Body Diversity on Broadway

Current musicals on Broadway. Source: broadway.com

When Hamilton burst onto the scene in 2015, it was rightfully hailed as a radical shift in casting for Broadway roles. Almost the entire cast then and all the touring companies and the resident Broadway cast now are people of color. And it is part of the point that black men and women are playing the Founding Fathers and Mothers, the very same people who enslaved and oppressed their ancestors. Hamilton is the story of America then told by America now, and looking at the people on stage, you can feel that. They look like the people we see in our neighborhoods. Except for one thing…

In all of Hamilton, only one character is ever labelled fat, and it’s the incompetent President John Adams, who we never see during the show. We are told in the show that Adams privately refers to Hamilton as a “Creole bastard” and Hamilton publishes his response in the papers, summarized with the lyrics, “Sit down, John! You fat mother[bleep]!”

Despite all of the other adjectives thrown about in the show—arrogant, bastard, orphan, loud-mouth, son of a whore, hero, scholar, right-hand man—only fat is reserved for someone Hamilton hates. Not even King George, who the American rebels have taken arms against, earns this particular epithet. Nor does Thomas Jefferson, who Hamilton regularly did political battle with. Only John Adams, who was clearly in a war of words with Hamilton earns it.

What makes it feel particularly disturbing is that this just occurred to me today. I’ve been listening to the original cast recording at intervals since October 2015 and this is the first time it occurred to me that the one character actually referred to as fat is someone we’re supposed to hate. And it’s not as if there haven’t been fat actors in Hamilton. James Monroe Igelhart is a fat actor who is currently in the role of Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson. But I think that he’s an anomaly, not only in Hamilton but on Broadway in general.

One of the few times that I’ve seen remarkable body diversity on a stage was in a touring production of Come From Away, which is the story of a small town in Newfoundland where 38 planes were diverted on September 11, 2001 when the US airspace was closed. The town doubled in size with the arrival of all of those passengers from all over the world. And when I looked on stage, there were the kinds of people I knew. Mostly thin or average-sized people, but also a couple of fat people. They looked like a group of real people that I would expect to see in an airport or getting off a plane.

Seeing that production of Come From Away, it was one of the first times I saw even a glimpse of myself on stage in a real way. I’m sure I’ve seen fat people on stage before, but always as a caricature or as someone evil, annoying, or unwanted. We need more of that on stage, just like we need it in movies and television. We need more of people like Igelhart winning a Tony for playing a role like the Genie in Aladdin. We need more of people like Ali Stoker, the first wheelchair user on a Broadway stage and Tony-award winner for best featured actress in a musical. And we need to stop using the word fat against people, even for fictional or fictionalized characters that we never see.

Really? Bariatric Surgery for Teenagers is What We're Doing Now?

CW: Discussion of weight-loss surgery and disordered eating

This week the journal Pediatrics published a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics that argues more children and adolescents should have access to bariatric surgery.

I’m sorry, SAY WHAT NOW?? Why are any children or adolescents AT ALL having bariatric surgery?

If you’re not familiar, bariatric surgery is a procedure that changes the structure of your digestive system, either by making your stomach smaller or re-routing parts of it, so that you can’t physically eat as much and you absorb fewer calories. The surgeries can be invasive and carry post-operative risks, and they require permanent changes to a patient’s diet. After surgery, patients are restricted to a liquid diet for 2 to 3 weeks and then need to slowly add soft foods then solid foods. According to this information on Medline, after gastric bypass surgery, which reduces the size of the stomach, patients can only consume about a tablespoonful of regular food at first. Overtime, this will expand to a single cup of regular food, when an unaltered stomach can hold 4-times that much. Patients have to limit or eliminate their intake of fats, sugar, carbohydrates, and carbonated beverages and have to take supplements so they get enough nutrients. Some of the most common side effects of bariatric surgery are body aches, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, feeling tired or cold, malnutrition, and ulcers, among others.

And we’re doing this to TEENAGERS. I’m 40 years old and I can’t imagine first having to undergo major surgery and then having to radically alter my entire lifestyle so as to completely restrict my food intake down to a few bites of low-fat dairy or skinless chicken breast, for instance.

And we’re not only doing this to teenagers already, a major medical association is recommending that MORE teenagers and children have access to it.

Source: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2019/10/24/peds.2019-3223

Children and adolescents with “severe obesity” (as determined by BMI, which we already know is a poor indicator of health) also are more likely to have additional complications like type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and hypertension and are at an increased risk of developing these complications. And I am NO WAY suggesting that children with these conditions is a good thing or something we shouldn’t be addressing. I AM, however, horrified that instead of promoting greater racial and socio-economic justice to these underserved populations, instead of advocating for better access to healthier foods and the elimination of food deserts, instead of fighting to preserve open spaces and offer safe locations for children to get physical activity, this national group of pediatrics specialists recommends that more children be altered physically, often permanently, in order to do so.

My fear is that this recommendation will lead to an increase in disordered eating in adolescents because surgery will be used as a threat of last resort. “Lose weight, lower your BMI however you can or we’ll refer you for surgery. You won’t be able to eat any of your favorite foods ever again. Do you want that?” The AAP statement is very careful to exhort pediatricians to have meaningful conversations with their patients about the benefits and risks, to make decisions together with patients and family, and that bariatric surgery should not be undergone without taking into account psychological and developmental maturity. But they also say that the patients in one of the studies that supports their recommendation were majority white and female. Which just so happens to be the same population who is most likely to have an eating disorder.

I find this whole thing repulsive and disgusting, and my level of distress and anger over this recommendation is high. Personally, I think there are far bigger concerns out there for the health of children and adolescents (can we say climate change for one?) than access to bariatric surgery.

When Entertainment is Supposed to be for "Everyone"

Theme parks are entertainment destinations that attract millions of people each year, which would make you think that they are able to accommodate the vast differences between all those millions of people at the parks. But I know as well as anyone else who has been to a theme park in a fat body that they don’t.

I was in college the first time I was kicked off a ride because it was “unsafe” for my fat body to ride it. I had waited over an hour in line with a group of friends, people I had spent the summer working with on my college campus. My friends and I had dared each other to ride in the front row of a roller coaster, one that was new and high and fast. I was nervous and excited as we climbed into the car and the safety arms came down over my shoulders… and failed to lock into place. Try as I might, and as the attendant might, we simply could not get the arms to lock. And the ride could not go until all the arms were locked. I climbed out of the car and walked away from the ride, furious, embarrassed, and alone. I sat on a bench near the ride, crying as I waited for my friends to emerge from their fun. We went about the rest of the day, and I tried to put the incident out of my mind.

I loved roller coasters. I loved the thrill of them and the speed, knowing the whole time that I was perfectly safe inside. But since that day in college, except for one very mild roller coaster ride about 11 years ago, I haven’t been on one since. It’s hard enough for me to spend all that time waiting in line, only then to be kicked off and humiliated in front of everyone because my fat body doesn’t fit.

I am hardly alone in my experience. Last year, an article was published in Huffpost about a woman who was kicked off the Hogwarts Harry Potter ride at Universal because the safety harness didn’t fit over her fat body. The woman is Jana Schmieding, a comedic writer, performer, and educator in Los Angeles. She had been “investigating size-based discrimination for several months, interviewing and publishing conversations with women in my life who have experienced body shame, injustice and inequity around their size, gender, race and presence,” when this happened.

From Schmieding’s article:

Like most of us who have encountered size discrimination in our lives, it tends to trigger our internalized fat phobia, making us think somehow that we are at fault for the discrimination against us. We think we should be the ones to change, instead of the other way around. It takes a monumental effort to reframe our thinking to place the blame where it belongs.

What’s heartbreaking about this story, and why I’m choosing to amplify it, is that it comes connected to a fandom that Schmieding felt deeply connected to. She got into Harry Potter just recently and was so excited to be visiting the theme park at Universal Studios. Schmieding over and over again talks about her childlike glee at the rest of the experience, how it transported her into the fantasy world and let her put aside the harsh reality for awhile. When something like that happens, when something connected to a franchise or a fandom that you love lets you down, it can be devastating.

It is still far too hard for those of us in fat bodies to find ourselves welcomed into the places we love, including our fandoms.

Fat Liberationist in the Making

Author and fat liberationist Sofie Hagen recently published a Twitter thread that had me wanting to stand up and cheer. In it, she reminds us that body positivity and loving yourself is great, and it is important, but until the system that allows fat phobia to flourish is dismantled, loving ourselves won’t make a difference.

Getting up every day and facing the systemic discrimination that Hagen talks about is soul-sucking. There’s not a single day that goes by that something gets in my way or causes me pain because people with bodies like mine weren’t even considered in its design. Loving and appreciating my body exactly as it is helps things suck a little less. But Hagen is 100% correct, it doesn’t begin to actually fix the problem.

It’s far too easy to push the needs of the fat, sick, and/or disabled aside. It’s much easier to react to their needs rather than plan for them. Planning takes money and time, and the path of least resistance (making a building up to code, for instance, but not stopping to consider whether the codes go far enough in the first place) is always more alluring. It’s much easier to make all of the fat people try to “fix” themselves, rather than forcing everyone to give us the same basic respect as everyone else. It’s not too much to expect clothes, shoes, seatbelts, and chairs to fit our bodies. It’s not too much to expect that we can access a building unassisted and without using dangerous, unproven, untested “technologies” to do it. It’s not too much to expect that a healthcare professional will treat and diagnose us according to the best information they have and not on a knee-jerk reaction to the size of our bodies. The litany of discrimination goes on and on.

I want to help create the kind of world that Hagen is talking about, one where there’s “a whole generation where no one learns that you have to be thin in order to deserve respect and happiness.” This blog is a tiny, tiny part of that. By calling out fat phobia where I see it over and over and over and over, maybe in my small corner of the world, it’ll start to change.

Question Everything, Especially When it Comes to Health and Fitness

The 2,000 calorie per day diet. The 10,000 steps per day goal. The body mass index. These are just a few examples of things we have been told are measures or indicators of good health or healthy practices but are by and large arbitrary and oversimplified. Bodies are complex and complicated, and no two function exactly alike. Trying to standardize them in any way is an exercise in folly, and it allows for people who don’t live up to these standards to be marginalized and bullied.

Let’s take BMI, for example. Anonymous fat writer Your Fat Friend recently published a piece on the racist and questionable history of the BMI. It is an incredibly well-researched article, and if you didn’t already know that BMI was sketchy, you should definitely read it. To summarize, BMI is a statistical way of finding the “ideal” body size for a population; it was never meant to link the weight and health of an individual and is NOT a measure of how healthy a person is; it was developed by measuring only white men, excluding all women and all people of color. Two people with the same BMI could be in vastly different conditions. For instance, a runner could be the same height and weight as someone with a chronic health condition that limits their mobility. Their BMI would be the same, and thus they would be classified into the same category (underweight, normal, overweight, obese, or extremely obese). The only thing BMI can tell you is how your weight for your height compares to the weight and height of other people in the population (ie, white men). It cannot tell you how healthy you are. But because it was adopted by US health insurance carriers, and then physicians, as a way of determining who might be at higher risk of disease (and thus who was a greater risk to insure and who should be charged more money), it hangs on.

There was an article on NPR not too long ago about where the 10,000 steps per day recommendation came from. Turns out that it goes back to a decades-old marketing campaign in Japan for a pedometer. Somehow, that number was adopted in the US as a goal for good health. One study on that number concluded that older women really only need light activity, around 4,400 steps per day, to boost their longevity. And that doesn’t take in account all activity they may participate in. Also, the longevity benefit in that population topped out around 7,500 steps per day. As with most things in the health and fitness area, what makes sense for one person, doesn’t make sense for another. Trying to meet an artificially set goal like 10,000 steps (which is the default goal for fitness trackers like FitBits) is setting up some people for failure.

As for the 2,000 calorie per day diet? It is based on some very rough rounding from self-reported calorie intake surveys that helped form the basis of the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. The FDA wanted consumers to be able to compare products for what percentage of daily intake of sodium, protein, fiber, etc the product made up. But that daily intake percentage had to be based on a standardized calorie intake. Ultimately, for reasons detailed in the article I linked, the FDA decided to use a 2,000-calorie diet as the baseline, noting that individual diets will vary. Somehow, though, that piece of data has become a goal for calorie intake, even though how much food your body needs is a complex interaction of age, size, activity, hormones, and metabolism, among other things.

Health messaging, especially in the US where lobbyists for various food industries (how many different meat and dairy recommendations have you heard?) are involved, is a minefield of bias and misinformation. Often, we’re only getting part of the story, and we don’t even know where the story is really coming from. The diet industry and lobbyists are very good at hiding behind scientists to put their “research” out for public consumption without context. Comparators and populations are left out of the percentages we’re fed. We don’t know who was tested, or how we compare to them, or how many people were actually studied. Yet, each time a new recommendation comes out or a standard measure changes (see the shift in BMI definitions in 1998), people immediately look at themselves first to see if they are “okay.” And then they look around at everyone else to see who is not “okay,” who doesn’t measure up. Usually, the answer is fat people.

When it comes to recommendations for better health, we all need a skeptical eye and a BIG dose of critical thinking. Before you are discouraged (or encouraged), take a look where the information is coming from if you can, and try to find out more about it. And definitely before you judge another person’s health or well-being or worth based on these recommendations, make sure you know where they are from and the history behind them. You’ll be surprised to find out they are often not based on real evidence.

Deep Dive: Lizzo’s “Fitness”

I may be a little late to the Lizzo party, but now that I am here, I am happily tearing up the dance floor. Lizzo’s songs make me feel so good and powerful, not just because of what she is singing but because it is being sung by a fat, unapologetic woman of color. She is aggressively fat positive in all her lyrics, the antithesis of “I woke up like this” culture. She centers the work it takes to look the way she wants to and be her, talking about getting her hair shampooed and pressed, moisturizing daily, using coconut oil, etc. She performs femininity because she chooses to, not because she gives one shit what anyone else thinks about her.

I think this is particularly evident in the lyrics for her single “Fitness”:

Lizzo party starting right now…

Independent, athletic
I been sweating, doing calisthenics
Booty vicious, mind yo business
I been working, working on my fitness

I been working, working on my fitness

Ooh, work my body like
Ooh, I know you want it like
Ooh, but I don't do this for you

Think about how I'm gonna feel when I step up on the catwalk
Think about how I'm gonna feel when I got that ass that don't stop
That ass that don't stop, that ass don't stop
And think about how I'm gonna feel when I take it all off
But I don't do this for you

She centers herself and how she is going to feel with her joyful movement. She’s imagining herself on the catwalk or naked and how good that is going to make her feel. And just in case you missed it, she makes sure to let you know that she’s not doing it for you. Nowhere does she say anything about how men are going to like her more or she’s going to find love and fulfillment in anyone else but herself. And she never once mentions that she is going to lose a single pound. If that wasn’t enough, Lizzo also says to “mind yo business.” She does not want you in her face congratulating her or trying to get with her while she is sweating and working on her fitness.

I could give example after example like this from her songs, and I just might one day. But for right now, I’m going to turn up the volume on my headphones and do a little chair-dancing to Lizzo. And I don’t care what anyone thinks.

Finding Strength for Living

I suffer from chronic pain because of arthritis in both knees. It is severe enough to limit my mobility significantly on a good day. On a bad day, getting around without an assistive device would be a recipe for intense pain for two or more days.

My pain makes me feel so weak sometimes. I feel like I’m supposed to be able to do more and go more places and have more adventures, but the reality is that the world is not built for me to do so. It is built for those who do not have chronic pain and who do not need an assistive device to avoid being in pain for days. That I fight every day to live my life and do what I can do is strength.

It is easy for someone to see me taking a break in my rolling walker and think that I am fat and lazy. But what they don’t see and will never think about is the effort that it took me to get out of bed, get a shower, get dressed, go downstairs, feed myself, and get in and out of the car before I even started whatever activity I’m trying to partake in.

I am so much stronger than those people will ever know, and I try to see my pain when I’ve pushed myself a little too far as a reminder of that strength. It’s not easy. It’s been repeated to me over and over from almost every corner of the media and messaging world that my condition is my own fault. I have arthritis because I’m fat. My fat body makes my arthritis feel worse. If I wasn’t so lazy and got some exercise, my knees wouldn’t hurt so much. Losing 1 pound relieves 12 pounds of pressure on your knees. Just lose some weight first and you’ll be able to do so much more!

My life is now and I am strong enough to live it.

Food Choices are Complicated

My relationship with food is difficult, to say the least. I never dealt with food scarcity or having to live in a food desert. I always knew that when the dinner hour rolled around, there would be something to eat on the table. But my parents worked incredibly hard to do so, and by necessity, a lot of the foods we had were canned or frozen; therefore, they were oversalted and mushy. That included the fruit we ate. And like most kids, I didn’t exactly have a sophisticated palate to start with. So my early experiences with these foods formed a huge bias that I had to overcome, something that I’m still doing decades later.

On top of these preconceived notions, there’s the constant influx of “bad” and “good” food messages. People aren’t allowed to just eat. Our food choices are constantly being picked apart and dictated by trends and crazes. One day eggs are good for you and the next they are too high in cholesterol and are going to give you a heart attack.

And when you’re fat, it’s even worse! If you’re fat and eat a doughnut, it’s proof that you are fat because you overeat and stuff yourself full of sugary foods. If you’re fat and eat a salad, it’s “so inspirational” that “you’re doing something good for yourself” and “trying to lose those extra pounds!”

Food does not have an inherent value. It is not good or bad. There are some foods people can’t eat because they are allergic or sensitive to it. I have a problem with soy and some dairy, other people are allergic to shellfish or peanuts. Some people have to avoid gluten. I have diabetes and need to manage my carb intake. But all of that is and should be determined by an individual person’s needs and not by any arbitrary ideas of what constitutes a “good” food.

No one can even agree on what “eating healthy” means, though I think this definition sounds about right:

“Healthy eating means eating a variety of foods that give you the nutrients you need to maintain your health, feel good, and have energy. These nutrients include protein, carbohydrates, fat, water, vitamins, and minerals.”

— https://www.breastcancer.org/tips/nutrition/healthy_eat

Eat what makes you feel good and gives you what your body needs to function. Look, making food choices is complicated. And it is complicated for everyone. The food experiences and challenges we face early on can inform how we approach food for the rest of our lives. Like I said, I am still unpacking decades of issues with different foods, especially the ones I know I need to eat more of to manage my chronic pain and diabetes. But the foods I need to eat are not the same as the foods you need to eat.

I feel like the main theme of my blog boils down to “Mind your business and the world will be better.” And if that’s all anyone takes away from me, I’ll be happy with that.

A Fat Athlete is Not an Oxymoron

There’s a basic misunderstanding that a person can be in a fat body and also be athletic. The two concepts are not, and never have been, mutually exclusive.

Take yoga instructor Jessamyn Stanley, for example. She is a proudly fat, queer yoga instructor who teaches classes all over the world for all body types and experience levels. Yet, when she walks into a room, people still don’t think that she is the instructor.

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/womens-sport/2019/08/19/life-bigger-pant-size-yoga-teacher-jessamyn-stanley-body-obsession/

In the article, Stanley says, “Fat people can do all kinds of things, we just clearly have a visibility issue.​” And that is so true.

I remember when this “Body Issue” for ESPN came out in 2014 showing a naked Prince Fielder, first baseman for the Texas Rangers.

Source: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/prince-fielders-naked-espn-cover-is-sexy-as-hell-1603146649

People LOST. THEIR. SHIT. Not because Fielder is naked—no, that’s common for the cover of this particular issue of ESPN magazine. No, it’s because Fielder is fat and naked and an athlete in a sport that doesn’t seem like it fits his body type. If Fielder were an American football player, someone on defense maybe, then perhaps the collective gasp wouldn’t have been so loud. We expect football players to be around 300 pounds, to create a wall to stop the run or keep the offensive line from getting into position to make a catch. And while baseball players have come in all shapes and sizes—remember Babe Ruth?—there’s still an image of what we expect one to look like that Fielder is messing with. From an article about the cover in 2014:

Source: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/prince-fielders-naked-espn-cover-is-sexy-as-hell-1603146649

In 2016, EPSN followed up with pictures of Vince Wilfork, five-time NFL Pro Bowler on the cover. He’s also naked, also fat, also powerful, and there were also jokes.

Source: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/27400369/the-body-issue#!vince_wilfork

So yes, Stanley is right… despite these examples of athletes so powerful and in their prime, fat and naked on the cover of ESPN Magazine, fat people still have a visibility issue. We are not seen to be athletic. Fat people everywhere, every day, have to battle against the assumption that our large size has come from laziness, a lack of self-esteem, poor food choices, and a lack of exercise. We are missing something fundamental about ourselves or we wouldn’t be fat.

But Vince Wilfork and Prince Fielder and Jessamyn Stanley are just three small examples of how wrong that is.

Let’s not get it twisted, though. Just because they are athletes and fat doesn’t make them any more worthy as people than people who are not athletic and fat. Or not healthy and fat. Athleticism and health and fitness are not the price of admission for being treated with the same courtesy and dignity of everyone else.

It is beyond time to start checking your assumptions about people based on their size. If you’re surprised that a fat person is doing something you didn’t think they could do, ask yourself where that assumption came from. If you assume that a fat person at the gym or out enjoying some kind of physical activity is trying to lose weight, ask yourself where that assumption came from. And if you feel compelled to congratulate that person or give them encouragement, stop and ask yourself why (and then don’t).

I’m not sure how many different ways I have to say it, but it clearly needs to be said over and over. Fat people are people and we can do anything, from being a five-time NFL Pro Bowler to being a singer and pop/hip hop/funk music star to being a person walking down the street with a cup of coffee. We’re here and we exist in all facets of life. And we are amazing.

When Fat People Don't Die Like You Said They Would

Most of the interactions that fat people have with healthcare professionals can be boiled down to “Lose weight or you’re going to DIE!”

Guess what? We’re all going to die one day, fat or thin or in between. What the doctors and nurses and other providers mean, of course, is that you are going to die prematurely based on your given life expectancy for your socioeconomic class and region (which we can debate the merits of at another time).

Except now there’s evidence that some fat might actually provide protection against disease and not cause premature death at all… say WHAAAAAAAAT?

Researchers are calling it the “obesity paradox,” which is a bullshit name for the antithesis of a bullshit epidemic that doesn’t exist, but I’ll allow it. At its core, the so-called paradox is that some extra weight—individuals in the overweight or mildly obese BMI categories—offers a protective benefit against a list of diseases including (but not limited to) pneumonia, cancer, burns, heart disease, stroke, and hypertension.

All of this is from an article in Quartz about the “obesity paradox.” It should come as no surprise that researcher after researcher has tried to deny these findings after data from over 100 studies and over 3 million people had been incorporated. First they attacked the data. When nothing wrong could be found there, they attacked the patient populations.

The upshot is, no one can make the “paradox” go away. No matter how they crunch the data or reconfigure the patient groups, the evidence is still there.

So how come healthcare professionals still stigmatize and shame fat people? Shouldn’t this mean that fat people are treated the same or even better than thin people who statistically will have worse outcomes in these areas?

No, of course not. That’d be ridiculous. It’d run counter to decades of fat bias and diet industry conditioning that thin is always healthy and fat is always unhealthy.

Source: https://qz.com/550527/obesity-paradox-scientists-now-think-that-being-overweight-is-sometimes-good-for-your-health/

According to the article, even the researchers whose work helped to identify the paradox don’t know what it means and do not back away from recommendations that fat people should lose weight to be healthy. The article concludes that HAES seems to be the best way forward and that research has shown that a HAES approach (opposed to a weight-loss approach) “…leads to lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and other metabolic markers.”

But the idea that a fat body can be healthy and actually be protected from poor outcomes from disease is such an anathema that it seems like people can’t wrap their heads around it. The article stops short of examining why that is. My guess is money related to the diet industry (ie, being paid for their research by the diet industry or sponsored as key opinion leaders by the diet industry), internalized fat phobia, and learned fat bias.

The article also does not give critical information on the debunking of BMI and the fact that it never was an indicator of health. So even the basis of the research on this paradox is pretty much bullshit. But the good news for us is that weight cannot and should not be used as a measure of our worth or our health. Even the scientists don’t know what it all means.