I am a doctor, and although I like the vast majority of my patients, I see this mentality all day long in the Africa-American women I take care of. I try to be kind to them, and so I don't really confront them very often about what I know are diets full of absolute crap. Which is doing them a disservice. To all the whiners and babies who are going to write in and acuse Ms. Dickerson of racism (I stopped reading after the first letter), you need to grow up and live in reality. Black women are eating themselves into obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and death (of course, a few people of any gender/race are, but only in black women is it driven by cultural standards). It is their right to do that if they really want, but let's not shroud this in feel-good euphamisms and denial.

A few months ago when she appeared on The Colbert Report, she was chunky. She was just chunky all over and kind of shapeless, rather than slender with weight concentrated in just one area, like the models she cites as poor examples; she definitely carried more extra weight in her midsection than she carried in the ass that Colbert handed to her.

Maybe it shows up more in the black community but on par Americans love to be fat. Fatter the better. 64oz depth charges of soda, quintuple burgers, 2 lb cheesecakes as single servings.

Pile it on, pour it in, scarf it down. Companies like Living XL.com and Big John toilet company know this stuff. We're fat and growing fatter and our kids won't outlive us as a result. I see it as an opportunity - get involved in physical therapy, invest in durable medical equipment. Hey it's a cold competitive world out there. We need to thin the herd. So however you look at it: moral failing, your unique metabolism, your mommy was mean to you, cultural norms, it's all good. Keep chowing down folks. I'll be selling you jumbo sized golf carts and zoo scales.

Wow, I'm a caucasian white boy, but I find that kind of behind very erotic, much like a slim woman with very large all-natural breasts. It's not the magazine that made her booty erotic, but her erotic booty that makes the magazine worth looking at!

Medicare spends $18,000 a year each to treat the vast numbers of type 2 diabetics on the rolls. Docs and Big Pharma make lots of money treating these people. They are a real cash cow. Since the most effective (and safest) treatment for type 2 diabetes is diet and exercise (which cost nothing), the policy should be that your medical costs will be covered for one year. After that you are on your own. It's called tough love.

My friends father, from Central America, is 5'6" and probably 130 lbs. He's had Type 2 diabetes for the past 10 years, and is now on dialysis.

My grandmother had Type 2 diabetes (I'm black) and she wasn't obese at all. Granted, she had 13 children so she wasn't a supermodel anymore, but she was a normal size for 55 year old women. She also stored most of her fat in her stomach. She lost her leg, and died.

My mother has Type 2 diabetes. She is overweight, but not obese by medical standards. (She actually has a medical condition which arises from a botched surgery she had when had cancer...) However, she does store all of her fat in her stomach (she has skinny legs.) But don't worry white America, she's not on medicare raising your precious taxes. She has her own insurance that she's paid into. I'm sorry if it raises your friggin premiums, but I don't want my mom to die like my grandmother. Guess I'm selfish like that.

Some people get Type 2 diabetes just because they are overweight, and can manage it that way by losing weight, but some people, like my family and my friends family, are at risk no matter what they do. I think it has to do with genetics.

How does Dickerson propose to make these fat women thin?

Almost everyone who diets gains it all back within five years. Study after study shows this. And the studies that claim to show sustained weight loss are inevitably talking about one or two years later, not five.

We've known this for years. There is no information whatsoever on how to keep weight off for over five years, because researchers cannot find enough people who've done it. On the rare occasion when they set up a study to last for five years, they don't learn anything useful, except that most of their subjects end up right where they started. (http://www.reuters.com/article/gc08/idUSN3036700020070402?pageNumber=1)

Scientists and doctors have no idea how to make fat people permanently thin. But boy, that doesn't stop people from insisting that they know what the problem is: pork chops and laziness! And the cure, obviously, is shame!

'Cause you know, no one's ever tried that before. If there's one thing you can't find anywhere in this culture, it's a fat person who's cripplingly ashamed of her body. And obviously, hating yourself is the best first step toward becoming healthier. We need to teach the poor, ignorant fatties these truths!

Because we care about their health

Debra Dickerson once again is given free range to hate other black women, under the guise of sanctimoniously knowing what's best. Fortunately I'm used to her MO and knew to stop reading once I hit this line:

Fetishizing large rumps ... is, of course, no better or worse than fetishizing plastic blimp-breasts, except that the latter could be considered safer.

So a naturally large rear is "no better" than a sack of toxic chemicals inserted into the body via an invasive surgical procedure that damages tissues and deadens nerves? Indeed, in Debra's mirror universe, expensive mutilation is to be preferred over natural gifts, since she actually has the effrontery to call it "safer".

I'm truly at a loss as to why a progressive publication continues to allot space to this hateful creature. I can only imagine that she has become "The Black Paglia", a ranting hypocrite with some distant credibility who is retained because they generate so many letters (which equal page views, ergo ad dollars).