Some Fat Facts

Why is there a fat acceptance movement and what is the information put forth by its proponents to justify our message? For today, I just want to focus on the high level of fat self-hate and fat fear that exists in our culture.

A woman named Lindsay, who writes the blog BABble (http://babble.sneakykitty.com/), recently posted statistics she gathered from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and the National Eating Disorders Association. This data shows just how virulent self-loathing based on size has become, particularly among the young, and the lengths to which people will go to avoid or try to get rid of fat.

Nobody is suggesting that people should go out of their way to become fat, but the facts show that desperate attempts to live up to a virtually non-existent thin ideal is much more damaging to good health than being fat per se. Accordingly, note the following:

From Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty:
* Over 50% of women say their body disgusts them (Dove Internal Study, 2002)
* The body fat of models and actresses portrayed in the media is at least 10% less than that of healthy women (British Medical Association, 2000)
* 6 out of 10 girls think they’d “be happier if they were thinner” (UK Teen Body Image Survey, January 2004)
* While only 19% of teenage girls are “overweight,” 67% think they “need to lose weight” (UK Teen Body Image Survey, January 2004)

From the National Eating Disorders Association:
* Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives (Neumark-Sztainer, 2005).
* Girls who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as girls who don’t diet (Neumark-Sztainer, 2005).
* 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner (Collins, 1991).
* 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat (Mellin et al., 1991).
* The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds.
* Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women (Smolak, 1996).
* 46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets, and 82% of their families are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets (Gustafson-Larson & Terry, 1992).
* 91% of women recently surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting; 22% dieted “often” or “always” (Kurth et al., 1995).
* 95% of all dieters will regain their lost weight in 1-5 years (Grodstein, et al., 1996).
* 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full-syndrome eating disorders (Shisslak & Crago, 1995).
* 25% of American men and 45% of American women are on a diet on any given day (Smolak, 1996).
* Americans spend over $40 billion on dieting and diet-related products each year (Smolak, 1996).

Not surprisingly, people who actually are fat are treated disgracefully in this climate: reviled, scorned, belittled, ridiculed, discriminated against, discounted and disrespected. Before you dismiss the concept of fat acceptance, consider the harm that prevailing values are doing to the fat and non-fat alike.

And, those of you who pride yourselves on not being taken in by the propaganda of decadent consumerism, ask yourselves this: Isn’t it possible that those who profit from the $40 billion diet industry have a vested interest in making everyone feel inadequate, insecure, unworthy and unacceptable, even if doing so requires deceit and misinformation -- not to mention constant reinforcement through advertising, marketing and the funding of "scientific studies"?

Finally, I ask women who consider themselves intelligent, liberated, self-actualized persons: Don’t you think it’s a little odd that the more that women successfully establish themselves in business, government and equitable interpersonal relationships, the more we are told to get thinner and thinner? Is it possible that a size zero is a metaphor for reducing women to nothing? Does it make sense to allow fat to be the kryptonite pressed against us to strip us of our power?

Just asking.