Paul Campos on "Fat and Idenity Politics"
You know the lectures going on at UCLA that we posted about the other day? A little birdie told us they are podcasting them on YouTube!!! The magic that is transmitting knowledge across time and space via the internet thrills me.
Below is the first lecture, by Paul Campos. I've never met Paul, so I had no idea he was so charming! He's got Ryan Reynolds' eyes/brows, amirite?
Admittedly, we've heard time and time again almost everything that Paul talks about. However, I still think it's a good listen if you have the time. While transcribing some quotes I had to listen to some bits over and over again...which made me realize that it can still be powerful to hear these words spoken, even if you've heard them a bazillion times already. My highlights after the jump.
Highlights:
-Paul got interested in this fat stuff when studying the Clinton-Lewinski case. Interesting story!
-Paul's demeanor and the audience's reaction to him teling them that overweight "is thinner than me...seriously." Hilarious.
-Paul's acknowledgement of privilege, which gives him legitimacy when speaking about such discredited things like this. As a fat woman who is often seen as "biased" or "merely justifying my behavior," I appreciate this.
-Paul says some interesting things about fatness as "relative" to different sitautions, contexts, people.
-This quote, long as it is:
-And my personal fav:
-At the end, Paul makes some interesting comparisons between cultural frames about "curing homosexuality" and "curing obesity," attempting to give the audience some perspective on "reality" and medicalizing human beings.
Below is the first lecture, by Paul Campos. I've never met Paul, so I had no idea he was so charming! He's got Ryan Reynolds' eyes/brows, amirite?
Admittedly, we've heard time and time again almost everything that Paul talks about. However, I still think it's a good listen if you have the time. While transcribing some quotes I had to listen to some bits over and over again...which made me realize that it can still be powerful to hear these words spoken, even if you've heard them a bazillion times already. My highlights after the jump.
Highlights:
-Paul got interested in this fat stuff when studying the Clinton-Lewinski case. Interesting story!
-Paul's demeanor and the audience's reaction to him teling them that overweight "is thinner than me...seriously." Hilarious.
-Paul's acknowledgement of privilege, which gives him legitimacy when speaking about such discredited things like this. As a fat woman who is often seen as "biased" or "merely justifying my behavior," I appreciate this.
-Paul says some interesting things about fatness as "relative" to different sitautions, contexts, people.
-This quote, long as it is:
"...this is the part that never ever gets acknowledged by people who know better, even though they will acknowledge it and then renounce that they have acknowledged it moments later. We can't make people thin, okay? There's no empirical proposition in medicine that is better established than this. There is no known way to produce significant long-term weight loss in a stastically significant population. We just don't know how to do it. And that includes weight loss surgery or stomach amputation. That does not produce significant long-term weight loss among most people who undergo it. Certainly what absolutely fails completely in terms of significant long-term weight loss is haraunging people about their weight. And telling them that if they ate right and exercised more they would be thin. For vast majority of people that description is a complete failure. It's hopefully relatively rare in medicine, in particular, and social policy in general, to keep pursuing an intervention which is demonstrably a failure over and over again. Now I'm sure many of you are familiar with the definition of insanity, it's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's just another word for dieting."
-And my personal fav:
"I noticed in the context of the Clinton-Lewinski thing that people flinched a lot less at "semen stained-dress" than they did with fat. I can say "semen stained dress" to my mother, she'd be like, "Okay. I'm not crazy about it..." But fat? "Do you have to use that word?""
-At the end, Paul makes some interesting comparisons between cultural frames about "curing homosexuality" and "curing obesity," attempting to give the audience some perspective on "reality" and medicalizing human beings.
Grassroots Activism | Bariatric surgery for kids! Whee!
Posted by withoutscene on February 1, 2010
That was fantastic. Thanks so much for posting this!
We're surrounded by so much sheer craziness on this topic that the simplest statements of common sense seem like epiphanies or battle cries.
Regarding the video, If only a handful of people are now moved to reconsider their misguided stance on overweight and its causes, it'll have been good for something, definitely. Nothing helps activism like someone who does not appear to be a member of the group he / she is speaking out for. Fat activism is generally perceived (to my knowledge) to be largely made up out of overweight women, it's helpful to have a male of regular weight speak out, kind of prevents people from putting his speech off as 'covering his own back', and will perhaps make them consider that what he's saying might instead be said because there's actually truth to it, instead of stated to further his own agenda.
On a side note, if it wasn't relatively depressing, I'd even find it amusing that people so readily believe that it is biologically next to impossible to make underweight people gain weight - all we folks need to say is that we have a fast metabolism, and that we eat enough anyhow, but it doesn't seem to stay on, but refuse to believe that similar would apply to those who have overweight. I've seldom not been believed, which is good, because I really do have great problems gaining weight. I just wish people would show that kind of consideration and common-sense when it comes to the opposite - overweight people and losing weight. How come we readily accept that some underweight people 'just can't help it' or are 'just built that way', while at the same time deny these reasons to be a possibility regarding fat people? If we accept that there's biologically sound reasons for underweight, then how come we stubbornly refuse to believe that similar applies to overweight?
I'm continually amazed at how, in apparently enlightened times, people remain so blissfully ignorant and willing to bask in their logically conflicting opinions for sakes of running along with what the media tells us. Lobbies controlling the media? No, the media's autonomous and unbiased and totally not sponsored by economically powerful lobbies who want to get their self-serving messages out there, right? And who's Steven Lukes anyway.
As a chemist and scientist, I have long been astonished at the definitive evidence that diets don't work as desired and how little medical science pays attention to that evidence. Paul puts it so much more eloquently and I am delighted that he is willing to speak out.
Go Paul!!
I've heard him speak before, and he's great. I'd highly recommend his book - which was initially published as "The Obesity Myth" and then came out as "The Diet Myth" - too.