What Have You Done Now, Oprah?

I wrote this as my column in the school paper this past week. It’s also posted to my blog. My response to Oprah’s weight-related issues. I’d also like to add it’s nearly twice as long as my column usually is.
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It’s no secret that this culture is obsessed with weight. We live in a world that has decided there’s nothing wrong with plastering the un-airbrushed version of a (usually) female celebrity on magazine covers and declaring that the two dimples on her narrow thigh make her some kind of failure. We watch Jay Leno every night as he makes biting “jokes” about how fat we are as a nation, even though similarly toned comments about gender, race or sexuality would get him banned from TV.
And we do it under the guise of health, because that’s supposed to make it OK to be rude. It doesn’t.
This week, Oprah Winfrey revealed that she has gone off her diet and gained back 40 pounds, putting her current weight near 200.
This number is supposed to be shocking. After all, it’s the same weight that Wyclef Jean determined was too high to be allowed on his stage.
That number has a serious stigma attached to it, but really, it’s not a big deal.
What’s funny is how Oprah, in her own special way, has in the same article talked about being ashamed of the number on the scale and said that her concern is no longer about numbers, but health.
That’s quite a pickle, isn’t it?

It would be great if Oprah could keep to the second half of that and actually make her struggles about health. Maybe if she used her immense popularity and influence to turn focus, more people would follow suit. Look at how her stamp of approval affects sales for books and her favorite things. Maybe she could do the same for an ideology.
See, there’s this concept out there that may seem revolutionary to some. Really, though, it’s one of the most logical thoughts in existence. It’s called “health at every size,” frequently referred to as HAES.
The basic concept is that people should take care of themselves, eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly, but they should do it to remain healthy instead of to lose weight. Living well like this means you will be healthy even if you don’t lose an ounce.
Scared?
In a world that celebrates disordered eating, promotes the waifs of 90210 as normal teenagers and teaches women to respond to every roadblock, from job loss to romantic rejection, with “maybe I’m too fat,” this idea is pretty controversial.
The diet industry makes billions of dollars a year. Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers would be strongly opposed to HAES, which means that following it is probably a good idea.
Maybe the Wii Fit would have to remove BMI from its progress tracker, which means Nintendo would sell at least one more unit that isn’t being purchased because of their use of that archaic system. The very same one that told a 13-year-old athlete that she was “obese” and made her Mii avatar swell up like a balloon.
AlterNet recently published an article about weight. It covered a 2007 documentary called Fat: What No One is Telling You , originally from PBS. This film follows several individuals in their weight struggles, including a comedienne who exercises three hours a day, an overweight couple that gets in shape in order to conceive and an 18-year-old young man who undergoes gastric bypass surgery.
In its online form, Fat has 11 segments that range from roughly five to twelve minutes in length. Exactly one of those, which is roughly eight minutes long, even mentions HAES. The other 10 are more concerned with discussing the so-called epidemic of obesity and classifying it as a disease.
Kate Harding, founder of the body image and size acceptance blog Shapely Prose , always has a great reaction to this sort of thing: “OMGOBESITYEPIDEMICBOOGABOOGA!” That pretty much sums it up. The PBS documentary isn’t as bad as some other sources, but it does seem to try and scare viewers into thinking of their weight as a disease or a problem to be solved as opposed to a workable part of their life.
That’s really too bad, because AlterNet ‘s article made the film seem different. It sounded as though it would try to address the actual medical or genetic reasons why some people keep weight on no matter what while others never gain it, regardless of diet and activity. It seemed like it was going to address why some doctors are apt to treat their obese patients differently or blame more medical problems on weight than necessary.
All of that was in there, but it was packed into that same eight-minute segment. The rest of the film felt more like a chronicle of the trials of a handful of fat people than a provider of significant medical information.
This is why Oprah should embrace HAES. First off, she would personally benefit by being healthier than she probably is by shifting from yo-yo dieting to a healthy lifestyle. Plus, she would make the concept much less alien to most of the country. Maybe this would put a dent in what is an incredible fear of fat held by so many.
Many lesser-known sources have already embraced this concept with a fairly vast and fiercely loyal following. Blogging is a fantastic outlet for these ideas. While it isn’t easy to tally exactly how many readers a blog has, there are ways to gauge its popularity. Shapely Prose , for example, regularly sees more than 100 comments on individual entries and recently had to broaden its horizons. Last week the site launched its own social network via Ning, which allows anyone to start a free community. Since its inception the network has welcomed over 500 members.
Now it’s more than a blog, it’s a community, which sounds cheesy but is very important to those involved. Instead of simply reading the opinions of the three Shapely Prose bloggers and commenting related to their entries, members, or “Shapelings” as they are called, have control. Discussions on their forums range from health issues to fashion, exercise tips to dating woes. Without having to constantly remind others that yes, fat women both exercise and date.
Really, the only thing members can count on having in common is a lack of conformity to what we’ve been told is the right way to look and a determination to be unashamed of it. While there is a trend toward a liberal feminist bent on this site, members bring different views, are different ages and come from all over the world. One might be able to call it Facebook for Fatties, except having one common bond provides a closeness and supportiveness that might not exist on a more general site.
With a group of people who trade so many kinds of tips and offer each other so much virtual support, how is it really convincing to refer to them as “unhealthy?” There are probably people reading this who are still convinced that the very act of being fat is dangerous. Now is probably a good time to direct them to the original Shapely Prose blog (www.kateharding.net). Aside from simply reading the site for general educational purposes, there is one specific entry to find called “Don’t You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?” It has its own tab at the top of the page and brilliantly rebuts every point that can be made under the umbrella of that question.
Getting back to Oprah, this topic would make for at least a few interesting episodes of her show. Between the very concept of HAES, her own struggle to accept that lifestyle (if she truly does) and all the resources for it and opinions on it, she could tackle it from several different angles.
And if she needs any “regular people” to talk to, I’m right here. I have Skype, though I’d also gladly accept a free trip to Chicago.
(I’ve also posted about body image under a different name. I was profoundsarcasm83, but lost the password when I got my new computer and so I started anew)