By now you may have seen the pointed on-air response that Jennifer Livingston, a news anchor for WKTB in La Crosse Wisconsin, gave to a viewer who suggested that someone as fat as she is should not really be on TV, lest young girls get the idea that it’s ok to be fat.
Here’s the video. Some thoughts on it below.
Let’s go back, for a moment, to what the guy said in his email. (You can find a transcript of the whole video here.)
Hi Jennifer,
It’s unusual that I see your morning show, but I did so for a very short time today. I was surprised indeed to witness that your physical condition hasn’t improved for many years. Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you’ll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.
While couched as helpful advice from a concerned citizen, the email basically suggests that Jennifer is, in essence, committing a crime against young girls by being fat in public. While Livingston, as a TV anchor, presumably “assaults” thousands of young girls by appearing on TV fat, the letter writer’s logic would presumably apply to every fat woman who posts pictures of herself online, appears in a play, or even just goes outside where others can see her.
Indeed, one woman I know has gotten similar, er, complaints, from people who’ve attacked her for “celebrating obesity” by posting pictures of herself on her blog looking something other than miserable and ashamed of her body.
In addition to the fact that Livingston’s weight is none of this guy’s fucking business, it should also be noted that the he’s simply incorrect in assuming that a person’s weight has much to do with the healthiness of their lifestyle. There are plenty of skinny people living less than healthy lives, including many in the public eye. (Has he ever heard of eating disorders? Or Keith Richard?) And fatness in itself is not a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle, nor does it generally add to health risks. Indeed, as author and fat blogger Kate Harding has noted:
Weight itself is not a health problem, except in the most extreme cases (i.e., being underweight or so fat you’re immobilized). In fact, fat people live longer than thin people and are more likely to survive cardiac events … obesity research is turning up surprising information all the time — much of which goes ignored by the media … Just because you’ve heard over and over and over that fat! kills! doesn’t mean it’s true. It just means that people in this culture really love saying it.
What you eat makes a difference to your health – not how much, or how many of the calories go directly to your waistline.
Meanwhile even those who actually want to lose a lot of weight don’t have many practical options besides gastric surgery, which carries its own health risks. Diets tend to be a mixture of quackery and false hope. They can be unhealthy and even dangerous – and the overwhelming majority of dieters eventually gain back what they lose. For most people, short of gastric surgery, the only way to lose a lot of weight and keep it off is to remain on a diet forever.
But the issue here isn’t really health. It’s body policing. As Livingston herself noted, fat people know that they’re fat. They don’t need it pointed out to them, even if the person pointing it out convinces themselves that they’re doing it for the fat person’s good. And frankly, most of those pointing it out don’t have good intentions. (It’s no coincidence that the favorite insult of the MRAs and other misogynists who hate this blog is to call me fat; I expect some will use this post an excuse for another round of fat-shaming.)
As Livingston noted in her reply to the letter-writer:
The truth is, I am overweight. You could call me fat and yes, even obese, on a doctor’s chart. But to the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don’t know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don’t see? You don’t know me. You are not a friend of mine. You are not a part of my family and you have admitted that you don’t watch this show so you know nothing about me but what you see on the outside and I am much more than a number on a scale.
And here is where I want all of us to learn something from this. If you didn’t already know, October is National Anti-Bullying Month, and this is a problem that is growing every day in our schools and on the internet. It is a major issue in the lives of young people today and as the mother of three young girls it scares me to death. Now I am a grown women and luckily for me I have a very thick skin, literally, as that email pointed out, and otherwise. And that man’s words mean nothing to me. But what really angers me is there are children who don’t know better. Who get emails, as critical as the one I received or in many cases even worse, each and every day. The internet has become a weapon. Our schools have become a battleground. And this behaviour is learned. It is passed down from people like the man who wrote me that email.
Since Livingston’s video went viral, the letter writer has come forward to double-down on his fat-shaming, saying in a statement that he hopes “she will finally take advantage of a rare and golden opportunity to influence the health and psychological well-being of Coulee Region by transforming herself for all of her viewers to see over the next year.”
I’m not quite sure why the letter writer thinks it’s Livingston’s job to “transform … herself” to meet his desired specifications. But I doubt there’s any point to arguing that with him unless he can first transform himself into something other than the real-world version of an internet “concern troll.”
After reading all this, I thought I’d take a look at MGTOWforums.com – where the regulars are not exactly shy about expressing their opinions about the appearance of women — to see if the regulars had responded with their customary compassion and respect. By which I mean self-righteousness and fat jokes. I was not disappointed.
Bubbagumpshrimp, while himself fat, decided it was perfectly fair to attack the weight of a fat women who – gasp! – puts herself on TV.
The writer stated the truth without resorting to being mean about it. He didn’t call her fat or anything mean. He just referred to her as what she obviously is…obese. This coming from someone that’s a good sized guy. You can’t go into a career that has you on camera, be her size, and be shocked when people call you on it. You VOLUNTARILY put yourself out there to be judged. If you don’t want to be picked apart on your weight, go be an IT person or something.
The problem in this country is that obese people are viewed as victims of a medical condition. The reality of it is that they are in a self-induced state. They have no one to blame but themselves. Putting someone like that out there to be a whiner when it’s obvious that she partakes in the all you can eat buffet line makes her exactly what the writer said…not a good role model for children.
Stewie displayed his rapier wit:
You shouldn’t be reporting on climate changes when you are so fat you are causing them.
Simple conflict of interest.
I don’t think she should be allowed to talk about earth quakes or talk shit about the gravitational pull of the moon either.
You know, because she’s FAT. (The climate and weather references are there because the MGTOWforum regulars seem to think she’s a weather person.)
DruidV, meanwhile, waxed indignant that a woman who doesn’t appeal to his boner is even allowed on TV:
This kind of shit is exactly why I killed my TV years ago.
Look, bitch, you’re FAT!
Listen, bitch, it’s perfectly a okay for anyone to tell you so publicly or otherwise. You don’t have the right to not be offended.
Let me say it again, bitch, YOU ARE FAT! and also very ugly, so I guess what you really are is FUGLY, bitch!
No, it’s NOT to be celebrated either, you nasty slob! It’s disgusting and pathetic. You should at least be ashamed of yourself, since laying off the buffet and hitting the gym is apparently out of the question, but then you are also female, which means you can’t even shut up about yourself long enough to see what a laughing stock you are. Three strikes and you are out, Bertha.
That said, couldn’t we pony up some $$$ to get this hideous broad (pun intended) replaced by a hot bikini blonde weather slut? It’s bad enough to have to watch our shitty weather play out, but do we really have to look at an indignant fat pig telling us how great and special she and her husband thinks she is at the same time?
Blah!
Blah indeed — because the letter writer’s missive to Livingston was really only a more politely worded, passive-aggressive version of this sort of hateful shit.
And still I shame nobody for their weight, hell, I’m even dating a woman that most of these guys would consider “obese”.
@Nathan
Hugs if you want them, I can totally relate to your comment. I’ve struggled with weight issues since I went from skinny child to chubby/fat teenager/adult. A lot of my insecurities still stem from the fact that I was teased badly about my weight and it never really left me. I actually still find if hard to wrap my mind around men who do find bigger women attractive.
I know a guy who feels bad about his weight too and it really sucks hearing how down he gets on himself cuz I see absolutely nothing wrong with him at all.
Imo, our society focusses too much on the appearance of people rather than our processed, bad-fat filled, genetically modified food. You cant just shove sugar filled, processed and cheaply priced food at busy, non-rich people then vilify them for eating it. Its not just fast food either, its practically everything sold in supermarkets.
Peace be upon Muhammad V.
Plus it’s hard to walk in the USA. Both Americans and Swedes have been getting progressively fatter for decades (although that has apparently panned out recently), but Swedes have continuously been less fat than Americans. One simple explanation is that in Swedish cities you walk around a lot. American cities are largely just built for cars.
There are a lot of sides to this complicated topic, even from my limited vantage point.
I am medically obese, according to my BMI. That said, I have a very active job that has lent me a decent amount of upper body muscle, and I don’t feel at all unhealthy. But do I have body image issues? Hell the fuck yes, and I have for almost two decades. I’ve gone on and off diets several times, my exercise level has fluctuated, and all throughout I’ve felt fat. Arguably I’m in the best shape of my life right now … but I look like this and my coworkers look like this. So yeah.
But that said? I’m still a man, and I live in a society that tells me that my worth is based on my actions, not my body. I may have self-image issues, but they aren’t constantly being injected into me by external forces. Women have influences both subtle and overt telling them that if they don’t look good, their worth as a person is low. Like this asshole letter-writer.
So yes, men get weight discrimination too. But it’s just not the same.
Troof, thanks for … the horrible person link? I guess?
Re: troof’s link – Is Roosh actually a Muslim, or is the Muslim angle supposed to be funny?
Well, on the plus side, you can’t really accuse Troof of thinking that women’s worth as people depends on how we look. On the downside, this is because he doesn’t think we’re people at all.
@ aworldanonymous
I wish you and your girlfriend luck!
My college meal plan (which I’m not on anymore, since I live off campus) involved all-you-can-eat buffet, and I did slowly gain weight the years I was on it. But I was also increasing my activity levels (walking everywhere and living on the third floor will do that to you). I’m definitely in the “unhealthy skinny people with tiny apetites” group.
emily – I think the Muslim angle is supposed to be funny. It’s almost as offensive as it is unfunny.
My aunt recently had the gastric bypass and might have to get it reversed. It’s caused her to lose too much weight, because she can’t hold anything down and is in danger of malnutrition and starvation. It’s also caused her to have painful bowel problems. When celebrities on TV show their dramatic weight loss after the surgery, they don’t also say the huge health risks that come from stapling up the stomach like that.
I do agree that our society has gone overboard on promoting good health. Yes, it’s good to be healthy, but like any good thing, that can be taken to an extreme. Because I’m thin, I don’t have to deal with people scrutinizing every food choice I make, like how people do to heavier people. Even so, I still occasionally get unwanted advice about something I do, like a guy that told me I shouldn’t drink coffee because it’s habit forming. I also have a relative that preaches at me about how bad it is for me to drink diet pop, because people need eight glasses of water a day!
And it gets taken to an extreme if you’re pregnant. My mom is a wonderful person and I love her dearly, but it drove me up the wall when she’d fret about what kind of salad dressing I chose or the exact amount of caffeine in Diet Dr. Pepper during my pregnancies. She would read something in Prevention or see it on Dr. Oz and then worry.
Some of those health shows and magazines can make people worry too much. Then they turn around and tell people they should be worried about worrying. One magazine article will say “Is movie popcorn DANGEROUS?” and then the next is “Do you worry too much?”
@thebionicmommy
My mum’s the same about fretting and preaching. My partner and I are vegan and every week she emails us fretting about our intake of a different vitamin or mineral or whatever. The thing is, we eat *really* healthily – we cook from scratch every day using fresh vegetables and we have a nutrition chart in our kitchen so we make sure we’re getting everything we need. If there’s something we’re not likely to get enough of from our diet, we either make an effort to include it or buy fortified products.
All of this is on top of the fact that my mother has a terrible diet! She eats ready meals nearly every day. I don’t make a thing of this because she’s a single mother working really long hours and it’s her damn choice what she eats. I just wish she’d leave me alone, and that people would stop thinking ‘vegan = malnourished*’. My grandmother thinks I only eat grass, yet still constantly has snide digs at me for being heavier than my sister – who also eats crap.
There’s no way to reliably see how healthy a person is inside by looking at them on the outside (except if they’re yellow, I suppose), and there are so many different variations in human bodies that we really can’t judge anyone for what they look like or what they eat.
(*JFC I probably eat more protein than people doing Atkins)
You’re welcome, mange. Here’s something more audience-appropriate for you.
I used to work with a guy who’d had a gastic bypass and it was scary. Not only did he lose weight at an alarming rate, he was sick all the time. I learned all about “dumping”, and I also learned that his doctors really hadn’t prepared him for how unpleasant that was going to be at all. This seems to be a consistent thread with people who’ve had the surgery, that in very few cases did their doctors adequately explain the long-term consequences. With my former co-worker he also didn’t get a lot of support in terms of dealing with side-effects when they happened, or even advice on how to minimize them.
I know one other person for whom the long-range results have been better. In her case her doctor actually did explain in great detail what to expect, which I think is part of why things have gone better for her (she’s also super-disciplined about what she eats, partly because it was made very clear to her what would happen if she wasn’t). Her weight stabilized after a while, and she seems to be OK now, but I still worry about the long-term impact on her health.
Basically it seems like this surgery is being sold to people as a magic cure, a one-time fix, but in reality they’re going to have to stick to a really strict diet for the rest of their lives or risk severe complications. Not to mention that the surgery is being done on teenagers too, and we really don’t know what the long-term health effects are going to be for them. Forcing people to cut out entire food groups while they’re still growing doesn’t seem like a great idea.
Choofles, your buddy’s idea of satire is really fucked up and damaged.
Also, ‘mange’ is a pretty weak make-fun-of nickname, man. Try ‘mutt’ maybe?
I guess ‘mangy’ would work.
I knew someone who got a gastric bypass because her weight had reached life-threatening proportions. She did become thin, but was sick all the time — because (as she explained) her digestive tract was now such that it wasn’t absorbing nearly enough vital nutrients. She had to take massive amounts of supplements daily and frequently needed medical attention. Most of her hair fell out.
Now, lap-band does seem to be safer, installed via laparoscopy (it’s also reversible without the need for another surgery), allows for variable intake restriction, and a lot of people are happy with it. It’s definitely superior to gastric bypass. But it’s still associated with serious, sometimes life-threatening complications.
@ Leum- good for you, that is one hard thing to fight your way out of.
I really hate the “think of the children!” line because listen bullying, fat-shaming douchecanoes, I promise you this, fat-shaming has WAY more of a negative impact on little girls than seeing a fat person exist while having a successful career on TV.
I grew up with a fat mother who also had a fat mother, both of whom are pretty self-loathing when it comes to weight. Now that my grandmother lives with my parents that house is just – ugh. It’s so full of so much negative body talk. Even though I told my mother years ago to lay the fuck off me, it’s still really hard to be around all that negative body energy – especially since they seem to sink their teeth more into my sister, who is fatter than me and hasn’t told my mother to lay the fuck off, mostly because she’s also a self-loathing fat person, and feels she deserves the abuse.
I was actually a pretty moderately sized kid (aside from being taller than mostly everybody until I was about 13), but I was terrified of getting fat because my mother was fat and made being fat out to be THE WORST thing ever imaginable. Even though she didn’t have any real health issues aside from asthma and got around just fine (she even helped coach my sister’s softball team and went hiking with our troop because she was a girl scout leader). Even though she was a pretty good example of how you can be fat and have it not infringe on your life, she mourned her body, and she taught us to mourn ours as well. I went on my first (self imposed) diet when I was nine.
By the time I was in high school, the burning hatred I had for my own body manifested into some seriously disordered eating. At one point I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have been eating more than 900 calories a day and I was pushing myself to exercise sometimes three hours a day. I’d get home from a volleyball game and make myself do laps around the house. It was ridiculous. Eventually when my athletic performance started to suffer I realized I just couldn’t maintain that kind of self-abuse. But I would continue to do some pretty extreme yo-yo dieting for years to come, stuff I’m certain really fucked up my metabolism.
Even now there’s still this ongoing war raging in my head a lot of times when it comes to food and exercise. Eating when I’m hungry is a struggle sometimes because I remember how I used to just ignore hunger and tell myself I needed to starve because I was a horrible fatty who no one would ever love. Having a lack of positive romantic relationships for a long time I think helped reinforce this idea. Even though I generally walk about 6 miles a day, swim once or twice a week, lift weights, play in a volleyball league and eat less (and generally more healthfully) than most of my thin friends, I’m now the fattest I’ve ever been. I’m what FA people might sometimes call “in betweenie” – though nearing pretty well fully plus size now. So I’m the sort of fat that gets a lot of “you’re not fat!” even though the BMI says I’m a big huge fat fatty. I think because I’m tall and athletic, my body tends to hide the weight better, but it’s definitely there and some days I can’t stand to look myself in the mirror. Sometimes I still skip meals, even though I know it won’t accomplish anything, might even make me gain more weight, just like every depriving diet I’ve ever tried.
What I think makes me most upset with myself is that there are so many other things in life I could be accomplishing if I wasn’t wasting so much time hating myself. Think of the kids – yeah, think of the next generation of people who could develop fucked up eating disorders that usually tend to spur more weight gain. Think of the next generation who could cure cancer or whatever else if they weren’t so damn worried over every morsel that passes their lips.
Nepenthe said:
That’s true. But when you focus on the dishonesty present on the side of the debate representing a group which is marginalized by society, and when you describe the popular discourse as merely dishonest while the marginalized discourse is guilty of “gross exaggeration and manipulation of data,” you’re not exactly presenting a model of unbiased empirical evaluation.
I haven’t honestly spent all that much time in fat acceptance spaces, aside from reading a few bloggers who agree strongly with fat acceptance and with health at every size. I’ve never noticed any significant distortions or obfuscations. It’s very possible they exist elsewhere. But surely you understand the problem with accusing fat acceptance advocates of lying without at least qualifying your remarks to acknowledge the lies they’re fighting against; no matter what your intention, when you accuse a single side in an oppositional conflict of dishonesty, the implication is that the unnamed side is honest.
(Most of what I know about HAES and fat acceptance is that they were hugely influential in helping my girlfriend stop an incredibly unhealthy pattern of dieting, so full disclosure, I’m pretty biased towards HAES.)
Not only that – it is also associated with weight-regain.
I doubt that… and the reason is pretty simple. Yes, the average person in the US and Western Europe has become fatter/heavier in the last few decades. But if you look at the average weight gain you will notice that it is not nearly enough to make a thin person fat. In addition, the weight distribution has not just simply shifted. Today’s thin people are just as thin as they were a few decades ago, and the average sized people are not that much heavier. It is the fat and especially the very fat people who are really a lot heavier (see this figure). There are a lot of possible explanations for this pattern of change. My best guess, however, is that our environment has indeed changed in ways that facilitate weight gain, but that these changes affect people differentially depending on their genetic make-up.
Also (and this has been brought up before) dieting has been shown to be associated with weight gain (see this paper). So, yeah, I do indeed wonder if interventions that are meant to “cure” fatness” might actually be causing part of the problem. It certainly would be in line with my experience – I developed binge-eating disorder after experiencing food restriction as a child, and starting to eat intuitively has been the single most important step in recovering from my eating disorder.
(Full disclosure: I do consider myself a fat acceptance activist, and I am “morbidly obese” according to the charts. I am also a scientist with both, a background in the life sciences as well as in experimental psychology. Yes, scientific data is sometimes misrepresented in the fat acceptance movement – but I do not think that this is more often the case within the movement than in the general population.)
@thbionicmommy – fun fact, the 8 glasses of water a day thing is basically bullshit, possibly held over from “water cure” treatments in the 1800s. (Back when leeches were also a thing, btw.)Don’t know if Snopes.com will help with your relatives but it might be worth a shot: http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp
I’m reminded of when anchormen used to smoke while reporting the news, LOL!
It’s… almost like Ruby’s gained some form of self-awareness…
drst: Near the bottom of that page is a part saying the whole “caffeine makes you dehydrated” thing is likely arse as well. Interesting link. 😀
I’m someone who’s main source of fluid every day is caffeinated (tea/coke ftw.. though not together, obviously 😛 ), so I don’t know whether that particular concept sounds weird because it is, or because i’m invested in it being questionable. Though even if it did work that way, I doubt it would get me to drink more water.. I are not a fan of water.