by Peggy Howell

NAAFA just concluded another successful annual fund raising convention, held this year at the Dulles Westin in Herndon, VA. During the Annual General Meeting on Friday morning, August 5, NAAFA Chairman Jason Docherty shared our accomplishments during this past year and our ongoing strategies to end size discrimination.

On Friday night, the Capital Chapter of NAAFA sponsored a "monumental" dance featuring DJ Xavier of Xcellence Entertainment. For locals that were not able to attend the entire convention, this was a great opportunity to become part of the organization that is working to protect their rights! The many out-of-town guests were able to experience how they party in the DC/MD/VA area!

Saturday's Diversity and Inclusion workshop was led by NAAFA Board Member and diversity professional Lisa Tealer, who discussed what we need to start, stop and continue to do in order to weave diversity and inclusion into the fabric of NAAFA.

Later that day, the Child Advocacy Super Workshop featured panelists Jason Docherty (NAAFA Chairman and CATK Project Leader), Darliene Howell (NAAFA CATK Project Volunteer), Deborah Kauffmann (RD, LDN), and Xavier Payne (Supervisor, Community Coordinated Care for Children, Inc), who discussed why it's so important to advocate for children in today's society, and how to use the NAAFA Child Advocacy Toolkit as a strategy in promoting Health At Every SizeŽ (HAES^SM).

NAAFA's always spectacular fashion show on Saturday evening featured fashions from designers like Toula, Ashaki Charles Designs, Magic Bubble Shirts, Rogerswear, and the MzBBW Collection, plus awesome jewelry from Bold Bodacious Jewelry. It is always fabulous to watch our fellow NAAFA members strut on the runway and highlight wonderful products made especially for us!

Sunday's Fat Advocacy Training Workshop, led by NAAFA Advisory Board member Brandon Macsata, prepared us to influence Capitol Hill during our Monday visits to lawmakers. The role-playing exercise was especially helpful as Brandon played the part of lawmakers who were sympathetic, apathetic and downright resistant. Good experiences for us all!

On Monday while many NAAFA members visited their lawmakers, Board Members Jason Docherty, Peggy Howell, and Lisa Tealer, joined by Brandon Macsata, conducted a very successful End Bullying Now! press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

As we gathered on Monday evening to share the results of our activism efforts, NAAFA members affirmed our resolve to continue our work to make the world a better, safer place for people of all sizes.

Big thanks go out to all our workshop presenters and volunteers who gave of their time and energy to make this convention such a success, and to everyone who attended.

If you haven't already done so, make plans to join us next year as we meet once again at the Westin San Francisco Airport Hotel, August 2-6, 2012. Learn about NAAFA's plans to continue the fight for Equality at Every Size! 

Last month NAAFA launched our END BULLYING NOW! Campaign with a contest for children. We invited kids between the ages of 6 and 18 to create a 30-60 second PSA telling us how they feel about bullying and its consequences. Along with great prizes like an iPad 2 and two $50 iTunes gift cards, we committed to feature the winner's message during our press conference at the National Press Club on August 8, 2011 (more on that later).

We are proud to announce the winners of the contest and hope you enjoy the creativity and compassion shown by these young people.

First Place winner Evan Storch is the winner of an iPad 2. You can view his winning video at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Aqx-9tws1Ns

Second Place winner Madelyn Harris receives a $50 iTunes gift card for her winning video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=75qzPsGC7Us

Jack Baran is our Third Place winner and recipient of a $50 iTunes gift card. You can watch his video at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fS39QfzwkEo

We will have a complete report about our END BULLYING NOW! Press Conference in a special edition newsletter coming soon.

We were blessed with several first time NAAFA Convention attendees this year that bravely jumped in with both feet and participated, establishing themselves as part of our community. We are so happy to have them.

One such newbie is a blogger who has posted about her experiences. With her permission, we are directing you to her convention review posts. We think you will enjoy her personal experiences and frank analysis of the 2011 NAAFA Convention:

NAAFA Convention 2011 Day 1: Boundaries and Booties!
 http://lipidlove.blogspot.com/2011/08/naafa-convention-2011-day-1-boundaries.html

NAAFA Convention 2011 Day 2: Sex and Fashion:
 http://lipidlove.blogspot.com/2011/08/naafa-convention-2011-day-2-sex-and.html

NAAFA Convention Day 3: Advocacy and Poetry:
http://lipidlove.blogspot.com/2011/08/naafa-convention-day-3-advocacy-and.html 

by Dana Schuster

Joanne Ikeda and I recently attended the 6th Biennial Childhood Obesity Conference in San Diego (an event billed as "The Nation's Premier Conference on Childhood Obesity"- UGH) representing Health At Every SizeŽ, ASDAH, and NAAFA. Joanne was a panel presenter for a session entitled "Promoting Weight Sensitivity and Health Messages for All Sizes" during which she introduced NAAFA's Childhood Advocacy Toolkit. ASDAH was one of the exhibitors, and I staffed the booth.

It was HUGE that ASDAH and NAAFA had a formal presence at this event and that the HAES^SMmessage was made available to the approximate 2,000 conference attendees. The ASDAH exhibit booth afforded me a relatively safe space in this toxic environment and the opportunity to speak to nearly 200 people who stopped by to pick up information and ask questions. I made many contacts and was THRILLED at how many times I heard people indicate some familiarity with HAES^SM from the PBS special or some other mention in a media source. There were many, many comments about how happy people were that we were present at this conference with this "really important" approach.

The banner in the ASDAH booth depicted three beautiful contemplative fat children with a statement balloon above their heads that read "When we hear you say you want to get rid of 'childhood obesity,' we feel like you want to get rid of us." Over and over again I saw people read the banner as they waited in the breakfast buffet line in front of our booth or walked by glancing at the exhibits. They would do a double-take, which showed me that this powerful message got people's attention and started them thinking about how a focus on size can harm kids.

I distributed ALL the materials I had, and had some amazing conversations with people from around the country, including physicians, researchers, dietitians, public health department employees, and others.

There were two FABULOUS HAES^SM tools in particular that I had as resources for which I will be forever grateful . . . the NAAFA Child Advocacy Toolkit (booklet display version and extra CDs) and Marilyn Wann's amazing YAY! Scale. I encourage anyone who does any type of HAES^SM or size acceptance outreach to bring a YAY! Scale - it is both fun and transformative.

I have used the YAY! Scale in many different settings but it was even more powerful this time because in the booth next to me was a company called Biospace with their "incredible" $7,000 scale that tells one's weight/BMI/body fat/lean muscle/strength/ etc. etc. with "98% accuracy!" It was a challenge to see so many people (mostly women) line-up to listen to a detailed dose of body dissatisfaction and be told they need to "lose X pounds of body fat, but make sure to not lose any muscle" as if this is even possible.

Rather than screaming at this blatant BS (my natural inclination), I simply pointed to my lovely pink and grey checked YAY! Scale and said "hop on my scale" which was, of course, conveniently positioned in front of my table as close to the Biospace scale as possible. People would step on and be told they are "sexy" or "perfect" or "adorable", and smilingly turn to look at the other scale and loudly announce that they liked the YAY! Scale MUCH BETTER. I didn't have to say a word. WOW!

It makes a significant difference to know that you all are out there when someone is in the "lion's den" like this. So, Thank You for all that each of you does to move the HAES^SM message forward in the world.

by Linda Ramos

Long-time NAAFA supporter, fat activist, and super-size model Debra "Teighlor" Perkins died of an undiagnosed cancer on July 21, 2011.

Deb was well-known in the fat acceptance community as a celebrated woman with unique beauty. She never divorced beauty from size and she made the Guinness Book of Records in 2000 for her size as a model (breaking taboos), sharing that beauty with others.

As an activist, Deb was a part of many of the earlier online size acceptance forums, from the Fat Acceptance Mailing List to the Dimensions Boards. In the 1990s, she helped restart the local Los Angeles Chapter of NAAFA, which continues to thrive today.

Deb contributed a lot to NAAFA-LA, most notably the "I Am Fat" song. It was conceived by Deb, who not only wrote the lyrics but also found a way for us to record it and distribute it. Her song remains a rousing anthem within the fat acceptance community.  

Deb was a consummate baker and cook, and people at any NAAFA-LA events were treated to Deb's creations, from her much-adored Ranch Dip to her stellar Cheesecake Brownies. She would make dozens of dishes, despite an increasing lack of mobility and deep, persistent arthritis pain. Her goodies made their way to folks at the 2009 NAAFA convention and the Fattitude Festival, to name only a few.

As so many of us do, Deb personally experienced size discrimination and abuse in the workplace, witnessed the terrible medical consequences of weight-loss surgery on friends (even complete strangers), extracted herself from an abusive relationship, and lived through so many of the experiences that lead us to fight for equality in society.

Her compassion and activism led her to reach out and be a lifeline to supersized shut-ins before she, herself, became fully disabled. She deeply understood the psychological harm that living in isolation in our society can bring. She gave shut-ins someone to call and be with, over the phone, when they needed a friend.

Deb spent many years working to educate her local medical personnel and institutions on how to care for supersized individuals. Sadly, it was those very barriers that she worked against that ultimately claimed her life, but she leaves a legacy for us to carry on. 

by Bill and Terri Weitze

[Find more news at http://naafa.org]

 

July 10, 2011: Pattie Thomas, Ph.D. offers a step-by-step explanation of the difference between correlation and causation, as well as explaining common pitfalls in obesity studies.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/i-take-space/201107/lesson-in-cause-and-effect

 

July 14, 2011: Senator Kay Hagan, Representative Tammy Baldwin, and Geena Davis want the media to promote more balanced and healthy images of women, and are proposing legislation to encourage this. Bizarrely, The Daily Caller starts their article on this with "despite war on obesity." Because promoting public health isn't healthy, I guess.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/13/so-much-for-the-obesity-epidemic

 

July 14, 2011: Dr. David Ludwig, in an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association, states that very fat children should be removed from their homes and placed under state care. Since kids can be fat for a variety of reasons, this seems misguided to us. Happily, many experts have come out against Dr. Ludwig's proposal, and NAAFA issued a news release on the subject. Also read Marilyn Wann's wonderful blog post for SF Weekly in response to Dr. Ludwig's piece.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/childhood-obesity-call-parents-lose-custody/story?id=14068280

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/2/206.extract

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naafapressreleases/message/75

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/07/foster_care_fat_ children_gastric_bypass.php

 

July 14, 2011: NAAFA's End Bullying Now! contest asks kids between the ages of 6 and 18 who have experienced bullying because of body size to create a 30-60 second video public service announcement. [See related story above.]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naafapressreleases/message/73

 

July 18, 2011: A recent study claims that people who are impulsive are more likely to be "overweight" because they lack discipline and are more apt to give in to temptation. The only thing the researchers seem to have done is fit a model to known data; they did not demonstrate any causation, and did not test the model against other data as far as we could tell.

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/07/personality-weight.aspx

http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2011-14323-001

 

July 18, 2011: More evidence of how toxic our fat-hating society is becoming: eating-disorder hospitalizations more than doubled from 1999 to 2006 for children younger than 12, according to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/07/18/more-young-children-are-alarmingly-thin.html

 

July 19, 2011: Some hospitals and ambulance services in Oregon are making changes to protect the dignity and safety of their fat patients by providing employee training and equipment that will accommodate larger bodies.

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/07/safety_dignity_ for_obese_patie.html

 

July 21, 2011: A UK study proposes an increased risk of many common cancer types for taller women, possibly due to hormones linked with growth or that tall people simply have more cells. Of note is the difference in tone of this article when compared to articles on fat people being at risk for certain cancers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/21/taller-women-cancer-study

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21782509

 

July 22, 2011: A Huffington Post article on how bullying can affect the health of fat children cites a study of Irish children (apparently unpublished) and a 2010 University of Michigan study. The article suggests encouraging healthy eating habits and more physical activity, and cautions adults not to make negative comments about fat people. But what about all the negative messages children are exposed to by the media and society in general? Also, why not make playgrounds safe?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-dolgoff-md/bullying-and-obesity_b_900445.html

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/6/e1301.short

 

July 28, 2011: Plus-size model Marquita Pring admits that she sometimes using padding on her hips, depending on how curvy the clients want her to appear in photos. Plus Model Magazine's editor comments that the practice of padding is not as worrisome as the disconnect between models and the community of plus-size customers.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Plus-Size-Model-Marquita-Pring-Owns-Up-She-Uses-Hip-Padding-213994.shtml

http://plus-model-mag.com/2011/07/padding-plus-size-models-the-community-and-losing-focus-is-the-plus-size-customer-an-after-thought

 

July 31, 2011: A camp in Vermont claims to operate on HAES^SM principles, encouraging its campers to make healthful food choices and be active without rigid restrictions. Unfortunately, the focus for the camp is weight loss. But in covering the camp, MSNBC gives a good overview of the HAES concept and refers to the scientific research that supports it.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43591507/ns/today-today_health/t/end-dieting-new-movement-focuses-health-any-size

 

August 1, 2011: ASDAH announces that they have successfully registered the trademark Health at Every SizeŽ. The move is designed in part to prevent diet and fitness companies from misappropriating the term (see previous item).

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/8/prweb8679043.htm

 

August 2, 2011: In an article about the practice and possible pitfalls of using celebrities to sell a diet program, diet companies take swipes at each other and at the celebrities that "failed" - claiming it was not the fault of the diet (excuse, me "program") but of the individual.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/fashion/celebrities-as-diet-spokespersons-a-two-edged-sword.html

 

August 4, 2011: The Manawatu Standard (New Zealand) reports on a panel led by Massey University lecturer Dr. Cat Pause on using the HAES^SM approach instead of using weight as a proxy for health. Dr. Pause follows this up the next day with an appearance on Radio New Zealand, speaking on fat studies.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/5397291/Weighty-subject-of-fat-for-talks

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2495121/fat-studies-research

 

August 5, 2011: Marilyn Wann's blog posts for SF Weekly continue with the first of a two-part series on the politics and dangers of lap band surgery. (Part two is also linked below.)

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/08/fat_activist.php

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/08/lap_band_part_two.php

 

August 8, 2011: An NPR article on stereotyping points out how fat people in television sitcoms or dramas seldom mirror reality, and a psychotherapist compares weight-loss reality shows to a tent revival where redemption can only be achieved by weight loss and the damage that can cause.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/138958386/big-fat-stereotypes-play-out-on-the-small-screen

 

August 8, 2011: Deepak Chopra, a doctor best known for his spiritual and self-help books, writes in the Huffington Post that abdominal fat is especially dangerous because fat cells are active, not passive as once believed. His solution? Eat less and exercise. What a breakthrough.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/visceral-fat_b_919441.html 

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