I'm going to take issue with your throwaway line about obesity, overweight and health. Here's why:

From Big Fat Facts (see bigfatfacts-dot-com):

"Obesity has not been found to be the primary cause of any of these health problems. There is little evidence that adiposity (excess fat tissues) produces the claimed pathologies.

Studies have shown that people who are heavy and fit are far healthier than people who are thin and never exercise. Fat, active people have half the mortality rate of thin sedentary people, and the same mortality rate as thin active people.

...

What do you suppose would happen if size were no longer an issue?

What if there was no such thing as being too fat, obese, overweight, heavy, super-sized, or girthy?

Would we be liberated to create more art?

To write more books?

To be involved in more theater?

To participate more as global citizens of the world?

To see more of the world?

To see more of each other?

To revel in our meals?

To revel in our bodies?

To revel in one another?

To dance naked in the sunlight, pleasuring in bodies big enough to contain all our possibilities?

Here's to boldly living the questions."

Hello Anonymous:

Actually, that wasn't a throw-away line at all. I've covered obesity, including the fat acceptance movement, for Salon. See this piece that I did last year on fat acceptance for kids:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/09/18/naafa/

That's why I was careful to say that some health problems are "associated" with being overweight or obese, rather than that being overweight or obese causes them. For example, doctors don't know why exactly about 80 percent of people who suffer from Type 2 diabetes are also overweight or obese, and there are other risk factors, but there is an association. See more here from the National Institutes of Health:

http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/health_risks.htm

best, Katharine

This is becoming insidious. And it's such a fracking unattractive word! Hate hate HATE "thick," and refuse to describe myself that way. At 5' 8", size 16, 38DD, I use "voluptuous," and I encourage all other zaftig (also a good word), stacked, lavishly plump, curv-licious women to do the same. RESIST THICK.

Thank you.

Oh. Yes. Also wanted to opine that, despite years of flirtation with NAAFA, lots of positive self-talk about my size, and much talk of reclaiming the word "fat," I have to agree that fat is rarely healthy, despite much protestation to the contrary from some folks. Sure, some folks may actually be fat and healthy at the same time. I'm vegan, so I've got a BP of 110/65, a great HDL/LDL ratio, etc., etc., blah blah blah, but I doubt I could gain much more weight and remain healthy, and I do realize that some of the health effects are cumulative over time, so perhaps I am only healthy SO FAR.

The truth of the matter is that every woman's body is different. If all of the flesh were to magically fall off of my bones tomorrow, my skeleton would be a size 8, which automatically disqualifies me from ever belonging to the club of women considered beautiful by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Needless to say, having all of the flesh fall off my body is no more healthy than if I were to gain 100 pounds.

I have other friends who couldn't get much bigger than a size 2 without being force-fed a box of corn starch every day. If they were to get big enough to be a size 8, they'd probably be sporting more pounds than is healthy for them, even though by many people's standards, they can still call themselves thin.

I know "plus-sized" women who run triathalons. I know "svelte" women who get winded picking up the morning paper from their driveway. And while yes, men ARE visual creatures who (for the most part) tend to like firmer bodies as opposed to fleshier ones, I don't know a single man who ever fell in love with a dress size.

Why is it that the fashion industry has this magic idea that if you are above a size 12, you must be "plus size" and therefore fat and in need of either a boot camp or special ego-boosting TV show to feel good about your obviously oversized body? Why is it that we presume that all women who are a size 4 are healthy just because they are skinny? Why is it so hard to love our bodies for what we can do with them as opposed to what made up number is on the tag inside our clothes?

I wish we could stop talking about fat and thin and plus-sized vs. regular-sized women and just talk about being healthy instead. Both the obese and the anorexic among us would be better off for it, as would our young girls, who often get so many mixed messages about how they are supposed to feel about how they look that they end up making stupid choices with their bodies that hurt them for life.

Studies have shown that people who are heavy and fit are far healthier than people who are thin and never exercise.

That's nice and all, but fat fit people aren't exactly a norm, y'know. Basing any kind of reasoning on a insignificant proportion of the population is silly.

I watched this last year, hoping it would be a positive and affirming thing for a lot of women. And I'm sure it was - without a doubt the women who competed were beautiful, and one thing that I LOVED about it was that not only were they larger women, they were also different ages. In fact, one of the finalists was "mature" AND bald! And she was a knockout. Sure, the pageant was kind of cheesy (as pageants often are), and Monique is annoying in general, and the constant clips of the contestants talking about what a life-changing experience this was were pretty manipulative. But I still think it's a positive thing to do a pageant highlighting the beauty of larger women.

BUT. I do take issue with the assertion that it's perfectly ok, health-wise, to be obese. Sure, it may well be that people can be very fit and also larger. But MOST people who are overweight are NOT fit, so to argue that these diseases are "only associated" with obesity just seems like a rationalization to me. I've seen too many overweight friends, family members, and coworkers go down the road to severely ill health to buy that it's common for overweight people to be just as fit as thin people. I know one person who is truly "fat and fit," and she's a dance teacher so she exercises more than most gym rats. But that's one person out of a sea of 40- and 50-somethings with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the pharmacy bills of elderly people.

This is why I prefer the Dove ads, exploitative though they may be, to the F.A.T. pageant. The Dove ads really do show healthy women who just don't fit the skinny body ideal you see in media. The F.A.T. pageant last year, on the other hand, showcased women who were actually obese. This is where I get really conflicted - I support anything that's going to help women of all shapes and sizes feel good about themselves. But I also can't imagine people doing an entire pageant glamorizing, say, smoking. And the health risks from obesity are just as bad as that.