Photographing "fat" celebrities in a "flattering" way

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This post is adapted from the Huffington Post article entitled "Celebrities & Weight: 16 Stars Who Have Taken a Stand Against Hollywood's Standard of Beauty". 

Jennifer Lawrence:
“I eat like a caveman, I’ll be the only actress who doesn’t have anorexia rumors," Jennifer Lawrence told Elle. “In Hollywood, I’m obese. I’m considered a fat actress, I’m Val Kilmer in that one picture on the beach.”

Corresponding picture:

courtesy Huffington Post

Rosario Dawson:
Rosario Dawson has often been told she needs to lose weight, but the actress attributes her weight to her "big boobs." “I would get told by my manager, ‘Rosario, you went into your audition with sweats today. If you want to wear a sweater, just make sure it’s tight.’ Because the casting directors would call her and say, ‘She’s great but the casting director needs to know if she’s slim.  I’m like, ‘Dude, have you seen the photos I’ve done? You know what I look like.’”

Corresponding picture:

courtesy Huffington Post

 Tyra Banks:

"To all of you who have something nasty to say to me or to women built like me," Tyra Banks said on her talk show, "I have one thing to say to you: Kiss my fat a**!"

Corresponding picture:

courtesy Huffington Post

 Tyra, what a fatty.

I'm not saying that I don't commend celebrities for speaking out about how unfair Hollywood's beauty standard is.  I am also pleased with the article for including diverse bodies, including several fat women of color (Gabourey Sidibe, Queen Latiyfah, Mo'Nique, and others). 

But even as they're talking about what weight rebels they are, they are being photographed in a way that highlights all of their skinny features.

You might ask, what's the point?  Isn't Hollywood just a weird alternate reality full of vain actors and bad messages about image?  Well, duh.  But that doesn't mean it has no bearing on our lives, even liberated, indie, modern, snobby feminist womyn who have no interest in garbage media.  If these and all other celeb photos have a sick obsession with hiding certain body parts that are not "flattering" (ie, not really skinny or optimally beautiful), that is certainly the way my friends and I talk/obsess about our clothing choices and pictures.

This is the first hit for "unflattering photo" on google images. Uh, what?

I thought that this Buzzfeed article did a great job of rounding up GIFs of before and after pictures of airbrushed celebrities, demonstrating that, no matter how thin you are, you will always have your "problem areas". 

You see, even this super-thin model has her armpit bulge eliminated, her skinny arm made even skinnier, her thigh pulled in.

The fabric on this model's outfit made her look too fat.  She is pretty thin, but they uniformly slimmed down on every part of her.

And don't even think about having just a teensy bit of non-toned upper arm that flattens out when you press it against something else.

I want to explore this idea of what is "flattering" in future posts.  These pictures may seem superficial, but "flattering" dictates our motivation in choosing almost our entire wardrobe.  "Flattering" drives the entire fashion and clothing industry.  It is the basis for our external sense of self-worth.  And it emerged from a long tradition of thin-centric (and white-centric) beauty.

"But it's SCIENCE": STUDIEZ.

By now, we're all on board that we shouldn't be mean to fat people, right?

(By the way, I love how this blog has played out like a cumulative course in FA 101.  I wish I could bring in guest lecturers, just like a real course!  Or that I was actually qualified to disseminate any of this information.  But thanks for reading.  -The Phat Ally)

Okay, there's this one retort that you, my disbelieving loved one, have.

That being fat is bad for you.  It's SCIENCE!

Okay, this mentality may be a result of years of conditioning or brain washing or whatever you want to call it, but it actually can be credited with almost all our fat hatred: from well-intentioned, condescending "interventions" towards friends to whispering-behind-our-hands, this-gossip-is-justified-because-that-fat-person-has-brought-it-upon-themselves type reactions.

One thing I have definitively learned: the multi-billion dollar industry exists for the purpose of maximizing profit at the expense of the mental health of millions of people, especially women.  So be careful when you read studies.  Are they trying to sell you a diet, with a side of low self-esteem?

Enough talk.  I always talk too much.  This time, I'll let more qualified people do the talking.  With studies that I feel are rigorous and refreshingly free of the weight bias that colors so many other studies.

I hope to keep adding to this list.  Also, links may appear either blue or grey.  I wish I knew how to standardize that, sorry!

On Advocating for a Health at Every Size (HAES) public

health model:

"Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals"
Source: Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Family Medicine 

"Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index."

"They all work...when you stick to them": a qualitative investigation of dieting, weight loss, and physical exercise, in obese individuals:

Source: National Institute of Health

"Public health approaches to obesity must engage and consult with those currently living with obesity, if patterns of social change are to occur."

"Health at Every Size: New Hope for Obese Americans?"

Source: US Dep of Agriculture

"'For obese folks who can’t find a healthful weight-loss regimen that gives them lasting results, this alternative to conventional dieting may offer greater and more sustainable improvements to several key indicators of their health.'"

"Size acceptance and intuitive eating improve health for obese, female chronic dieters"

Source: UC Davis

"Encouraging size acceptance, reduction in dieting behavior, and heightened awareness and response to body signals resulted in improved health risk indicators for obese women."

"Weight loss for the obese: panacea or pound-foolish?"

Source: National Association for Physical Education in Higher Education

"Because traditional weight loss programs have poor long-term efficacy, a nonweight-centered paradigm might be more effective for improving the health of individuals considered overweight or obese."

"Dietary Therapy for Obesity: An Emperor With No Clothes"

Source: University of Iowa

"As he has ably pointed out in his accompanying article, there are numerous biological, behavioral, and environmental paths to overweight. It is not surprising that the more or less “one size fits all” approaches that have been taken in past behavioral interventions have been less than impressive."

On weight cycling being worse for you than maintaining a constant weight:

"In Obesity Paradox, 'Thinner' May Mean 'Sicker'"

Source: The New York Times

"In study after study, overweight and moderately obese patients with certain chronic diseases often live longer and fare better than normal weight patients with the same ailments."

"The effect of weight cycling on blood lipids and blood pressure in Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial Special Intervention Group"
Source: International Journal of Obesity

"RESULTS: Men who weight cycled did not have the predicted smaller improvements in total cholesterol, HDL, the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, or diastolic blood pressure, compared with noncyclers."

"Genes take charge, and diets fall by the wayside"
Source: The New York Times

"'It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals.'"

"Confronting the failure of behavioral and and dietary treatments of obesity"
Source: PsycNET

"The stigmatization of obesity, the overstatement of health risks, and the pervasive influence of the lucrative diet industry have maintained public demand for dietary treatment. However, much evidence suggests that maintenance of high but stable weight is safer than weight fluctuation. "

Pathways from weight fluctuations to metabolic diseases: focus on maladaptive thermogenesis during catch-up fat
Source: International Journal of Obesity

"In particular, Debray et al noted that the early increase in the weight of prisoners transferred from German concentration camps to a Paris hospital in a condition of severe starvation was largely due to the accumulation of fat rather than to the rebuilding of muscles...These findings led Keys et al to describe such preferential fat accumulation and fat overshooting as ‘post-starvation obesity’."

Dieters Put on Weight in the Long Run: Study
Source: Reuters

"'The majority of people -- up to two thirds -- regained all the weight they had lost, plus more.  We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all.  Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the war and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back,' said Mann."

"Does Exercise Really Keep Us Healthy?"
Source: The New York Times

"But before you turn to a fitness program as the solution to your particular health or weight concern, consider what science has found...Exercise alone has not been shown to bring sustained weight loss."


NYT: "Our Absurd Fear of Fat" by Paul Campos

"The study, by Katherine M. Flegal and her associates at the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, found that all adults categorized as overweight and most of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality risk than so-called normal-weight individuals."




Weight loss studies tend to be biased:

"A meta-analysis of the past 25 years of weight loss research using diet, exercise or diet plus exercise intervention."
Source: US National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health

"Weight loss research over the past 25 y has been very narrowly focused on a middle age population that is only moderately obese, while the interventions lasted for only short periods of time."

"Medicare's Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Dieting is Not the Answer" (PDF)
Source: UCLA

"It is clear that dieting does not lead to sustained weight loss in the majority of individuals, and additional studies of the effects of dieting on weight are not needed...We recommend that researchers conduct long-term randomized studies on the effects of dieting on health outcomes, with a specific focus on whether the short-term health benefits of weight loss persist after the weight is regained...These studies must make every effort to minimize the biases that led to overly optimistic reports of the success of diets."


I will close with a quote from Michelle Allison, the incredible Fat Nutritionist:

"I am comfortable with the fact that, yes, there is a clear association between higher levels of weight and ill health...I am comfortable with the fact that, yes, behaviour contributes to weight...I am comfortable with the fact that, yes, many people do not find fat people sexually or aesthetically attractively...None of these facts shakes my conviction that It Is Not Okay to Engage In Appearance-Based Discrimination, to deny rights or enforce unfavourable social policies on people because of their appearance. 


"These facts also do not preclude the peculiar theory to which I subscribe, that people can be healthy and happy at a variety of weights by focusing on self-care instead of weight loss, and that, in my opinion, this is a preferable policy to the destructive and ineffective "War on Obesity" we have waged for the last decade."

Post in context.

A rare personal annecdote

When I was in college, my mom, concerned about my low energy level, took me to see a nutritionist.  I had never been very energetic, but just in case, my invested, proactive, baby-boomer Mom had spoken with doctors and gotten my blood tested.  When the results came back negative, I rationalized them with my late teenage complacency and inertia (and, I suppose, my low energy level).  But Mom reasoned that even if there was nothing concretely wrong with me, there might be something that I could adjust, in my diet or lifestyle, to fix it.

It was a very good idea of my hers.  And so, I pretty cheerfully accompanied her to the nutritionists'  house.  Whereupon I was informed that she was not actually a nutritionist, but a "nutrition detective".  And that I probably had a rare mitochondrial condition - nothing too serious, but I should still take daily supplements.

(And they were such strange supplements! - not your run-of-the-mill calcium, iron, and vitamin D, but evil-tasting and requiring a search in more than one store.)

It's true that I am bitter towards this woman because it was very clear that she had no interest in treating people, and certainly didn't take an interest in me, but only cared about providing very specific and unusual (and reductionist) solutions to complex questions.  (And for suggesting that I shouldn't study abroad because of my "condition".  And for always bringing up my "low muscle tone".  I get it, lady, sheesh.)

But if I had anything to discuss with her, it wasn't my low energy level, it was my not-so-good relationship with food.  I told her that I was afraid I ate too much.  She asked me why that bothered me. So I told her I never really let myself get hungry, and did not know how to stop eating when I was full.  I still remember the way that she pushed her glasses to the bridge of her nose, peered at me, and said, "But why do you care?  You're not fat."

With no regard for psychology and mental health, she was clearly a quack.  I only knew that I didn't like to be shut down enough to insist after three sessions that I was't going back, but at the time, I failed to put my finger on four key things:

1. A bad relationship with food is an issue, yes, even in a thin person.
2. And her idiotic, insensitive response made me fear, and hate, the ever-dreaded GETTING FAT with even more fervor.
3. I was not alone.
4. Innumerable other young women that feel the exact same way is a symptom of something gone seriously wrong with the system, not something to be dismissed and neglected.

We could all stand to lose a few pounds

AHA!

I love that feeling of epiphany.

It came to me today when I was thinking about something that my dad had said about my blog.

He agreed with me that the media's incessant harping on weight loss is disproportionately targeted at women.  But he also insisted that these are insipid, low-class forms of media, and the fact that people are taken in and swayed by it is a symptom of another problem: the dumbing-down of America.

I may not like it, but I understand the core of his argument.  And yes, it's annoying to scroll down a reputable website showing me an image of an acai berry on the side, or a cartoonish woman in profile with her belly rapidly inflating and deflating, or either of these, really:







And I'm not even going to address tabloids whose survival depends on their depiction of celebrity weight gains and losses.  These blatantly fat-hating, "insipid" forms of media are not worth my time and energy to attack.

And right now, I'm going to leave aside the issue of the fact that fat people with normal personalities are not allowed to exist in TV shows and movies.  Today I'm going to talk about reputable, mainstream media.  They do not singlehandedly shoulder the responsibility for fat hate, or spawning an endless network of feel-better-look-younger-road-to-a-happier-thinner-better-you websites and magazines.

(Don't get me started on articles like this one, which suggest that fat people who are comfortable with their bodies are somehow setting a dangerous example for the rest of us.  But I digress.)

But they are complicit in the "every one can afford to lose a few pounds" (ECATLAFP) phenomenon, folks.  It's particularly scary; now fat people are not the target, I am the target!  Or else I might be fat one day?  Or else I will no longer be beautiful?  Regardless, t's what my friend AJC brilliantly referred to as societal control.  Because the thing is, it's not technically untrue.  So look out!  It's everywhere.

She insists she sleeps better, her allergy symptoms have disappeared, her mood has improved, and -- not her goal but a nice bonus -- she has shaved 10 pounds off her solid 5-foot-5 frame.  - Washington Post, "Paleolithic Diet is So Easy, Even Cavemen Did It", January 2, 2010

Gah!  It's subtle.  And it's every bit as stupid as this:

But it begs the question, which banal rhetoric is fueling the other??

"Two groundbreaking new studies address the irksome question of why so many of us who work out remain so heavy." - New York Times, "Dieting vs. Exercise for Weight Loss", August 1, 2012

 Researching now, I am overwhelmed by the amount of articles devoted to weight loss, exercise, and health.  I will update with more examples as I see them.  Have you read anything like this lately - a casual mention of the fact that your body at its current weight, regardless of its level of health, is not sufficient?