Newsclips and quotes [I got your issues right here]

[Via Showbiz Spy via Jezebel]-"We all have the same issues. Every woman. It's thighs, butt, arms, muffintops. All those fun things, we all have the same issues." — Heidi Klum.

Except, not every woman counts those as 'issues'. Feeding ourselves and our dependents; physical security; finding and keeping a job; getting equal pay for equal work on that job; not being sexually harassed on that job; reproductive rights and autonomy; affordable, accessible health care provided by professionals who see us, hear us, value our input and well-being. I could go on and on about the things that concern millions of women everywhere, and readers can add several more. Thighs, butts and arms - those are body parts*. Not issues.

*ETA: And for some of us, the above issues are influenced by the disabilities with which we live, yunno, speaking of body 'issues'.

The version of your body currently running is not bedroom compatible

My gym is running some kind of 6-week body makeover butt blast boot camp bangarang. That's not what it's really called but you get the idea. It's especially for women. It says so on the flier. Also on the flier, central to the message and in large red type, are words to the effect of:

GET A BEDROOM BODY!

Now, the gym runs these kinds of things all the time, in which they propose to bulk you up or whittle you down or generally bring you up to code in a specified time period. This is the first one I've seen geared specifically to women. And it's also the first one I've seen that seeks to gently encourage participation by reminding people women that they will have to get naked for someone's enjoyment, and for the sake of that other party, they'd better get their asses in gear. Or no man one will want to sleep with them. And then what would their lives become? Why else would you want to get in shape anyway, womanperson? For sport? For functional strength? For your own damn self? Stop speaking nonsenses!

Presumably, men don't need bedroom bodies*. Their fitness activities are in pursuit of more lofty ends. Hunting! Fighting! Watching cricket with their shirts off! And since women have to sleep with them anyway (everyone in this hetero-normative dreamscape is 'straight', ok? Just play along), there is no minimum aesthetic requirement involved for men.

Also what we've learnt so far is that a "bedroom body" is of a particular type produced in a gym or other exercise situation. Somebody should tell that to the bodies everywhere that are at this moment getting into some pretty enjoyable situations in their bedrooms, garages and crawlspaces right now, and have no intention of changing their bodies in order to continue doing so. If this describes you, you are hereby advised to cease and desist, until such time as we have certified that you possess the appropriate, bedroom-approved body.

It's true, I suppose, that "a bedroom body" could mean something more all-encompassing: it could simply mean a fit body of any size and shape that allows you to - as a friend of mine likes to put it - spin on your headtop during sex. But then, nobody's asking a man to spin on his headtop. I guess he and his non-bedroom body can just lay there.

And what annoys me most about this stupid poster - when I have to see it every single morning because it is affixed to the changing room door at my eye level - is that it does not reflect what I always thought were the philosophy and behaviours of the staff at this gym. They've always seemed very inclusive about women in sport, women gaining strength just because they feel like it. They've always seemed to have a pretty open "we can all do anything we want" mentality, inclusive of men, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, everyone. But now, because they are letting this stupid poster speak for them, I have to acknowledge that somewhere, someone in this establishment either does not get it, does not think, or does not care. And since I spend some time there, time that I otherwise enjoy, that's a bit of a downer. Still, always one who's eager (w00t!) to embrace the all too familiar "humourless" tag, here I go tomorrow morning. To ask what that mess there on the changing room door is all about.

*I asked if there was a similar poster on the inside of the men's changing room, and was told 'no' by a jolly fellow who is also a member, and who added, "darling, any man that got a body, it ready for the bedroom."

The curious case of Not Meaning Anything By It

I live in a land where people think it's perfectly acceptable to say whatever they want. If you gain weight, or lose weight, or cut your hair, or let it grow, or grow paler, or grow darker, all these things are worthy of comment. And along with the comment comes a healthy serving of judgment. The judgment says a lot about who we are. When I was growing up, and even now, sometimes, getting darker was not cool: "Oh...you get dark! You been in the sun? [contemptuous snarl]" Well yes, I've been in the sun. We only get about 702 days of sunshine a year and I'm 8 years old. My life is in fact dedicated to being in the sun. But of course, voluntarily getting darker was not something that people understood, because for a lot of them, dark was less attractive. The same was true of short or natural hair, and an aunt once remarked with disapproval when my sister grew her natural hair out: "oh...('oh' in this context is usually a sign of impending disapproval)...you leaving the hair hard!" I am at once totally baffled by and in complete understanding of this kind of sentiment. I get that she meant "oh you have ceased to chemically process your hair", but implicit in that statement is the notion that processed - rather than natural - hair is the default (which by definition cannot be true), that unprocessed hair is 'hard' and therefore bad, and that 'hard' hair is to be avoided at all costs.

In our nicknaming, we go a step further. We not only comment on some aspect of a person's physical appearance, but we brand them accordingly: we make it the sum of who they are. So a person will be Fat Man, Short Woman, Tallies, Hopalong (yes, I'm referring to a person with one leg; yes, I'm horrified that some people seem not to see the problem there), Slims or Bones or Matchstick.

And on we go: commenting on people's appearance and habits, expressing unsolicited desires and attraction, bullying people as a pastime, and generally blabbing here there and yonder about things on which we have no business remarking. It gets tiresome, but what's more tiresome to me is the defense or dismissal of this habit with the words: "Well I/he/she/they didn't mean anything by it." This expression is a mystery: it's that all-encompassing defense which it seems is supposed to allow you to let any mess fall out of your mouth without taking responsibility for it. It's akin to "it's just my opinion" and a close neighbour of "I'm just saying". There's this notion that because an idea was spawned somewhere in the recesses of your brain, albeit by a process that remains unclear, it is worthy of utterance. And not only do you have the right to share it (which you probably do, which doesn't mean you should), but we have the obligation to 'respect your opinion' merely by virtue of the fact that it's your opinion. This is false. If your opinion is ill-conceived or bigoted or just plain nonsense, I don't have to respect it. And further, if you share it with me, and I think it nonsense, be prepared to hear about it, if I'm in the mood to let you know. You don't get to hide behind "it's just my opinion" as a license to talk out the side of your neck and not have to defend it.

Not meaning anything by it is a similar animal. What am I supposed to do with this information? That you didn't mean anything by it? You formed a sentence, so you meant something. You used words, which carry meaning, and so there was something that you hoped to convey. Perhaps you're saying that you didn't mean to upset me, or to start a fight. This might be true. But what you're really saying there is "I wanted to say whatever I pleased and leave you with the responsibility of not getting upset or challenging me." Or maybe you're so used to certain patterns of conversation that you just automatically discharged some nonsense without thinking about what it might mean for the other person. And if that's the case: stop it. Or finally, maybe you had a genuine foot-in-mouth moment. I've had those. They're hideous things. But "I didn't mean anything by it" is not of any comfort in those situations either. Because it's so overused, it's a bit of a non-statement now. If the person registers offense (or even if they didn't, depending on how brave you're feeling), just say sorry, you used the wrong words, and say what you really meant. Because you did mean something. Otherwise, why was your mouth open?

Now, there's been a lot of talk recently about what it means to be offended, and whether it is even desirable to avoid offending people, and it's a worthwhile discussion, because people do claim offense at everything. It's now a strategy; it's about manipulation. In the theater of the absurd that is the US Tea Party movement, for example, becoming offended is the new method by which to deflect responsibility: "How dare you call me a racist? I'm offended by the implication!" The ensuing backlash means that no one cares any more. Forget about not meaning anything by it, people are now starting to feel that if they can cause you personal injury on a lark, that means they're edgy and interesting, possess biting wit and are not afraid of being 'real'. That is all an illusion. The fact is, you're just an a$*hole. For me, the point of demarcation lies in the following: you don't have a right to not be offended, especially if you're the type to be offended by the skirt length of a stranger on the bus. But you do have a right to be free from discrimination and dehumanization by word and action. I tend to feel that words are action. They can call all kinds of things into being. They should be operated with care.

Weight-loss surgery for all!

Dr. Super is loving this.

Usually reserved for the most obese people, weight-loss surgery is unlikely to be a last-ditch option much longer. Technological advancements are turning it into a one-hour, incisionless procedure -- making it more attractive to moderately overweight adults [...]; overweight and obese teenagers; and normal-weight people with difficult-to-control diabetes. Several new procedures are already in human clinical trials.

I think we're all getting a little carried away and assuming that just because a procedure is easy to accomplish, its effects are also easy to live with after the fact. As many have discovered, and as this same article notes, even though the already low morbidity rates for this type of procedure continue to decline and operation recovery times become shorter, patients still have to contend with medium- to long-term problems, including "nutritional deficiencies, diarrhea, regurgitation and bowel obstructions."

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 19% of patients experience dumping syndrome, which is involuntary vomiting or defecation. Complication rates involving ulcers, wound problems, hemorrhage, deep-vein thrombosis, heart attacks and strokes range from 2.4% to 0.1%.

And where do we draw the line regarding preemptive surgery? One surgeon notes that "[p]eople 50 pounds overweight are the ones we should treat, before the problem gets worse," but isn't that number quite arbitrary? Unless we ascertain that at 50 lbs overweight (as opposed to 40 or 30), people start to see marked deteriorations in their overall health (in fact, we've been told that every 10 lbs packs its own share of doom), then the benchmark at which surgery becomes an option can arguably continue to shift downwards.

I suppose weight-loss surgery is now poised to enter the realm of cosmetic procedures, where if people opt to risk their lives and health in order to try and feel better about themselves, then they have that right. The rub lies in the fact that most elective cosmetic surgery is not covered by the majority of insurance plans or universal health care systems. And so it will be interesting to see - especially in the context of the raging US health care debate - how this particular argument evolves.

Happy *burp* Independence Day (Conversations in holiday eating)

It's Independence Day in Barbados - 43 years since we told England "thanks for the slavery and that but we can take it from here." I hadn't spent an Independence Day in Barbados for some time, before now, but it's one of my favourite weekends of the year, in part because of the conkies, which might possibly be the best food in the Western Hemisphere (next to steamed pudding and sweet bread). This morning, reading the news, I saw that when asked about Kate Moss's statement that "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", Rihanna responded "I love food because I'm from Barbados." And I thought: what a simple and beautiful truth lies in that statement. The 'because' is the real poetry there. Simple cause and effect: since I am from Barbados, I love food. My love for food is based on my geographical provenance. No need for further examination. It's science.

And it's pretty accurate. Holidays and food go hand in hand in lots of places. But for many of us here, eating is an event. I've been planning activities with friends and colleagues, and after we've planned the menu and assigned responsibility for preparing the various items, the conversation has been known to go like this:

Me: So we have all the food and drinks sorted. What else will we do?
Friend 1: And the cups and ice? And the Banks? (Because apparently Banks beer is crucial enough not to count as a drink, and to merit a separate discussion point.)
Me: And the cups and ice and Banks. What else will we do?
Friend 2: How you mean?
Me: Well we can't eat all day.
Friend 1: *blink*
Friend 2: I don't understand.
Me: Well, we'll get there, we'll spread the blankets, unpack the food, eat it...
Friend 1: People will drink, talk, fall asleep, wake up, eat again, finish the drinks, eat the leftovers on the way to the cars and go home. Seriously...how long have you been away?

And of course it has changed a bit over the years. My generation and subsequent ones are pretty active. We'll set up some stumps for cricket and play paddle ball and volleyball at the beach, but whenever I'm at a daytime holiday event with people of all ages, the food is definitely the star. And it's a challenge if you have certain food preferences.

Say my plate has some rice, a flying fish and fried plantain:

Guy I've seen twice in my entire life: Why aren't you eating?
1st Stranger: You trying to reduce?
2nd stranger, wandering in: She trying to reduce?! Reduce where? Girl you big as a mosquito. (Note, I'm considerably larger than a mosquito.) Eat some food.
Me: I'm not trying to lose weight. This is enough food for me right now.
Twice-seen guy: Oh you sick?
Me: No. This is what I want now. I'll have more later.
Stares from all 3
3rd stranger, wandering over: That is all the food you want?
Twice-seen guy: She trying to reduce.
Pitiful glances from all.

Or, say my plate has a variety of foods but no meat:

Neighbour: Why aren't you eating? (You'll notice there's a very clear definition of eating that is more than just 'ingesting a food item and swallowing')
Me: I have food. All that's left is meat and I don't eat that so...
Neighbour: Oh you don't eat pork! There's lamb and chicken.
Me: No I mean meat. And poultry. And shellfish.
By 'shellfish', I'm mumbling and ashamed.
Neighbour, confused: Oh. There's a lasagna there. That has vegetables.
Me, trying to disappear: Right. That's beef. I'm alright, though. This is enough. Thanks.
Neighbour, calling in reinforcements: She says she doesn't eat meat. No meat in that soup, right?
Stranger: No. Only some pigtail.
Me: Right. That's um...from a pig. But you know, I'm good here. I have plenty.
Both look at my plate disapprovingly.
Stranger, calling in more reinforcements: Straw! What here doesn't have in meat?
Straw, also a stranger, walking over: Ahm. I ain sure. Eat some chicken!
I think he believes that if he says it with enthusiasm, I'll be spontaneously convinced to eat chicken.
Me: No, thanks.
Straw: Eat li'l piece. It can't kill you.
Straw is not even in the vicinity of the point.
Me, backing away lest I be force-fed some lamb stew: I have plenty, though. Seriously. Thanks.
Pitiful glances from all.

Of course, we're a modern society, for what that's worth, and we have our fitness competitions and fashion industry and a desire to be thin that is not pervasive, but exists. (We also, for the record, have a non-negligible vegetarian population, so I never understand why so many people act as if non meat eaters are of some kind of cult.) Fat people are still teased, as are thin people. But in general, the thin ideal is a lot less thin than it is in other places. It's more a kind of medium-sized ideal. Still, this type of food philosophy, though seeming quite food- and body-positive in some ways, is quite intolerant in others. It assumes that it cannot create disordered eating, and so does not really allow for its existence in the way food is discussed and treated among groups of people. That assumption is of course incorrect, and I think we're on our way to realizing that.

But there's a certain level of comfort that we have with food, and a pride in creating it that historically comes from doing interesting, innovative things with very little, laboriously-, locally-grown food. That pride is deliciously experienced around Independence Day, and in honour of this day, I give you the afore-mentioned greatest food of the Western Hemisphere. The Conkie.

Ingredients:
2 cups corn flour
1/2 cup flour
3/4 lb finely grated pumpkin
6 oz margarine/shortening melted
1/2 lb sweet potato
3 cups grated coconut
1 tsp salt
4 oz raisins (optional)
3/4 lb brown sugar
1 cup whole milk
1 tsp spice
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp almond essence
Banana, Plantain or Fig leaves (singed over fire)*

*They'll say you can use wax or foil paper if you have no banana leaves, but They lie. No, you can. But you shouldn't. They simply won't taste the same.

Banana leaves are used to wrap the conkie mixture, so you need leaves that aren't shredded. Strip leaves from stalk with a sharp knife. Leaves are very delicate and tear easily. To use them in your recipe, you must make them pliable by briefly singeing them over an open flame. If your leaves start to curl up, that means they've been on the flame too long. If your leaves spontaneously combust, that means you're using old, dried up leaves. So, you know, don't do that. Use green leaves.

Tear singed leaves into individual squares for wrapping your conkies. The standard size square is 8" x 8", but they can be bigger depending on how big you want your conkies to be. Cut the leaves into desired pieces.


• Combine grated coconut, sweet potato & pumpkin.
• Mix in sugar, spices, flour, corn flour, salt and raisins.
• Add milk, margarine and almond essence.
• Mix ingredients well. Mixture should be thick and drop slowly from a spoon.







• Place 2 to 3 heaping tablespoons in the centre of each banana leaf square.
• Fold the banana leaf neatly around the mixture. Be careful not to tear the leaf, or the mixture will leak.




•Steam conkies over rack of boiling water in a large saucepan or steamer until firm to the touch.









And vIola! Here's your unwrapped conkie goodness:













These lovelies freeze very well. My mother once made them on Independence weekend and froze me a batch until I came home in May the following year. I don't think I did any grocery shopping that entire first week I was back.

Happy Independence Day.

Recipe and photos adapted from www.justbajan.com

Serena has a(n expensive) moment

I was just about to post my entry about Melanie Oudin and ask why the small, blonde White tennis player has to be dubbed America's sweetheart when the Williams sisters fit most of the underdog profile ascribed to Oudin, except of course they are decidedly neither small, blonde nor White. So of course they won't be cast as America's anything, not when a non-negligible percentage of America is right now marching in the streets intent on showcasing themselves as the real America - you know, the part that's not brown. I was all set to talk about how the reason it's so easy to paint Oudin as a women's hero and laud her skill as unprecedented is that from the time the Williams sisters began to dominate women's tennis, many commentators didn't even see them as women's tennis heroes, because they hardly saw them as women. They dismissed a major part of their game as the natural result of mass and brawn - that thing Black athletes have naturally, rather than skill, which is what White athletes have. And many even began to tire of their domination on that basis: there go the Williams sisters again, beating all the regular people with their muscles and whatnot. It just isn't right!

(I was also interested in why any woman in sport has to be a sweetheart of any kind, and why we need to minimize women's strength and athleticism in favour of their 'more feminine attributes', as if it's ok that they run around and sweat and get all dirty, because behind it all, they're really little girls, so all is right with the universe.)

And then I saw Serena's outburst in her semi-final match against Kim Clijsters - the one that cost her the match - and I thought "well, this is not great." Because I thought that unfortunately, even though Williams has spent years in the game as an even-tempered sportswoman, gracious in defeat and downright charming in interviews, people are going to say "Well here comes the Compton now. It was only a matter of time." Am I cynical? Definitely. Am I wrong? Probably not. John McEnroe spent most of his career snarling at officials and beating his racquet to dust, and it became something of a joke: "oh that's just John!" But there's much less space for a woman to have an indecorous outburst, and a Black woman? Forget it. As we speak, I'm searching for match footage of spectators diving for cover or calling 911.

All accounts of Serena's conduct - that she threatened "I swear to God I'm [expletive] going to take this ... ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat" - suggest that she was completely out of order. If there were ever a time a player should suffer a point penalty for verbal abuse, I'd say this would be it. She lost her head, she threatened an official, and was rightly punished. It remains to be seen whether further punishment will follow, a possibility which would certainly stimulate argument over whether there's more behind the treatment of this incident than unsportswomanlike conduct, and whether the reaction would be the same if Serena happened to look different and/or didn't enjoy the status she does within the women's game. Serena herself isn't that apologetic, and seems eager to move on. I hope it's that simple, but I won't be surprised if it's not.

You're fat because your chicken breast is bigger than your fist

If you watch The Biggest Loser, you know that it is essentially a weight loss competition where overweight people form teams to see who can lose the most weight collectively. Each week, whoever has lost the least as a percentage of her total body weight is eligible to be sent home. By the end, one person will have been declared the biggest loser, and will receive a $250 000 prize (in the UK it's £10 000. We can't catch a break) amid much fanfare and confetti. Sound potentially problematic? Well no kidding.

The contestants exercise for hours and hours every day on a restricted-calorie diet. So clearly the show is just about entertainment for its viewers, since this lifestyle is not practical for anyone outisde the show who's not a professional athlete, a member of the Armed Forces or from the planet Krypton. (They do have a Biggest Loser Club, though, which is essentially a less psychotic, online diet and exercise support plan geared toward weight loss, and based on the show.) I've watched a couple episodes of the US version, and even though I have several issues with almost everything about the show's premise and execution, I at least found the trainers/team leaders entertaining.

Celebrity ubertrainers (or should that be ubercelebrity trainers? Whatever. They're uber) Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper each take a team through daily workouts and help drive their success. Jillian is your typical, tough taskmaster, who often appears bewildered and victimized when progress does not occur as expected; while Bob is a positive-thinking, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed sort who I'm almost positive is being dosed with happy pills without his knowledge. He seems to think that fat people are just broken thin people. And doggone it if he ain't gonna fix 'em. I'll admit: I've often caught myself liking Bob despite myself and all the things wrong with his apparent philosophy. He's just so earnest.

The UK version is decidedly worse. Because it features all the things wrong with the show - the unrealistic, stress-inducing workout regimen; the weight-loss as competition dynamic; the stripping down of contestants for weigh-ins as if they're livestock at market, and as if to remind us that they are in fact huge and have the rolls to prove it, in case we'd forgotten - but has none of the entertainment factor. Yes, I acknowledge the problem with this statement: why do I want to be entertained by the show if I concede that the entire thing is a mess? I don't. I've only watched it a handful of times in order to be able to make an informed judgement. But I notice that the UK version has not one redeeming factor: the trainers - whose personalities are meant to be at least interesting enough that their interaction with the contestants creates some intrigue - are dull as grass.

One also gets the impression that the UK producers were aiming to recreate a similar match-up to that of the US version: one of the trainers is a tough, non-bullshit-having woman, and the other is a focused (but milder-mannered?) man. Both try too hard. And the result is a big pile of snore.
But today, my second time watching the show, there were some fireworks, and by 'fireworks' I mean extra-loud yelling, dramatic camera shots and plenty food- and fat-shaming. Trainer Angie stops by the house for a surprise lunch inspection. Don't you hate when that happens? She walks in to find Jennifer, the mum in the mother-daughter team above (contestants are paired up in this series), eating chicken breast she had just prepared. Angie then begins to yell at Jennifer, in front of everyone including Jennifer's daughter Sadie, about the fact that there are no carbs or vegetables on the plate, and that she is eating more than a single portion of chicken. She also belittles her for having had steak the night before. While Angie stands there bellowing, pointing at the offending meal, flailing about and otherwise losing her sh*t over this unforgivable food transgression, Jennifer sits there looking morose, embarrassed, and most of all, hungry. Sadie, who is directly next to her, tries to pull it together for the both of them by agreeing to eat some spinach.

The segment is interspersed with video clips of the other contestants remarking that Jennifer knows she's eating too much, and that they've tried to speak to her about it. The implication is that the only thing that will get through to her is a good old verbal flogging delivered by Angie who, I'm sorry, seems to have no idea how to do the tough love thing, if it is even appropriate here.

I suppose none of this should be surprising, given the premise of the show: let's haul some fatties in here and beat them into shape. But I admit that I was alarmed by the abuse this woman was forced to suffer. First, as the slowest loser to date, apparently, Jennifer was trying to accelerate her weight loss by eating low-carb. Ill-advised though this may be, it does indicate a level of effort and an unwillingness to once again be in the spotlight as the weight-loss failure. Do they expect to throw these people into a competition under extreme physical and psychological conditions and have no bad/compulsive habits develop? I'd be more surprised if they didn't all end up with patterns of disordered eating.

Second, the woman is obviously hongray! During the entire dressing down, she sat there staring longingly at her delicious chicken breast that was going cold and was probably now covered in spittle and hate. And it isn't necessarily because she's greedy, as she was forced to mutter. It's because a body her size probably can't subsist on the fist-sized portion measure that Angie was waving in her face. That's not to say that it's impossible to stick to the diet and lose weight. Clearly it's not: almost everyone on the show loses. But they're not all the same person. Not everyone can change their bodies by sheer force of will. Hunger is not a figment of the imagination, and it won't be exorcised by another hour on the treadmill.

Sadie was worried that after the embarrassing talking-to, her mother would tell Angie where to shove her fist(-sized portion) and give up. And I would think that's a very real concern with anyone who's struggling to lose weight. This show already makes no secret of its extreme methods of trying to get all bodies to look and behave the same. Now they've added express public humiliation to the mix. I don't think the contestants are the only 'losers' here.

Dr. Super, the obesity slayer

The Hospital is a Channel 4 programme which questions whether the NHS is "being asked to pick up the pieces of an increasingly self-destructive society". The show interviews consultants, surgeons, nurses and midwives about the problems they face in treating illnesses and their symptoms that we have, they seem to suggest, brought on ourselves.

Last night's episode was a re-airing of the final in the series, and examined "the cost of Britain's increasingly obese teens."

At Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, younger and younger patients are being referred for help in tackling their weight and, increasingly, they are asking for a gastric band.

While doctors and dieticians see the £6,000 operation as a last resort, some patients seek them as an 'easy' solution to their weight problem. But NHS weight management clinics can only help those who help themselves, and health professionals are hampered by young patients who don't tell them the truth about what they are eating.

Now, while it might be useful and interesting to examine health care provision from the point of view of the providers and the challenges they face, I have trouble understanding how health professionals are the ones 'hampered' by unsuccessful treatment. Ultimately, it's the patients who have to suffer the effects of failed care, even if, as the show suggests, it's their own fault for lying. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of how problematic I found this show.

The programme was set up as a look at two different approaches to NHS-assisted weight loss. They interviewed professionals at the weight management clinic who are responsible for referring patients for the gastric band surgery, if they find it is indicated. If they do not so find - if they think the patient's lifestyle doesn't support it, or that he might see results from a less drastic method, they support the patient in a programme of weight loss through diet and exercise. The other angle was an interview with Dr. Paul Super, a surgeon who seems to have a bit of a reputation for churning out gastric band surgeries by the hundreds each year. His philosophy seems to be that obesity is expensive and ugly, and that all fat people should just have a gastric band operation so they could stop costing the NHS money and just stop being unhealthy and unattractive. This man was a real gem. I could barely take my eyes off him.

The staff at the Center, though earnest, weren't exactly writing any journals with their methods. They did explore the patients' psychological histories and relationships in order to create a more complete picture than "you're fat because you eat too much", but once they had gained that information, I'm not sure they quite knew what to do with it. In at least one case, where they discovered the woman had started binge eating after her family had been abandoned by their father, they kept checking on her progress with that relationship as well as with her diet and exercise; and the mere fact that they seemed to care and were willing to talk about it rather than simply scold her for overeating appeared at least in the short term to help motivate her in her efforts.

But in general, the system seemed to be that they would either (a) recommend the surgery and then send the patients home to lose some of the weight first, through diet and exercise; or (b) not recommend the surgery and send the patients home to lose weight through diet and exercise. And since most fat people have tried exactly that a gazillion times before, the only difference here is that now they get to show up at this clinic every few weeks to be 'assessed'. Still, if a patient doesn't dread these appointments, but instead finds the doctor understanding and the environment reasonably stress-free, then I suppose it's better than the alternative. And a couple of the doctors seemed to really want to be warm and understanding. So that was something.

Dr. Super, on the other hand, the belly-reducing surgeon extraordinaire, was - in short - a real a*shole, and really did no favours for the 'surgeons are jerks' stereotype. Below are some of the many awesome Dr. Super philosophies on fat people and their really fat fatness.

Back, beige food!
Between surgeries, the doctor stops for his regular lunch of a can of tuna - it's convenient, tastes great, and has no carbs. Carbs are evil, you see, and are just hiding in the shadows waiting to make you fat. But you can detect them and foil their plan. How? Easy. They're all beige!

Listen to this guy.

So no pasta, rice or potatoes. Because they're beige. But you don't get beige meat, so that's fine. Or beige fish, so we can eat...wait....um...

And notice how he shames his own colleagues about eating crisps, sneering at them and taking their food so he can prove what undisciplined slobs they are. "That's right...go on eating your crisps (you big fattie)!" How much fun must this man be to live with? Thankfully, his colleague seems not to give a crap about him and his colour-coded diet. But this is certainly not a healthy approach to food for a doctor who focuses on nutrition to have, outlawing an entire food group and advocating a can of tuna for lunch. Now there's no denying that some food is not generally healthy if we consume too much of it. I'm no fan of a steady diet of processed junk in crinkly bags. But there is nothing wrong with rice and potatoes, as long as you don't first deep-fry them and then coat them in equal layers of lard and white chocolate. And all food can be consumed as part of a healthful diet. It's the categorization of some foods as good and others as bad that leads some to diet-binge cycles. I dare say Dr. Super has issues with food.

They're fat AND they lie
Another part of the programme that struck me - in fact this caught my attention in the clip advertising the show - was the disgust with which Dr. Super condemned patients for lying about their diet. This is not a direct quote, but he sneers something to the effect of: "They'll try to convince me that they only have a salad for lunch. They lie! But the scales never lie." One of the patients at the weight management clinic acknowledged that when she first saw a doctor there, she did lie, because she was embarrassed about the volume and nature of the food she consumed. And this is to be expected. But eventually, she felt safe and encouraged enough by her doctor to be honest in her journals. The doctors there realize that even this is a process, and allow this trust to evolve naturally. Not Dr. Super. He just snickers and hauls the fattie onto the scale so he can yell "Salad my ass! Look! You weigh a tonne!"

"Look how it wiggles!"
Following Dr. Super into surgery, we watch as he jiggles the belly of an anaesthetized patient and jokes to his colleagues that he can feel the ribs. You see, it's funny, because he can't possibly feel ribs in such a big, disgusting mass of flesh. See? Lawl?

The glaring absence in this piece is the lack of focus of both Dr. Super and the producers on the possible risks of the surgery. The surgeon seems to believe that this method is your proverbial magic pill, and actually says that all fat, young people should have it. Apart from filming one of the subjects after she has been fitted with the band and has some initial discomfort, and then acknowledging that her weight loss occurs at the same rate as another woman who opted for diet and exercise alone, the procedure is not presented as the life-altering decision that it is.

Later, fatties. I'm outie
At the end of the show, our lovable surgeon is leaning up against a wall in his hospital, and a large woman passes by escorted by two doctors. He has just been talking about when surgery doesn't work, and as she passes by, he snickers at the still fat woman and says, "That was one of mine. Life goes on," and lopes off into the sunset. And the sad lesson is, even our noble hero can't wrangle all the fatties. But he's going to keep on trying.

Fatties stay home!

The ever classy Ryanair, in a move possibly more problematic than United Airlines' recent announcement that it may boot obese passengers from full flights and charge them for a first class or second seat, is proposing a fat tax for obese passengers.

Not content with plans to scrap check-in desks, charge passengers for using toilets and clobber customers with a £30 charge if their duty free won't fit into their hand luggage, Ryanair has hit on a new scheme for increasing revenue: a so-called fat tax for overweight travellers.

In what appears as much a ruse to gain publicity as a serious policy, the Irish-based budget carrier said today it would impose an as yet undecided extra levy on passengers who weigh considerably more than average.

The charge, which could fall foul of discrimination laws before it ever takes effect, was proposed following a poll of passengers on the airline's website. It attracted more votes than other ideas, including a €1 levy to use onboard toilet paper, which would have the face of the airline's famously pugnacious chief executive, Michael O'Leary, printed on it. The fat tax gathered nearly a third of all the votes.

The airline now plans to poll passengers on how the charge should be calculated, with ideas including a per-kilo levy for all men weighing more than 130kg (20 stone) and women more than 100kg, or a fixed penalty if a passenger's waist touches both neighbouring armrests at the same time.

The United policy is controversial in part because it targets a group of people that is easy to target, because being overweight is seen as the result of a lazy, undisciplined, gluttonous lifestyle, and the penalizing of overweight people for their indolence enjoys tacit acceptance among many members of the public. What appears as a simple case of "well if they take up more space let them pay more" is far more complex, since other dimensions or manifestations of 'largeness' are not equally treated. I fly often, and have never been inconvenienced by a person spilling into my seat because of fat hips or a large belly. I have many times, however, been shoved around by a person who did not appear fat and who managed to buckle his seatbelt, but had such a large back and shoulders, he was occupying his seat and half of mine.

And this is not the only case where it might be fair to question how much of the responsibility is the passenger's and how much is the airline's to provide a conveyance that ensures the comfort of all its passengers. At some point when I wasn't looking, it became my problem that my reclined seat would inconvenience a tall passenger behind me. So I am now expected to spend an 8-hour flight bolt upright because a passenger - who is their responsibility, not mine - cannot fit into the standard space afforded when the seatback before him is reclined. Surely it is the airline's responsibility to seat us both comfortably. Why isn't the tall person behind me being forced into first class or a second seat at an additional price? Or why am I not being asked to pay a premium for a reclinable seat, since my back cannot sustain extended periods of sitting upright? There are other groups of people who require more space; not just those with broad, fat midsections (because fat can be distributed differently so as to allow Person 1, who weighs the same as Person 2 but carries it in other parts of the body, to be exempt from this penalty depending on how fatness is measured).

But Ryanair is not even pretending that this is about the comfort and safety of other passengers. (Well they are pretending but) in the context of the cost-saving idea poll, it's clear that this is merely another in a series of arrogant and idiotic cost-cutting measures. What they are proposing is to possibly weigh passengers and then charge them for each kilo they exceed some predetermined standard weight. As the article acknowledges, this is likely to be shot down under discrimination legislature, but I find it mortifying that a company would even suggest something so absurd, and worse, that the public would endorse it. I'm sure those voters who supported the measure are going to love being made to step onto a scale to see whether they are within passenger weight guidelines, while friends, family and strangers look on. Even as a publicity ruse, this policy is chock full of boo and hiss.

And Ryanair's gem of a spokesperson, Stephen McNamara, also had this to say:

"These charges, if introduced, might also act as an incentive to some of our very large passengers to lose a little weight and hopefully feel a little lighter and healthier."

Eureka! Why didn't we think of this before? Discrimination and humiliation are surefire ways to get people to lose weight. Quick! Everyone drive down the street and oink at the next fattie you see. We'll all be thin in no time.

In defense of my right to like sports and Guinness: Part 1

Happy Monday! Oxymoron, you say? Not this Monday. The sun is shining today in London, and that's always cause for celebration. And it's real sunshine too - with actual warmth. Not the kind of vague, distant glow you tend to get here, as if the sun had been on a bender the night before and is up there lying on its couch, drinking Andrews and grumbling 'What do you want from me? I'm here aren't I? This is the best I can do right now!"

So here I am, raring to go following a weekend that was actually restful instead of just an extension of the work week. After I left you on Friday, I did rewatch Nacho Libre, whose song about why Ramses is not dancing at the party is still as genius as I remember. What I hadn't remembered was the random, sex-starved fat girl who eats all day and is too hideous to get a man so she has to literally crawl on her hands and knees to cut men (and Esqueleto) off at the pass, trap them and have her way with them. Aren't people tired of writing this character? Because I sure am tired of seeing it. You know, this might just be a rumour, but I'm made to understand that fat women can actually manage to find willing partners for sex if they so desire. It's one of those ideas that's so bizarre it might just be true.

Then on Saturday I went with my favourite DJ (we'll call him DJ because we have wild imaginations) to Camden, where we ate a mountain of vegan food, walked all around the market, sampled overpriced chocolate (and in his case, also a giant, jelly Smurf), and drank Guinness over a conversation about the quietly re-emerging notion that women who say they like sports are just lying to appear cool for men. That's right, folks. Join me on a journey back to the fifth century.

A few weeks ago, a woman at a message board where I post made the extremely insightful declaration that women who say they like (i) sports and (ii) Guinness are not sincere, but rather involved in an elaborate deception aimed solely at hooking themselves a fella. Given that I've been watching cricket since I found eyes in my head and consider Guinness the best food on earth, I am about to shake the foundations of her very existence. But it's not just anonymous message board lady. More and more, throughout this year's Premiership season particularly, it has seemed as if greater numbers of people are choosing a team and jumping on board. Apparently, this type of activity is frowned upon, especially - or only - when the people in question are women. DJ has been noticing it too. In fact, he brought it up, telling me about a guy he knows who is peeved to within an inch of his life when women dare to interject in sports conversations, because they're only johnny-come-latelies doing it to seem cool, and have no natural propensity to understand sports, no genuine interest in it, and nothing to add.

Now what strikes me as particularly hilarious about all this is that the man in question in DJ's story is from Barbados, just as we are. And in Barbados, we play a little of everything, but the only major sport in which we have a legitimate international presence is cricket. That means that support for teams in most sports is not home-grown, based on location or other traditional markers of loyalty. So most sports fans out there fit into two categories: they started playing the sport and were naturally drawn towards its highest exemplars on the international circuit; or they just happened along one day and decided to start watching because they found it entertaining. Neither of these groups, and particularly not the latter, has any kind of monopoly on fandom. Because if the fandom of the women you criticize is artificial, then surely so is yours, since you are not from Manchester or Liverpool and have no reason other than whim or circumstance for the team with which you are aligned. Just because someone is turned onto a sport after you have been doesn't make their admiration of it any less valid. The portal has not closed. New fans are born every day.

And the sports themselves have gone through trends in popularity. When I was growing up, it seemed like none of my peers cared or talked about cricket. The cricket team couldn't pay people to come with them to away matches, get-out-of-class-early pass be damned. NBA basketball was huge, as was track and field. Now, as with several other things, people's scope of interest is growing. And sport trends are changing. Basketball will always have its fans, but football is becoming that sport: the one that everyone has a team in. This is the way, and you don't get to pout about it because some woman dares to share an interest that you think you have dibs on as a marker of your manhood.

And I'm not sure what makes these particular men, some of whom have the agility of porridge and whose most energetic exploits to date are a game or two of Snakes and Ladders, any more disposed to appreciating sports than women are. Agility, strategy, speed, raw skill, camaraderie, politics: these are all aspects of sport that women appreciate. There are three major sports that I follow closely and enjoy: cricket from about the age of 4 introduced by my dad (who incidentally learnt from his mother); tennis from about age 11 introduced as part of the school programme and aided by a good friend at the time who would become a longtime partner; and football from about 12 years ago when I started playing competitively. And to be frank, I've never been inclined to talk to most men about sports. And here's why: I'm not interested in being fodder for your masculine self-affirmation; what I'm after is a real, analytical conversation. So if you can only quote me all of Michael Ballack's defensive stats and tell me how many eggs he had for breakfast on the day of his last match with Bayern, and that is your sole 'argument', then you can move along. I can memorize stats too. That's not what my love of the game is about. And I've found that quite a few men who have come late to following a sport, but who of course are not questioned on the validity of their support, often hide behind statistics, and use them to shout others down before the others realize that in fact, the shouter only discovered what 'offside' was yesterday. Incidentally, most of the men with whom I enjoy a heated sporting debate tend to be secure, well-adjusted people who don't fancy using conversation to try and surreptitiously bully women into accepting their 'rightful place.' Funny how that happens.

Now the whole 'women in sports' dialogue is complex, and there are certain things I'm not discussing here. I am not debating whether statistically more men than women follow sports: I think there is a discussion to be had on how we might express interest differently so that women's interest is sometimes not acknowledged as such, but I feel safe in saying that the number of men I know who enjoy sports is greater than the number of women, although among my Barbadian friends, with our cricket legacy, that gap starts to close somewhat. I am not debating whether women's professional leagues are as entertaining and therefore should attract similar levels of investment as men's. I'm contemplating a follow-up post in which I might address that. And I'm not saying that there are no women who have ever said, jokingly or otherwise, that they only watch football to see men's legs, or baseball for the tight pants. This is something I also want to come to later because when I started this post the sun was high in the sky and now it's almost dinnertime. The thing is way too long. But this is about the ludicrous notion that if you meet a woman who supports a given sports team, odds are, she's lying and is just saying it to seem cool (beyond the extent to which we all use knowledge of competition as a point of social engagement with other men and women). We know you would like to believe you're that central to our lives, but the plain truth is, you really aren't.

Real Women, Fake (White) Noses

I haven't so far been very impressed by the exploits of Coleen McLoughlin Rooney (she seems to go by both names separately) in Coleen's Real Women. (Are we not meant to notice the Photoshopping in the promo pic?) The premise of the show is that each week, Coleen - who became famous for marrying footballer Wayne Rooney and then carving out her own career as a writer, model, businesswoman and wearer of expensive clothes - does her own casting calls to find 'real women' who will compete with career models for high-profile modelling contracts or spokesmodel positions. As you'll guess from the name of the show, it's based on the notion that there are in fact beautiful, non-model women walking British streets who are just as appealing as and perhaps more representative of certain brand philosophies than your typical (UK) size 4 model. Ignoring the annoyingly over-used and disingenuous 'real women' caption (which implies that smaller women are either Barbies come alive or figments of our imagination), I was willing to give the show a chance, mainly because I like (the media image of) Coleen, who seemed confident, not very far up her own trasero and earnest in her quest to make everyday beauty more visible.

Except, I don't think she's doing that well. She does find gorgeous women of all sizes, but the women who ultimately win the contracts are not too far off from the model industry standard of beauty. I've also found it curious that one of Coleen's candidates always secures the job, but let's assume that I'm willing to suspend disbelief concerning that, and just go along with the idea that Coleen is just so convincing and pioneering, that all of a sudden these industry professionals see the light and are lured to the fat side. The thing is, they aren't really lured to the fat side. If anything, they're lured to the just as conventionally beautiful and carrying a little water weight side.

But the show fails in other ways, and that failure could not be more evident than in last night's re-aired episode, where Coleen and her assistant were trying to satisfy a Superdrug spokesmodel brief in Birmingham. As usual, they found some really striking women and narrowed them down to the three who would be put forward for the job, my favourite of whom was Cara, the biracial daughter of a Black, Jamaican man and White, Belgian woman. I was drawn to her serenity: I felt that if she were on a Superdrug billboard, she would probably catch my eye.

So after all the show's preamble about embracing your own height, size, unique features and personality, Coleen's casting expert Camilla then promptly spends the entire episode registering her discomfort with Cara's wide nose, and agonizing over the ways in which they might make her nose appear more narrow. (She's also concerned, but considerably less so, that Alana looks too old and Liz seems to lack confidence.) She consults the photographer about the angles he'll use to diminish her gargantuan nose, and at one point has what resembles a nose intervention with Cara, confronting her about the 'problem' and reassuring her that they'll do whatever they can to hide her big, fat, black nose. At one point during Cara's shoot, Camilla, smiling and relieved, tells her, "Your nose looks beautiful!" which, given the woman's ethnic heritage, can only mean "Don't worry...it hardly looks black at all!" Way to help women embrace their features. Cara, meanwhile, seems a little nonplussed by the nose debate. When pressed about what abuse she suffers because of her clearly inadequate nose, she confesses that her husband says she has a 'pig snout'. (Yeah...you might want to trade him in for a less asswipey model.) Just for your own reference, here's Cara:




















I guess it's ok to be fat, but not too fat, short but not too short, and black but not too black. If you can have dark enough skin to make their campaign seem edgy and inclusive, but white enough features to not scare off the consumers with your big, black nose, then you're a real woman.

Hating mothers: the new American pastime

Along with shoulder pads and shiny jumpsuits, mother-hating is having a banner year. Madeline Holler's Babble article 50 Moms We Love To Hate is a strange kind of witch-burning festival that isn't tongue-in-cheek enough to make it seem harmless. That is to say, if Holler was trying to satirize our obsession with having opinions on the way women mother, the satire isn't effective enough that people wouldn't take it seriously. (At no. 50, she names one of the moms we love to hate as "Moms who hate on other moms", but it's at the end of the article, so it comes off as kind of a 'Haha fooled you!' after the damage has been done. We don't think that the writer necessarily actively hates all these women, but she doesn't exactly distance herself from the hostility either, so presumably she's doing her share of mom-hating as well.)

Just like Maxim's Unsexiest Women and Least Appealing TV Women and Women Too Ugly to Live (oh wait, was that not one?) lists, this one encourages us to hate women on the basis of their (only) purposes as women: eye candy or incubator of humanity. Somewhere, someone is right now compiling a list of 30 Women Whose Meatloaf Sucks Most.

Holler's list is an antithetical mishmash of women who, according to our idealist notions of motherhood, are either getting it very wrong, or getting it too perfect for anyone to possibly compete. In a time when the way we perform as mothers is up for judgment by all - when absent mothers are blamed for emotionally unavailable men, single mothers are blamed for criminals and overbearing mothers are blamed for the gays - it does seem like a list of offenders would be the next logical development. I think the pillories are coming soon.

Unsurprisingly, the revoltingly-nicknamed 'Octomom' Nadya Suleman tops the list, with Angelina Jolie in second and the prolific bearer of offspring Michelle Duggar at number three. Notice the trend? You must have kids, but not too many. Otherwise, you're just being smug and greedy. Women should only be reasonably fertile.

All the stereotypes of why women are supposed to hate other women are also represented here. Apparently, we hate Heidi Klum because three weeks after giving birth she was back on the catwalk: "She explained her lack of flab as "good genes." We hate that she just won't tell us it was surgery", and Kelly Ripa disgusts us because she's a hot, privileged mother who 'pretends' to mundane tasks like laundry. Will no one stop this insanity? Will no one speak up for those of us who enjoy seeing happy, confident women going about their business not ashamed of being hot? Not all of us despise attractive women and take pleasure in people looking like crap. So please keep your pitiful schadenfreude to yourselves.

We rule, you drool

I used to be a fitness instructor. I was doing a first degree, teaching Spanish and English at my old school and doing group exercise and personal training sessions here, there and yonder all at the same time. But I rarely felt overextended - in part because i loved it all, especially the group exercise. I had some clients who were trying to lose weight, some who were training for competitions, others who were trying to help control health conditions, and some who were just there for a laugh and a hobby. But i took it all very seriously, because these people considered me an authority. They would come to me with questions and, quite frankly, take my word as truth. I answered to the extent that my knowledge would allow, and always advised them to read further, if they were so inclined.

So these days, even though I no longer teach at gyms, I still get a little annoyed when I see what looks like misleading information being perpetuated by those who are supposed to know better. To be fair, the diet and fitness industry tends not to know whether it's on foot or horseback on any given day. That is to be expected when research is always being done not only by 'independent parties', but also by people who are trying to deduce findings that will suit their own ends. But there are some things we should all know by now if we aim to educate people in diet and exercise.

Recently, I noticed that a gym where I used to work out, which has always prioritized wellness and functional strength above just looking hot (which they focus on too, of course; they're a gym - not a commune) has a points system based on hours of exercise per month. They then post the points as part of a Top 10, indicating who's at the top, who's at the bottom, and clearly by elimination, who's just sitting on their asses not doing enough. I think this is a less than ideal approach for a number of reasons.

First let me say that I don't know whether you have to submit yourself to this 'competition'. I would imagine that you do, unless there are fitness police with whistles and clipboards tromping around logging everyone's minutes on the treadmill or counting beads of sweat as they fall off. I don't know the procedure for having your workout hours logged, but the fact that there is some agency involved, that you're not being judged against your will, makes it less bad, though not good.

And here's why: prizing time exercised above other aspects of fitness is sending the wrong message to the people who exercise there, some of whom I would think are just looking for a treadmill and a shower and not to be unwitting participants in a special gym edition of Survivor. It implies that there is some virtue in submitting to hours of exercise, when we all know that there is a certain number of minutes after which there are diminishing returns for both cardiovascular and strength training, assuming you're not training for a marathon or other endurance activity. Put simply, training long does not mean training effectively. In fact, it can often work against you. Again I have to make the disclaimer that I don't know whether this is a special club of athletes, which is in any case irrelevant if they're posting the results for all to see: the message that lots of exercise is always good is being transmitted to other gym members, and that message on its own can potentially lead to overtraining and compulsive patterns of exercise.

Apart from bad information, there's also the issue of plain bad feelings. Most people I know exercise to feel better, if not in the short term, at least in the medium term when they start to see results related to their goals. Who wants to see a list of all the people 'better' than you (at least according to some definition implicit in this Top 10 list) as the weight of your ass is dragging you back off the treadmill? Even among the most body-accepting, this is a bit much. And just unnecessary. And for those of us who haven't yet learnt to love said ass at any size, it's daunting, to say that least.

I know that this particular gym encourages competition. They have a great community spirit among very active members and participate in or organize various events. But we're not all universal soldiers, and we already carry our own inadequacies without needing to have them enabled by the people who should be helping us feel empowered.

Tune in at 8:00 for an eating disorder

It seems like every other week, some TV celebrity decides to unmask the dangerous world of dieting by herself embarking on a gruelling journey towards the perfect figure. This week, it was a rerun of Louise Redknapp’s “The Truth About Size Zero” feature shot almost two years ago. The TV presenter, who was voted FHM’s Sexiest Woman of the Decade, and is usually a UK size eight (US size four), severely restricts her calories and undergoes punishing workouts for a month in order to fit into a US size zero dress. She also visits celebrity friends who have suffered eating disorders, along with some young women at the Rhodes Farm Clinic for eating disorders in North London, and they all share with her their struggle to develop a healthy relationship with their bodies and with food.

The formula is pretty much the same as all the others: Louise eats a couple blades of grass and an egg a day, exercises herself into a state of constant lethargy and nausea, her weight drops dangerously low, she is warned by doctors to stop but continues anyway, and at the end, she fits into the size zero dress and then goes out with her friends to get sloshed.

Throughout, she complains about how hungry she is, is consumed with guilt that she is constantly snapping at her husband and young son, and keeps reminding us that she feels awful and that the whole thing sucks. But what is the ultimate lesson? She never stops, even when she starts to have bouts of vomiting, she loses the weight, and she fits into the dress. And even though we’re told she’s dangerously thin and given the whole “please don’t try this at home” spiel, frankly, she looks great and not at all emaciated. So, what we have just been provided with is a living model of how to successfully starve oneself into a size zero dress in 30 days. Presumably, this was not the aim of the piece.

I say ‘presumably’ because I’m not quite sure of the intentions of the whole trend. I don’t want to malign poor Louise and question her own motives: perhaps she really is concerned about all the young, confused, starving women out there. And she’s certainly not the only one to undertake such an ‘experiment’. We’ve had Alesha Dixon with her “look, no airbrushing!” special, Natalie Cassidy trying every diet under the sun for our viewing pleasure, and it seems like Dawn Porter is always somewhere or other eating or doing something bizarre to lose weight. But I have to wonder whether these shows and their presenters aren’t doing the same thing they’re accusing the rest of the media and the fashion world of doing: capitalizing on our obsession with weight and our bodies in order to capture an audience.

First of all, where is the real sense of experimentation? We know that if you greatly restrict calories far beneath your basal metabolic rate (what your body would need to function if you were to keep perfectly still all day), you will lose weight rapidly. Louise’s programme did mention that you lose large amounts of muscle as a part of this, which is undesirable, but the aesthetic result – her body – doesn’t show this to be a bad thing. So what we expect to happen does happen: she loses weight and feels somewhat sick. But she carries on, and at the end, she’s 15 pounds lighter. And – and there’s no way to say this delicately – they don’t die, these presenters. They don’t even almost die or even have to take a sick day. There are no tufts of hair on the bathroom floor or gum disease or heart failure. If they were to carry on this way for a little longer, some of these things would likely start to manifest. But the fact is, they don’t.

So all we get to do is watch these people lose weight, which I think some of them secretly want to do anyway, (experiment and public service my arse), and then those among us who have spent the last six weeks wondering how we’re going to shift that holiday weight – or worse, those twelve and thirteen year olds out there who are smack dab on the verge of eating disorders – now have added and proven ammunition.

Frankly, I call bullshit, and I’m over it. I call bullshit on the truth-seeking, public education intent of these shows, and I challenge the TV networks, here in the UK and elsewhere, to make the real sacrifice, strip away the glamour and the voyeurism factor, and make a genuine effort to help solve this problem.