The Weight of the World

NEWS

Excerpt from University of Lethbridge article, The Weight of the World: When the Personal becomes Professional becomes Political

My dedication to becoming an eating disorder prevention specialist was not always well met.  People told me that eating disorders among teenage girls were old news and over-done, so I focused my Master’s research on male body image.  Supervisors dismissed my aspirations, with one telling me I should go back to being a teacher, and that I would be a psychologist when pigs fly.  Family dismissed my aspirations, with statements like, “Why would you want to sit around listening to people’s sob stories?”  My favourite was, “Why would you get a PhD?  You might as well write books about magic like JK Rowling.  She made a million and no one is going to read what you write.”

Despite the lack of support, deep down inside I knew I needed to persist.  This was a new field with relatively few experts, and something inside me told me to carry on.  I began to immerse myself in the history of the (mis)treatment of eating disorders, body image, weight bias, and began to ponder how eating disorders and weight bias are social justice issues.  I focused my research on feminist-informed participatory action approaches to eating disorder and obesity prevention in schools.  It was really hard to convince people that these are serious issues when the society around us is immersed in the thin ideal and fat prejudice.  Sometimes I felt very alone.

During my educational journey, there were some adverse experiences around food and weight shaming that confirmed my belief that eating disorder prevention was a burgeoning field that needed further exploration.  First, imagine my surprise on my way to speak about body image at a national conference, when a homeless man pointed at my bag of outrageously expensive organic trail mix and declared, “Junk food is bad for you.”  I was food shamed by a man with no food.  Second, imagine how stunned I was one night after my husband rushed me to the Emergency room in the middle of the night with extreme abdominal pain when a nurse callously stated to her younger colleague, “Female, fat, & forty, it’s probably her gallbladder.”  I had just experienced weight bias in a healthcare setting.   I began to think, “If this is happening to me, who else was it happening to?  If I don’t speak up, who will?” Trust me, AHS got an earful from me about the need to address weight bias and stigma in health care settings.