Saying No to Body Shaming

In a recent New Yorker piece, Lizzie Widdicombe writes about the plus-sized fashion industry, describing how plus-sized women (size 14 and up) have felt stigmatized and marginalized by the types of fashions available for them. Some women have circumvented this, and there are now companies out there producing fashionable clothes in larger sizes.

In the article, she writes that the views we typically hold about weight and fat are recent, developing since the industrial revolution. Around that time, clothing became mass produced, so people started needing to fit their clothes, rather than the other way around.

In addition, fat had previously signaled affluence. Once that ceased and thinness signaled affluence, we started to devalue fat and weight. The author quotes Madeline Jones, the editor of the online magazine Plus- Model: “People become plus size for all sorts of reasons, not all of which involve lifestyle choices. And it’s not clear that shaming people—or requiring them to wear muumuus—is an effective weight loss tool.”

This is certainly true: fat shaming is hardly conducive to weight-loss.  

Can you be too fat to be President?

There’s a new wrinkle in the 2012 presidential race: The idea that you can be too fat to be president.

The issue has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks alongside discussion that New Jersey governor Chris Christie could be a viable candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. As speculation grows that he could enter the race, pundits are writing about his weight, and asserting that Christie is too fat to be president.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni did his best Sunday to challenge the weight prejudice directed against Christie (who doesn’t talk about how much he weighs, but has referred to his long-running “struggle” with his weight).

We treat weight as if it is simply a matter of willpower, and equate thinness with virtue and weight with gluttony and slothfulness. Despite all the evidence that weight is much more complex than simple willpower, and is affected by many factors, including genetics, we continue to denigrate the overweight and to value thinness above all else. We act as if being thin is a sign of self-control, and being fat is a sign of no self-discipline. Bruni -- a former food critic for the Times and the author of Born Round, an excellent memoir revolving around eating -- writes that his thinness in college didn’t reflect self-control: “It reflected bulimia and laxatives,” he says.

Ironically, this focus on Christie’s weight occurred during the first Weight Stigma Awareness Week, an effort by the Binge Eating Disorder Association to make people aware of the stigma and discrimination that the overweight face. It’s a reminder of the importance of not making judgments about behavior based on weight.