away.”
“I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this,” Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, says. “Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don’t understand. . . . I think they’re going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn’t what they are conjuring up.”
Part of the confusion stemmed from the silhouette that was released, which made Dora look more like a Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan than a young girl. For the record, the doll does not wear a short dress, but a tunic and leggings. And while she looks older (she’s supposed to be about 10), with longer jewelry and longer hair, she doesn’t have makeup and seems pretty much like a 10-year-old girl.
Nickelodeon and Mattel say that as part of unrelated research, they found parents wanted a way to keep Dora in their children’s lives and have their daughters move on to a toy that was age appropriate.
“The idea is Dora for more girls,” Brodsky says. “The whole point was this was created because moms said help us.”
Oh, those silly, silly moms! When will they realize that Nickelodeon and Mattel only want to help?
But then again… compare and contrast:
(Also, it looks to me like maybe the image on the left is wearing a dress, which cuts off at knee-level, as opposed to the tunic on the right which cuts off much higher and is worn with leggings. Silhouette found here and here.)
Confusingly, there’s another silhouette illustration of the New Dora I’ve seen, which is just the non-silhouette illustration with the details blacked out. As far as I can tell, Mattel released two different teaser silhouette drawings, but I’m not sure of the timing.
Honestly, assuming the newer illustration reflects what the doll will look like, things could be much worse. The original Dora will still be on TV. Dora’s new outfit is funky and fashionable, without being overly sexualized as the Bratz outfits are. And I’m always happy to see a mainstream doll that’s not white. There’s still a ton wrong, but there are way worse dolls on the market.
But still — the original Dora was ever so much cooler.
Finally, let me link to my own post from 2007, to make the point that this isn’t the first time Dora’s owners have thought “boy, if we could only sell a thinner, more girly Dora doll, we’d make a killing!”
I’m getting sick of the-popular-kids-are-better-at-geek-stuff-than-the-geeks trope, which stinks of noblesse oblige. And there are a zillion other things wrong here. But I’ll still be giving this show a try, because I’m that much of a sucker for anything resembling a musical.
But about that preview: Note the unwritten rule in TV that it’s okay to cast a fat actress if she’s black (and especially if she’s black and sings). On the one hand, of course it’s great that some talented fat black actresses are getting work. On the other hand, these actresses are often typecast as sassy, strong-willed types.
I’d rather see fat black women cast in the wide variety of roles white thin men are cast in — when, for example, will we see a fat black female captain of a starship, playing gravitas instead of sass?
ETA: And also, what’s with the kid in the wheelchair? Is it even a speaking role? If it is, you’d never know it from this preview.
It seems to me I’ve seen this a few times — the character of the high school loser in a wheelchair, whose primary narrative purpose — other than being an icon of loserness — is to establish the evilness of the people who reject the kid in the wheelchair, and/or to establish the openminded goodness of the thin, good-looking protagonists who befriend wheelchair loser. (Examples: Heathers, Adams Family Values, Wicked.)1
Diversity consists of real parts, not just tokenism. Given how very rare characters in wheelchairs are, it’s a shame that a high proportion are done badly.
And why are the thin, ablebodied, pretty, white people always the leads? It’s like, it’s okay to have a bit of diversity in a friend group, so long as we remember who’s really important.
(Via Roz Kaveney — congrats on the agent, Roz! — and a hip tip-with-a-quip ripped from the lip of Kip.)
At least the part in Wicked is a speaking, and singing, part, and there’s a bit more to the character. But I want to vomit every time I hear the able-bodied guy blow the wheelchair girl’s mind by suggesting that she can dance — it’s played as if she’s spent her entire life waiting for some able-bodied guy to legitimize her by finding her attractive. As if no one in a wheelchair ever knew that she could dance before the ablebodied came along to let them know. (back)
Sorry I’m fat. I mean, yeah, sure, I try to stay away from beef, and I’m raising my daughter vegetarian, and I drive a small car, and turn out the lights when I leave home, and okay, I’m supportive of plans to reduce greenhouse emissions. But I’m fat, so I’m destroying the world.
I’m finding the story about Susan Boyle, a “Britain’s Got Talent” contestant whose audition video has been very popular on Youtube, interesting.
The video (which can be found here) is great fun to watch, because Susan Boyle herself is very appealing, her voice is great, and because it’s always satisfying watching a high point in someone’s life.
But primarily, the video’s fun because everyone likes watching the underdog kick ass.
But the weird thing is, why is she such an underdog? Partly it’s because she’s not TV-pretty (Boyle herself was apparently dismayed by how she looked on TV), and TV has taught us for years that only thin, pretty people have any talent. Partly it’s because she’s heavyset (at least by TV standards, which are harsher for women than men), and partly it’s because she’s nearly fifty. I agree with Crowfoot, who in Shakesville comments wrote:
This has made me bawl my eyes out. I’m also fat and in my forties and feel ugly and I know no one would take me seriously as a performer. I also gave up on acting because of the sexism and the lookism. So watching her up there blowing them all away in the face of their bigotry.. *sniff* The sexism/sizism/lookism displayed by the audience and the judges just breaks my heart. How dare they laugh at her because she isn’t skinny and young and beautiful. Douchebags. How many people’s lives are diminished by this crap? We are a stupid stupid stupid species.
Even more than that, however, I think people were shocked because of the class markers she carries — in her voice, her attitude, and her hair and clothes. Ms Boyle’s presentation fairly screams “working class,” and people don’t expect working class to do good work. Colette Douglas Home writes:
Susan [was] roundly patronised by such mega-talents as [Britain's Got Talent judges] Amanda Holden and the aforementioned Morgan, who told her: “Everyone laughed at you but no-one is laughing now. I’m reeling with shock.” Holden added: “It’s the biggest wake-up call ever.”
Again, why?
The answer is that only the pretty are expected to achieve. Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person. [...]
She lived with her parents in a four-bedroom council house and, when her father died a decade ago, she cared for her mother and sang in the church choir.
It was an unglamorous existence. She wasn’t the glamorous type - and being a carer isn’t a glamorous life, as the hundreds of thousands who do that most valuable of jobs will testify. [...]
Then, when a special occasion comes along, they might reach, as Susan did, for the frock they bought for a nephew’s wedding. They might, as she did, compound the felony of choosing a colour at odds with her skin tone and an unflattering shape with home-chopped hair, bushy eyebrows and a face without a hint of make-up.
I’m not above judging people by their presentation. Presentation is one of the ways we assure each other that we know what we’re doing. If someone hasn’t learned how to present themselves professionally, we assume that they also haven’t learned how to do their work professionally. And sometimes that’s justified.
The trouble is, a “professional presentation” is bound up in a lot of things — voice, grooming, body shape, clothing — which are in turn connected to class, to race, to body shape, to gender presentation, to disability status, etc.. None of these are hurdles that it’s impossible for (say) a fat Black person auditioning, or applying for a job, to overcome, if they have sufficient talent and drive. But these are hurdles that well-off, abled, gender-normed, thin white men don’t face.
And for the judges and audience to be so utterly shocked that a woman whose presentation isn’t “professional” sings beautifully… it’s says something pretty sad.
But that Ms Boyle was such a hit — and that millions of people have viewed her on YouTube — maybe that says something optimistic. Maybe it says that there are a hell of a lot of us who are sick of the sick, slick standards TV promotes. That would be nice.
Today the Standard had a guest post on ACC (ACC is NZ’s workers compensation scheme -a lthough it covers much more than workers compensation):
The investment losses have been a big part of it but there is also a rising accident rate stemming from our ageing population and climbing obesity rates, which has been foreseen by medical experts for some time. We cannot do much about an aging population really, but obesity is wholly avoidable with smart policy that has some guts behind it.
Why should we focus on obesity? Obese workers have a higher accident rate, take longer to recover, cost more treat and are out of work for a longer period of time. A 2007 Duke University study found that “obese workers filed twice the number of workers’ compensation claims, had seven times higher medical costs from those claims and lost 13 times more days of work from work injury or work illness than did nonobese workers”.
Although they don’t provide a link I’m going to assume the guest poster is quoting from the press release about the study. Here’s a link to the study itself for people who speak science article.
The numbers quoted are absolute numbers, they’re not controlled for anything. In particular, they’re not controlled for occupation.1 I’m sorry to insult my readership by pointing this out, but the correlation between class and body size is pretty well established, as is the correlation between class and work-place accident rates.
Surprise! When the authors control for occupation (although not income, and managers appear to be treated as the same occupation as workers) the numbers look rather different.2 These numbers are expressed in risk ratios, whereby a control group is set at 1, and 2 means something is twice as likely when all the variables that are mentioned have been controlled for (full disclaimer, I could be lying, I don’t understand statistics that well). The risk ratios for number of claims for people who have a BMI of over 25 range from 1.09 to 1.45. To understand how insignificant a risk ratio of that size is here are some of the risk ratios for occupational groups:
The guest posts asks ‘why is ACC costing so much?’ And answers ‘workers’ bodies’. Even though its evidence is a study that demonstrates that the nature of work plays a far bigger role in the numberof workplace accidents than the nature of workers.
I’m a ‘which side are you on’ kind of a girl, and this post makes it very clear which side it’s on. It blames workers and their bodies for workplace accidents. It chooses policing workers bodies, over fighting for workers bodies.
There are two other problems with those numbers. First that when it says ‘obese’ and ‘non-obese’ it appears to be comparing people with a BMI of between 18.5-24.9 and a BMI of 40+. In the article obese is defined as a BMI of 30+, so the terms used in the press release are not the same as those in the article, or the common medical use of those terms. I’m not going to dwell on that because I have less than no time for the BMI in the first place.
The other problem is that all the numbers apart from the numbers of claims made appear to be based on guesses at what the numbers might be rather than actual numbers:
Lost workday rates (days per 100 FTEs) were calculated by multiplying these stratum-specific claims rates by their corresponding mean number of lost workdays per claim. Similarly, multiplying the claims rate by the stratum-specific mean costs (including the amount already paid and the amount reserved) allowed calculation of cost rates (dollars per 100 FTEs) separately for medical and indemnity claims costs. Confidence intervals were calculated assuming that the number of events followed a Poisson distribution.
I’m not going to comment any more than that, because I don’t speak science article, but will concentrate on the ‘claims made’ figure when explaining why this research doesn’t prove what the standard thinks it proves. (back)
I don’t actually like debunking scientific research about fat, it seems to me to be conceding too much. Even if everything they said about the dangers of fat were true it wouldn’t change my political analysis of fat at all. (back)
I’ve really enjoyed the Buffy comics, even though I stopped reviewing them. After a while there are so many ways you can say “It’s great that Buffy had sex with someone that I don’t hate so much I would like to pickle them in brine, but do they have to draw all the women looking the same?”
What draws me back to talking about the Buffy comics isn’t the series itself (although it’s getting really interesting and exciting), but the letters column at the back of last month’s issue (the Harmony issue for those who subscribe). The last letter in the column said:
I’m not loving the way the characters are drawn. I know they’re comics and that’s how men typically draw women in comics, but why does Buffy have such a tiny waist and such large breasts? Seeing the way she was drawn in #10 was a real let down; Buffy looked more like Heidi Montag of Jenna Jameson than Buffy. I don’t have anything against a tiny Waist (I have one myself!) or large breasts (okay, those I don’t have, as most women with tiny waists don’t have naturally. But it was disappointing to see Buffy have an unrealistic, unattainable, Barbie-esque body type. I don’t understand why Buffy’s looks are clearly modeled after Sarah Michelle Gellar, but someone decided to inflate her chest.
I wish I had a scanner so I could show you the image she was talking about, but I’m sure you can imagine it. [I'm guessing this is the panel you would have inserted --Amp.]
I want to draw attention to how specific the author’s point is. You could write, but all she is saying that in the comics female character’s waists have got smaller and their breasts have got larger.
You can tell the reply is going to be full of weaseling because Scott Allie immediately turns over the reply to one of the few women who work on the comics.1 Sierra Huhn an assistant editor spends the first few sentences blathering on about how Buffy is much better than other comics, because the women don’t have big breasts and itty-bitty waists (she clearly didn’t look at the first frame of #10 before she wrote that).
She ends with the mealy mouthed “The last thing we want is for anyone who reads this comic, or works on this comic, to feel like we’re in the business of exploiting women” (actually the last thing she says is ‘yay Buffy means more women read comics,’ which is so irrelevant that I’m ignoring it). Which is nice side-stepping what was actually brought up (the original letter didn’t mention exploitative). It’s also an interesting rhetorical technique when the facts are against you (the way women look in the comics is limited and emphasizes extreme hour glass figures) you say “I don’t mean to make people feel that way” - shifting the topic from what exists to other people’s feelings.
But it’s in the middle that she gets really offensive:
It’s true most of the characters are attractive (have you seen the show?), and thin (Slayers have to follow a pretty strenuous exercise program…just sayin’…), and sometimes Buffy may be more buxom from one issue to the next. It happens. But not unrealistically so, and not all the time.
Because we all know training regimes give women large breasts and small waists (you think slayers spend hours doing the “I must, I must, I must, increase my bust arm thrusts?). It’s a ridiculous and insulting answer to a serious question.
That’s not even what I object most to what she says. It’s that she’s stepping on the greatest moment of the history of TV.
Those of you who watched the show will remember Buffy’s last speech. For those who don’t Buffy is talking about doing a spell to share her slayer power, with all the potentials all around the world (it’s way cooler than I can make it sound in a sentence). And as she was doing this there is a series of images of girls becoming slayers, at school, at home, and on a baseball diamond. It means a lot more if you’ve watched the show, but you get the idea.
One of the slayers is fat. She isn’t not-skinny, she isn’t Hollywood fat, she isn’t a size twelve, she takes up space. And she stands up and uses her body and her strength to stop stops the man who is trying to hurt her. Meanwhile we hear Buffy’s voice saying “Everyone who can stand up; will stand up.”2
Why haven’t we seen her in the Season 8 comics yet? Don’t tell me that she started a strenuous exercise programme and now she’s got a tiny waist (her boobs would presumably be the same size) and is one of the many identical looking slayers you see in the background, because I will hurt you.
There have been eleven men and one women involved in producing the art of the comics (that’s pencils inks colours and letters) and five men and one woman have written scripts. Jo Chen does most of the covers, and the designer has always been female. Listed in the front is three editorial staff and a publisher. The Publisher and Editor are both male, but usually one of the editorial staff is female. I say this not because I necessarily think the comics would look any different if they had more women involved in their creation, but to point out that given how few women are involved in producing the comics to put one forward to justify the way women’s bodies are drawn is tokenism of the worst sort. (back)
Random piece of Buffy trivia - that was the last shot of Buffy Joss ever shot. (back)
By any measure, 
The new male model is supposed to look younger, pubescent, rather than adult; and like with female models, that means casting them young and skinny.
