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Big, fat crusade tackles obesity online

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-29 08:49

NEW YORK: Kate Harding has spent most of her life on one diet or another, losing weight but always gaining it back. Determined to improve her quality of life, she joined a fast-growing group of anti-dieting activists promoting overweight people's civil rights.

Women queue to enter the Fat Girl flea market in New York on April 4, Fat-acceptance advocates are beginning to promote anti-bias laws, encourage tolerance in healthcare and at the workplace. [Agencies]

Launching an anti-dieting blog called Shapely Prose, Harding and other fat-acceptance advocates online - calling themselves the fat-o-sphere - are also educating one another about how to improve overweight people's health.

She and other bloggers with names like FatChicksRule and Big Liberty say society's "war on obesity" makes overweight people hate their bodies and suffer from low self-esteem.

"Being fat doesn't make me lazy or stupid or morally suspect," said Harding, 34, of Chicago, who also has written a book, Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere. "The message we're promoting is health at every size."

Her blog entries criticize dieting obsessions and ponder coverage of weight issues in the mainstream media.

Since launching her blog, Harding, who says she is 1.6 meters tall and about 88 kg, says her body image has improved. But she admits wearing a bathing suit in public "can still throw me for a bit of a loop".

Fat-acceptance advocates are starting to organize to promote anti-bias laws, encourage tolerance in health care and the workplace and help retailers recognize the profit potential of catering to plus-size customers.

"People are just beginning to think about being empowered," said Lynn McAfee, director of medical advocacy at the nonprofit Council on Size and Weight Discrimination.

"The emphasis has just been 'lose weight and everything will be fine', and it's becoming really clear that people aren't losing weight," she said. "So we want to shift the emphasis to making us as healthy as we can be at whatever weight we are."

Activists say the movement is beginning to amass some victories, from larger seat belts in cars to a decision by the Supreme Court in Canada that obese and disabled people traveling on airplanes can't be forced to buy a second seat.

The National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), a civil rights group formed in 1969, has found new life as fat-acceptance advocates gain force online.

There are now more than 50 fat-acceptance blogs and more than a dozen books promoting the idea, from Linda Bacon's Health at Every Size to Wendy Shanker's The Fat Girl's Guide to Life.

But the dominant view remains that overweight people should be focused on losing weight.

Some two-thirds of Americans are considered overweight or obese. Obesity-related healthcare cost upward of $100 billion a year, research shows. There are no US laws prohibiting weight discrimination, and only one state, Michigan, has an anti-weight bias law.

Weight discrimination is pervasive, said Rebecca Puhl, director of research at Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. An "obesity wage penalty" - larger employees getting paid less regardless of job performance - is widespread, and research shows overweight people are less likely to land a job or be promoted than a non-obese worker, she said.

"We do need to fight obesity, but not obese people," said Puhl. "Individuals ... who are discriminated against because of their weight are more likely to engage in unhealthy eating behaviors and avoidance of physical activity."

Reuters