Good Girls Don’t Get Fat by Robyn Sil­ver­man
My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

This book is absolute­ly amaz­ing, and I strong­ly rec­om­mend it to every­one.

Yes, I said every­one. If you are a human being who is read­ing this post/review, you live in a first-world soci­ety and you inter­act with females. You will ben­e­fit from a greater under­stand­ing of what mod­ern social stan­dards do to young females and how they shape us for the rest of our lives, how they twist us into dis­or­dered think­ing that touch­es absolute­ly every­thing we do, from how we think about our­selves to our per­son­al and busi­ness rela­tion­ships, our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, our health — every­thing. And you will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change how you inter­act with females, par­tic­u­lar­ly girls, so that you are more of a pos­i­tive influ­ence rather than yet anoth­er per­son who is pulling her down and hold­ing her back.

I was already famil­iar with some of the research regard­ing the media and unre­al­is­tic por­tray­als of women. I knew that every mag­a­zine cov­er is Pho­to­shopped and air­brushed, that “nor­mal” mod­els rep­re­sent only 1–2% of real women, etc. I did­n’t know that 5% of Amer­i­can high school girls have turned to tak­ing ana­bol­ic steroids in order to get a more toned, slim look, accord­ing to the CDC’s 2003 Youth Risk Behav­ior Sur­veil­lance Sys­tem, and that one out of every 14 girls in Amer­i­can mid­dle schools have tried steroids for the same pur­pose. I had heard that the pop­u­lar­i­ty of cos­met­ic surgery for young peo­ple was ris­ing, but I had no idea that it was as preva­lent as it is. I can’t remem­ber exact­ly how high, but it was fright­en­ing.

If there is a young lady in your life, stop for a moment and think — are you a pos­i­tive influ­ence on her? When young women in col­lege were asked about what they recall their par­ents say­ing about their bod­ies as they grew up, 80% of the respons­es were of neg­a­tive remarks. What will the girl in your life remem­ber you say­ing? If you’ve ever won­dered whether or not you should talk to her about los­ing a lit­tle weight, don’t. Believe me — the rest of the world has already beat­en that into her, and will go on doing so every minute of every day. There’s no way she does­n’t know that her body is unac­cept­able, whether she’s still car­ry­ing a lit­tle baby fat, is mor­bid­ly obese, or sim­ply has a slight­ly round face.

One of the things I admire most about Good Girls Don’t Get Fat is that it does­n’t just talk about how bad things are, it gives con­crete sug­ges­tions for improve­ment! That’s what we need.

The book is avail­able in any for­mat you can imag­ine. Pick it up. It’s an easy read, and won­der­ful.

View all my reviews

About mod­els and the effects of the media on body image in their pop­u­la­tions, at least. Fol­low­ing Spain’s move last year that banned ultra-thin mod­els from cat­walks, France is act­ing. The “French par­lia­men­t’s low­er house adopt­ed a ground­break­ing bill Tues­day that would make it ille­gal for any­one — includ­ing fash­ion mag­a­zines, adver­tis­ers and Web sites — to pub­licly incite extreme thin­ness.”

British researchers are also rec­om­mend­ing action. “With con­stant images of stick-thin, size-zero mod­els, tiny-waist­ed pop princess­es and actress­es is putting young girls’ health at risk and fuel­ing the rise in eat­ing dis­or­ders, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Janet Trea­sure of the Eat­ing Dis­or­ders Research Unit at Kings Col­lege Lon­don.”

It’s a relief to know that, some­where in the world, peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to this stuff. It’s tire­some to hear the con­stant folderol about the “obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic” here in the U.S., with almost no bal­anc­ing cov­er­age.

And anoth­er announce­ment, this one at the request of Ste­fanie:

The date has been set! Mark your cal­en­dars for NOLOSE ’08: Sep­tem­ber 26th through the 28th (Fri­day-Sun­day). Meet us by the pool at the Clar­i­on Hotel and Con­fer­ence Cen­ter in Northamp­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts for a week­end packed with fat­tas­tic fun, food, friends and oth­er good stuff!

We’re all hard at work, plan­ning to make this year’s con­fer­ence the best ever! There are a lot of excit­ing things in the works. The Clar­i­on has charm, a great loca­tion and a staff that is already excit­ed to hang out with all of us. As always, choos­ing a venue was no easy feat. We have a very diverse pop­u­la­tion and we have lots of fac­tors to take into con­sid­er­a­tion. All in all, we are pret­ty psy­ched about the Clar­i­on, and we are sure most of you will be too.

Keep your eyes open for more detailed infor­ma­tion about the con­fer­ence as it becomes avail­able and, as always, if you have some ideas about what you’d like to see at NOLOSE this year, let us know! Expect to see a call for work­shops in the very near future, because that’s how we roll.

For more infor­ma­tion about NOLOSE and to keep up with the cal­en­dar and new infor­ma­tion about the upcom­ing con­fer­ence, please vis­it nolose.org.

NOLOSE is a vol­un­teer- run orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to end­ing the oppres­sion of fat peo­ple and cre­at­ing vibrant fat queer cul­ture. NOLOSE start­ed out as the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tions for Les­bians of SizE. As the years passed and the orga­ni­za­tion grew, we changed our mis­sion to include not only a broad­er com­mu­ni­ty of queer women—dykes, les­bians and bisex­u­al women—but also trans­gen­dered peo­ple.

NOLOSE and the annu­al NOLOSE Con­fer­ence are explic­it­ly trans-inclu­sive. We want to make it clear that NOLOSE invites all fat queer women, all fat trans and gen­der-vari­ant folks and our allies to par­tic­i­pate.

I was going to ask, “This is news to whom?” Then I real­ized that it’s per­fect­ly like­ly that peo­ple who aren’t fat real­ly don’t real­ize how much size dis­crim­i­na­tion there is, while it’s impos­si­ble for the rest of us to avoid it.

From the Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Obe­si­ty, 4 March 2008:
¹

Dis­crim­i­na­tion against over­weight peo­ple-par­tic­u­lar­ly women-is as com­mon as racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, accord­ing to a study by the Rudd Cen­ter for Food Pol­i­cy & Obe­si­ty at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty.
“These results show the need to treat weight dis­crim­i­na­tion as a legit­i­mate form of prej­u­dice, com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics like race or gen­der that already receive legal pro­tec­tion,” said Rebec­ca Puhl, research sci­en­tist and lead author.
(…)
The study also revealed that women are twice as like­ly as men to report weight dis­crim­i­na­tion and that weight dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place and inter­per­son­al mis­treat­ment due to obe­si­ty is com­mon.
(…)
Co-author Tatiana Andreya­va of Yale said weight dis­crim­i­na­tion is more preva­lent than dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, nationality/ethnicity, phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty, and reli­gious beliefs. “How­ev­er, despite its high preva­lence, it con­tin­ues to remain social­ly accept­able,” she said.

I’ll prob­a­bly be slammed for this, but I hon­est­ly thing that weight/size dis­crim­i­na­tion may be even more preva­lent in the U.S. than racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, because it’s social­ly accept­able.

Kate Hard­ing cre­at­ed this very cool slide show to show just how absurd it is to rely on body mass index to deter­mine whether or not peo­ple are at a healthy weight.

BTW — I did not “miss” blog­ging yes­ter­day. Feb­ru­ary 29 was the only “day of rest” for Blog365, so I took it 🙂 It felt odd, though!

It’s a no-brain­er for me! I’d rather be or hug the gal on the left any day!

Some­how, though, the Make Me a Super­mod­el judges found the waif on the right more wor­thy of praise than Jen Hunter, the hot babe on the left who actu­al­ly won, thanks to input from fans.

The skin­ny gal, Mar­i­anne Berglund, looks like a kid play­ing dress-up to me. An under­fed, sick, awk­ward kid who has­n’t quite hit puber­ty. Putting her next to Ms. Hunter is just cru­el.

Which one would I rather have my daugh­ter emu­late? That’s not hard, either. If I ever see Katie look­ing like Ms. Berglund, she will be on the way to the hos­pi­tal in a trice.

Thanks for the link, Alice_Bunnie!

Beth Dit­to’s music (the group’s name is Gos­sip) isn’t quite my thing, but I’m tick­led by the fact that she’s total­ly unapolo­getic by who she is.

I feel some kin­ship with her about hav­ing a big voice, too. Some of us are just blessed with them. Yes, we can (and some of us have!) learn good tech­nique so we aren’t always loud—but we’ll always have big voic­es.

The very first per­son I thought of on view­ing skin­nyvideo is She’s Pre­cious. But all my lus­cious friends, and all of you who appre­ci­ate them, should watch it!

Accord­ing to http://ergoweb.com/Ergoweb, the mod­els, which are used in the design of the pas­sen­ger area of Ford’s vehi­cles, are “chunki­er” than pre­vi­ous mod­els, to allow for “a big­ger bel­ly and wider hips.”

The com­pa­ny rec­og­nized it is hard­er to sit in a car if the steer­ing wheel feels too tight, the seat seems a lit­tle too nar­row and there is not enough room for the legs.

Thank you, Ford! Dare we hope that oth­er car man­u­fac­tur­ers, maybe even (gasp!), air­lines might fol­low suit?

Full arti­cle

In a very unpop­u­lar move, Spain has banned appear­ances by fash­ion mod­els who’s body mass index is too low.

Italy is con­sid­er­ing fol­low­ing suit. The lan­guage in the leg­is­la­tion makes it clear that the pur­pose of the ban is to encour­age health­i­er media images, due to the grow­ing inci­dence of eat­ing dis­or­ders diag­nosed every year.

Frankly, I can’t begin to imag­ine the U.S. gov­ern­ment even con­sid­er­ing that kind of leg­is­la­tion. We do have a freer press here (on the sur­face, at least), but that does­n’t explain all the dif­fer­ences.