Protesters getting into tutus, tying balloons, festivities
It may not look like it, but this is the start of a social revolution.

Nat sot Marilyn Wann, Activist, National Assoc to Advance Fat Acceptance: Welcome to ‘out bodies’ – out-selves, a coming out party for every body. Fat or thin, short or tall, do not apologise for your size. Eat your veges and exercise and don’t live your life based on the number on the scale. 56:04

Women dancing in tutus, wearing ‘Fat People are more Fun” T-shirts, doing martial arts, cheer squad etcGroup exercises
It’s a backlash – or as the protesters at this Manhattan park call it – a Fat-lash.They’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna diet any more.

Nat sot Marilyn, speech at protest: I look a lot like my fat mother who’s 80 years old and she mows the lawn and I think I’m lucky to get this body.

Thin Indian woman
weighing themselves

Curious bystanders watched as scales were cast aside for a new kind of weigh in.

Very obese woman: “C’mon now Beth, c’mon now –you’re hot.

For lead activist Marilyn Wann, it’s a fight to stop discrimination against those who don’t fit the thin American ideal.


Marilyn Wann: I would really love it if my govt didn’t vilify two thirds of the population needlessly because they’re not doing my health or anybody’s health any favours by pointing the finger at me and saying ‘you’re bad, you’re wrong, you’re sick – you’re gonna die.

Nat Sot, Music at the State Fair

Folks eating, corn being dipped in liquid butterBig bums on seats Nashville, Tennessee.Home to sweet corn, grits and southern fried chicken.

Nat sot pig racing, “And they’re off and racing ..”

Pigs racing around mini track It’s the Tenneesee State Fair and top billing is the Krystal Hamburger Eating contest.

We will count whatever is in your mouth when the clock hits zero but we’re not going to count it until we’ve completely chewed it and swallowed it.

Call of start – they start stuffing their faces with hamburgers

Hamburger eating contest, guys dipping food in water then stuffing burgers in their mouths

It’s a snapshot of why Americans are getting bigger – they’re surrounded by excess food, eating more than they need and moving less.In the midst of an avalanche of obesity warnings, this is tantamount to a rebellion.

Nat sot of contest – crowd yelling

Nat sot countdown to end of contest “3, 2, 1 ..”

True to form, New York heavyweight Ed “Cookie Jar” Jarvis, emerges the winner – gorging on 33 hamburgers in 8 minutes.

Nat sot Happy to present to you, the Trophy for the Nashville State Fair .. Cookie Jarvis! Whoa!

Holding trophy aloft

To him, the health critics take food far too seriously.

Grab with Ed Cookie Jar Jarvis:

What do you say to folks who say, as a role model, this isn’t a good one, we’re trying to get Americans to eat less, not more?

It’s only one day you know, you know everybody who goes to the buffet, they look like a professional eater. The bottom line is it’s not about gluttony, this is a competition like any other sport. If you go to watch guys throwing a football around, it’s the same thing except we’re just throwing food.

Tommy Thomson at weight loss program Leading the charge, US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thomson, who’s jumped on the diet bandwagon.

Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thomson, March 9th 2004: I’m exercising and I’m watching my diet and I’ve lost 15 pounds. I can’t ask America to lose weight unless I’m willing to do so myself. I’ve got the whole dept of Health and Human Services on a diet, Darren.

Ad Council – humourous ads urging folks to lose weight, dog finds ‘lost butt’ in park

Ad Council

But the targets of that very campaign say the effect has been to ramp up discrimination against the obese.

Grab Kristie Agee Tape 3: I think the only thing that is achieved by shaming people into weight loss, is weight gain.

Nat sot Roy playing piano:

Because the Big Fat Mamas and the Little Fat Mamas are back in style again.

Singing and playing piano

At home in Nashville, rehearsing with her musician husband Roy, Kristie Agee says the anti-fat crusade has gone too far.

Grab Kristie Agee: There are people out there who think fat people are just lazy. That they don’t move and they just eat all the time. What’s the reality? The reality is many of us started dieting at a young age and that dieting caused us to become emotional eaters and that is really what the problem is.

Kristie looking at photos of her as a child Tape: I was already in kindergarten and I was already bigger than the other kids. I just like, developed quicker. I look and think ‘man, that don’t look like a fourth grader” (laughs)

Reporter: And why is fourth grade so significant to you?

Cos that’s the year I started my first diet. Probably nine.

Photo of her at college - slim What followed was years of dieting successes and failures – a physical and emotional rollercoaster.Each time she lost weight, she’d regain it – plus some.

Grab Kristie, looking at photos: Oh God that is after I lost 120 pounds at Weight Watchers and they had a party for me and those are the pants I used to wear and those are the pants I wear now. Same size I wear now. What do you think when you look at that photo? It’s hard you know, yesterday I got these in the mail from my mom and I cried. Because it was more comfortable and easier to live at that size.

Sitting down with Roy watching video of one of their performances

Now weighing 158 kilos, neither Kristie nor her husband can get health insurance.

Reporter: What are your other health indicators like?

Kristie, Nashville: They’re great. My cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar has always been normal. I don’t smoke, I don’t even drink yet none of that seems to matter.

So your weight is the only reason you’re disqualified from health insurance?

Yeah.

Mary Ray Worley putting on guitar: What’s the big idea ..

Kristie and other women singing on stage
Folks in audience

It’s what brought Kristie here to Newark, New Jersey and this convention run by NAAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Kristie Agee, Tape 4, Newark: I found a flyer about NAAFA and the convention so I signed up to come and all of a sudden, when I came for the first time in my life – I didn’t feel like I was so different. I fit in. I fit in.

Up on stage singing – row of big gals

One of the Fat Freedom Singers, Kristie no longer baulks at being called ‘fat’.

Grab Kristie Agee: We at NAAFA have taken the word back and aren’t afraid to say the word ‘fat’ at all. I’m ok with being fat. I’m okay with it.

Folks in audience, woman wiping tear from eye

People came from around the country - united in defiance.

Nat sot woman reading poem at convention,

When you take a look at me and only see my height and weight and girth, you are not seeing the whole of me, you are not seeing my worth. You don’t see my personality, my warmth or my charms – only my belly, my thighs, my butt, my arms. You don’t see the beauty inside, you only see the fat, 54 inches wide.

Prof Campos: “Enough with the diet talk already” Book pix
Welcomed as a hero in Newark, lawyer and author, Professor Paul Campos whose controversial book, The Obesity Myth has just hit the shelves.

Prof Paul Campos, lecture at convention: It doesn’t make any sense to focus on our weight and it especially doesn’t make any sense to focus on making fat people thin which is an absolutely crazy kind of public health policy.

Women in audience cheering

He claims the obsession with weight is more about idolising thinness than health.

Grab Prof Paul Campos, Author, The Obesity Myth: All the hysteria we’re hearing right now about how we’re undergoing some huge public health crisis because of increasing weight, is just that, it’s hysteria. It’s moral panic and it’s not based on some sort of legitimate health crisis, of which there is none in the US.

Exercise class “Reach, reach, reach ..”

Obese women exercising

His book assails doctors, pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers and anyone else pushing the view the overweight NEED to shed kilos.He claims that message is driven and paid for by a weight loss industry wanting to keep people addicted to diets and diet pills.

Grab Prof Paul Campos: What happens when you tell people to lose weight, is that, if they pay attention to you, is they get on this weight cycling diet hamster wheel that they’re running around on and the long term effects of that are clearly bad. They’re bad physiologically and they’re bad especially psychologically.

Exercise class

He says research supports the view you can be overweight, even obese and still be healthy.

Qu: So do you think doctors are wrong when they say to patients, you should lose weight?

Campos: Oh absolutely. I think that doctors on the whole, should be considered guilty of malpractice when they tell people they ought to lose weight for the sake of improving their health.

Cutaway question: You’re a professor of law, you’re not a doctor, what right do you have to question medical advice?

Ans: Well it’s a good question and you’re quite right, I’ve heard that question asked of me and I’d say a couple of things in reaction to it. One is there are in fact quite a few doctors and more all the time who agree with everything I’m laying forward in this book

But many do not - and his malpractice quip had this doctor seeing red.

Arthur Frank, Medical Director, GWU Weight Management Program: To say something like that is a brazen kind of misleading statement which serves no social benefit, which serves no health benefit and which is just for the purposes of being inflammatory. It’s a dangerous thing to say. I think that he’s wrong.

Two shot Fair ground – people eating

Dr Arthur Frank has been treating obese patients for 27 years.He agrees discrimination against the obese is a very real problem in the US, but says its irresponsible to say it’s healthy to be fat.

Dr Frank: Oh it’s very serious, I don’t think this is hysterical at all. The adverse effects of being overweight and obese are devastating, they have a shattering effect on the lives of people who are afflicted. The complications of obesity are killer complications. People die of diabetes, they die of hyper-tension, they die of coronary artery disease and all of these diseases are made worse by being overweight or obese.

Folks at fair grounds Little boy at fair – incredibly overweight

Kids at fair on chair ride

Professor Campos disputes the numbers, but health authorities say there’ll be 400 000 deaths from obesity related diseases in the US this year. Figures show two thirds of Americans are overweight, one third of them - obese.

Most worrying is the claim of a dramatic increase in childhood obesity – 15% of American kids are obese and like Kristie, many will end up on the diet roundabout.

Grab Kristie Agee in Newark

It taught me to hate my body. Literally. To really hate who I was physically.

Grab Dr Arthur Frank: Obesity is a disease in which the body, the brain, the regulating system that controls your eating is dysfunctional. Something is wrong with the system. It’s not because you’ve done something wrong, it’s not because you brought it upon yourself, it’s not because you’ve eaten too much. In fact, you can reasonably make the argument that you eat too much because you have the disease – not that you have the disease because you eat too much.

People eating at fair “Eat less” is the solution – but that’s a lot harder than it sounds.Americans are bombarded with food messages - and the portions are huge.


Grab Dr Frank: We live in a world of an enormous overabundance of food in which it is very easy for people with marginal problems of eating to take advantage of all the excess food.

Q and A Dr Arthur Frank:
Can you be fat – overweight -- and fit?
Yes.
You can be fat and fit but its better to be not fat – and fit.

Nat Sot Curves Weight Loss Center

Big women working on weight machines
Big trainer jumping up and down.

Therein lies the trend for American women who’ve decided they’re never going to be the size of a svelte Hollywood actress. Thousands are shunning mainstream gyms, to attend fitness centres like Curves where the emphasis is on health not size.

Grab Katy Dukes, Curves Fitness Center: I feel it’s definitely moving in the right direction.

Me: The beginning of a revolution? Yes, definitely.

Kirstie Alley “Fat Actress” eating pasta

“I have wanted to do this show for such a long long time .. is there any more butter?

Ad keeps running

And something considered impossible a year ago: Showtime Networks President Bob Greenblatt, is giving plus-size actress Kirstie Alley her own show – Fat Actress.

Kirstie Alley – heralding new show – scoffing pasta: He got sick of me saying, I want a show, I want a show – he said shut up Tubby – so here’s the deal, for every five pounds you lose, you get an episode.

Music/Power to the Meek, Eurythmics, Fashion Parade Tape 4,*Booty shake

Women in audience clapping along, taking photos
Fat women parading clothes

America is clearly not winning the war on fat. Simple messages alone, like ‘eat less’ and ‘exercise more’ are not enough for a complex problem. Neither has humiliation or shame worked.

fat fashion caller: Confident and sexy in her spiral skirt .. every woman deserves to look and feel her best.

Women in audience watching fashion showFilming with video camera These men and women say they’ve tried changing and argue it’s time to change it’s attitude towards them.America they say is super-sizing and get used to it.

Kristie Agee, Tape 4: Basically I’m giving up the fight. I’m going to be ok with myself the way I am and live a happy life the way I am and I’m not going to go on any more diets.

“When large is not enough!”

Final fashion parade sequence.