Marilyn Wann, who weighs 285 pounds or 129 kilos, had her health insurance denied on the grounds of weight alone. This spurred her into becoming the leader of the so-called fat pride movement in the United States. She openly identifies herself as ‘fat' and calls for society to change. 
"There's this institutional level of discrimination and threat to fat peoples' lives and there's also just social ostracism. People of all sorts of weights, not the fattest people necessarily, are feeling excluded socially because of feeling not thin enough.
I think people come in all different shapes and sizes, I happen to weigh 285 pounds. I don't think that's a particularly important or interesting fact about me, except for the fact that we live in a our fat-hating society and so I end up having to do a little bit of work to make living space for my self and hopefully for other people of all sizes who are affected by that negative attitude.
The stereotypes that go along with fatness are that fat people are lazy, stupid, smelly, ugly, gluttonous, out of control, unhealthy, undisciplined, asexual or oversexed.
You're hearing all of the classic stereotypes that have been applied to every outsider group - that there's something wrong with us, that we have some kind of fatal flaw, that we should be pitied and avoided."
Gwyneth Paltrow
Ms Wann says that everyone - including her - has the right to be fat.
"I don't ask anyone else for permission to exist. Whether or not you want to ask me if I have a right to be fat or not, I claim it.
I grew up as a chubby kid. I think there's sort of an implied question of ‘Why are fat people fat?' and I notice that we don't ask the same question ‘Why are these thin people so thin? What did they do wrong to be so thin?'
It's very natural for me and for my body [to be fat] and I think that if we look with a certain amount of common sense at the world we'll notice that people just naturally come in different shapes and sizes and that we can all treat our bodies well with good nutrition and regular exercise, but that doesn't mean we're all going to look like Gwyneth Paltrow. We can celebrate weight diversity."
Medical establishment
Health is not akin to weight, Ms Wann says. She takes an approach called Health at Every Size. It's behaviour-focused and encourages people to eat and exercise in response to their body's needs. She says this is far more helpful than ‘threats' from the medical establishment.
"I don't believe that weight equals health. And I think the fact that our society uses health as an argument to justify prejudice and discrimination around weight is really very sad and unhealthful [sic]. If every time you turn on the television or open a newspaper you hear the message ‘Fat people are unhealthy, fat people are dying', that message itself is a suggestion."
Tags:
fat,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
health,
health insurance
,
Marilyn Wann
elizabeth,
12-09-2008
- USA
Do people have a right to be fat? We should have the right to not have to think about it. I would like to raise my daughter to like whatever body she gets, as long as she is leading a healthy lifestyle. I spend too much time exercising, because I actually like it, but I also hate the fact that I am constantly thinking of how I look. I'm not fat but I'm not thin. I've had 3 children and I'm in my 40's. I cannot exercise any more and I refuse to diet, so I have to accept that this is as good as it gets.
Annie,
10-09-2008
- Canada
I am a fat woman. At 5'4'' I weigh 225lbs. I have spent my life attempting to alter my physical appearance through the right ways and the wrong ways. No matter what I did to myself, starvation or working out or being a 4 time M.V.P. for field hockey and soccer, my body remained virtually unchanged. I have been taunted from the sidelines of a soccer game that I was playing in, oinked at on the streets and ignored in clothing stores because of my size. I was 16, reading an article in a magazine aimed at my age group, and there was story about a girl who was my age, and weighed 184lbs(I weighed 210lbs at the time) and had her stomach stapled because she was declared 'morbidly obese' and it was about her success, and making it through the operation and living life to the fullest now that she was 'skinny.' But I've made it to the age of 22, and because of the support of my sister who is a 'skinny' girl, telling me that the body I have is the only one I'm going to have and it's mine and I've got to own it, I have owned it. I have been able to claim and love this body as my own. If we teach people to hate themselves we accomplish nothing for our society; we only succeed in marginalizing another minority group and assigning tired stereotypes yet again to the visibly different. So congratulations world, you've done it again.
Max,
09-09-2008
- NE
I have figured out over time that every fat person has their own reasons for being fat. I rarely know what those reasons are. Some are survivors of sexual abuse, and want to be fat to avoid sexual attention. Most of the fat people I know are emotional over-eaters. They use food as a drug to help them feel better. When they can't over-eat, they feel the unpleasant feelings they are trying to escape. Everyone wants to feel better; everyone wants to feel good. Unfortunately, their "drug" of choice tears up their bodies, which were not designed to tolerate this kind of abuse. The fat people I know have joint problems, can't get around easily, can't fit in cars and chairs, and suffer many insults from cruel people. I believe fat people have a right to be fat, and others have a right to not like it, but not to be cruel about it. I do not believe it is cruel that fat people sometimes have to pay more health insurance. Their health care, as a group, costs much more than it would if they were not fat. Either they pay the extra expense, or they expect others to pay it for them, which is not fair.
jasmin,
08-09-2008
- India
The fat people are fat, not out of choice but due to their physical or mental problems, on which they have little control. Addiction to food happens in depression and when life isn't up to expectations.They fill their empty life with food. And depression leads to lethargy, so little exercise leads to obesity. And in depression all food is converted into fat due to hormonal imbalance. Secondly, as J Hunt feels, the fat don't eat all the food meant for the poor, on the contrary they eat less, but eat wrong foods. In my observation, thin people eat much more as their metabolic rate is high, burning food quickly leading to hunger again. I have colleaguess who are both fat and thin, and guess the fat are so self-conscious that they eat little but the thinner ones gorge snacks like famished for ages. And J Hunt, I know not of a human being on earth who can control the pangs of hunger and skip food because the poor are hungry. It is a great thought, ideally speaking, for debates but in reality, we rush to have food on the first sign of hunger. It is not the fat people but the politicians who are responsible for their scarcity of food. And yes, Patrick and Rick, we need to train our kids to eat healthy but some people are weak willed by default and reach for food more often, than others. Only subtle motivation can help them overcome their weakness and not our rude words.
danna,
07-09-2008
- United States
I think that Marilyn Wann was a wonderful speaker and it makes me sad the amount of prejudice there is mainly here in the US against fat people. Everyone has the right to health care. However, I believe that fat people, as well as lean people should be more sensitive to the amount of natural resources they are using and/or wasting. The comparison between attitudes in the West and Africa in the program misses a very important point which is the huge difference in the number of obesity cases in the US as compared to anywhere else in the world, especially Africa. This difference in numbers is an important issue because it is an indicator to the wasteful consumerist culture that exists here and the lack of awareness that people have towards the food crises and the role that they play in it. This role is most certainly not limited to fat people but basically what it comes down to is that with the limited natural resources in the world to claim the right to be fat is to claim a larger amount of natural resources that can go around evenly in the world... it's not exactly fair to people that are going hungry. I think people should be happy with the body they are given and not try to change it, but to be aware of their life decisions on the rest of the world at the same time.
Patrick Neustatter, MD,
07-09-2008
- USA
The irrational defense of being fat that I have just listened to on The State We Are In reminds me of the favorite quip of Click and Clack the Car guys - to wit, "unencumbered by the thought process".
I am a family physician in Virginia. There is a mass of irrefutable evidence that being overweight is associated with many health problems. Why was this point not put to Ms Wann? And if you are less healthy, you use more health rescources. I think insurance ompanies are bums, but did she stop to think why they didn't want her as a client?
Dr John Tickell seemed just to be errasible but miss the mark - being overweight on an aeroplane is the least of the sins. Being fat in the old days and the third world was a sign of wealth - and now the pendulum of what's an OK body weight has swung too far the other way - so Fergie's daughter, Beatrice, for example is pilloried by those cads in the UK press as being a "Pampered Miss Piggy" even though she's only a size 10.
Tell Ms Wann we don't hate her, but, just like if she was a smoker or a heavy drinker (maybe she is?) she is flirting with an unhealthy life style.
PS, for a curmudgionly rant on healthy life styles in general, go to DrGagg.com
rick,
07-09-2008
- United States
Ms. Wann talks about acceptance but means endorsement. The rhetoric of the fat movement demands acceptance of their lifestyle, but the implicit message is an equally firm demand that society also endorse their lifestyle choices. All people, irrespective of weight deserve respect, compassion and the rights that come with being human. Society can acknowledge her humanity and her right to be as she is without accepting that her chosen lifestyle is a good idea. My wife works in childcare here in the US, and the proportion of overweight children is disconcerting. Overweight parents subscribe to Ms. Wann's myopic philosophy and don't work with their children to develop healthy diet and exercise habits, resulting in overweight and unhealthy kids who grow into overweight and unhealthy adults. We need to show love and acceptance to all people, while working towards a goal of overall health, irrespective of being fat or thin. It's unfortunate if the cost of making overweight people feel good about themselves and their choices is a generation of needlessly unhealthy children.
J Hunt,
07-09-2008
- USA
40,000 people are starving TO DEATH each and every day. I understand that being overweight is something a few people really do have a medical problem with but everyone else who's so overweight should feel some responsibility to the world for how much more they obviously consume. Our farming industry works great, clearly, humans skill with farming is why our population has exploded while our consumption is threatening so much of the rest of life on this world. But we should not be so proud of our ability to eat all we want that we're proud of our huge size. I think every day of how many people are starving, many have died since I started typing this, and I canNOT enjoy super-consumption.
Nancy Chinchor,
07-09-2008
- USA
I am a muscular woman who powerlifts because it is genetically my skill. However, my muscle weight at 5"6" is 139 lbs. My total weight is 201 lbs. I, too , cannot get insurance due to weight. I am much happier lifting weights and I am much healthier in every measure that my doctors perform. So weight is the wrong number to judge me by. I like being my best -- it is my right. I am heavy!!!
Grace,
06-09-2008
- Australia
All of Marilyn’s arguments were based on the idea that fat people don’t have a choice in being fat, she simply asserted that the calorie–exercise intake= fat stored equation doesn’t work. She claimed it was outdated science, while she never cited any scientific argument or study to prove this. Even if she had, an intelligent person doesn’t need a scientific study to see that her premise is incorrect. The volume of anecdotal evidence is far too great. The simple equation of eating too much, with too little exercise resulting in fatness has been tried and proved time and again. That’s why you don’t find over weight or obese people in famine stuck Africa, that’s why you never found fat people in POW camps where there were low calorie intakes couples with exercise, that’s why the number of overweight people has increased with the introduction of fast food (high calorie, low nutrient food), and labour saving technology which has resulted in humans in the western world taking in more and more calories, while exercising less and less. For Marilyn to weigh as much as she does, she either has a disease which makes her fat, like metabolic syndrome, or she is not eating and/or exercising in a healthy way.
I do not harbour prejudices against fat people, I think that fat people can be intelligent, productive, caring, worthwhile people in society. That doesn’t change the fact that fat people cost society through their demands on the health system, fat people in fact cost the world; we are currently facing world food crisis and fat people continue to eat more than their body needs, the cost of producing the processed food that in many cases contributes to fatness takes up energy and resources. The crux of the issue is that predominantly – not always- fat people DON’T HAVE TO BE FAT, something can be done about it, and that’s a good thing. Why is it good? Because fat people affect other people in society in a detrimental way, if they’re happy to have dangerously increased odds of heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnoea, bowl cancer, that’s cool- but when that means that the health system I and the rest of my society relies on is stretched to breaking point by fat induced diseases, and when my tax dollars are going towards dealing with an issue that doesn’t have to exist, that’s when I say it’s not okay for people to be fat.
Given the costs, we shouldn’t accept fatness, unless there’s no option eg. metabolic syndrome or injuries that prevent someone from exercising. The issue of whether people choose to be fat is a difficult one. There are many good arguments that suggest people are fat as a result of societal and emotional conditions they are exposed to (eg. being uneducated about proper eating and exercising habits or being literally addicted to food) for this reason I don’t support things like a fat tax on aeroplanes. However, there can be no question that in the majority of cases fatness can be avoided, I think Marilyn’s sentiment that some people are just naturally fat is dangerous, because it counters people trying to change their behaviours to lose weight, it says to society and government “don’t try to deal with this problem, it’s just natural, there’s no problem”, when clearly it is a very costly one, and it can easily be prevented.
I am not condoning the kind of culture we’ve seen emerge in society where stick thin celebrities are glorified. Being that thin, is just as unhealthy as being as fat as Marilyn. Of course this statement applies to the majority of people, there are always exceptions, but the exceptions represent a very small percentage out the millions of people who are overweight in the Western World. I agree with the statement “people just naturally come in different shapes and sizes and that we can all treat our bodies well with good nutrition and regular exercise but that doesn't mean we're all going to look like Gwyneth Paltrow” however the doctor never said we had to, he was advocating a healthy weight- you may say that’s hard to define, it’s not, it should be a rough calculation taking into account age, height, medical conditions and the statistics which show the level of fatness that signals increased risk of overweight related disease.
Marilyn tried to say that attempts to get fat people to lose weight were tantamount to encouraging eating problems like anorexia. It’s not; Marilyn showed just how misinformed and misguided she was. Eating disorders like anorexia are psychological disorders; men and women who are struck by this disease don’t cease to eat because society tells them not to, they don’t eat because this is a way that they can gain some kind of control in their lives, when people feel that they have no control in their lives, they are able to regain some control.
