Marilyn Wann's Yay Scale

What world does this fat activist live in?

I discovered her YAY! scale...[see here too]

LOL it's too small for me....oops guess Marilyn Wann forgot about the over 280-300lb crowd who would crush a small drugstore scale like that under their feet. I tried two, one for each foot, to weight myself, and succeeded in breaking both of them.

YAY! I just broke the scale. LOL!

I found out about this here....

I also showed him how passersby of all sizes on Haight Street react with relieved delight to my invention, the Yay! Scale. It's merely a bathroom scale with compliments instead of numbers on the dial. Step on it to find out you're "sexy" or "gorgeous" or "perfect" or "fine." He urged me to find fat people to Yay! themselves. The next fat woman who happened by not only failed to feel downtrodden, she had read my book.

Anyone here remember "Up With People!"? I know I'm dating myself here, ah they were a good group in some ways....kept everyone happy and singing during the oil embargoes. I guess Marilyn Wann seems to be a one woman "up with fat people" [well smaller fat people] show. Reminds me of back in 1989, when I watched Michael Moore running around on "Roger and Me", filming all the "be positive" parades and Auto World as Flint crashed into the economic void. Michael Moore instead of being another sell-out, still seemed to care at least back then. I know Marilyn Wann doesn't do serious except on rare occasion, that may be a bummer on the self obsessive, self esteem fat praise-a-thon...but a YAY scale, LOL, I think the over-fat promotion "jumped the shark" long ago.

"Out of Touch Marilyn Wann: Let's Have a Parade!"

"Thought Crime and Size Acceptance, Ideologues and The Big Brush-Off"

Seriously folks, I liked Marilyn Wann when I first came across her book which was a zine years ago. It's too bad she has gone this route, I wish there could be honesty, instead of the usual show-boat stuff. There is a place for frivolity and fun, but it's like she is committed to emphasizing the fluff. They have proven the "self-esteem" movement has failed on the kids, on adults especially fat adults it just gets insulting, wearisome and speaks of over-compensation. To me this stuff is empty. How else can I put it?

Poor People And Fat

Watch these two videos and put your thinking cap on, to what is happening out there...





See: "Poverty and Fat: Food Is So Expensive Today"

High Fructose Corn Syrup And The Damage It's Done

I've written about High Fructose Corn Syrup here before...I try to avoid HFCS myself, it's difficult when the budget is tight...she is right about how obesity and diabetes skyrocketed from HFCS being used far more.

Size Zero Could Be Down To Genes

"Size Zero Could Be Down To Genes"

Show this one to any fat hating skinny people who think they are thin from their "good virtue".

Plenty of genes have been discovered to help explain obesity, but scientists have found that skinny people possess extra copies of extra genes, which could explain their naturally thin frames.

The identified gene is part of a group of 28 genes. In one in 2,000 people, these genes are abnormally duplicated resulting in carriers failing to put on weight as normal.

‘If we can work out why gene duplication in this region causes thinness it might throw up new potential treatments for obesity and appetite disorders,’ says Chief scientist Professor Philippe Froguel from the School of Health at Imperial College London.

‘We now plan to sequence these genes and find out what they do so we can get an idea of which ones are involved in regulating appetite.'

The study found that people with too many copies of these 28 genes tended to be underweight with a body mass index lower than 18.5, instead of a health BMI between 18.5 and 25.

The research throws light on weight issues in children, too. Half of children with the genetic duplication had been diagnosed with a non-specific condition called ‘failure to thrive.’

‘This shows that failure to thrive in childhood can be genetically driven,’ says Professor Froguel. ‘If a child is not eating, it’s not necessarily the parents fault.’

Last year, the same researchers discovered that people with a missing copy of these genes were 43 times more likely to be morbidly obese.

"Why We Need Size Acceptance" [Violence on The Fat]

"Why We Need Size Acceptance"

Hey, I do not disagree with EVERYTHING having to do with size acceptance. While I have some giant beefs about the movement, standing up against abuse of fat people is a GOOD thing.

I think if fat people weren't so hated, and we weren't being used as a vehicle to be profited from or to be exploited, there would be SOME REAL HELP and change out there, but she is on to something with this one:

We are all participants, willing or no, in a culture that promotes and glorifies this kind of violence against ourselves, and which revels in that violence’s effects. Even the language we use in discussing our body fat is steeped in violence; our fat parts are to be burned, blasted, destroyed, dissolved, eliminated, eradicated, or otherwise abolished. Let’s think for a moment about the broader effects of regarding our bodies—even an aspect of our bodies—with such language and imagery. This thinking divorces us from ourselves, and from the wonderful mechanism which enables us to experience the world. It creates a divide where none should exist. It turns our bodies into enemies, or antagonists, or discrete objects to be controlled and restrained. It denies us healthful connections between the thoughts in our heads, our interactions with the world around us, and the physical form that enables us to connect and communicate. It does us harm.

Sometimes I think about all the 'answers' they give to the fat, and it always incorporates pain and suffering. Nothing about wellness, joy and happiness. I don't have to go smack myself around for having thyroid disease or have some crazed trainer scream at me like the TV show "Heavy" but supposedly for being fat, I should be groveling on the ground, and prepared to suffer.....

Would some of you be offended if I told you that sometimes I wonder in my mind if weight loss surgery is more about torture?

Let me talk this one out, the other day, I was reading a book about "footbinding" in young Chinese girls, as I sat there getting grossed out as the fictional author Lisa See, described the breaking of foot bones and the rest to give Chinese women of some hundreds of years ago [footbinding lasted 1000 years], teeny feet, I thought what else is weight loss surgery, but more pain and "suffering" to get a "good" look, and most of the time it doesn't even work, even in this book, they admit 1 out of 10 girls died from footbinding and infections, gangrene and the rest plagued the rest. So human beings have done really screwed up things with their bodies for centuries.

So when they tell you to go under the knife and tell you, hey we will shrink your stomach down and make you "thin", they couldn't have thought of a worse way of torture. Trust me as a person with severe digestive problems where I projectile vomit for literally 18 hours with severe bowel pain [dry-heaves are no fun] if I accidentally eat some MSG or some high fat item [it took me 6 months to figure things out], one does not want to go to the land of digestive organs that do not work.

I think about the VIOLENCE of that....

and how fat people are so hated....

and how no one wants us to get any REAL HELP, because we are considered NOTHING to them.

I still am NOT going to LOVE fat [because of what it has done to me], but I know when things are seriously screwed up, and looking at a society that is so messed up in so many ways. All the "wars" on obesity, are about violence, instead of actual HELP and HEALING.

Book Teaches Fat Kids, Diets Work...yeah right!

"Book Weighs Heavily On Childhood Obesity"

CONTROVERSIAL new children’s storybook about a girl who transforms her life by going on a diet has been condemned by parents and health experts around the world – before it has even hit the shelves.

The book, Maggie Goes on a Diet, written by US self-publishing children’s author and dad Paul M Kramer, will not be published until October, but Amazon and Barnes and Noble are taking advance orders for the book on their websites.

The hardcover book, which is aimed at six to 12 year olds, tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who goes on a diet and “is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal-sized girl who becomes the school soccer star”.

The book’s overview explains: “Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self-image.”

The front cover shows an overweight girl looking into a mirror and seeing a much slimmer version of herself.

If anything this is setting up this girl for getting fatter. Why not put her in soccer if she likes it, if she can still run and see what happens? Like have FUN? How many of us fat kids, looked in the mirror, like the fat girl with her horned pig tails on the front cover, wishing we would see a skinny body?

I have never seen a super-fat kid turn into a skinny look like other kids. Now there are children who from illness, and other factors just like adults can gain temporary weight. But here we see the carrot of "you can be super-thin too, if you just WORK hard enough" held out to the kiddies and it's a lie. Here's a secret, the skinny kids don't have to WORK at it, they just ARE.

What is scary to me about my childhood, and I was fat as a kid, though supersized obesity came much later, is how ACTIVE I was. I rode my bike EVERYWHERE even 5 miles down the road, this in the era before helicopter parents, this included hours and hours of walking and hanging out, and delivering an hour and half newspaper route, from age 9 on, even on weekends. This included hours spent at pools, doing yard work and more. What about the fat kids who are active? I know there are some kids they definitely need more exercise, don't leave them in the house, only playing video games night and day, but this book bugs me, they hold out a false "dream" that failed for so many of us.

Cleaning and Hiring A Housekeeper

I'm poor but I have decided to hire someone to help me clean up my apt, and found someone via personal references who has extremely decent rates. I do not need someone weekly and cannot afford that, just someone to do heavy cleaning, I think upgrading my surroundings will help my mood. After all, I am housebound a lot [the next three days, hot and humid weather is keeping me indoors] and want to enjoy life while inside. For me my surroundings ARE important. The water heater leaked all over the place, one day when we were out, and thankfully I live in a place where they do repairs well, and they sent a clean up company to dry up all the water. I've lived in some doozy places before where they would not have cleaned the mess up, so was very relived

One friend said to me, you do not have to beat yourself up, just hire someone to do the deep heavy cleaning and then do some maintenance, and you will feel a lot better, so I am going to do this. Some of us cannot afford nor are eligible for a weekly home health aide. I want to do what I can get done, really I wouldn't have enough for them to do at this present point but we need a deep clean around here. My husband is good at laundry and taking out trash on regular basis, but scrubbing floors, not so much.

I can still vacuum, cook the meals, do the dishes and things like that but I need someone to who can get down on the floor and scrub them, and do baseboards which now are covered in dust, and get this place really actually clean. At least now I can reach my apt trashcan, and went off to hurl a trash bag into it, from cleaning out the fridge. Cleaning is not easy for the very fat, though I try my best. I've gotten help before when it's grown beyond me, trying to clean with when you are allergic to every cleaning product out there outside of watered down bleach, dish soap and Murphy's oil soap isn't easy. At least if I get someone in here, to do a full clean, I won't be doing the asthma attack thing, coughing and wheezing at every strong cleaner smell.

Thankfully my friends understand they know I try my best. The time to work on decluttering my apt is also here, so I do not have it turn into a hoarder's paradise, so will be working on that as well before the big clean out. Always I give stuff away and shopping is not much of a hobby for me, so sometimes I wonder how "stuff" just literally piles up in here. LOL Well I will look forward to getting this place in better shape over all.