We sure had an awesome conversation in comments to my post of yesterday on my discomfort with the concept of intuitive eating. Turns out there really are as many definitions for intuitive eating as there are folks practicing it, which makes sense in the larger scheme of things. The discussion really helped me pinpoint exactly where my wariness of intuitive eating comes from, and it may be a total non-surprise that it’s wrapped up in language.
First, the esteemed Fillyjonk said:
I know there are people using the term in a way I find troubling — people who hope to use it as cryptodieting (i.e. “once I commit to intuitive eating I will magically only want carrots and cabbage and will lose weightâ€), and a smaller number who use it as cryptobinging (â€but I want to eat one million Oreos, so it must be good for meâ€). But this reads to me more like a rejection of disordered versions of IE than a rejection of IE.
…I guess part of the problem is that whenever you put a term to something, you risk people taking it up as a banner but in a way you can’t countenance.
It’s precisely this sort of diet-but-not-a-diet thinking that has made up the majority of the intuitive-eating conversations I’ve read recently, and that explains my desire to reject this faulty logic right away. The potential to use “intuitive eating” as code for for an old-fashioned “lifestyle change” diet makes me twitchy. Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone who practices intuitive eating is participating in a dieting fakeout, not by a long shot — but the capacity of the concept, and the language it uses, to be so flexible is a problem for me. (As an aside, be warned I may start using the term “cryptodieting” ALL THE DAMN TIME now.)
And then, honorable commenter Roxarita said:
Here is what I do not want: another kind of eating that has A NAME.
And I went YES. OH DAMN. THAT’S IT EXACTLY. Here we have my primary problem. I spent the first third of my life giving names to my eating patterns, or having others give names to my eating patterns, or imposing rules other people drew up onto what I ate, and when, and how much. “Intuitive eating” strikes similar chords in my psyche, and that sound frankly makes me want to run as far and as fast as possible in the opposite direction. I just want to eat food that is both tasty and good for me. I don’t want to overthink it. I don’t want to name it or give it a bonnet and a baby carriage. It’s just food, and eating should just happen. Obviously, I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t participate in any naming/organizing of how to eat, if it helps you. You do what makes you happy and well. But it ain’t for me.
Finally, the venerated Michelle of The Fat Nutritionist added some important distinctions:
I think there are some shades of difference between “demand feeding†(which is what a lot of people are talking about when they say “intuitive eating,†and which Lesley is describing here as “intuitive eatingâ€) and other forms of eating that are HAES-supporting.
For myself, I don’t promote the demand feeding variety of intuitive eating. I do think giving some thought to nutrition and how food makes you feel physically (once you’ve dealt with underlying guilt and restriction issues around food, and ONLY once you’ve dealt with those issues) is really the grown-up way to eat. But that’s my bias.
Anyway, the idea I support, and the one I think Lesley is talking about here, is called “eating competence,†which hasn’t spread around too much in lay circles. Yet.
(I also think “eating competence†is meant to be more of a descriptive term than a prescriptive one. The research on it is based on observing how people who are healthy and who don’t have lots of anxiety around food eat, and what factors are a part of that. I can totally understand being uncomfortable with prescriptive eating concepts, because even if it’s a non-diet approach, it still feels like someone is telling you that you SHOULD eat in a certain way. When, in reality, grown-ups get to decide how to eat for themselves — and different people are going to eat in different ways that work for them.)
This really hits the nail on the proverbial head. If I may descend into semantics for a moment, I find “eating competence” a term much preferable to “intuitive eating”. For one, “intuitive eating” rings out like a plan or a strategy or a dreaded lifestyle-change — which, again, is fine if it works for you, but I chafe at that sort of thing. Intuition, conceptually, is an intangible and nebulous idea at best, and intuitive eating would seem, in my opinion, to lend itself too easily to second-guessing and overthinking. I think I want a cookie. No wait, do I really want a cookie? What am I intuiting about the cookie-desire? Maybe I can’t have the cookie I want because it will have a negative health effect on me? Maybe I want a piece of cheese instead? I expect that intuitive eating works as well as it does for folks in recovery from eating disorders because it functions as a training program to reconnect biological need with emotional mind — taking a moment to stop and think about how and what and why you are eating, to nourish yourself, when you’ve lost that ability at some point, is no doubt a tremendously healing approach, and one that provides touchstones and waypoints for re-learning how to eat without judgment or guilt. What do we mean by “intuitive” here, if not as a code word indicating an awareness of a potentially-clouded connection between body and mind? But for those who haven’t divorced these aspects of themselves, this is a challenge without a purpose. In my case, I know when I want a cookie, or a burrito, or a spinach salad, and I don’t want or need to think about it too hard, nor do I feel inclined to interrogate my body to try to glean what it wants, as my body and me are the same thing anyway. I want a burrito, but I should skip it because it’ll make me feel grumpy in the stomach later. I want a cookie, so I eat the damn cookie. I don’t really want a spinach salad, but I’ll eat one anyway because I do best with a certain daily intake of leafy greens. I don’t require reconnection; I’m already connected.
On the other hand, the term “eating competence” sounds to me more like a skill, an expertise you develop and which subsequently comes naturally. I also dig the distinction Michelle makes above regarding this being a term that is more descriptive than prescriptive, as intuitive eating has always struck me as a prescriptive solution, hence my problem with it. I mentioned in comments yesterday that I’d seen a lot of Come-to-Jesus fervor about adopting intuitive eating, and that’s great if it works for you, but it’s not an approach that everyone is going to benefit from. I am very much into the idea of being a competent eater; but I don’t want to have to rely on intuition to direct me. It seems too much like going into the pantry with a dowsing rod and hoping for the best.
Now, the one thing I think we can all agree on is that there is no one definition of intuitive eating that we can all agree on. Which is part of my gripe with the term. As usual, I recommend you, individually, use whatever method works best for you, as an individual, and that you call your approach whatever you want. What I am NOT trying to do here is discredit intuitive eating when it works for people. But I just can’t get my head around it, myself, and the original question was inquiring why I personally am not overly fond of the concept of intuitive eating. This is why: I don’t care for the terminology. I don’t want to overthink or name my eating habits. I don’t believe that human intuition as a concept is infallible. I find that trying to eat “intuitively” complicates something that doesn’t need complications. At least in my case.
EDIT: Some folks in comments are suggesting that what I describe here IS intuitive eating, so possibly this post would be better framed as my own re/definition of the concept. My reading on the subject over the past few months has left a sour taste in my mouth, so I’m feeling reactionary about it, but it could be that intuitive eating is just one of those approaches that has no single definition, even if some sources make it sound otherwise (or that intuitive eating requires a wholesale rejection of any eating “rules” whatsoever). At any rate, on to the original post.
I had a question a couple weeks ago about why I’m not a huge proponent of intuitive eating as a solution to a troubled relationship with food. First, I want to make it abundantly clear that this is my opinion only. I am not disparaging intuitive eating if it works for you; I think everyone should find their own way of feeding themselves and relating to food, and, if necessary, healing that broken connection with the whole process of eating. Reality dictates that different bodies and different people respond differently to different stimuli, so if intuitive eating has served you, then you go on intuiting, friend. However, both philosophically and practically, it does not so much work for me. I think intuitive eating actually complicates something that should be very simple, and it can outright fail some of us as a strategy for eating healthfully. I’ll illustrate, as is my wont, with a personal example.
I don’t have a gallbladder. Not anymore; not for several years. I have written about this, with both humor and rage, before. When I was 23, my gallbladder and I found ourselves at a standoff, victims of irreconcilable differences. I won the battle, obviously, and my gallbladder and I would part ways forever. No, this is unfair; I didn’t hate my gallbladder, nor was I at war with it. Indeed, the injury I caused it was purely accidental and if the intervening years have taught me anything, I would much rather go through life with a functional, intact, normal gallbladder than without one. But, the divide occurred, and one of us had to go, and accepting that, swallowing the reality that I was losing an organ, was a long and difficult process.
For reasons relating to the obscene miseries of health insurance, I had to put off my gallbladder’s removal for several months after being diagnosed. At the time I was just squeaking out my final years on my father’s health insurance, which would only pay for such a surgery if it took place in-network, the “network” being mostly located in Florida with my father and my childhood home. I was also in my final semester of my first Master’s degree, and a Boston resident of several years, and, well, if you know me at all you’ll know it is very much against my nature to take a leave of absence from school in order to tend to a health problem that was unlikely to kill me in a hurry. So, I faced a period of almost four months in which my gallbladder and I had to maintain a shared household, which was a bit like spending four months with a sleeping pufferfish in your abdomen. You really don’t want to disturb the pufferfish, so living in a way that eliminated possible disruptions seemed my most logical option. Surviving those four months without pain would require a major change in eating patterns.
As my first two attacks were instigated by dietary fat — specifically vegetables sauteed in olive oil — I gamely decided to remove all fat from my diet. I didn’t have a target, in terms of numbers, as my wide-eyed goal was to live completely fat-free, though I’d soon discover this was nearly impossible. Almost everything has some fat in it. Plus, fat serves other purposes in your digestive tract that are kind of important. I eventually settled on trying to keep my fat intake below ten grams a day. As a result, I spent the next four months primarily subsisting on sliced apples, unflavored brown rice, baked potatoes with fat-free sour cream, and fat-free soy-based “bacon” on fat-free white bread with fat-free mayo and lettuce and tomato, in a revolting perversion of the traditional BLT sandwich.
It was not living; it was surviving.
Oh, the foods I longed for. Delicious cheese. Sliced avocados. Granola. Non-skim milk. Salad dressing. I craved and craved. And yet, satisfying these cravings would have done me no favors. The foods I dreamed of were good for me, certainly, and likely would have satisfied the nutritional requirements I was utterly missing, but they also would have launched Abdominal Pufferfish (great name for a band, no?) into a merciless campaign of pain and terror on my innards, and going back to the ER was just not high on my list of priorities. So I resisted. I was miserable. I tried to imagine it as a fascinating social experiment; a reminder of what my life was like during the multitudes of extreme diets I forced myself to suffer as a teenager. It didn’t work. I hated virtually every moment of my life right up until the day of the surgery; and when the surgery was delayed by a few hours, and I had to lie in prep, in a too-small backless gown, with an IV drip in my arm dosing me with valium that was supposed to take the edge off but did nothing so much as it made me even more depressed and impatient, I finally burst into near-hysterical tears, and begged of my then-boyfriend, now-husband, “Just make them take it out. I just want this to be over. I can’t wait anymore.” Though I had spent my life beginning around the age of eight thinking of my body as the enemy, this was the most at odds I’d ever felt with myself. And it provided a turning point, ultimately, when post-surgery I decided I would declare a truce with my body, fat or not, and learn to think of it not as a discrete entity somehow separate from the person I was, but as every bit a part of me as my commitment to social justice activism, or my love of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. If I am to value myself, and my intelligence, and my contributions to the world, I must also value the vessel that enables me to engage with that world, and to experience everything that makes me who I am.
Now, having had this experience of self-enforced denial, I do understand the intuitive appeal. Ignoring, burying, resisting cravings can make you miserable. But part of my journey toward self-acceptance has been to realize that my own relationship with food is most comfortable when it is informed by certain established standards, and is not simply allowed to take its own course. By way of example, I do better in life when I manage to eat at least one big serving of leafy greens a day. Many days, particularly during the week, I don’t really feel like cooking up some collards or kale, so I’ll have a spinach salad. I’m not always jazzed about a spinach salad (in truth, I usually am, but not always) but I know that eating it will ensure that I’ll feel my usual awesome self the next day. On the other hand, sometimes I’ll crave what I call garbage food.
Now, before anyone gets on me for doing the “good” vs. “bad” food thing, let me note that I’m not saying garbage food is “bad”. Just that it’s garbage. Taco Bell, for example? Is garbage food. It’s not evil, but it is food we eat because we’re in a rush and our options are limited; because it’s cheap; or because we reeeaaally want a metric fuckton of salt. There’s no love or care deployed in its production. Its nutritional value is dubious. It’s prepared with speed, and speed is its only benefit. Well, that, and sometimes it can taste really good going down, in spite of the hypothetical (ahem) effects it may have on one’s digestive tract later on in the day.
So: sometimes I’ll crave garbage food. And sometimes I’ll eat garbage food, and that’s okay, because it always comes down to me making a judgment call about whether the pleasure of ingesting said food is worth the potential havoc to be wrought later on. That’s my choice, and I’m happy to have it; but, I also have to recognize that sometimes not indulging a garbage-food craving is much wiser and kinder to myself than diving into that chalupa with reckless abandon. All things in moderation. When I have a craving, I stop and think, okay, if I eat this, how is it going to make me feel? If it’s likely to make me feel logy or sluggish or otherwise not-great, is that worth the trade-off of satisfying the craving? Is there something else I can eat that will strike a balance between these two issues?
While intuitive eating goes a long way in healing many people, most particularly folks in recovery from eating disorders or other forms of disordered eating, I cannot think of it as a universally-applicable doctrine, and frankly I don’t think it’s supposed to be. There are, after all, people with lactose intolerance who crave cheese, and people with gluten allergies who crave bread, and it’s difficult to argue that these folks would benefit from following their “intuition” at the expense of what they know to be true about how they digest certain foods. While learning to listen to one’s body is of paramount importance in self-acceptance, there is, sadly, no one-size-fits-all solution that invariably works for everyone, and intuitive eating can sometimes verge on a doctrine of its own, if only because the folks who dig it are often very vocal about their experiences. But ultimately, ideally, acceptance of one’s body should also mean cultivating a sensitivity to what helps you and what doesn’t, whether we’re talking eating behaviors, or food itself.
Intuitive eating is, no argument, a radical approach to eating in our current food culture of denial, judgment, and superiority. And I’m happy for the folks for whom it works. But it’s not the only approach. The best approach, for me, is to strip food choices of their moral values, and balance listening to one’s hunger with a thorough understanding of how different foods affect you, for good or ill, and to let that inform my eating decisions.
Hey kids, it’s Friday! It’s also my personal annual Get An Extremely Private Medical Exam That Causes Me A Fair Bit Of Anxiety Day. But no matter, you’re getting some fluff, whether you like it, or not.
Fluff the first comes from a Formspring questioner (SURPRISED?), who inquires: I’ve been reading fatshionista for a long time, and maybe this was covered at some point that I missed, but what happened to it being a group blog? I think you’re fabulous, I’m just confused by the structure of the blog now.
Good question! I did not, in fact, formally note this slight shift out here in the internets, though I always meant to. I am bad with the housekeeping posts.
My vision for fatshionista.com was always that it would be a group blog with a diversity of perspectives, and for the first year, pretty reliably, it was. And it was great! However, in the year since, most of the other bloggers dropped off (for various totally understandable and drama-free reasons). Eventually it became overwhelmingly just me writing, with posts from other authors maybe a couple times a month, if that.
Thus, in late 2009 I quietly shifted the structure a bit, as it seemed disingenuous to keep promoting this as a “group blog” when it had really become a blog I write, with occasional contributions from others. It just seemed confusing and inaccurate to not reflect the format change. So I made some new post tags, reorganized the author groups in the backend, and now it’s Mostly Lesley’s Blog, With Posts By Amazing Occasional Contributors When They Have Time To Participate (Or If Lesley Sees Them Post Something Awesome On LJ And Asks Them To Crosspost It To Fats.com).
Blogging is a weird hobby and/or compulsion, and one that is insanely time-consuming, so unfortunately not everyone has the ability (or is as willing to forgo sleep) to participate on a regular schedule. I get that, completely. Nevertheless, I maintain an open-door policy with regard to guest posting from any of the original bloggers at any time. Is this is ideal scenario I’d envisioned when I began this thing in 2007? Nope, not by a long shot. But, it’s how things have gone. I expect this space will always be changing — for example, stitchtowhere and I have been discussing a tag-team advice column since LONG before I started my illustrious Formspring career, and we still have plans of making that happen. I try to just keep in step with how things are now and let the river run, as the song says. Working Girl, anyone? Anyone? Come on.
THAT’S RIGHT.
Fluff the second is a bit of backstage nonsense that I am only sharing because I am, as I have oft mentioned the past few days, operating on not much sleep. Were I running at full capacity I would probably think better of this, and as it stands I may later be terrifically embarrassed by it.
See, I have a crap commute. I go in and out of Boston every single day for work. There is a lot of traffic. The one up side to this is that it gives me enforced time to do lots of meandering, unstructured thinking. When ideas I want to remember hit me, I record them as voice memos on my iPhone. Most of these are dull mumblings in sentence fragments, since I don’t record them with the intention that anyone but me will ever hear them, but occasionally they verge on coherence.
Yesterday I was thinking about a comment made by Eve to this post, in which she mentions that she and a friend had recently agreed that I should host a fatty-makeover show meant to teach fat folks “how to dress their best and be fabulous in their own way.” I love this idea! I do. I think it would be awesome and if I had any power at all in the media universe I would be trying to pitch that idea all over.
But while I was thinking about it in the car last night, my mind began to wander — as it does — and it occurred to me that it would also be fun to have another show as well… a different… show.
You can listen to my half-conceived and fully-unscripted insanity, as spewed over the steering wheel of my car in real time, using the Quicktime gadget below. (If that doesn’t work for you and you’re burning with desire, you can also download it here, though you are not missing much.) Oh yeah, and it’s probably not worksafe, as I say “fuck” a few times.
BRING IT ON, BRAVO. You know this would be a huge hit. Pun very much intended.
My loves, I am sorry. I am all apologies and excuses. I’ve been briefly out of town. I had the norovirus. (”There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!”) I am also doing badly with time management at present. My email is piling up so large that I fear it will shortly evolve sentience and threaten my life for being so neglectful. I have multiple half-finished blog posts that are currently doing nothing so much as standing by my locker smirking and making vague threats about dumping my books after school.
So, until I get my shit back together, I am sharing a few more of my favorite recent questions and answers that you may have missed from Formspring, which is also becoming unmanageable given that over the weekend my to-be-answered queue has ballooned to 49 questions. That said, I welcome you to add to the lumbering horror by asking a question of your own. I will get there. And I promise there will be fresh content, sweet and shining as a spring morning, very soon. Someday… somewhere… we’ll find a new way of living.
(This is what happens, kids, when I am sleep-deprived and overstimulated. You get an abundance of old movie references.)
Q. I think some of the questions asked on here are a bit rude. Yet you still answer so graciously, what is your secret to being so gracious and kind?
A. In every anonymous internet exchange, I’ve made it a habit of assuming everyone’s best intentions. Constantly assuming the worst will eat away at you slowly from the inside like a poison, and that’s how activists get burnt out.
That said, I’m also aware that people who ask rude questions usually do so in order to get a particular reaction. They’re looking for me (or whomever they’re trying to incite) to get angry or act stupid or betray some hurted feewings. Answering graciously, as you put it, effectively defuses that attempt.
If I were capable of taking the rudeness personally, I might find it more difficult to deal with. But the rude people aren’t really speaking to me; they’re speaking to fat people as a monolith, or they’re speaking to the fat family member that disgusts them, or they’re speaking to the fat coworker that they hate, or they’re speaking to the anonymous fat guy who sat next to them on the bus this morning. As a public fatass I’m just a conduit for that, and I accept that it goes with the territory. It isn’t about me, it’s about what I represent: that is, fat people refusing to buy into shame and self-loathing.
Confidentially, I find the rudest questions are often the most fun and challenging to answer in a polite and thoughtful way. If I couldn’t take a punch — or if part of me didn’t dig getting under people’s skin enough to make them take a swing at me — I wouldn’t have been able to do this for as long as I have.
And thanks for the grand compliment.
—
And with that, two of the aforementioned potentially-rude (or potentially-not, I can never tell and try to err on the side of optimism) questions are answered after the jump!
Q. Most people who diet gain the weight back so you say “diets don’t work.” Most people who try to quit smoking fail. Would you say to them “Quitting smoking doesn’t work!” and start a Smokers Acceptance Movement?
A. You are indeed a very clever monkey, I tell you what. This is a rare instance in which I can speak to both of these issues from personal experience.
Once upon a time, I was a very heavy (PUN!) smoker. We’re talking nearly two packs a day. I was also a grad student at the time, so most of my waking hours were spent sitting and reading (and smoking), sitting and writing at a computer (and smoking), and whatever time was left I spent playing Everquest (and smoking). I quit smoking cold turkey. Literally, one day I smoked, the next I didn’t, with no step-downs, no patches, nothing at all. I succeeded the first time. It was incredibly difficult, but hey, my self-discipline had been carefully honed by having spent my formative years from age 8 forward on one diet or another. It’s possible that the only marginally-positive thing I took away from my extensive dieting history — being an inveterate optimist I can always find something useful in the worst experiences — was that it enabled me to learn to employ self-discipline from a very young age, luckily without going so far as to develop a full-blown eating disorder, as an excess of skill in the area of self-control can often do.
I honestly know smokers even today who feel like they’re constantly shit on, and would probably grin and nod at the idea of a Smokers Acceptance Movement. Fortunately, I’m not real invested in policing the decisions other folks make about their bodies and their health. I’m glad I quit smoking, for sure; it was expensive (I thought it was expensive then, over eight years ago, but it is RIDICULOUS now), time-consuming, and triggered all my worst hypochondriac impulses. But I don’t give a damn if other folks continue.
That said, the glaring and obvious difference between smoking and dieting is that smoking isn’t necessary to live; eating food is. A body can quit smoking and never smoke again and go on to live out a normal lifespan without having been negatively affected by quitting. Dieting isn’t “quitting” food because obviously, you can’t quit food. You have to eat. Thus, dieting is a much more complex mechanism than your average smoking-cessation technique, and is an effort that the body fights not because of chemical addiction, but because restricting food intake for the purposes of intentional weight loss is not an evolutionary imperative. Quite the opposite, in fact.
(This is also why I sigh a bit when folks talk about “food addiction”. I don’t doubt the sincerity of those who believe this, but part of me always thinks: OF COURSE you are addicted to food. Everyone is. If we do not eat food, we will literally wither and die. Perhaps, someday, medicine will find a means of removing our digestive tracts and installing personal ion engines into our abdomens and we can be Free of the Tyranny of Food Forever! But I don’t think that’s going to happen in our lifetimes, and until then, we need to make peace with food.)
My point being, the addiction metaphor really doesn’t work for me. Food isn’t nicotine, or hard drugs. Nor is food poison or medicine, as I’ve heard a friend recently remark. It’s just food, and no matter how vigorously you may resent it, you will always require it to live. Therefore, my opinion is that quitting smoking and dieting are incompatible for comparison purposes.
But it was a thoughtful challenge, so thanks for that.
Q. But isnt being as fat as you are a huge physical burden? I can imagine that being that big must make it difficult/impossible to run.
A. These sorts of questions and concerns always make me chuckle, though I promise I am not laughing at you for asking, but rather at the reality that we’ve got so many assumptions imposed on life in a fat body that it really must be difficult to imagine how a fatass navigates the world. And I don’t just mean in terms of space.
I’ll address the running question specifically first: I won’t deny that I hate running. I’m a quick sprinter — if I had to dodge a smallish horde of shambling-zombies standing a couple yards apart on my way into the safe haven of a shopping mall just over a hundred yards away, I could do it without trouble. If I had to outrun a pack of 28 Days Later-style zippy-zombies for a mile to get to an abandoned farmhouse, yeah, I’d be utterly screwed. That said, it may surprise you to learn that I have several fat friends who DO run, like, for fun and/or exercise, and who enjoy it. (I know it surprises ME, but that’s because I find running interminably dull.) I’ve also known quite a few great big fats who’ve done the Couch to 5K program (http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml) and gotten a lot out of the experience. So, running fatasses are not that unusual, at least amongst able-bodied fatasses who choose to keep up an exercise routine of some kind.
Simply put, no, being as fat as I am isn’t a huge physical burden for me. Would it be for you? Almost certainly, because you lack the decades of experience I have in moving this body around. In my experience, being fat and active means one’s muscles and joints and flexibility will adapt in order to successfully carry one’s weight. Sometimes, some aspect can’t adapt for one reason or another, and you get folks with knee problems and the like (though, in fairness, often folks prone to knee problems will have them to some degree no matter their weight). In my case, all I need to do in order to be physically active and adept is… be physically active and adept. Everything else just falls into place.
This is partly why I have trouble with television shows (OH HAI TYRA) that strap non-fat people into fat suits for a taste of what life as a fat person is like. It’s true that this might give one an idea of how social status is affected, but very often, once stripped of temporary fatness, the fat-pretender will say, “Ugh! It was so HEAVY! And so HOT! It made me so TIRED! Being fat SUCKS!” In fact, it is being trapped inside a big fake costume that sucks, just like if you woke up tomorrow with an anvil strapped to your back and had to carry it around all day would suck. It’s not your familiar body; your sense of scale and self-awareness is skewed; you’re not accustomed to it. I daresay if you and I were to swap bodies for a day, I would likely be as confused and inept in a smaller form as you would be in a larger one.
Hence, I can’t say my body or my weight is “a huge physical burden” because it isn’t. I’ve never thought, wow, my big ol’ fat leg is so much heavier to lift and walk with than it would be if it were… not as heavy. What the fuck do I know from “not as heavy”? It’s my leg, the one I’m used to, the one that matches the other leg, the both of which I use to trot up and down stairs at work, to jog through the Target parking lot in the rain, to FWOOSH away on the elliptical at the gym for forty-five minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I don’t think about the physical heft of my body; I don’t have to. I just use it and live my life.
This has been a slow blogging week for me for a few reasons, and unfortunately I’ve yet to finish the part two of the “Dealing With Parents” post about dealing with kids, with a side of constructive criticism of the drumbeats leading up to the war on childhood OMGbesity, i.e. fat kids are easy targets! (Actual post title will probably be shorter.) Nevertheless, I’ve been trying to keep up with my Formspring questions, so for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, this should be new content. As an aside, there are a few questions currently in my queue that are a week or two old, because I’m still working on answers to them, so if you’re waiting… I’m sorry you have to wait some more.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve weighed in on the Amanda Palmer/Evelyn Evelyn debacle, whether it’s a problem that it’s mostly fat people who care about fat issues, being confronted with other people’s fat hate confessions, and what I’m listening to lately. Below I’ve collected recent questions and answers all revolving around the topic of weight loss, including some potentially-surprising thoughts on WLS and the difference between personal politics and individual reality.
Q. I’m confused about your anti weight-loss views. Are you also anti weight-gain for people who are underweight? What about muscle gain for athletes in training? What is so bad about purposefully changing your body’s weight or shape in a healthy way?
A. You are correct! You ARE confused!
Body changes are inevitable. I am quite in favor of changes in one’s body, though I admit this is because opposing them is automatically and perpetually a losing battle. We all age; we have accidents and injuries; hormones shift; so does flesh. No getting around that, no matter how many cosmetic surgeries a body may have — change is unavoidable and plentiful. I am not opposed to change, because it’d be like opposing the sunrise.
I am, rather, opposed to a $40 billion dollar industry of diet and weight loss products that promise health and happiness for a price and consistently fail to deliver. I’m opposed to a culture that sets forth one narrow standard for an acceptable body and refuses to acknowledge or represent alternatives. I’m opposed to a health care environment that candidly and blatantly places more emphasis on sheer poundage than on the overall health and wellness of each unique individual. And I’m opposed to a world in which abusing, harassing, bullying, demeaning, humiliating, and hating fat people exclusively because they are fat is considered an A-OK way of life.
I hope that clears things up.
—
Q. If you could magically wake up tomorrow and be thin–knowing you would be healthy at that weight, knowing you’d stay that way without bouncing back, et cetera–would you?
A. This is a question I have posed to myself for literal years, and my answer is still the same.
No.
I’m probably one of very few people who can say this and absolutely mean it. This is not to imply that I should get Extra Activist Points, or any such nonsense, and in truth, I would not fault anyone who took part in your hypothetical magical fat-dropping system. My motivation, certainly, is rooted as much in my nature and personality as it is in any grand commitment to fatness. I may well be the most stubborn person you’ve ever met; the person who knows me best in the world, my husband, will attest to this. The fact is, even if EVERY OTHER FAT PERSON ON EARTH shrunk before my eyes, I would stay fat. Partly to make a point: no one but me gets to dictate, by coaxing, pressure, or force, what my body looks like. Because even if The Magic Thin Pill existed, there would still be people in the world with bodies and shapes that don’t adhere to what culture glorifies as “normal”.
And partly: well, because I sometimes enjoy pissing people off, particularly when pissing people off is a side effect of making them witness and face their own shallow prejudices and hypocrisies. I’ve still never read the comments to the Boston Globe article about me, though I am led to understand that many of them focus not on my IMMINENT DEATH but on sheer disbelief that I could actually, honestly, literally be, as the title says, “fat and happy”. I’d stay fat, cheerily, just to make those people climb the walls with rage.
I don’t do well with conformity. Or authority. As it happens, it’s only recently that this aspect of my personality has become somewhat useful.
—
Q. So, I’m 32, was diagnosed as diabetic a year ago, diet and exercise aren’t managing it–and I’m terrified. I don’t care about losing weight–but being diabetic–I’m considering WLS. I know your general position-and I know you aren’t a dr, or an oracle,
A. Simply put: you need to make the best decision for you, and your health, and your long-term quality of life.
(Formspring cut this off again, but I think I can get at what you’re asking here even in an incomplete query.)
My position on WLS is a philosophical and political one. And our bodies are, necessarily, political. But they are also private, and the decisions that you make in the interest of your own health are inviolate, in my opinion. I have the luxury of having a strict policy about WLS as a concept because that’s all it is to me: a concept. A vague idea. Someone else’s distant reality. An overprescribed surgery, too often “sold” for profit by corrupt physicians. I don’t have to think about it seriously, as a real possibility in my life; I never have. So my opinion here is inextricably tangled up in this perspective, no matter how hard I try to sympathize with folks whose lives are taking different turns (and I do try). I acknowledge that as a personal limitation.
If you firmly believe that WLS is your last hope to survive and manage this disease, then you do it. You do what needs to be done. I will strongly suggest you do some thorough research on diabetes-related outcomes for WLS; the success of WLS in curing diabetes is not at all established, and even its ability to manage it isn’t a sure thing, and WLS is an awfully big gamble to make if you don’t have assurances it’s going to help. I will also strongly suggest you get a second opinion with regard to treating your diabetes, if you haven’t already, and assuming you have access to healthcare that will allow you to do so. WLS has saved people’s lives. There is no debating that. But it’s a big decision, and one that will absolutely affect you for the rest of your life, for good or ill. If you’re going to do it, you want to pass through that doorway with your eyes open, and with a complete understanding of what to expect, and how different people’s experiences post-surgery can be.
(Also, and this may go without saying: get the best surgeon you possibly can, ideally someone who’s done this surgery many many times, with a high rate of success, and ask about how often he or she’s faced patients with post-surgery complications. If they resist giving you a straight answer, find a different surgeon. This is advice I’d give anyone having surgery of any kind, for the record.)
I can only dimly imagine how scared you must be, but your decision here is about you, and your life, and nothing else — including what people like me have to say about it — really matters.
I hope you can be strong and get through this, and I sincerely wish you the best and offer my support, no matter what you decide.
—
Q. I am surprised to see you say “WLS has saved people’s lives. There is no debating that” below. What resources do you have that make you so sure?
A. My resources are purely anecdotal. The main reason I don’t go into The Health Issue very often is twofold: one, my health (or your health) is no one else’s business; and two, I have an immediate kneejerk mistrust of statistical research and studies on both sides of the issue. Now, I spent many years trying to be a veritable expert on various studies discounting the efficacy of dieting & weight loss, and their long-term damaging effects, and I still believe that’s true, but I’m less reliant on numbers than I once was. It is my opinion these days that an over-reliance on using some medical studies to disprove other medical studies only gives credence to a medical culture that enables pretty much anyone to buy the result they want, usually so they can use said result to sell things and turn a profit. I no longer trust that ANY of this work is unbiased.
Thus, my certainty is based on the handful of people I’ve met who have expressed that they believe WLS saved their lives — and not in an evangelical, you-can-too! way, but an honest acknowledgment that while they may even now be conflicted about having made the choice, they still would make it again.
Now, it’s certainly true that WLS has ruined at least as many lives, either via post-surgery complications, long-term unforeseen health consequences, or just plain killing people. However, I simply can’t say, sweepingly, that WLS has never done any good to anyone ever. That’s just unlikely. I’ve no doubt that it has. Does a small number of “success stories” justify its continued use? Nope. Not to me. The return is not worth the investment of human lives.
Am I going to tell someone, an individual who’s scared and feels like he or she is up against the wall, “Don’t have WLS”? HELL NO. I don’t want that responsibility. And I certainly don’t want anyone else to feel like they have the right to tell me I SHOULD have WLS, or that I should diet, or that I should stop wearing so many cardigans, and so forth. I simply want people to make critically-informed decisions about their bodies and their health, and to respect the right of others to do the same, and to extend privacy on this issue to everyone, no matter their private and individual choices. Yes, I am individually opposed to WLS, and I think it’s really a long-term barbaric experiment on “disposable” fat bodies, JUST TO SEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN! But I won’t tell someone what they should do with their own damn self. How can I expect people to respect my choices about my body if I don’t respect other folks’ choices about theirs?
My loves, it is with a heavy fat heart that I must inform you that this will be my final Unstapled recap, for reasons to be explained below. My sincere thanks for all your support, and I’m sorry I won’t be able to follow it through to the bitter end.
Previously: Carnie made plans to pitch a nebulous “product line” to QVC in New York. Carnie got measured by Dallas (with Rob’s help). Rob bought Carnie a bracelet which she may or may not find beautiful, thoughtful, and charming. Carnie still struggled with the pesky alcoholism issue.
We start straightaway with Carnie in confessionial, explaining that Dr. Oz has called and asked her to be on his show. Oh, that should go well. Carnie, of course, said yes, and since she’s also supposed to meet with QVC plus she’s filming this reality show you might have heard about, the whole family’s packing up (well, Carnie, Rob, the kids, and Aunt Dee Dee) and jet-setting to the opposite coast to both “enjoy ourselves, as well as get some work done.” Again, that should go well. We see the traveling through a series of still snapshots of the family at the airport and on the plane, so there’s no discussion of the potential challenges of Flying While Fat, which is disappointing given recent events. They arrive at the Omni Berkshire Place where Carnie & co have a massive suite. We are then treated to some totally gratuitous shots of Aunt Dee Dee wandering through the hotel looking for her room (!!!WACKY!!!), which I gotta say I find a bit insulting, primarily to my sense of humor but to Dee Dee herself as well.
That night, Carnie tells Rob she can’t sleep. Luckily the show couldn’t afford to get accommodations for the crew (I presume), so the camera guy sleeping on the floor in their room is there to catch their ensuing conversation on tape. He couldn’t possibly be there because this whole “can’t sleep” thing is a staged opportunity for Carnie to ponder her fears for the Dr. Oz show. No way. Carnie’s stressed, Rob is supportive. Then he gives her a dutch oven. These two deserve each other.
The next morning, they’re going ice skating. Carnie is terrified at first, but warms up (HA!) once she gets out on the ice. At one point she exclaims: “It’s like it’s exercise but you don’t feel like you’re exercising!” — HELLO, HAVE I NOT BEEN SAYING THIS FOR SIX BLEEDING WEEKS NOW? EXERCISE NEED NOT BE THE TORTUROUS BOREDOM THAT DALLAS WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE. — “We should go more, it’s great!” Afterwards, Dee Dee brings everyone hot cocoa and Carnie refuses, because she’s being “good”. Rob confessions that he’s proud of her for standing there freezing and thirsty while everyone else drinks their delicious and warming hot cocoa. Carnie notes that she honestly didn’t want any — which, believe it or not, can happen, as very few fatties will greedily gobble up whatever food is handed them.
Post ice-skating, Carnie has to go meet with Mickey the Manager, who has also flown out to NYC to “support” her, back at the hotel. Mickey says that Dr. Oz actually wants to “follow” Carnie’s progress over “ten or twelve weeks”, which means she’d have to come back to New York and go back on the show. Carnie’s all WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN for a minute, and then says, exasperated: “Don’t you think people are tired of heariing this [bleeeeeping] weight story?… I mean, it feel like it’s beating a dead horse: up, down, up, down.”
YES. YES YES YES. Carnie, there is little in this world that I want more than for you to be famous for pretty much ANYTHING other than being fat.
Mickey the Manager, whom I have NEVER LIKED, for the record, is shaking his head “no” emphatically. He confessions that he is trying to convert Carnie’s anxiety about the show to courage. “It’s been really hard the past few months, because I’m just stagnant,” Carnie tells him, and she’s hopeful Dr. Oz will help her have a “plan”. Which strikes me as ironic, considering she’s had a few people give her a “plan” (Dallas and his weird yoga, Nutritionist Lady and her binder) and all she’s done is rebel against them, and understandably so.
Next Carnie and Mickey need to chat about what, exactly, they’re going to pitch to QVC as Carnie’s products. Carnie’s decided on her bread pudding, and her cheesecake, both regular and sugar-free. She explains in confession that the situation is made tricky by the fact that they’re not dealing directly with QVC, but with one of QVC’s manufacturers, called Earthbound. Which would explain why they’re in New York and not Pennsylvania. Carnie also wants to sell aprons and oven mitts. And they’re off to the QVC meeting! Right now! Carnie confessions, “So much of my life and energy and feelings are focused around weight, and it’s just really relieving to just focus on something else, for just a few minutes.” Hey, if I had a Carnie Wilson self-awareness bingo card, I would have just gotten a square!
The guys at Earthbound/QVC are interested in Carnie’s ideas, surprise. They’d like to have some kind of cooking/selling-things combo show that features her. Interesting. Then they start discussing prospective brand names. One dude has proposed calling it, “Carnie Wilson’s Delicious” which is cute, but Carnie takes it straight to a sexual meaning (reading “Carnie Wilson’s” as a contraction, and not the possessive). She proposes calling it “It’s Delish” and the guys in the room seem to humor her, but isn’t that something Rachael Ray says a bunch already? Eh, what do I know, I don’t watch cooking shows.
Commercial. O HO, it’s a fabulous new Quaker product, something called “multigrain fiber crisps”! Correct me if I’m wrong, but back in the days when I derived most of my pleasure via self-deprivation, we called these things “rice cakes”. But good on you for reinventing the wheel, Quaker.
We’re off to see Dr. Oz! I am going to try, here, to get through this whole segment without making a single Wizard of Oz joke. Wish me luck.
Immediately after I’ve typed the above, Carnie says, “If anyone can help me, it’s him, so I’m just going to pretend I’m walking a yellow [bleeeeeping] brick road to Oz!” Fuck.
Carnie arrives at the studio, where Rob and Dee Dee are waiting. Who’s watching the kids? I guess it doesn’t matter, certainly a four year old and an infant can entertain themselves in New York for a few hours without getting into trouble. Carnie is greeted by Dr. Oz’s travel coordinator, who is herself a cute fat girl. In the green room, Carnie notes that the snacks are all fruits and vegetables. Carnie meets some producers, and then Dr. Oz comes in and hugs her and oozes oily charm all over the damn place. I don’t know if I have any Dr. Oz fans reading, and I should note that this is the first time I’ve seen the dude in motion, but my first impression is to be squicked. Carnie is basically over the moon, and calls him handsome, and is ALMOST at a loss for words, which is saying something. Rob, in the background, is snapping pictures of the two of them on his phone. Oh LOL. Dr. Oz gives her a digital camcorder (he calls it a “flip cam”, but it’s not) and asks her to record herself “struggling” when she gets home, because that will help him help her. Huh? Is this code for, “it will give me good candid footage to showcase your failure next time you’re on the show”? I honestly don’t know if Dr. Oz is a giant jerk (like Dr. Phil, who was also unleashed from Oprah’s TV womb), but he seems sort of… disingenous to me.
Dr. Oz books it out of the room and lets a producer deliver the news that he wants some numbers from Carnie, namely numbers derived from medical tests. Which he wants to do on air. Ooookay. The needle on my humiliation-o-meter is suddenly diving into the red. Carnie, bless her for having a brain in that head, is immediately suspicious. She’s not comfortable with having him check her blood pressure because, she says, “it’s going to be high, I mean I’m on the show and I’m nervous as [bleep]. It would not even be accurate.” The producer replies, “It’s just sort of a visual illustration of sort of one the things Dr. Oz does to look at your weight.” Because testing your blood pressure tells him how many pounds you weight? Because nobody knows what having your blood pressure checked looks like? Or because we need something dramatic so Dr. Oz can have a Serious Conversation with you about your Imminent Death and the Orphaning of your Children? I am apoplectic right now. A visual illustration? What the fuck does that even mean? PLEASE, Carnie, stand your fucking ground on this. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar: “It’s a trap!”
The producer chuckles at Carnie’s reluctance and says, “It’s gonna be good!” Carnie folds like a house of cards and says alright. DAMN IT. After this, Carnie is visibly shaken, like enough that in spite of my frustrations with her, and the reality that I find her quite annoying at times, more than anything I want to go and hug her and say it’s okay, you don’t have to do this, or at least you can do it on your own terms, and you have the right and the courage to say no to anything that makes you uncomfortable. She seems blindsided, and rightly so. Carnie has so much loving support, and yet no one is telling her that she should trust her instincts, and that she’s an intelligent adult with the capacity to take care of herself.
It’s magic time! But first, commercials. There’s a very long ad for a hands-free soap dispenser that I find hilarious for some reason.
Carnie hits the stage and Dr. Oz preps her by mentioning that she’s “struggled with her weight” since she was four years old — this, right away, disgusts me, because the most complicated thing a four-year-old should be struggling with is learning to write her own name so that others can read it — and then asks if she’s drinking again. Carnie bursts into tears almost immediately and says no, she’s grateful for her sobriety every day of her life. Dr. Oz wants to know if Carnie’s replaced her addiction to alcohol with an addition to sugar, which makes me think he’s not done any reading on the potential link between weight-loss surgery and alcoholism either, nor does he know a damn thing about Carnie’s medical history. Carnie says she is an addictive personality and she’s not ashamed to admit that, it’s part of who she is. Fair enough.
Dr. Oz walks her over to a big fake scale — I’m assuming they weighed her before she went on. Hey, numbers! Carnie weighs 218 pounds. Her waist is 41-point-something inches, and Dr. Oz takes this moment to opine on the especially-deadly nature of the dreaded Bellyfat. He actually says it will “poison the organs inside of you” which, dudes, is kind of overstating things just a bit, and this criticism is coming from someone with an unabashed fondness for hyperbole. I mean, simply put, if fat in the gut literally poisioned people, there would be no old fat people. And there are lots and lots of old fat people. If Dr. Oz wants to talk about the difference between subucutaneous fat and visceral fat (in a nutshell: subcutaneous fat is the fat we see in rolls and dimples, while visceral fat exists within the peritoneal cavity, is also found in thin people, and has demonstrated effects on things like insulin resistance or fatty liver disease; google for more, as though I am not stupid on these matters, I dislike going into them), then I will patiently listen, but simply noting someone has a belly is not conclusive evidence that they have visceral fat in dangerous levels. Period.
Dr. Oz proceeds to check her blood sugar, and uses one of those shiny handy finger-sticking meter-gadgets diabetic folks can use now to check their glucose through the day. Wait, what? Don’t you need a fasting blood test to evaluate diabetes risk? He glances at the result and says, immediately, serious and firm, with a certainty that makes me roll my eyes so hard I can see through time: “Your blood sugar’s a hundred. That means you’re borderline diabetic again.”
DING DING DING WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP IRRESPONSIBLE MEDICINE ALERT. I knew my instincts about this guy were spot on.
FIRST, prediabetes is not diagnosed by a finger prick. Ever. Prediabetes, just like regular diabetes, is diagnosed via either a fasting glucose test or an oral glucose tolerance test. Both of these require several hours’ preparation, and a finger-prick simply doesn’t compare as quality information. ALSO, EVEN IF a positive result is accomplished via one of these two methods, a responsible physician will retest a few days later just to be certain it wasn’t a fluke, as flukes do happen, so technically a diagnosis of either prediabetes or diabetes cannot be made until there have been two consecutive positive results at least a few days apart. ALSO ALSO, even IF this were a means of diagnosis, a random blood glucose result of 100 is NOT prediabetic ANYWAY. A normal non-fasting blood glucose range is in the low- to mid-100s. I am not just inventing this information out of the air, y’all — this is how it is. Google these questions yourself and you’ll find numerous respectable medical resources explaining all of this.
THEREFORE, more than being irresponsible, a sham, a fraud, and a liar, Dr. Oz is an asshole, because I’ve no doubt at all that he is entirely aware of this. I mentioned being apoplectic before, but now I am so apoplectic that I had to take a few minutes to scream at my husband and terrify the cats out of the room.
Carnie just keeps saying, “I can’t believe it.” She’s speechless, aside from these four words. She shouldn’t believe it. She confessions that her spirit is “crushed”. Hasn’t Carnie had an annual physical recently? If she’s at risk for diabetes, wouldn’t that physical have included a fasting blood glucose test? (I know I have one of these every couple of years, and my only diabetes risk factor is being a fatass.) Why doesn’t it occur to her that this fake fucking diagnosis is wrong, and instead of immediately trusting it, she should go see her real doctor and get some reliable bloodwork done by a responsible professional? Indeed, backstage after the show, Carnie is astonished because she says she’s BEEN in contact with doctors this whole time and NONE of them told her she was prediabetic. Probably because she’s not. Meanwhile, Rob is being a totally insensitive asshole and essentially telling Carnie she has no right to feel shocked, or to feel any emotional response at all. Carnie starts crying. I’m checked out, guys. I am done.
Carnie and Rob go out for a romantic dinner, and blabber more about Carnie’s being fat and about to die, etc. etc. Whatfuckingever. Rob enlists the help of the waiter to present Carnie the bracelet he picked out. Carnie loves it, so I guess he knows what she likes after all.
Next week: Carnie talks to Dallas about her “new” Dr. Oz-approved plan; her whole family goes on The Newlywed Game; her father may or may not appear; someone gets trapped in a collapsing bouncy castle. Seriously.
Unfortunately for my beloved readers, my recapping of this show will not continue after this post. I am disgusted past the point of no return, and so I have decided to bring this effort to an end prematurely, for the sake of my sanity. For one, this show is just bad. It’s not entertaining, the “characters” are neither relatable nor likable (excepting the children we rarely see), the only person who can be sympathetic at all is Carnie herself, and even that is a rare occurrence. I was, truly, a little iffy on whether I’d make it through this series from the start, given the weight-loss component, and for the first few episodes they did an okay job of balancing Carnie’s fat fixation with the other stuff that goes on in her life. But it’s not interesting for me anymore. It was one thing when it was just funny and silly and ridiculous, but I don’t think I can continue on considering Carnie’s currently operating based on a significant lie about her health, and unless the beginning of next week’s episode shows her doubting this “diagnosis” and getting a second (or first, really) opinion, I refuse to give this bullshit a single nanosecond more of my time. Carnie may, in fact, be prediabetic, but she needs to get an actual diagnosis, and not a sham reveal from a fucking TV quack. Not only is this insulting to the intelligence of everyone who watches this show, it’s insulting to people who are living with diabetes for real, and only reinforces the mistaken notion a lot of folks have that doctors are automatically always right about everything and should never be questioned. My impression is that since Carnie doesn’t seem to have any significant health issues related to her size, this show felt it had to invent one. Well, bully for them, but I’m no longer playing along, as there are far worthier outlets than this farce for my intelligence, my rage, and my snark.
Happy trails, Carnie! Best of luck in whatever the hell it is you hope to accomplish in your life, and tell Rob I said fuck you very much. Thank you and goodnight.
(I still intend to recap Kirstie Alley’s rapidly-approaching foray into reality-TV starting late next month. Let’s all hope it’s a better experience than this one.)
This week’s poll results:
The question was… Lingerie-shopping with your family?
What? No. 45.7%
Cannelini beans. 23.5%
Only if my family included Cass Elliott’s daughter. 16%
Sure, why not? 11.1%
I am actually lingerie-shopping with my family right now. 3.7%
Hey, did you know? I have this Formspring page! Where people ask me questions! In the past week or so I have talked about NAAFA (twice), the political leanings of the fatosphere, whether I plan on getting a puppy, and the possibility that I may be a Time Lord, amongst lots of other things. Do you have a question? Ask. It may take me a week to get to it, but I will answer.
Below: Why the cardigans? Are the geeky more attracted to fat girls? How can I draw boundaries with my doctor?
Q. Could you post some pictures of your eshakti dresses without the cardigans you always wear. I’m really curious what they look like not covered up (or at least a link to a picture of them)
A. I can try to remember, but it’s unlikely I will. Let me explain:
Firstly, I grew up in South Florida, and now live in Boston. Boston is constantly cold, or at least, it’s never warm. There are maybe four or five days out of every year that it’s warm enough that I don’t bring a cardigan with me during the day. Sometimes I don’t actually wear the cardigan all day long, like in August, but I always have one, because it never gets legitimately hot up here, even when the locals THINK it is. Also there is air conditioning, which often requires I adopt cardigan-based protection.
Secondly, this isn’t simply a matter of me being a cold-weather wimp — I actually handle the cold with aplomb, given a good scarf and coat — but I have a pretty rare (I’m told) allergy that causes me to break out in hives when exposed to too-cold air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_urticaria). Air conditioning causes this reaction just as often as winter wind. Thus: cardigans.
Thirdly, layers are my jam, yo. It’s what I do. I rarely wear just a dress, without a cardigan, or a scarf, or some other dramatic accessory, because honestly, I think that’s mind-numbingly dull. If I wanted to just demonstrate the wearing of singular articles of clothing, I’d be a model. As it is, I’m far more interested in how to style various pieces, and what I can combine them with, and how far I can go with color or pattern-mixing, and so on.
Fourthly, I am happy to link to stock pictures of the dresses… when they exist. Items have a habit of vanishing off eShakti’s website like evaporating ghosts, however.
I do hope that clarifies the all-important cardigan issue.
Q. I have observed that “geeky” men tend to be more often attracted to (or more open about their attraction to) fat women than non-geeks. Do you agree, and what are your thoughts on this phenomenon?
A. I am inclined to think that the geeky are more likely to value personhood over appearance, for a variety of reasons. For one, many nerdy types have experienced what’s like to be teased or bullied for failing to fit in. A fat person — especially a fellow fat nerdy type — is more likely to “get” that, to share those experiences, which are often formative to say the very least.
For another, when you’ve got geeky and/or off-the-beaten-path interests, finding someone who shares those interests — who won’t laugh at your collection of Star Wars toys or comic books or your penchant for fan fiction — is much more of a challenge than finding someone you simply see as physically attractive in the most conventional way. Thus, I expect many geeks are willing to relax any adherence to cultural beauty standards in order to couple with someone who likes that they like.
There’s no denying that some geeky folks (just like non-geeky folks) are simply attracted to fat people, regardless of the personality and interests of the fat individual in question. And it’s true that often geekiness by its nature is about rejecting the mainstream, the culture of homogenized beauty standards included. But generally I don’t think an independent attraction to fat bodies is any more common in geek circles than it is anywhere else; arguably it’s just that geek society is more likely to look at who a person is, and find them attractive for that, rather than simply because they are fat, with little regard for who they are aside from a fat body.
My opinion only, but I entirely agree that the geeky seem to be far less likely to consider fatness a dealbreaker when seeking a mate, and in many cases are more likely to learn to find a fat person attractive, even if they’ve never been attracted to fat people before.
Q. Do you have any tips on dealing with doctors? Specifically, discussing ways to improve your health without them hitting you with a bunch of weight loss crap?
A. Medical advocacy is not my strongest suit; I have always suffered White Coat Terror, and thus doctors have often been my fat-activist kryptonite. I currently have a doctor I like, so it’s less bad than it’s been when I was seeing doctors who were horrible and dismissive and lazy, but still — I have this terror.
One of the best responses I’ve seen to a doctor recommending weight loss for everything is: “Okay, what if I were a thin person having this same exact problem or concern? What would be your suggestions then?” Arguing with a doctor about weight loss never works, and this is understandable, as doctors are typically working in an environment and a medical culture that is quickest to blame fat for everything from acne to tennis elbow. So rather than debate the merits of weight loss, better to deflect and ask for specific suggestions that would apply to a non-fat person, and if you’re fortunate you’ll get the information you’re seeking with a minimum of fuss.
The biggest thing about working with a doctor, for me, is to remember that the doctor is technically in my employ. I pay for his services; if I don’t like how he’s treating me, I am fully within my rights to ditch him and find someone else. If I have problems with a suggestion he’s made, I do my research and bring it back to him and ask him in light of the information I’ve gathered, why does he think I should still do X? Doctors are not the sole gatekeepers of health information; though they are, without doubt, the most well-educated people on the subject, these days you can do a fair amount of research yourself, if only so you’ll be equipped to ask more pointed and well-informed questions.
As a last resort, you can also simply tell your doctor you are not interested in weight loss at this time, and if you change your mind in the future, you will let her know; but until then, you do not require any information on the subject. If your doctor refuses to respect your feelings on this, and is unwilling to come to a compromise that works for both of you, it’s time to find a new doctor.
An open letter of gratitude to Kevin Smith, antihero of the fat revolution.
By Lesley | February 18, 2010
[Oh, I wasn’t going to write about this, as others have already done so, in some cases much more poignantly and elegantly than I. But then I did.]
Dear Kevin Smith,
There was a comment that you made somewhere in the midst of this epic saga — I forget where, it’s such a blur, and I haven’t read or listened to half of it all — that went something to the effect of: “I’ll have this following me around for the rest of my life.”
You’re right. You will. If you lost a hundred pounds between right now and tomorrow morning, assholes worldwide would continue to make jokes about you being SO very fat that not only did you fail to lower the armrest, but you broke the row of seats and busted out the bulkhead of the plane, because these stories are like fish tales; they get bigger every time you tell them. There is no final redemption for fat people, especially fat people who carry the additional burden of being somewhat in the public eye. I write a lot here about fat and popular culture, and I can tell you with relative assurance that the public are only happy when famous fat folks lose weight because it builds anticipation for when they put it all back on again.
Fat people get shit on. This is indisputable; it’s as true as the sky being blue and bears doing their business in the woods. In my extensive fat-person-meeting career, I’ve yet to meet a single fat person who’s said, “Being fat is a NON-STOP PARTY. I get the love and admiration of everyone I meet, I don’t have to pay taxes, and every two years, someone gives me a pony!” Fat people get shit on in ways both similar and different to the ways women get shit on, or queer people get shit on, or disabled people get shit on, or poor people get shit on, or people who are not white get shit on. The kind of humiliation and dismissal you experienced, and worse, is experienced by fat people nationwide, every day, on planes and elsewhere, and many people think this is right, and well-deserved, even without knowing the circumstances of the particular embarrassment — they believe fat people deserve it, whatever it is, simply because they are fat.
You’ve emerged as a sort of Fat Everyman. Someone with a voice that a lot of people will listen to, while those of us who’ve been wringing our hands over this issue for years have been whistling in the dark. Of the multitude of posts on fat blogs on this subject the past few days, I’ve seen many that focus on your history of fat-hating comments, and that highlight your frequent insistence that you could, in fact, lower the armrests, inferring that you would argue that anyone who couldn’t should get their ass kicked off the plane.
While I have no doubt that these bloggers have good intentions, from my perspective, focusing on these aspects is a missing an important point — possibly THE most important point. I imagine, if I may, that a lot of your protestations were rooted in the horror of the whole insane experience; I have been a fat activist for a long time, and a giant fatass for even longer, and if I found myself ejected from an airplane, I too would be likely to argue that, damn it, the armrests were down. I wouldn’t necessarily mean that that kind of treatment would be A-OK if only it was perpetrated against someone fatter. It’s difficult, in a moment of personal embarrassment, to think of anything except why the hell is this happening to me?
The disingenuously-named “passenger of size” policy is arbitrary. Even the armrest test? Arbitrary. This much is obvious, given your experience, and I’ve heard many a tale from other fatties who could lower their armrests but were told, regardless, to buy a second seat or get lost. And I’ve also heard many a tale from two-seat buying fatties who learned that when you buy two seats on Southwest, owing to their cattle-call seating policy, there is no guarantee that those seats will actually be next to each other. (I knew that Detachable-Ass Upgrade would come in handy.) It’s a bullshit policy that’s applied unpredictably; there is no way to apply such a policy fairly, at least not one that leaves the fat person’s dignity intact.
But even that isn’t really the point I want to highlight here. The fact that you, with no real investment, prior to now, in anything activists like me have to say on the subject of size discrimination and body image — that you were this angry, this indignant, this vocal? That’s the point. People typically don’t get all up in arms about social justice unless they personally have been wronged, and even then, a lot of people would just as soon quietly accept their humiliation out of fear that making a scene about it will only draw more unwanted attention to how fat they are. Southwest Airlines (as well as the other airlines with a history of treating fat people like shit) relies upon this fear to keep the people they mistreat quiet. Your refusal to suffer in silence is an act of bravery, even though you may not fully realize it yet.
When it comes to injustice, most of us are but one experience away from speaking out. We don’t all have to agree on whether fat is genetic, or a sign of a morally-corrupt character, or just something some people are, or a result of unbalanced humours, or a curse placed upon us by gnomes. But I think we can agree that regardless of our individual feelings about our bodies, or whether Southwest’s two-seats policy is fair and justified if applied in a particular way, nevertheless, fat people are still human fucking beings and deserve to be treated with respect. Period. There is no excuse for doing otherwise.
Thank you, Kevin Smith, the reluctant Howard Beale of fat travelers. Your sacrifice, your rage, is sincerely appreciated.
Cheers,
Lesley Kinzel
P.S. And for good measure:
Reading List: The varied lives of famous fats, eating what you want, and a problematic fictional musical act.
By Lesley | February 17, 2010
Collected links and reading from the past few days. Most of this already appeared on my Twitter feed, but given the rapid and transient nature of that medium, I’m also sharing them here.
Hey, look, it’s the trailer for Kirstie Alley’s forthcoming reality “docuseries” (or, as I like to call them, “crap”) on A&E.
I plan on recapping this series, and I am cautiously optimistic about it at this point — not merely because I have to be in order to gear myself up for the task, but because a) Kirstie Alley is capable of being funny and b) the passive acknowledgment at the end of this trailer that there are fat women out there who don’t hate being fat… it’s just that Kirstie does.
Moving on: you may have heard something in the past couple of days about a certain film director getting busted for attempting to sit on an airplane while being fat. This has been covered pretty extensively by almost every bleeding FA blog in the universe, but if you read nothing else about the Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines saga, you must read this concise and conclusive article from Kate Harding over at Salon. Kate says it all.
Elsewhere: Gabourey Sidibe talks to Access Hollywood about the lack of diversity on Vanity Fair’s “Young Hollywood” cover, and about media representation in general. Sidibe comments: “…I mean, I come from a world where I’m not on covers and I’m not in magazines at all.” (I’m also wondering if she’s bored yet with explaining where her “miraculous” self-esteem comes from.)
There are several other videos of Gabby chatting with Access Hollywood at the 2010 Oscars Luncheon, in case you need more of her awesomeness in your day: check them out here.
Next up: Michelle over at The Fat Nutritionist kindly explains what she means when she says “eat whatever you want”, and why worries of death by snack-cake are probably overblown. Ultimately, it’s about individual freedom and trusting people to make their own decisions. Possibly I should send Michelle’s contact info to Carnie Wilson; Michelle would likely present Carnie with more than a binder.
Finally: there are some extremely thought-provoking conversations happening around the imminent release of a side project by two out-of-the-mainstream musical artists — I refer to Evelyn Evelyn, two fictional conjoined-twins performers being portrayed by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley. The tale began innocently enough, but has taken some odd turns in the past couple of days. In her blog, Tiara the Merch Girl takes a balanced view of the situation, acknowledging both its problems and possibilities. FWD takes on the task of explaining what “disabled” means in a practical sense, and also includes a handy link roundup at the bottom of the post, so you can do some reading and come to your own conclusions.
(Related: Look for an upcoming post from me on the use—and overuse—of the “trigger” concept, and how the word is losing its original meaning as a result.)
Feel like sharing anything else? Let fly in comments. Self-promotion is encouraged.
Last time: Carnie got shit on by Dallas. Then she got shit on by her husband. Then she and her husband went to see a sex therapist, who, luckily, did not shit on anyone.
We start, predictably, with Rob and Carnie goofing around in the kitchen, making plans to go get tattoos from Kat Von D at LA Ink. Oh, wait, that’s not predictable at all. What the hell? Carnie confessions that Rob has a tattoo that “goes all the way from his shoulder down his arm,” making it sound really big and impressive. I assume Carnie has fewer tattooed friends than I do. Carnie asks Rob where he’s going to get his new ink installed, and he says, stroking his t-shirted chest, “Riiiight here, babydoll,” and when Carnie asks him to pull up his shirt to look, she asks, “Did you shave your chest?” Rob answers, “I did a little bit of manscaping.” I hate the word “manscaping,” kids. Always have, always will.
Carnie wants to draw on Rob’s chest. They’re acting all cutesy and playful with each other and I want to be feeling all “AWWW” about it, but it’s sort of icky. Like I need to hit my brain with some Comet cleanser and a scouring pad. Turns out Rob and Carnie are planning to get their kids’ names tattooed on them. Carnie asks Rob where she should get hers — isn’t this something you should sort out ahead of making the appointment to do the deed? — and Rob suggests her neck. Damn you, Rob, I laughed. But this is but a skirmish in the war — this isn’t over. Carnie’s already pre-freaking out about the tattoo. Well, at least things are normal.
Next, the “girls” are going lingerie shopping. The “girls” include Carnie, Carnie’s mom, Aunt Dee Dee, and Owen OMG IT’S CASS ELLIOTT’S DAUGHTER WOW. Sadly, DanielBrian are nowhere in sight. Carnie confessions that she doesn’t know if other people go lingerie shopping with their family, but for her this is pretty typical. Calling this just a lingerie shop is kind of misleading, though — there are corsets and feathery floggers and masks. Also, there are couches aplenty, and the “girls” are the only people present. At one point, putting on a black bejewled mask, Carnie’s mom says, “My husband won’t recognize me, that’s perfect.” We know where Carnie gets her sense of humor, at least.
Elsewhere, Rob is at a jewelry store. He confessions: “When I heard Carnie mention to the sex therapist that she didn’t feel like she was desireable to me, I wanted to give her something special, just to say, hey, you know, you are a beautiful woman and you are my wife.” I guess nothing says “I still find you attractive” like some expensive jewelry. Actually this seems confusing to me; if you want to demonstrate that you find your wife beautiful, why not just tell her so? Isn’t the jewelry really just a pricey prop for the real sentiment? “I think you’re so beautiful that I am willing to spend this money?” But then, I am not a woman who is overly fond of expensive jewelry, so it’s possible this is something I’ll just never understand.
Rob has brought “Big Daddy” along for advice, whom I know we’ve met before but I don’t recall the context and I’ll be damned if I’m going to go look. BD is Carnie’s mom’s husband. The lady working the counter at the jewelry shop is very excited to be on camera. Rob points out a ginormous ruby cocktail ring and asks the price; it’s $21,000. Rob gawks and the saleslady asks if that’s in the ballpark of what he’s looking to spend. Rob closes his eyes as if he’s actually weighing his options and says, “Ruby ring… addition to the house… ruby ring…” No, it’s nowhere near his ballpark. It may actually be a different sport. They move over to something more reasonable, and eventually decide on a charm bracelet with two charms of the letter “L”, representing their daughters’ names.
Okay: I am going to make a prediction here, and since I’m not liveblogging this I can rest easy in the knowledge that I can always delete this bit later if I’m wrong. BUT I AM GOING TO PREDICT that Carnie will be disappointed. Why? Because for women who are not me (that is, women who like gifts of jewelry) tend to want that jewelry to be all about them, and them alone. I don’t think it’s a matter of selfishness so much as it is a matter of being treated to something that reminds us of the time before we were running our asses off twenty hours a day and all our priorities got taken over by the kids we had; it’s not a regret, it’s an opportunity to be reminded that your husband (or partner) sees you as not just the woman he’s lived with so long, but as the woman with whom he fell in love. A piece of jewelry that references the kids instead underscores the idea that Rob sees Carnie primarily as the mother of his children. Maybe I’m reading too far into this? Who knows. But that is my prediction.
Rob really likes the result — it is a very pretty bracelet — and leaves happy.
Back at the “lingerie” shop, the girls have changed into some corsets and some (not Carnie) are drinking what looks like champagne. Carnie confessions that she and Owen (that’s Cass Elliott’s daughter in case you missed it in my capslock freakout above) have a lot of things in common and have had a lot of similar struggles. Carnie asks Owen how often she has sex with… whoever she has sex with, it’s not clear. Owen says “a couple of times a week” and Carnie is astonished. Carnie confessions: “I can’t comprehend that Owen is having sex twice a week. It’s not fair! I’m jealous!” Owen tells Carnie, “The key of it is how you feel. If you’re feeling good about yourself, then you can show that to somebody and they want to be a part of it.” Good advice. Carnie is like WHOA, YOU’RE RIGHT, MAYBE IT’S ME. Carnie confessions that “sex has taken on a different meaning since I had kids,” and that putting on the lingerie was like “lighting a fire.” In truth, Carnie looks hot in her corset.
Oh hi Dallas. We’re back at the house, Carnie’s back in non-corset clothes, and she greets him at the door all chipper. They head out to the back deck with their yoga mats again so Dallas can hear Carnie’s confession. For one, she ate gluten last weekend. Dallas asks how she felt afterward, and Carnie says, “If I have any more gas, I’m gonna erupt.” OKAY, so we have confirmation that the farting IS related to the alleged gluten allergy. Because that was totally weighing on my mind.
As an aside, in light of the gluten allergy, I requested a friend draw me a picture of Carnie being pursued by angry gluten. I specifically suggested the gluten should be wielding medieval weapons. This is the most excellent result.
Moving on, Carnie admits she did not do her workout. Carnie tells Dallas: “It’s just that sometimes when I feel the pressure of the losing weight, the media, the public, this, that, I get crazy in my head, and I get overwhelmed.” Dallas tells Carnie she can’t control any of that, she can only control her own actions, and what she puts in her mouth. The first part of this is good advice. Carnie says, “I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do right now. I just got angry, like [bleep] everyone for telling me what to do, I don’t want to do that.” You can hear the rage and desperation in her voice, and it both defangs my snark and makes me very sad. Carnie, you are probably experiencing this feeling because you’re a grown-ass woman and you’ve earned the right to make your own decisions, and yes, your own mistakes. You resist the imposition of rules and restrictions because they’re coming from a source external to you, and not from your own feelings about what is best for you. So long as you are relying on people like Dallas to whip you into shape, you will fail, and fail, and fail. You need to figure out what you want, and how you want to feel. You need to know yourself.
Damn.
Dallas, ever the sensitive gentleman, confessions, “Carnie was like at a different level of bitchdom today. I mean, Carnie is always full of a million excuses why she can’t, as opposed to why she can.” Oh, I shake my head. Maybe if exercise wasn’t made into such a punishment, Carnie would have more success in keeping up a workout routine. But I guess we’ll never know.
Carnie says she’s feeling overwhelmingly “resistant”, so she gets up and goes inside. She says to Dallas, “Kill me later.” Dallas says, “I’m used to your bitching and whining. Crazy bitch.” Between the two of them, I imagine, this is sort of a charming and affectionate exchange, or someone’s idea of “tough love”, but it creeps me out. More than that, I continue to be creeped out by Dallas’ strategy of tearing Carnie down in the name of building her up again, as it seems like such a candid effort of keeping her entangled. A person can only hear, “You suck, and I am the only person who can save you,” so many times before they start to believe it. I won’t go so far as to call it abusive, but it doesn’t sit right with me. Not at all. That’s not being supportive.
Commercial. Thank Maude. I need to go look at the Shiba Inu puppycam for a minute. Ahhhh.
And we’re back. Carnie’s alone and getting on the scale. Afterward, as she documents her magical numbers, she alerts Rob to the fact that she’s only lost two pounds. Oh, but how do you FEEL, Carnie? Are you cheerful and chipper and full of energy and joie de vivre? Do you look forward to every sunrise and love the hum of the amazing and miraculous machine of your body as it moves you through life? Is your every muscle ripe with energetic tension, your cells thrumming like the wings of a thousand hummingbirds as the world around you slides past with an unexpected and kaledoscopic beauty, every moment of every day pregnant with possibility, and do you wonder at your tremendous luck simply to be alive, right here, right now, in this time?
No?
Responding to the two-pound news, Rob snarkily suggests that Carnie consider diet and exercise, and Carnie and Rob proceed to have a little mini-argument about Carnie’s workout schedule. Carnie wants Rob to “set it up” and Rob says no, she has to do it. He says she has to want to do it. Carnie says she doesn’t want to do it. Rob says, “You want to lose weight, don’t you?” and Carnie says yes, and Rob finishes, “well, then you do want to do it.” Carnie tries to express her frustration to her husband, saying, “It’s just hard when I have the baby and then I’m up in weight.” Well, yeah. Having a baby will do that to you. Rob says, “You had the baby six months ago.” Carnie’s all, “…Yeah?” And Rob completes, “It’s time to start losing it.” Yeah, what the fuck Carnie, why aren’t you Victoria Beckham or Heidi Klum? Clearly you are a horrific failure as a woman. Get out, and turn in your vagina when you go. Carnie counters: “You know how long it sometimes takes people [to lose post-baby weight]?” Rob says, “Yeah, when you’re snacking all day, or whatever you’re doing, when you’re sneaking around.”
You know, my dear readers, there have been a great many times in my brief recapping career where I wished for the ability to punch someone through the television. But never, ever, have I felt that desire so strongly as I do right now, toward Rob. I get that maybe he’s sick of listening to Carnie complain about being fat while appearing to do nothing to change it. But these are not things you say to a woman with a long history of weight struggles, not to mention abandonment issues and general insecurity and low self-esteem. You just don’t do it. It’s like bullying the kid on the playground who will never fight back; it’s harmful and it reinforces all the mental garbage that’s keeping Carnie shackled to this bullshit self-loathing. Rob’s all, dude, just get rid of Satan’s Pantry and the pounds will magically melt off, and Carnie says, “Oh, it’s so easy. That’s why I weigh 120.”
The fight moves to the living room, and at one point Rob accuses Carnie of trying to “sabotage” her exercise routine, and then says, “Why don’t you go to, whatever, Overeaters Anonymous.” Carnie shoots back, “Why don’t you go to Assholes Anonymous?” Which is actually pretty funny, though Rob states he is already a member. Rob confessions that he’s frustrated and he wants Carnie to be self-motivated.
Angela the nutritionist is here with Carnie’s food plan. It’s in a binder and everything! Very official. Carnie says it’s “so strict” that without Angela around day in and day out, she’s not optimistic about being able to follow it. Yeah man, there’s nothing like having your eating habits dictated to you by a binder to help you understand solid nutrition. Angela says, “No sugar, no white bread, no pasta… Nothing white.” What about rice? Turnips, onions? Quinoa? Cauliflower? Cannelini beans? Garlic, mushrooms, parsnips? None of these either? Gee, I’ve already learned so much about nutrition! White food makes you fart! Carnie’s very concerned about verifying that she will be able to eat parmesan cheese again at some point in her life; the nutritionist informs us via confession that Carnie really loves cheese. Again, I don’t get it: if Carnie has to forego cheese in order to lose weight, wouldn’t going back to her cheese-eating ways mean getting fat again? I admit, it’s been a very long time since I dieted, but even back in the day this never made sense to me. This is why they like to call diets “lifestyle changes”, so that when you’re sadly eating a rice cake and missing cheese, you can think of cheese as just having been a part of an old and regrettable former lifestyle, and not a delicious form of sustenance.
Carnie confessions, “What can be more depressing than looking at a list of foods you cannot have? I literally want to cry.” Nothing. Nothing is more depressing. I don’t mean sad — many things are volumes sadder than this. But there is little in life that is as depressing as a list of absolute restrictions, especially if you’re not being given other options that seem like a worthwhile exchange. I mean, I don’t even want to imagine my life without cannelini beans.
While Carnie’s discussing her options with the nutritionist, Rob is loudly installing a lock on the pantry door. He confessions, “Carnie’s asked for my help, so now she’s going to get it.” Rob comes into the kitchen and asks Carnie to come help him find something in the pantry, as a device to get her to discover the lock on the door. Carnie’s all, “yeah, it’s locked, very funny.” Rob and the nutritionist high-five. Meanwhile, I hate myself for watching this show. WHY AM I WATCHING THIS SHOW? Carnie wants to know where Rob’s going to keep the key. The nutritionist wants to know why Carnie wants to know. Carnie says, “My life is in there,” and the nutritionist, getting all deep for minute, says, “Your OLD life is in there.”
Carnie confessions: “Having the pantry locked makes me feel like an animal. And I am not an animal.” I would love to know the strategy behind locking the pantry. By removing Carnie’s ability to make her own decisions, we’re supposed to expect she somehow figures out how to make “good” food choices by osmosis? Carnie goes on: “I am a person who’s addicted to food.” If you want to get technical, everyone’s addicted to food, insofar as we require it in sufficient amounts to be functional (i.e. not dead) human beings. So this is hardly going to engender any sympathy from me.
Carnie’s on her way out for a meeting with her manager just as Dallas drives up. She realizes she’s double-booked, and apologies to Dallas, but she really can’t skip this meeting. Dallas has a random front-yard confession in which he delivers the following wisdom: “You can’t want one thing, and not do, what you need to do, to get what you want.” And that’s one to grow on!
Commercial. More puppycam for me. Ahhh.
When we come back, Carnie and Rob are at LA Ink for their “tattoo date.” I know that LA Ink is another reality show that exists, but that’s about it. I’ve never seen it and only know who Kat Von D is because they sell her makeup brand at Sephora. Carnie looks at the art books and she and Rob settle on their designs. Rob goes first while Carnie watches, cringing. Then Carnie’s up, and she’s still tripping about the potential pain. One of the other women at the shop asks, “Have you had children?” ostensibly with the idea of telling her it hurts less than that. Carnie says, “Yes, well… not through the vajayjay.” Points to Carnie for using “vajayjay”, though I can’t say I was terrifically curious about whether she’d had c-sections or not. During the tattoo, Carnie grimaces a lot, and confessions that it hurt terribly.
Later, we’re back at the house, and Carnie and Rob are preparing for Dallas to come by for a workout. When Dallas appears, he’s brought a whole class with him. He refers to two class members as “afters” and two others as “durings”. As in, two people there to represent AFTER Dallas’ magical assholery made them smaller, and two to represent the imposition of Dallas’ assholery to their lumpy bodies as being in progress. Delightful. Because these people aren’t anything more than their goal weights, not really.
Dallas wants to have a sharing circle! Everyone has to talk about overcoming adversity! Dallas will begin. He has both ADD and dyslexia, and taught himself to read when he was 32. Okay, that’s pretty heavy. Rob says something noncommittal about being lazy. Wow, Rob, that’s rough. Dee Dee tears up talking about how much she admires Carnie and Rob. One of the “afters” talks about being an actress and how she was told at thirteen that she was too fat for the business, so she should just quit. In response she developed an eating disorder! Never let it be said that cultural pressures to be thin don’t encourage people meet their goals in creative and healthy ways!
When Carnie’s turn comes, she talks about her habit of beating herself up, and somehow gets into the fact that her dad was not really present or “hands on” with her, at which point she starts tearing up, and eventually is crying outright. Carnie doesn’t need a personal trainer or a nutritionist or a lock on her pantry door as much as she needs a good old fashioned goddamned THERAPIST. Commercial.
As the sharing circle continues, Carnie says the following, which I present without further comment: “It’s important for me to share what I’ve overcome, because to say that I was over three hundred pounds, is a really big deal. And there’s lectures I used to do for people, and women, and some of the doctors that used to hire me, they don’t want to hire me right now, because I weigh 215 pounds, and when I weighed 150, they were like, knocking down my door, like come be an inspiration, so when I’m up in my weight, I feel like a failure, but it’s hard because there’s a real legitimate fear about food, and me, and keeping that up, and I don’t just wanna weigh 150, I just wanna be in that lifestyle where it’s a part of my daily routine to like check in with my daily routine and have I worked out. So that’s my goal.” Then Dallas says some vague crap about being her counselor. I think this is supposed to be a “breakthrough” or something. Commercial.
Randomly, we see Rob showing up to practice with his old band, and apparently they haven’t played together for awhile. Rob sings and plays guitar; the few bars we hear aren’t terrible. When Rob gets home, Carnie’s prepping for dinner with the kids. They show their new tattoos to Lola, who is adorably gleeful about them. It’s a genuine “Aww” moment for me. And that’s a wrap!
Next week: Carnie goes on Dr. Oz’s show and may be horrifically embarrassed and/or humiliated in the process. It looks kind of heavy. No pun intended.
Last week’s poll results:
The question was…
In trying to keep up regular exercise, which of these best motivates you?
A workout that is fun and engaging, 33.8%
A generalized sense of well-being and health, 28.4%
Two whole cakes, 21.3%
Setting and achieving measurable outcomes and goals, 10.7%
Heaps of guilt, shame, and/or verbal abuse, 3.6%
A carrot, 1.3%
A stick, 0.9%
Two Whole Cakes is a blog written by 
