fattypatties

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY

One great thing about being so busy is that sometimes it helps me to forget for awhile and be able to breathe.

I'm breathing from my belly these days and it is healing.

It is healing personally and it is healing the people.

WEASEL

I sometimes draw Medicine Cards to help me focus through chaos. Today I was reminded of Weasel's story and how wars by light-skinned people on dark skinned people is not a new thing:

The chiefs sent Weasel to the enemy camp to smoke them for power. "What medicines of the enemy?" the chiefs asked Weasel upon its return. Weasel never failed to give an accurate account of the enemy's numbers, strengths, and weaknesses. It was Weasel who tearfully told the Original People of the coming of the white boat people. "These brothers have strange new medicines," said Weasel. "They will tell us that to live the way we do is wrong. They will confuse us with their talking bark. They have stolen thunder from Sky Father and placed it in their weapons. They have not respect for the animal brothers and sisters, and they make their thunder speak to the animals and kill them. They will make the thunder speak to us also. Their numbers are too many to count, and these white brothers will steal everthing from us but our spirits. The great dark shadow of the ravenous bird of death has fallen over the People." (P. 169, Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams & David Carson, St. Martin's Press, 1999).


Weasel's power is in observing and knowing things that others cannot see or know. It doesn't make Weasel very popular because often telling about the underlying things, the hidden things is a thankless job that makes others uncomfortable. There is weasel power in sociology. That is why I am both proud and weary of my ability to see beneath the surface of the social world.

But in times of war, it is difficult to watch and know the consequences and pain that this effort is creating. There is indeed a dark shadow of a ravenous bird of death falling upon the world right now. I feel it deeply and it aches.

FEELING LOW

I had a meeting today that should have left me feeling positive about my life. This has been a weird week. It seems like everyone around me is fighting. Fights have broke out in comments on blogs and on e-mail list serves. This war is bad kharma.

Even the good things that happen seem surreal.

I feel paralyzed. Stuck in a moment in time. Not moving forward in ways that I should be moving.

I have work to do. I'm not doing it. I'm just going through the motions.

San Francisco was a high point this week. But now it just serves to remind me that good things could happen, but they aren't.

I guess it's just Friday Blues. I feel lonely. I feel alone.

SAN FRANCISCO TASK FORCE

I spent some time this evening watching the video from today's Rules Committee meeting in San Francisco concerning the formation of a task force on promoting nutrition and physical activity among kids (was obesity and diabetes).

There are a number of people who have influenced me and helped me to understand fatness in the light I do now. These people saved my life in many ways. I sat and watched this video and saw some of these people. I highly encourage you to watch this. It is worth the time.

All you need is streaming video or audio on your computer. Go to the SFGTV website and click on the Rules Committee March 23, 2003 link. This should kick in your default video player (mine was Real Player). It looks like these links stay up for awhile, you should get a chance to watch it for a few weeks. The discussion begins around the 26 minute mark. The first fat activist to speak was Jennifer Portnik at around ther 44 minute mark. Marilyn was there at the 1 hour 17 minute mark. Tish showed up at the 1 hour 21 minute mark. A bunch of others were there, including names I've heard or people I've read about such as Sondra Sovenay, Deb Burgard and Pat Lyons, and Frances White. I was especially impressed with Supervisor Dufty. I am bursting with love and relief that so many strong voices were heard in a public forum.

Wow. Just, wow.

The Rules Committee continued approval of the task force so that it could be rewritten with fat neutral terminology, promote health-centered programs rather than weight-centered programs and include people from the size acceptance community on the task force to ensure sensitivity to fat people and the ongoing stigma fat people face. Unless they pull something out of left field, it seemed like a great day for fat people in San Fran.

It was the way I imagined democracy could work. Thank you San Francisco.

GO TISH!!!!

I'm so proud of Tish. Please be thinking about her at 9:30am Wednesday morning as she stands up for fat kids in San Francisco.

Thank you Tish!! You Go Grrrllll!!!!

Sometimes Dilbert says it best.

EMBEDDED JOURNALISM

So I'm driving around yesterday and listening to CBC radio. Donald Rumsfeld is on, complaining about news coverage which compared yesterday's bombing with campaigns of lore in Europe during World War II. "Nothing like this has every happened before in history" he says. Then he actually said, without even a hint of a laugh or giggle, that the precision bombs are more "human." I think he meant that it was better for human beings, but I kept thinking that unfortunately it was all too human to kill, all too human to give killing some noble rhetoric, all too human to pretend something else besides killing is happening.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It is better to hit so-called "military" sites over civilian sites, but battlefields where soldiers meet and fight like "civilized men" haven't existed for sometime. There is no such thing as a humane war. Human beings die. That is the way of war. As miracle Max said in The Princess Bride, anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

And they really are trying to sell something in this made-for-t.v. war -- GI Joe. As I listened to the radio, I heard a term that threw me at first. A general talked about the "embedded journalists." WTF? After returning home, I researched this a bit and found out what he meant. Even as Rumsfeld was complaining that no one's perspective on this war represented the truth because it was only a "slice of the battle" not the whole picture, it turns out that is by Rumseld's design. Want to cover the war? The only way you can is to travel as an embedded journalist. You get to see GI Joe up front and personal. No more General H. Norman Schwarzkopf as the famous front to the war. No more General Colin Powell to admire. In The Gulf War, version 1.0, we only got to see top brass on our television (and to listen to CNN's "Boys of Baghdad" on their cel phones describing the bombing "as it happened").

Media coverage changed during the first Gulf War as media organizations took the scraps offered them by the military without challenging them. Journalism has continued to become more malleable, bending to government and corporate wishes since then. I found a report online that was interesting in light of the media's embedded relationship with the American and British military: America's Team: The Odd Couple, A Report on the Relationship Between the Media and the Military. I couldn't find out if this document was actually commissioned or read by the US military. If it wasn't, the report certainly captured the intent of the US military. Reading the executive summary and the recommendations were enlightening. Limited censorship and media pools are called for by the report.

On the surface this seems like a compromise between battle conditions and freedom of the press, but whether intended or not, this kind of coverage has the affect of unmarking the military and political hierarchy that controls the battle. Tish wrote today of the ridiculous contention that protest is a lack of support for the troops. This kind of embedded coverage of the war works well with that anti-protest rhetoric. We see the war from the eyes of those troops and we sympathize, forgetting who put these troops in harms way.

It is the way of war. It is the language of war. I don't want to forget that as I search the channels and try to see if someone, somewhere will tell me what I want to know. I want to know that it is over. My guess is that it will never be the same.

General William Westmoreland: "Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."

Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and, as Hitler's designated successor, the second man in the Third Reich: "Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

THE SPIN: FREEDOM

I tried to watch the war on television some last night. It made my head hurt. Carl says he's ready to abandon the word "freedom" since it has become meaningless. I hate giving up such a beautiful word to those who would abuse it. But I understand the sentiment.

The new spin is that the Americans are "liberators" of the Iraqi people. Who can argue with that? Sadaam Hussein is a bad man, right? He has committed atrocities against his "own" people. He used the wealth of his land for his own means. He scares his people on a regular basis. I heard a young Iraqi being interviewed on CBC radio a couple of nights ago. He said Americans and Canadians could not understand what it means to live without freedom. Americans and Canadians have freedom. The dictatorship of Hussein is absolute and overpowering. He is right, of course. I don't know what it is like to live under a dictatorship. I'm certain that the oppressions this man felt in Iraq are quite foreign to my life.

But he is also wrong. America is not the land of the free for all Americans. It never has been. The fact that the Americans got good at masking their atrocities and oppressions does not make them the great liberators. Their track record speaks for itself: Black Slavery and subsequent Apartheid, Native massacres, the gap between rich and poor, Korea, Cuba, VietNam, Cambodia, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Iran, Iraq (Sadaam, the early years). Isn't it ironic that the Iraqis are turning to the very people who taught Hussein how to make these "weapons of mass destruction" to "liberate" them? Oh, yeah, it's a spin. My guess is that the Iraqis are probably uneasy about this liberation. They probably understand better than I do exactly what the American influence is capable of creating in a foreign land.

For those of us who have never been in a country "liberated" (though, I often wonder if Florida and the Southeastern United States shouldn't count -- but I'll leave that discussion for another time): read Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century a report by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), published in September 2000 (that's two months before the coup by Bush and one year before the attacks on New York and Washington). This document is long and difficult to read, but it is important to understand that the current militarism isn't just in reaction to terrorist attacks. It is a philosophy espoused by America's leadership. This philosophy is about American domination. If you don't think the PNAC document is influential on Bush's policies, consider who the members of PNAC include: Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

So the spin may sound good: Liberation!! Freedom!! All hail the conquering rescuers. But I fear for the Iraqis after the fact. Only a strong United Nations would have made it possible to keep American aggression in check and now the security council is just there to pick up the humanitarian pieces after the war.

This is not a good time for this planet. Not a good time at all.

IT HAS BEGUN OR RATHER, UH, IT CONTINUES...

Okay, first, this is surreal.

Meanwhile, the bombs have begun in earnest.

Last night I got a migraine. First, I've had in some time. I usually only get migraines when I've been tense about something for a long time and then it concludes and I relax. Relaxing causes blood that had been constrained by tension to flow to the brain and cause the headache. So I get headaches after things like big exams, the GRE, my dissertation defence, the closing on a house, etc. I have no idea why I got a headache yesterday, but I wonder if it isn't the war. I've tried to keep it at bay, in the back of my mind, but I think all this tension has gotten to me, and then it began and I hate to admit it but I have a weird surreal sense of relief that it began, that it was no longer up in the air.

Once I realized that, I felt profoundly manipulated. The build-up on the border, the so-called diplomacy, the suspense -- will they? won't they? The ridiculous tape loop of news stories about security and diplomacy and threats. All of this now feels like a well-designed Hitchockian suspense thriller designed to make us feel relieved that a war has come. Dammit! I hate being manipulated. I have to wonder who and what else is being manipulated as well.

In the meantime, I've recovered from the headache, but I still have this nagging feeling of impending doom.

Today, we remember history.

I think I've figured something out. VietNam was the war that got covered on television. The Gulf War, version 1.0, was a war that refused to be covered on television. When the media failed to challenge that refusal, the powers that be figured out they were in control of media interests. So this war, Gulf War, version 1.1, is the made-for-television war. Hyperreality lives on.

WAR DRUMS

I have been searching for something profound to say. I haven't thought of it yet.

I am deeply saddened and angered by the events of the past few weeks.

I am not surprised.

I am proud of Jean Chretien for remembering that Canada is a soveriegn nation and not the 51st state.

I am angry that W has made the world more dangerous by weakening the UN and by dividing allies and by putting oil(1) above people.

Mostly, I am sad and depressed because the world could have been so much more.

Tish talked about spirituality and working through the depression. I've been turning inward and outward as well.

Mother Earth sure seems to be mad at somebody :D


=======================
(1) from W's ultimatim speech:

"And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people."

IT'S OFFICIAL

I'm not going to own up to my personality test, but here's the result of Carl's:


Geek


What's Your Personality Type?
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SCIENCE AND CULTURE

There has been an interesting discussion on a list serve I follow called "Show Me the Data" which looks at data about obesity research with a certain amount of skepticism. Many of the people on the list (if not all) belong to a growing number of researchers and practitioners who believe in Health at Every Size as a paradigm for encouraging healthy eating and exercise without relying upon restrictive dieting and punitive exercise with weight loss as a goal.

After writing the following e-mail, I decided it might be good to post it on my blog...


==============
I have had limited access to my e-mail. I could read your discussion but couldn't respond at the remote location I was in for the past few days. It was both exhilirating and incredibly frustrating to read this list during that time. This has been a great discussion on several planes. The sociology of scientific knowledge remains my favourite topic for reading, thought, and writing. So this discussion raises a topic near and dear to my heart. I have been saving my thoughts on this for several days, so below is a rather long analysis/rant. Proceed at your own peril :D.

I read with the most interest the part about what science is and is not, and how science benefits us. I have to disagree with Paul E. when he said "Obesity science is the only arena I work in where data and facts that don't fit an economically and culturally mandated paradigm are swept under the rug." First, I think the history of medicine is filled with similar stories, usually involving groups who suffer stigma in society--minorities, poor people, elderly, women and so forth. Obesity is the latest in a long list of pathologies that are questionable, including eugenics, women's hysteria, phrenology, medicalization of race, and a long list of questionable "research" practices including the Tuskegee experiments on black men, the drug trials for DES, the birth control pill, and the Dalkon shield and of late, some questionable practices around pharmaceuticals creating syndromes to treat in order to extend their patents. Second, I think all medical research occurs within the context of the economic, the social and the cultural. Obesity and the other examples I've given may be extremes of this influence, but no research is done without funding and no research is done without human beings -- funding and human involvement means that cultural influences exist and therefore the data and presentation of data are going to be judged by cultural paradigms and those things that don't fit will be probably ignored or diminished.

However, I agree with Paul E., and others, that scientific research is valuable. The recognition that science is not objective and is culturally informed does not diminish its value. In fact, I believe such a recognition can increase its value because we will be more confident in our knowledge as we scrutinize our results.

Sandra Harding has written extensively about this. She points out in Is Science Multi-Cultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistempologies there are four basic claims upon which science, as we think of it, is built:

1. There is just one world.
2. There is one, and only one, possible account of the world.
3. There is just one science that can piece together the one account of the one world.
4. There is a class of people who, due to their education and experience, can practice this science in a way that will lead to the one possible account of the one world.

Recognizing these assumptions and questioning them from time to time only leads to better knowledge. If we treat our assumptions as sacrosanct then we are simply practicing a religious exercise and we begin to treat scientists like priests who represent a special status that can't be examined. This is very dangerous and it is very prevelant in medical science.

"The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. ... "==Albert Einstein, 7 Oct 1952 (from Ideas and Opinions, p166--Three Rivers Press, 1954[1982])

Questioning whether science can be objective should not be threatening to science or scientists. It is well within the spirit of the scientific method to remain skeptical. Questioning whether science can be objective, or recognizing that there is more than one way to interpret physical phenomenon, can expand knowledge and doesn't necessarily negate the existence of an objective world. It merely points out that we live in the fishbowl and therefore cannot escape that perspective.

What I object to is the lack of scrutiny that scientific and medical research and practice receive. The class of "scientists" are not the only ones who should be allowed to scritinize. Questions and critiques should be important no matter from where the questions come.

I read with interest the use of science and scientific methodology as rhetorical ploys in the e-mail exchange between Tish and the San Francisco pediatrician. Tish's personal childhood experience was dismissed as irrelevant or inferior information: "As a person working in public health and policy, I cannot base my opinions on a sample of one." On the surface this seems like sound reasoning, however this statement carries with it a lot of theoretical baggage, including the fourth assumption from Harding that only a certain class of people can speak with authority about scientific matters. This dismissal is not scientific. It is highly political. Tish did well to point out that this pediatrician's agenda affected her reasoning. The doctor's agenda informed her statements about the term "overweight" being merely "medical" and therefore uncontestable. By realizing the doctor's agenda, one can indeed question the term "overweight" on levels other than its medical usage or measurability. This is the kind of use of science for social control and social status that bugs me because it is so often left unmarked. Hell, half the time we don't even mark the scientist. "Science says ...." "Science proves..." etc.

The "scientific fact" is equally fraught with unmarked politics. In my understanding of how scientific knowledge is to be created and produced, I believe that there can be no such thing as a "scientific fact." I take a fact to be something observable, documentable and measurable. Facts either support or detract from particular scientific theories. Tish's exchange with the pediatrician brings this out as well. The doctor essentially defended the use of weight as a parameter for the taskforce simply because it was easy to measure. Any "facts" she gathers is based upon this decision. She rejects hard to operationalize concepts such as "health" or "fitness" for the more concrete "weight" measurement. This would be okay, scientifically (not politically) if she were to admit to the limitations it places upon the results and the lack of validity as a measurement of health. Instead, however, the doctor asserts that the validity of the measurement cannot be questioned because she believes it is a "fact" that "overweight" has some health consequence. This is fallacious in at least two ways: First, she is confusing her measurement of something with the thing itself. This is a fallacy of circular reasoning. She is drawing a conclusion (overweight is a medical measurement) to support the evidence that results in those conclusions (we measure weight because it is easy to watch and then we conclude that weight matters.) Second, she is appealing to medical authority as if it were a unified, unbiased and otherwise singular thing. This is a fallacy of authority. To assert that doctors do it and therefore it cannot be dismissed is simply asserting status and raises no real scientific reason for the practice. Facts drawn from this fallacious approach can appear scientifically acquired and be asserted as "scientific facts" but in the end only a skeptical view of them will bring one closer to the truth (as I'm sure this list understands, since it is called "show me the data").

Some observable, documentable and measurable phenomenon called facts add up to pretty strong evidence (gravity seems pretty consistent in the universe so far), but facts are not in and of themselves science and scientific knowledge does not produce conclusions or facts. The door should always be left open for examination because it is within that moment of curiosity and observation that more scientific knowledge can be obtained. The use of the term "scientific fact" is a rhetorical ploy to use the legitimacy of science to prove a case. I always make it a point to scrutinize with skepticism anything touted as "scientific fact." Someone is usually selling something when they use it. Caveat emptor.

Science is valuable only to the extent that it is useful. Experimentation is extremely pragmatic: results must be reliable for sure, but they must also be valid. We need to know why we are measuring something, if our measurements actually measure the phenomenon we say they are and if these measurements can accurately capture the phenomenon being measured. I value greatly what medical research has provided. I owe my life to PAP smears because I would have had no way to know of the precancerous cells that had been growing in my body without it. I get a flu shot every year. I take medications developed by researchers on a regular basis. I don't object to the value of these kinds of endeavours and I am glad that such endeavours are always improving. I simply believe that this knowledge should be shared and scrutinized. I don't think of the scrutiny as hurting science as a useful tool. Instead, I think it makes it more useful. Knowing the influences upon a given study, the background of those conducting the study, the funding of the study, etc. allows people to decide for themselves regarding the validity of findings.

Obesity research is indeed one of the areas where I see a great lack of utility and a lot of unmarked political baggage hiding under the guise of "scientific fact" (I'm going to use "medical fact" here as a synomyn for "scientific fact" though I'm aware that this could be a whole other topic.) Even the word "obesity" deserves scrutiny because it is a medical term that has never been clearly defined and has yet to even prove itself a pathology. "Fat" is a descriptive term. "Obesity" is a medical term implying that fatness is a disease. While there might be some credible research that links the physical characteristic of fatness with certain diseases and physical ailments, I have found no credible argument that demonstrates obesity as a disease in and of itself. Yet it is constructed as one constantly and any further obesity research, no matter how scientifically sound that research may be, is tainted by this lack of credibility. No one studies "fat people." They study "obesity." There is a world of differences, as Tish's discussion with the pediatrician points out. A fat kid is a real person with considerable complexities, including, but not limited to, the stigma he or she suffers from being marked as inferior because of his or her fatness. An "overweight" kid is a medical entity that will be measured with some meaning attached to changes in that measurement. The fact that the "overweight" label might hurt the "fat kid" is irrelevant to the doctor because she continues to unmark the politics of "overweight." The only solution to the stigma that the doctor offers is to be removed from the stigmatized class (lose weight) and the implication is that all those left in the class are indeed a product of their own making. Tish, in the doctor's mind, is not allowed to question this "medical fact" because she does not belong to the medical class, and, indeed, belongs to the stigmatized class. The belief that Tish (or someone like her) has no legitimate critique within the doctor's rhetoric is sociological and political, not medical or scientific.

Recognizing the economic, social and cultural contexts of research allows scientific and medical knowledge to be scrutinized and improved and therefore, it makes it more powerful and useful. Scientific researchers should not fear this scrutiny if they truly want to create the best science they can. Only open discussions with all interested parties can create this kind of powerful knowledge and that is why I value such discussions on this list. It has been enlightening in many ways.

I'll leave with one more quote from Albert (with forgiveness of his sexist language):

"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

"What place does the theoretical physicist's picture of the world occupy among all these possible pictures? It demands the highest possible standards of rigorous precision in the description of relations, such as only the use of mathematical language can give. In regard to his subject matter, the physicist has to limit himself very serverely: he must content himself with describing the most simple events which can be brought within the domain of our experience; all events of a more complex order are beyond the power of the human intellect to reconstruct with the subtle accuracy and logical perfection which the theoretical physicist demands. Supreme purity, clarity, and certainty at the cost of completeness."== Albert Einstein, 1918, given as an address at the celebration of Max Planck's 60th birthday (from Ideas and Opinions, p166--Three Rivers Press, 1954[1982])

MY HUSBAND IS...


What Is Your Animal Personality?
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Anarcho-Syndicalist - You believe that governments
and corporations are both equally evil. You
think that all people should have maximum
personal freedom. You think everyone should
have control over their economic production,
because the economy should be structured
completely in terms of cooperatives and
communes. Your historical role model is Noam
Chomsky.

Which political sterotype are you?
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MORE FUN THINGS -- SOME DAY I'LL WRITE AGAIN SOON...






Green - You believe that small economic units
should control the goods, and that the
government should be permissive of
"victimless crimes," respectful of
civil liberties and very strict towards big
business. You also believe in either a
socialist tax structure or more power to local
communities. You think that environmental
policies should be written into law. Your
historical role model is Ralf Nader.


Which political sterotype are you?
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You're Angelina Jolie...you may jump from thing to
thing...but you know who you are and no one
helped you to get there. You a crazy mamma
jamma...


What actress are you?
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What Is Your Animal Personality?
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Thanks to Suzanne by way of Tish.

MY EVIL TWIN BROTHER'S EVILOSITY OR STILL FORGETTING ABOUT ALL THIS SERIOUS SHIT

How evil are you?

I am more evil than my evil twin -- what's up with that?

TO SUM IT UP

This exercise I've put myself through this week has been worthwhile for a couple of reasons.

First, I was feeling quit low when this week started. One of the problem with living with the stigma of fat is that when I am sick, I find myself revisiting fat acceptance issues even if NO ONE suggests that whatever illness I have is related to being fat. Of course, it is rare that there isn't one medical professional around who won't make the suggestion and this time pneumonia and asthma got connected to fatness by one doctor at the hospital. But I was revisiting the question since my hospital stay. Somewhere in the back of my brain I was beginning to convince myself that the diet process would be worth it one more time. Writing about my past this week and remember all the shit I've put myself through in the name of losing weight reminded me that such a strategy would not work for me.

Second, I realized dialogue can help at times, but at some point it is just an existential moment that you either experience or you don't. Tish summed it up for me best the other day:

"It really is about identity. A shift of identity. I'm fat. There are people who think that means that I gorge and sleep. What ever. I'm sick of explaining myself."

I have reached that existential moment and frankly I am tired of explaining it to other people. I took the challenge this week to explain some things not because I wanted Angel (or anyone else) to understand me but because I needed to revisit these questions again -- especially the one where I cared about other people's efforts. I did this exercise in public because I thought my own struggle might help other people in their struggles, but I am more concerned that my struggle becomes part of the record. Identities do not appear fully sprung out of no where and attach themselves to individuals. They come from interactions with the world around them. They are informed by the reactions the world gives to our existential moments of realization. They are a combination of who we are inside and who we are in other's eyes. This is the question that I've come to call the culture question.

I have struggled with the culture question this week, but in the end what I've done is reaffirmed my own existential moment. I affirm that I am fat. It is part of my identity. I don't see it as a bad part, but a very core part of who I have become. It turns out that for the most part, I like who I have become. It is true that what I want now is for my identity to be acceptable in my culture. But I don't plan to change my identity in order to be acceptable. It is tough living with stigma. But knowing how to live with a stigma makes me a better sociologist, a better artist, and a better friend.