By Christian Messer
Photography by Rosemary Ragusa unless noted
Makeup & Hair By Michelle Lagos

As a society, we have come to believe that it is unacceptable to ridicule people based on race, religion or disability. However there are two groups of whom is is acceptable to publicly make fun: fat people and LGBT people. This is ironic, because in our LGBT community, we have those who have disdain for fat LGBT people. I took it upon myself to dive into this topic in order to discover and educate myself, and then pass it along to you. What I discovered is that there are many myths that are taken as fact in the community or society as a whole. What you’ll find here are the facts and the stories of those who have struggled with weight, accepted their bodies, and those who have shed the pounds and kept it off.

Myth #1 Fat people use genetics as a crutch, it simply isn’t true.

In all honesty, yes some people do. However, it has been proven time and again that your biology does play a role in whether you’re prone to store excess fat. In addition to genetics, environmental factors influence how body fat is accumulated. Jeffrey Freedman M.D., Ph.D. (Marilyn M. Simpson professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at The Rockefeller University) says it best in an article for a series, Newsweek’s “The Fat Wars: America’s Weight Rage,” his is titled, “The Real Cause of Obesity”:

“The heritability of obesity — a measure of how much obesity is due to genes versus other factors — is about the same as the heritability of height. It’s even greater than that for many conditions that people accept as having a genetic basis, including heart disease, breast cancer, and schizophrenia. As nutrition has improved over the past 200 years, Americans have gotten much taller on average, but it is still the genes that determine who is tall or short today. The same is true for weight. Although our high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle contributes to the approximately 10-pound average weight gain of Americans compared to the recent past, some people are more severely affected by this lifestyle than others. That’s because they have inherited genes that increase their predisposition for accumulating body fat. Our modern lifestyle is thus a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the high prevalence of obesity in our population.”

Stacey Bias, founder of Fat Girls Speaks told me this, “If you think about it, there have always been fat people…it’s like gender or sexuality, fatties are out of spectrum, much like any other fluid thing we have in our lives. Some people are more prone to storing fat and some people are less prone. There are of course all sorts of environmental factors that may contribute to how much fat we store, but that doesn’t change the fact that some bodies are naturally going to store and keep fat that others aren’t…that’s just a reality of human bodies.”

Take my story as one example: I have always been skinny…always. I eat fatty foods and sweets (a big vice of mine,) and yet don’t experience the side effects. Looking at my parents? My father’s metabolism is the one I inherited. He was always thin as far as I can remember. He did like his beer and later in life he did get a slight beer gut, but other than that, he was always thin. My mother is the complete opposite. I never knew my mother as a thin person. I saw that thin person in photos, but never in real life. She ate healthy as far as I recall, but she also had a sweet tooth, and I’m guessing that’s where mine came from. Her father was Cherokee Indian, and if remember correctly, he was half, my mom a quarter and me a fifth. As one would have guessed, the Indian population has been combatting obesity for some time, much longer than the majority of society.

I asked Bias’ opinion about genetics and her reply was a surprise because it makes sense in several ways:

“I think to an extent it plays a role, but I think our cultural obsession with dieting plays a role. It shuts off our internal relationship with our body. It shuts off our internal relationship with food. Then it becomes something…a shame based relationship with our body. A shame based relationship creates neuroses, it creates anxiety and ultimately, compulsion. That’s certainly not true of everyone. But it can be true and has been true for me in the past. It definitely is part of the struggle, and dieting actually makes people fatter. Most everybody you’re going to meet is or has been somewhat recently on a diet.

So I think it’s a combination of nature and nurture that makes people fat. As far as the global epidemic of, “Oh my God, Oh my God…Obesity”…I think it’s being blown out of proportion to some degree, just like with BMI (Body Mass Index.) Bodies are getting bigger and a lot of it is being assigned to fat, but truthfully, each generation is taller than the next. Evolution of bodies makes us bigger, we’re way bigger than we were, what…200 or 300 years ago. If you look at clothing…people were tiny, they were short, so we are growing, and that’s going to be true regardless of weight.”

Myth # 2 Fat people are unhealthy and lazy

Quite the blanket statement, and again, there is a part of the population whose health has been adversely affected by being fat. Some of these people may have never tried to control their weight, and some have simply given up trying to do so. It is possible too, that it is a lifestyle shared by their family for generations, so it’s accepted. However, this is where we bust this myth: the people we talked to are very active and in fact, very healthy.

Our cover model Rasha Spindel is one example of that. When I asked her how she felt about this perception she replied,

“I think that is insane! Just because you are plus-size that does not automatically make you unhealthy or lazy! Stereotypes like that are so hurtful! I had my doctor tell me the other day (after seeing my lab work) that I am one of the healthiest curvy people he has ever seen. It doesn’t matter that I am not skinny. I am healthy, and incredibly active!”

Troy West, partner and owner of Empower fitness is another example. He explained to me that when people show up for a class, and see his size, they make assumptions. “Fat doesn’t equal lazy. And that is a point they like to use…and it’s usually learned behavior. I’ve usually used combat for one of the things that was quite easy for me. You know…the day that you can actually beat me? You can talk.,” West explained.

He continued, “Because I was fat as a kid, I was a chubby kid who played football and played violin. That was hard, it was really difficult. Throw on top of that a weight problem. But I was also the kid who if you ever said anything, I’d literally kick your ass…didn’t matter one way or another. I grew into that with the Marine Corp, barely met weight standards with a 300 PFT (Physical Fitness Test.)

With any kind of hate, it’s usually ignorance. I run into all the time. I have people that come in and say, ‘How could you?’ (meaning how could a chubby guy teach me to be fit) Easily – because I’m the best of the best. By educating yourself out of those things.”

Myth #3 It’s clear, diets work, and are the solution for being fat.

And they are also one of the main reasons why people are bigger than they used to be. As Oprah commented to “Food Rules” author Michael Pollan, “Diets haven’t made us smaller, they’ve made us fatter!” It’s true, and diets do work, but they also have a flip side that no one counts on: gaining the weight lost…back.
Blogger Kate Harding explains this much better than I could possibly try to, so here is an excerpt form her post on, “Fat vs Fiction”…

“[T]o win the fight against obesity,” Thorpe and Ferguson write, “all of us need to be individually committed.” Really? All of us? What role do people who aren’t fat play in this, exactly? If you mean they need to be constantly reminding fat people that we’re disgusting, unlovable, smelly, lazy, undisciplined, and above all, unhealtheeeeeee, then as a whole, they’re doing a bang-up job already. (This does not, of course, apply to all thin people. Some of my best friends are thin!) So I’m pretty sure what you mean is “Fat people need to be individually committed” to fighting their own bodies. To which I’d point out: Most of us already are. Who the fuck do you think is keeping the $50 billion dollar weight loss industry afloat? Magic sprites?

Oh, and about that. You know that population-wide weight gain that happened in the last 30 years? (Friedman says the average is about 10 lbs.; I’ve heard anywhere from 7 to 20). Check out that last sentence from the UCLA researchers I quoted above: “Dieters who gain back more weight than they lost may very well be the norm, rather than an unlucky minority.” Not only does dieting not work, but a lot of times it makes you fatter. And the weight loss industry has been growing right along with our asses all that time. Is that the only reason for the gain over that period? I have no idea, probably not. But it’s something obesity alarmists never, ever factor in, even though common sense suggests somebody really ought to explore that correlation.”

Myth #4 Gastric bypass surgery is a cop-out, easy route and eventually, doesn’t work.

Gee…see a pattern here of blanket statements?

Gastric bypass surgery is the last resort for most people who have it, and contrary to popular belief, it is not easy. Jim Wilburn contacted me to volunteer his experience of obesity issues from childhood to adulthood and his final decision to get the surgery. You can find his full interview on the id Magazine site, but here are some excerpts:

Jim Wilburn: “And that was the big thing with me that got me going on it was, I was 25 years old and my doctor put me on high blood pressure medicine and I was 130-140 pounds overweight…my family’s history of stroke and heart disease is huge. Everybody in my family was obese. I know there’s genetics that play a role, but it’s habits too, growing up.

We ate a lot of processed foods, my mom wasn’t into fresh vegetables, she just had bags of frozen vegetables. There were the ceremonial trips to Costco and Price Club back in the day, and we’d roll out with two palettes full of food and stuff. Finally, my doctor threatened to put me on blood pressure medicine a couple of years before he actually did. I tried exercise, dieting and all of that, but finally I researched gastric bypass and found that it worked.

The particular surgeon I went to in Los Angeles has performed it on celebrities, heads of state for various foreign nations. He pioneered this particular procedure that I had implemented. The reason I am able to maintain the weight loss I because I have a ring around the pouch that they created. A lot of doctors will just create a pouch, and the pouch will stretch in time.

Mine, they put a ring around it to restrict it from stretching. So it’s almost like I’ve got a band around it and so I have a 3oz. stomach now, where I used to have a 30oz. stomach. Quite a different size. Once that fills up, it tells your brain, “oh, I’m full,” so you eat half the food you used to eat.”

And on being prepared for surgery:

“It really is an individual thing. I know people, they couldn’t handle the surgery I had done. I had it done for my own reasons, it’s not the right solution for everybody. Nor is exercise or diets. It depends on your state of mind and your health.”

Wilburn continued to tell me that he has successfully kept the weight off by making smart choices on the foods he eats, even taking food density into account. He can eat a whole tub of popcorn by himself, but foods like potatoes, need to be eaten in moderation.

This is one case, and there are many like Wilburn’s to be sure. As with any health issue, there are two sides, and there are those who have the surgery and gain the weight back. Most of that may possibly be due to the kind of procedure that is done. As Wilburn mentioned, most surgeons just create the pouch, which can eventually stretch. Wilbrun also had the help of a support group his surgeon had built into all major cities; a resource that is not available with most surgeries.

Myth #5 Fat people deserve the looks, comments and discrimination they experience…after all, it’s their fault they’re fat.

Sure…if you’re a hateful bitch! Fat people are just that, people. Just as you or I have demons, scars, or inherited traits we may not like, the same is true for those who are plus-size. Being large is the effect of many, many causes. Genetics, biology on may levels (diabetes or thyroid issues for example,) combined with environment, lack of nutrition education and lifestyle; it’s a pretty intricate formula and mine is as unique to me as it is to yours.

Marry genetics with an American modern society and you have a problem. Cheap processed fast foods are readily available, access to mobile transport, schools cutting expenses and dropping gym class, T.V. takes up a chunk of our day and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is in practically everything we eat which makes it hard to cut out. In lower income neighborhoods fresh produce is not always accessible, and you also have learned helplessness that has been passed down form generation to generation.

Myth #6 Fat people are not normal, why can’t they be like normal people or me?

Hello? You’re in the LGBT community! Really…what is normal? I had a colleague the other day tell me the word normal should be deleted from our dictionary. My normal is different than your normal. Just as opinions are like assholes, so are perceptions. If you’re brought into a room that is empty other than a chair in the middle of it, you may go in and see a chair. Someone else could see something completely different. They may see instead, a piece of artwork, a step stool, or shelf.

This is why the terms overweight and obese are not the words plus-size people like to hear. Bias explained it to me like this:

“You used the word overweight a couple of times and I just want to throw an idea your way about that word…because I feel like it is a very judging word…because, over who’s weight? It applies automatically that there’s an ideal. The same with underweight, the same with obese, which is a very medical term.

It’s funny, people shy away from the word fat, but it’s the least judgmental word. Fat is just fat, it’s not good or bad. It’s the application of judgment by society that actually makes it a positive or negative. You might touch on that in your article. But if you write about me, don’t call me overweight…just call me fat.”

Thus ends this part of our series. We’ll be continuing this topic of discussion for some time, but this was a good start. My point in doing this first installment was to give you, our readers some facts and stories about those in our community that are plus size. I hope this helps to change some minds and delay knee-jerk judgements about this part of our community.