Readers have let me know about a number of really ridiculous things happening right now. Let’s talk about some of them:
A former Biggest Loser contestant is being sued by a company that endorsed her. There were some copyright and conflict of interest issues, and the fact that she “gained far too much weight” which violated her contract which stipulated that she “agrees to maintain her current level of fitness and conditioning.” Now, I ain’t no big city lawyer, but it seems to me that she agreed to keep a level of fitness and conditioning, not a body size. This is often confused and it’s a pity. People of various sizes have various fitness levels – the two are not synonymous. You can’t look at someone and determine their strength, stamina, or flexibility unless they are putting on a display of flexibility, stamina, or strength. Even if she had agreed to stay thin, had she or her sponsor read the research on dieting, they would have known that maintaining long term weight loss is a promise that almost nobody can keep.
Speak of sizes and fitness levels, there was so much bullshit around Marion Barlolli’s Wimbledon win that it spun me into a state of pissed off that I haven’t reached in a long time. First a BBC commentator tried to win the Wimbledon Trophy for being a sexist jackass, then a series of men took to Twitter to prove that sexism and misogyny are not just alive and well but are points of pride for some guys. @Everyday Sexism collected a bunch of them starting at “Bartoli didn’t deserve to win because she is ugly” and getting much, much worse. Ok dude, your desire to have sex with someone or not has actually no bearing on their ability to do anything other than have sex with you (which you might just assume they don’t want to do.) Seriously who are these guys who think that the entire world revolves around who they think are attractive? Spare me. Spare all of us.
The pissed off continued when I found out that a former Australian Vogue editor is shilling a tell-all book. I wrote about this for iVillage – to me what it comes down to is that she seemed happy to observe women slowly killing themselves for beauty and glorifying the process on the pages of her magazine. Now she’s happy to be paid to write about it in her tell-all book, all the while doing absolutely nothing to actually help these girls. Maybe she could donate all the profits from her book to an organization that helps people with eating disorders? Maybe instead of buying the book, people could donate the $20 bucks they were going to spend on it to such an organization. Maybe instead of being obsessed with reading about exactly how bad the world is for fashion models, we could ask ourselves what we can do to dismantle a system where a Vogue editor who watches a model starve herself during a trip doesn’t think that the natural thing to do is “lie her down next to a fountain to get the last shot” because the model could no longer stand. When that happens, it’s time for an ambulance, not a creative pose. And to me it’s time for outrage, not supporting this woman by buying her book.
I call epic shenanigans on every bit of this bullshit!
But the news isn’t all bad. A company called ByPost thought it would bring great hilarity to its Twitter feed to make a fat joke before suggesting that Twitter followers purchase postcards from them. Why they thought this is really anyone’s guess, but I think they’ve learned their lesson. In a great burst of human decency people went the fuck after them on Twitter and now they know how to apologize lots of ways in 140 characters or less, and why it’s probably a bad idea to hand the Twitter reins over to Skippy the marketing intern because Skippy is just so funny.
Also, the Big Fat Flea Market is going on this Saturday. This is the Size Diversity Task Force’s big yearly fundraising and it helps fund scholarships for our Vegas Retreat (you should come!), the Guinness world record paper mache project, and all manner of other awesome activism. You can attend live in LA and if you aren’t in LA you can watch the Livestream and even get a personal shopper (#findmyfatclothes) which is especially cool since Hips and Curves donated 74 stunning plus sized corsets in addition to the bags and bags of awesome clothes we have. You can also participate in the raffle with it’s over $1,100 in prizes: Donate to the SDTF and receive raffle tickets: $1=1 raffle ticket, $5=6 tickets, $10=14 tickets, $20=35 tickets, $50=100 tickets PayPal: [email protected]
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