by Marilyn Wann

Gabourey Sidibe's doing a memoir — read it in 2017!

A fat fitness anthology from Candice Casas, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and Courtney Marshall is in development! Here’s the call for proposals.

Alex Gino’s new YA novel, “George,” about a young, genderqueer person, comes out soon!

Don’t miss the fat-positive novel, “Dietland,” by Sarai Walker.

A documentary team created a fake diet study and got it published in a science journal. Mainstream media reported it as fact. This brilliant muckraking shows how junk science in weight-loss research happens.

Video games that make children move around don’t increase their overall activity, according to a new study.

A new line of Barbies have their feet on the ground…no more tippy toes! Meanwhile, women who wear high heels more than three times a week can develop imbalanced ankle muscles that are prone to injury, researchers say. They recommend compensating exercises.

My new favorite fat activist is 17-year-old Vera Tieno, who just received a $5,000 art scholarship at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gala, where she partied with Usher, Pharell, DeNiro, and Whoopi. Plus model Denise Bidot spent an afternoon with her beforehand, doing liberating things with fashion. The teen, who has lived in jeans and t-shirts, said, "It’s that feeling that you don’t belong, that it [fashion] wasn’t for me. It’s the thinking that my body does not look like the media wants me to look, and if I don’t look like a magazine, then I thought I didn’t deserve it." She learned from Bidot, "That you can rock anything you want you just need to be happy feel good in what you’re wearing not for anybody else." She admitted she found the high heels painful, though.

photo from Stylite.com

Fat model Tess Munster and Simply Be made made a fun little video on the topic of bikini bodies: #simplybekini.

The media celebrated the weight loss of Abby Lee Miller (of "Dance Moms"), even though it turns out to have come from grieving and medical concerns.

Amy Schumer says: "“I’m probably, like, 160 pounds right now and I can catch a d—k whenever I want. Like, that's the truth. It's not a problem…I'm not going to apologize for who I am, and I'm going to actually love the skin that I'm in. And I'm not going to be striving for some other version of myself." 

Fat-positive RN and diabetes expert David Spero writes about loving food instead of living in fear of food.

Sometimes, both the question and the answer are uncool: People think smokers deserve medical treatment for lung problems, but fat people don’t deserve medical treatment to lose weight, according to a Danish survey. 

Tasmania now has emergency vehicles equipped to help fat people. Uncool that the reporting of this news is steeped in anti-fat prejudice. 

A comprehensive study found that fat people are less likely to die from injury, car accidents, and falls. 

Half of stomach amputation survivors regain 5 percent of their body weight in the first two years, while others regain more, according to the stomach thieves' own organization (the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery). And that's just in the first two years after so-called "weight-loss" surgery.

A woman who had not one, but two "weight-loss" surgeries, lost no weight. Her doctor's recommendation was to consider cutting into her stomach a third time.

One in 20 stomach amputation survivors are back in the hospital within 30 days. Pharmacists say "many [readmissions] could have been avoided by dietary counseling and filling prescriptions before hospital discharge."

Although they found higher levels of hospital admissions among weight-loss surgery survivors in the first year or two after surgery and only followed people for three years, researchers say the surgery will save money longterm.

Stomach amputation has “longterm nutritional consequences,” a pharmacist warns. Anemia is “a big problem.” Deficiencies in macronutrients (which help regulate blood sugar), “are common.” Some medications (metformin, antidepressants, antibiotics) may further deplete people’s bodies of needed nutrients. If women become pregnant post-WLS, it’s “critical” they are monitored and take specialized absorptive supplements. The pharmacist also says that WLS complications can be mistaken for other, more familiar health concerns.

Plastic surgeons profit from increasing rates of stomach amputation, logging a 7 percent increase in saggy-ectomies in 2014. Such operations involve massive incisions to remove excess skin from people's arms, bellies, and upper legs. (Remember: nutritional deficiencies may make wound healing difficult.)

WLS…not a diabetes cure: “Some doctors had thought that gastric bypass could cure diabetes, but that did not happen for most of our patients. Also unexpected was the extent of complications in the bypass patients. Gastric bypass now appears to have less strong positives and more worrisome negatives than previously thought," says Charles J. Billington, MD, a researcher in the ongoing Diabetes Surgery Study. They found increased risk of infections, bone fractures, and nutritional deficiencies in stomach amputation survivors.

Hoping to expand their customer base among not-very-fat people, surgeons have developed a way of cutting off just 2/3 of a person's stomach, instead of nearly all of it, claiming it could produce between 30 and 80 pounds of weight loss.

What do you do if you’re a white guy “physician-scientist” who’s just finished cancer treatment and you weren't invited back to your job as chancellor of Ole Miss? You join that school’s anti-“obesity” center and tell people you’re eager to address an important issue. Ugh. Priorities?

Are medical diagnoses a popularity contest? More than half of people surveyed think "obesity" is a disease. Researchers at the Yale Rudd Center say that disease status will reduce anti-fat prejudice. I predict just the opposite. Unsurprising, since the center's mission to prevent "obesity" is counterproductive to their other stated goal of reducing weight stigma.

by Marilyn Wann

I first found fat community in 1992 thanks to the book, "Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression." (It's still in print and still a great read!) In my eagerness, I signed up for all of the resources listed in the back of the book. Most of them were in-person events or things to read. There were no listings from whatever-passed-for-the-internet-back-then. I remember attending a pool party; reading Radiance magazine, which was impressively glossy; and going to a lick-and-stick party of the local NAAFA chapter, which involved stapling and putting postage on the monthly newsletter, then eating pizza with Frances White and Louise Wolfe, while her lovely, five-year-old daughter played in the living room.

I was always glad to read Bill Fabrey's column for Radiance, a compilation of weight-related media and research from the previous three months. Even if the reporting was anti-fat, it was exciting to see any mention of fat activism or the non-diet approach (now Health At Every Size). I have a similar urge to gather weight-related stuff that catches my attention, both cool and uncool. Only now, it would be very difficult for anyone to collect everything that's coming out. This first round up of items I've come across in the last week is about as long as the list that Radiance used to publish quarterly. Is there a version of Moore's Law for fat community? Does our computing/community speed double every two years? Old-timer comparisons aside, I like seeing the words "round" and "up" together, so here's Round Up #1.

Please send in links you think I should include in future round ups! If I commit any errors or harms, please let me know; I'll be glad to be accountable and aim to do better. I hope you find this list useful. Thanks tons!!!

North Carolina-based yoga teacher Jessamyn Stanley was just on Good Morning America! In the caption for one of her 500-plus Instagram photos, she writes, “I love showing up to teach a class where my students are obviously expecting a more svelte teacher and they are surprised by a curvaceous black femme with the mouth of a drunken sailor." Here's another fun article about her.

White-centric fat stuff is uncool. This is a brilliant article addressing the need for plus-size fashion modeling to routinely spotlight black women. Great quotes from Chenese Lewis, Marie Denee of The Curvy Fashionista, Jill Andrew and Aisha Fairclough of Fat In the City and the Body Confidence Canda Awards.

Another story on this crucial topic.

Cassy Jones-McBride of the Fuller Woman Network offers important insights on the need for black women to be represented centrally in fat community and in mainstream media.

A great post about liberation and fashion from Pia at Chronicles of a Mixed Fat Chick, on The Curvy Fashionista.

A powerful personal story from Stacy Nye about shedding swimsuit/weight fears. From the Association for Size Diversity and Health's blog, the ASDAH Files.

Also from the ASDAH Files, a story of liberation from internalized weight oppression via meditation and yoga, from Rachel Dhanya Smith.

A Militant Baker model answers the question, “Can fat guys be sexy?” Duh. He also talks about the very real fat oppression that men (and people of all genders) face.

Super cool: Gorda! zine. (On Facebook.)

Donate a book to help a new eating disorders support group for people of color in LA get started! Nalgona Positivity Pride is a Xicana/Brown*/Indigenous site for chubby warriors that focuses on the intersection of eating disorder awareness, body positivity, and decolonizing body love. 

Great arguments for debunking those pesky, fat=unhealthy beliefs. Keep this link handy. From Melissa A. Fabello, co-managing editor of Everyday Feminism.

Here's another blow to popular, fat-blaming health beliefs. What if the bacteria on our bodies, and not the fat in our bodies, causes type 2 diabetes?

Uncool: Some fashion and lifestyle person I'd never heard of, Lauren Conrad, wants cool points for being body-positive while continuing to promote internalized weight oppression. Nope.

A story the WLS-loving mainstream media won't tell: Bowel obstructions are a well-known complication for people who undergo stomach amputation. Ouch! One woman had so much damage from them that her small intestine had to be removed and she later got a bowel transplant. 

After talking to 10 hand-picked couples about the effect of one partner’s “weight-loss” surgery on their relationship, a researcher reports only positive findings. Better sex! No mention of people who are still mourning partners who died from the surgery. No mention of people whose partners became alcoholic because of the surgery. No mention of people who live with painful complications that can’t be fixed because of the surgery.

A new type of so-called “weight-loss” surgery that shocks the stomach’s main nerve happened in Texas last week. If you get the cattle prod, you can’t get an MRI or a heart pacemaker. So try not to get hurt or sick or old.

The dangers of medical weight bias (for people of all sizes): A 165-pound teen has intense back pain and asks her doctors for an MRI. Instead, they tell her to lose weight. A few months later, they have to amputate her leg because of a fast-moving cancer. A court awards her more than $28 million.

NPR interrupts its steady stream of anti-fat reporting for this interview with Susan Greenhalgh, author of a new book, “Fat Talk Nation: the Human Costs of America’s War on Fat,” which documents the damage to people of all sizes. Sadly, both the author and NPR hold onto fat=unhealthy beliefs. Also, the term “fat talk” is uncool. It defines any talk about fat must be negative. Try instead: "weight bashing."

In 2015, it’s still a new idea that hospital equipment should accommodate people of all sizes and mobility levels in medical settings, not just in weight-loss offices. The guy in this article is arguing for it. Sad he has to use a word like “bariatrics.”

A related article on hospital design includes very cool info about a hospital that bought patient lift devices and had 95% fewer “handling incidents,” 99% lower workers’ comp costs, and 98-99% fewer days of lost or restricted work. Also  this uncool comment up front: [One designer] “says he usually asks a facility early in the design phase about its bariatric population and if it’s a chronic problem.” Yet another article says accommodating fat people could increase hospital profits, because it's not convincing enough that people could die without it.

A possible new sleep apnea device that’s cordless and hoseless.

Health At Every Size expert Jon Robison debunks yet another study claiming “success” for workplace weight-loss programs.

A few fat-causes-disease comments, but otherwise a generally true and important critique of anti-“obesity” fear mongering. I.e., population-wide weight gain has leveled off. An inconvenient fact for people who make their careers on the backs of fat people.

The July issue of Elle UK is the Body Issue. Editors seem to know that love-your-body is trendy, but they just can't manage it. At least 3 of 8 cover headlines fail: “Summer dresses for real women.” (All people who identify as women are real women, no matter what size. Real compared to what, some thin ideal?) “Meet the fabulously fit size 18 supermodel.” And, “Can a no-diet exercise camp get results?”

Plus-size model Ashley Graham’s talk about redefining beauty.

Fat-positive, body-positive, and size/race/gender/disability-inclusive stuff from ModCloth.

Plus-size women’s clothing sellers on Etsy, some with sizes above 3x.

An author’s recommendations for young adult books that address body shaming, fat oppression, and eating concerns. No guarantee they’re completely free of weight-loss content, but worth a look.

A brilliant post from UK-based fat activist and HAES expert Angela Meadows about the impact of weight bigotry on children: “It is not uncommon for researchers to call for increased awareness of the ‘detrimental impact of obesity on educational achievement.’ But this just adds another layer of stigma onto already disadvantaged children. We need to be focusing on the detrimental impact of the way heavier children are treated on educational achievement. We need better teacher training, stronger anti-bullying measures, and programmes to teach diversity and respect for all.”

A lovely poem, “Fat Speaks,” by Deborah Gorlin from her book, "Life of the Garment."

Uncool: Some fashion scold thinks weight diversity is a passing trend that must stop right away.

The writer isn’t wholly fat-positive, but this piece does a good job raising awareness about two classic faux-compliments and what they really mean: “Good for you, fatty, for exercising! Maybe you’ll lose weight.” and, “You’ve lost weight, fatty. You weren’t okay before!”

NAAFA responds to fat-shaming ads in Guatemala. I hear that Latino fat activists will be responding, too!

School agrees with teens that weight-shaming advice to girl grads is uncool.