Media and Research Roundup - May 2023
Image description: A white-appearing, femme-presenting person with shoulder-length blonde hair and dark roots, wearing jeans and a white patterned tee shirt, sits on a long orange couch smiling slightly while reading a book with a yellow dust jacket. Also sitting on the couch is a very cute cream colored dog who is looking alert. A plant is to the right of the couch and a wooden coffee table is in front of it.
Image is courtesy of AllGo
By Bill and Terri Weitze
CONTENT WARNING: Some articles featured in the Media & Research Roundup may refer to stigmatizing events or use stigmatizing language.
April 2023: Using the teen magazine Seventeen and its part in sowing the seeds of anti-fat bias, Anne Helen Petersen looks at how each generation deals with anti-fatness and body dissatisfaction in its own way.
April 11, 2023: Reported by CNN, a recent study finds that weight loss was associated with an increase in mortality, particularly among men, highlighting the need to monitor and investigate weight loss in older adults.
April 16, 2023: Doctors, researchers, and patients are reporting that CoolSculpting may have substantially underestimated the cases of paradoxical adipose hyperplasia after receiving treatments of freezing fat cells.
April 18, 2023: NAAFA Chair Tigress Osborn is interviewed by WNYC Studios about civil rights for fat people.
April 19, 2023: Kristen Parisi discusses weight discrimination and legal exclusions in light of New York City's consideration of adding size as a protected class.
April 21, 2023: An article in The New York Times talks about the many (and sometimes serious) side effects of the semaglutide Ozempic.
April 25, 2023: Jovana Savic runs a pop-up vintage clothing fair called "Thick Mall" for sizes large and up in Chicago, Illinois.
April 26, 2023: A New York bariatric surgery practice has been suing patients based on a payment agreement that patients often sign without understanding the legal impact.
April 27, 2023: Another weight loss drug is working its way through the FDA for approval. Eli Lilly's Tirzepatide is purported to allow for weight loss of up to 22% of body weight, but the new drug comes with the same type of serious side effects as Ozempic and Wegovy.
April 29, 2023: The bias against fat women in the workplace continues to get worse. Pay inequality for women in the workplace is well known; that fat women fare even worse is well documented but is not generally acknowledged.
May 3, 2023: Virginia Sole-Smith's book Fat Talk, Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture has become a New York Times Best Seller. Sole-Smith attributes the success of her book to be the support she received from the fat community.
May 5, 2023: Weight loss chain Jenny Craig announces that it is closing its operations, purportedly due to competition from new weight loss drugs.
Pic is of Terri and Bill Weitze, a Caucasian couple, both wearing glasses
Terri and Bill Weitze have been active within NAAFA for years, and they currently coauthor the Media and Research Roundup in the NAAFA Newsletter. They both live and work in Michigan, and met through a fat-positive bulletin board system before the days of the World Wide Web.