This post is the fourth and last installment of my blog series, Where Pounds and Inches Hurt the Most . Follow these links to read the first , second , and third posts. Since I am petite, it has not been an uncommon experience for large size clients of mine to be skeptical about my capacity to empathize with the daily disdain and disapproval that they endure . So when the opportunity presented itself for me to experience life at more than double my normal weight, I leapt at the chance. I had been an interviewee on Channel 3 News entitled “Fat and Forgotten” which documented the physical and emotional hardships of being a large sized citizen. Many of my patients and members of NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) were featured. A seamstress from Hartford Stage Company was commissioned to make a realistically proportioned “fat suit” which was worn by reporter Barbara Pinto with clothing from Lane Bryant. Since she only went u
This post is the third one in my blog series, Where Pounds and Inches Hurt the Most. Follow these links to read the first post and second post Psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair points out the defining virtue for women in the 1950’s was to remain virginal until married, whereas in recent years it is to be thin. Columnist Ellen Goodman has noted that dieting is perhaps the most popular female “sport”. Ninety percent of dieters are females who typically associate beauty, success, personal happiness, and self-worth with thinness. The belief that “you are what you eat” has become a reflection of the new morality. We have lost sight of the fact that beauty standards are both culturally and temporally relative. A very large woman recently vacationed in the Caribbean with her average weighted friend. Much to her amazement, she was constantly pursued by the mature men, while her friend was virtually ignored. In the Time Travel Diet, author Jennifer Shute chronicles tem