Utne Reader sticks toe onto the HAES bandwagon

[firecat]

Wrongly or rightly, I think of the Utne Reader as one of the voices of the upper-middle-class self-righteous "progressiver-than-thou" movement, which has so far been more of an enemy of fat activism than an ally. So when I found out that they published two articles that are critical of current rhetoric around fat and obesity, I felt like maybe the message was getting through to some people who are usually anti-fat.

"The Food Police: Why Michael Pollan makes me want to eat Cheetos by Julie Guthman, from Gastronomica has this important comment:

In a course I taught, Politics of Obesity, I was not surprised by the number of students who wrote in their journals of their hidden “fatness” or eating disorders. The number of entries that stated how the course itself had produced body anxiety and intensified concern over diet and exercise, however, was shocking, given that much of the material was critical of obesity talk. The philosopher Michel Foucault might have called this the “productive” power of obesity talk—naming a behavior as a problem intensifies anxiety about that behavior.

This is really true for me and it's why I limit how much I read about fat and obesity—even the positive fat-activist stuff makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes. Every once in a while I'd like to just get through a day without thinking about how my body is at the center of a huge cultural debate about Good and Eeevul.

The article also does a good job getting at the moral angle behind "obesity rhetoric", how fatness has come to stand in for sin and thinness for moral superiority, without reference to how anyone actually behaves. So does this one: Shame on US: How an obsession with obesity turned fat into a moral failing by Hannah Lobel. Excerpt: "We continue to treat obesity as if it’s either an original sin we’re born with and must repent or a cardinal sin we choose to commit."

I did not read the comments on either article. Articles like this tend to attract some fat-hating comments, so approach at your own risk.

Comments

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be giving a presentation on HAES on campus, in April.

The main thing that I want to get across is that we all control the shape of our bodies about as much as we control the color of our skin. Yeah, we can be a little thinner if we exercise, but it's similar to being a little more or less dark if we decide to tan or not.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on this. I haven't written the presentation yet.

[firecat]

I'm going to be giving a presentation on HAES on campus, in April.

Cool!

The main thing that I want to get across is that we all control the shape of our bodies about as much as we control the color of our skin.

Yeah, body shape and size are pretty much genetic.

we can be a little thinner if we exercise

I would say that "some people get thinner when they exercise." But some people don't, and some people gain weight (because muscle is denser than fat). Some people's body shape changes when they exercise - not drastically, but even if they don't lose weight they might find their measurements are different.

But there's no single truth about what happens to people's bodies when they exercise - EXCEPT that it's almost a universal truth that people who exercise regularly have better health indicators than people who don't. And that's true regardless of a person's weight.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I dislike all tendencies to frame things as moral issues when they...aren't. Besides this one, I think the most common current one is clutter.

I mean, it's not as if there aren't enough real moral issues to deal with.

[firecat]

And don't forget gardening.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Wow. This subthread has just clarified why there is so little for me to talk about with my mother -- a thin, conservative Christian woman who spends an inordinate amount of time cleaning and organizing, and thinks that everyone should WANT to garden. No wonder she's obsessed with "saving" me -- and if she can't save me, she'll try to save my children instead. *sigh*

[firecat]

Wow, all of the modern virtues in one person! I'm sorry the relationship is uncomfortable as a result.

[prairierabbit.livejournal.com]

Gardening I can live with, but the obsessive mowing of my neighbor, and his incursions into my yard when he thinks my grass is too long--3 inches tall!--and his comments about liking a "nice yard" make me want to mow him. *fans self*

The clutter=immoral idea is one I hadn't pulled out and looked at before. It's definitely enlightening--virtue=appearance (thin, tidy, mowed) avoids all that pesky actually getting to know someone time investment. One can move directly to judgement. *sigh*

[firecat]

One can move directly to judgement.

Ex-act-ly, pre-cise-ly

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Wow, I hadn't known that people were turning clutter into a moral issue. I thought they were turning into a psych disorder (I bought a self-help book on clutter, for example).

I suppose housekeeping has always been something similar to a moral issue, but maybe it was closer to manners than morals.

Recycling is a moral issue, but it sure conflicts with clutter as a moral issue. If I am a Good Recycler, then my house is full of ugly clutter from all my recycling bins.

[firecat]

I think clutter might be not so much something that people pass judgement on other people for having (unless it's at the psych disorder level) but something that people feel virtuous for not having, or for reducing.

(See flylady.net. Which is one of the places where you see clutter shading into housekeeping and both of them shading into morality.)

And personally, I feel that if I don't reduce my clutter by recycling it instead of throwing it out, I am morally bankrupt. :/

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

You're right that people pass judgment on housekeeping, but I don't think it's moral judgment. It's more like class judgment or "you're not a competent grownup". On the other hand, if we feel virtuous when we do our housework, that is a moral judgment in itself. Complicated!

But I also think people (usually women) worry that others are going to be more judgmental than they turn out to be. I know I don't care about somebody else's mess or dirt unless it goes to fairly extreme levels.

I have complicated feelings about housework and clutter. I don't like being surrounded by clutter, since it reminds me of my relatives who have *bad* clutter problems and makes me feel depressed. But I don't like doing housework, because it makes me feel like a housewife or a slave. I can only deal with housework if the system feels fair (e.g. at work, we each sign up for a week where we are in charge of cleaning the kitchen.)

As for recycling, I feel that God will smite me if I don't recycle. It's a very "primitive" kind of morality. The "beginning of wisdom"? To keep The Lord and me both happy, I'm trying to figure out a system of recycling that doesn't look ugly and depressing, but I am not there yet. Suburbanites put this stuff in the garage, but I live in a condo in a city and ain't got no garage.

[firecat]

It's more like class judgment or "you're not a competent grownup".

I think that for women there's also a gender-based judgement ("you're not a proper woman if you don't keep your house looking nice"), which does feel moral, especially if children are involved ("look at the bad example you're setting; your children are growing up in squalor").

I hate housework and I'm lousy at it. The OH and I tried to do it ourselves but we squabbled over it. I hire someone to clean the house, and pay them pretty much as much as I get paid for work I do, which feels fair.

I've seen systems in catalogs that have doors/lids so you can hide the recyclables. Of course the systems themselves aren't exactly attractive, but I guess the idea is that they are less unattractive than the cans sitting there in a paper bag or something.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, housework is quite the feminist issue, even today. Paying somebody to clean the house is a good idea. It gives somebody a job, and if the pay and conditions are decent, a decent one at that.

I might not mind housework if I got *paid* and it wasn't my own mail I had to sort/shred/recycle!

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Elements of this have really put some things together for me.

[firecat]

I'm curious what things got put together...

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I have words for it yet, but feelings I've had when reading about fat activism, for example, and it helped make sense of some things other people have said to me.

Hannal Lobel's article

[(Anonymous)]

Pollution causes obesity!! LOL! Not so.

But Hannal's article really wasn't bad. The references could have been more carefully chosen, but it didn't detract from the piece.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Pollution causes obesity!!

You know, I actually went to a talk given by a guy who claimed exactly that--that the toxins in our environment were somehow causing us to become fat. It's amazing what people will try to sell their stuff. What's really sad though, is how many people bought that line of BS, probably mostly because of the cultural self-hatred.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[firecat]

It's the same sort of thinking that brings us "Killing turkeys causes winter."

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I promise to quit killing turkeys.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[bunnybutt.livejournal.com]

I have no reason to doubt this source. I think it's an interesting perspective, with scientific merit. Since I have a history of being a "canary in a coal mine" anyway, I can't say it surprises me, either.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=646

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm... Well, they seem to have a potential point about hormonal effects. Without more research, I couldn't say whether it's accurate. However, I get suspicious again with this:
There is also a need to address the obvious question of why the people in polluted cities like London and New York remain slimmer than those in industrial towns and cities.

The data doesn't even match the theory that they put forth, and they're trying to "patch the hole." Now, I'm the first to agree that human beings are complex. But it's still disturbing to see yet another article that posits a cause of obesity largely based on correlation with population data etc.

And with regard to the fellow I heard speak--let's just say that there were other holes in his presentation that I could drive a truck through, and he didn't answer my questions well enough for me to go back a second time. And my friend, who was paying him so much money for a while... is still fat.

I remain open to new information, and still skeptical for the moment. Thanks, though, for the link. It certainly was refreshing to see a wide variety of factors presented, rather than just the same old songs.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[bunnybutt.livejournal.com]

Any popular media article (which this is) can only address the very surface of a research issue. Obviously the cited studies would contain far more scientific information regarding the conclusions.

I didn't get the feeling they were trying to "pin" obesity on anything except to say that it's far more complex than calories in/out, and likely has significant adaptive components.

It bothered me to see members of the fat community snicker and sneer at the theory posited, I will say. A lot. It reminded me of nothing so much as the snicker and sneer often seen on the medical profession and general public's face when someone says diets don't work, or HAES. If we aren't at least open to new ideas on correlation and causation, how can we expect anyone else to be?

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[firecat]

That article went to a lot of trouble to tease out potential alternative reasons for obesity but unfortunately appears to have completely overlooked socioeconomic status, although it danced around the subject by mentioning ethnicity. Poor people are more likely to be fat, for whatever reason (probably partly lack of high quality nutrition, but possibly in some cases because they are exposed to more pollutants). If you are interested in this angle, I recommend Campos's The Obesity Myth.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[firecat]

Also it's kind of sad that the article went to such trouble to debunk certain beliefs about "obesity" without bothering to debunk the belief that it's inherently unhealthy.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Yes, THAT. Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[(Anonymous)]

I read Paul's book when it first came out. The studies the article references are much more recent than his data.

The referenced article is just an article. A short one, and not in an American publication. It had some interesting thoughts on pesticies, pollution, hormonal interactions and complexity. I linked to it *only* because someone openly scoffed at the idea that there was a link between pollutants and fat, not because I thought it was perfect.

However, if we disregard everything that isn't perfect, we miss a lot that is important and useful.

Re: Hannal Lobel's article

[bunnybutt.livejournal.com]

mail client anonymized my reply to this for some reason. Sorry!

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

I gave up on Utne when they posted a story extolling the virtues of Wallmart since its PR cleanup campaign. When they first came out, there was some real substance there, but now it's just another lightweight lifestyle magazine.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only size/fat activist who needs a break from reading body image/size acceptance stuff occasionally. One of the goals of size acceptance to me, personally, is to make body size a non-issue in most venues (because it's an issue all kinds of places it doesn't *need* to be), and it's hard to make it a non-issue if I'm constantly reading and thinking about it.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

You can count me in to this group. I'm barely nibbling at the beginnings of size activism, and I have to do it in cycles. Otherwise I get too depressed and angry.

One More From UR

[(Anonymous)]

There's one more article in the same section from Utne Reader:

Love Your Fat Self
http://www.utne.com/2008-01-01/Politics/Love-Your-Fat-Self.aspx

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the links. I'll try to read them.

Somehow the urge to eat Cheetos reminds me of my vegan friend who called Science in the Public Interest the "Don't Eat That Society". Even though he was a strict vegan, he felt they were a bunch of hectoring busy-bodies. And he did like his cheeto-like snax, too.