Three truly productive things you can do about Breast Cancer

1. Self-check your breasts or have a mammogram if you are in the free screening age group. (http://www.bsnsw.org.au)
2. Volunteer to help women with breast cancer or donate to an organisation that does. (http://www.bcna.org.au).
3. Donate to reputable organisations that fund breast cancer research. (http://www.breastcanceraustralia.org or http://cancercouncil.com.au).

NB: Wearing pink, buying pink products and posting cryptic memes to your facebook status are not listed above. I’d say sorry for being a grumpy bitch, but I’m not really.

NB2: Links are Australia-centric because that’s where I am. But I am sure similar organisations exist in the US and other countries.

‘Obesity’ costs skewed for shock value? Duh!

The fatosphere is always talking about how the ‘costs of obesity’ are inflated for shock value and to influence public policy and spending – and at last we have a leading actuary who has confirmed that the costs of Australia have been vastly over-estimated. Instead of $58 billion, he states the actual costs are only $8.8 billion – but I guess that just doesn’t have the same ZING!

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A leading actuary has lampooned health lobby figures on the costs of smoking and obesity as being extravagantly inflated and based on suspect methodology.

“The numbers are all over the place,” writes Geoff Dunsford in the September edition of Actuary Australia. And they are “big numbers” – the implication being that they are too big.

and

The sheer size of the numbers, argues the Sydney actuary, perverts government policy. It can lead to poor spending decisions. The credibility of the numbers from the health lobby is therefore critical to government policy.

The press and the public have been led to believe that the costs to the system are higher than they really are so the government can “justify use of taxpayers’ money on measures to reduce its prevalence and prevention”.

and

Access Economics estimated the cost of obesity to Australia at $58.2 billion. And sure enough, this enormous headline number promptly bobbed in the press.

On Dunsford’s analysis, however, the figures are flawed, skewed by the “non-financial” estimates to make obesity seem a lot more costly to the taxpayer than it really is.

The costs break down as $3.9 billion for the health care system, $4.4 billion in “other” costs relating to lost work days, taxes forgone and other productivity losses.

More detailcan be found in the article (Be warned: the comments are full of fat-hate.)

That damned Angel in the Kitchen is invading our boardrooms and battlefields! Oh noes!

So – like the Victorians before him – Clive Hamilton sees women’s role as moderating the worst excesses of men. What’s the point, he asks, of women stepping out of the kitchen if they can’t be all sweet and nice and fill our boardrooms and parliaments with rainbows, lollipops and purring kittens.

So the far-reaching social change envisaged by feminism in the ’60s and ’70s attains its pinnacle with targets to put more women into boardrooms and cabinets. But why bother putting women into boardrooms if the corporations they run continue to despoil the environment, evade their taxes and pay their chiefs obscene salaries?

What is the point of women in cabinet if, to get there, they must be fed into party machines, then extruded as those who can be trusted with levers of power, competent managers of a dysfunctional political system?

And rainbows, lollipops and kittens – not to mention women – have no place on the battlefield! He goes on:

One day, when we have been shaken from this collective reverie, we may find ourselves asking what it means when those who had once pacified the beast have gone off to join it.

Truly, it seems we haven’t gone far beyond the concept of the ‘Angel in the Kitchen’ if we are looking for women to be the ‘Angel in the Boardroom’ or “Angel on the Battlefield”.

Let’s drop the gender essentialism, shall we?

Toxic Messages

I discarded a very toxic message recently, one that had been rattling around my brain for upwards of 25 years. It was so deeply embedded, I didn’t even realise I was still carrying it around, despite my years of fat acceptance and fat activism.

It came – as many of the toxic messages in my life have – courtesy of my step-father. He who gave me the demoralising puffy-lettered “I try to lose weight, but it keeps finding me” shirt. He of the undermining “You’ll never be Twiggy” sideswipe. He whom I no longer let into my life because of his continued toxic actions and toxic words in very many arenas.

So you’d think I’d have discarded this message along with his other bullshit.

But no.

Want to hear it? This thing I’ve unconsciously been allowing to guide my thoughts and fashion choices since I was 14 or 15?

“You can’t wear belts. You look like a sack tied around the middle.”

Hey, arsehole. Fuck you!

I limited myself with my buy-in to this bullshit rule, despite priding myself on not following the accepted fashion rules for fatties. I wear stripes. I wear patterns. I have no fear of bare arms. I wear my sexy bikini on the beach with pride.

But I steered clear of belts.

Because of an offhand comment 25 years ago from a proven dickhead who probably forgot he’d ever said it two minutes later.

But there’s an upside.

I’ve recently rediscovered belts and, therefore, a whole range of fashion looks that were previously (in my head) off limits.

I’m wearing a belt today with a cute little dress. And I look hot.

Fuck the toxic messages.

Words of Wisdom

Perfection is the curse of patriarchy. It makes us hate ourselves. And you can’t be embodied if you hate your body. So one of the things we have to do is help our girls to get angry. Angry. Not at their own bodies, but at the paradigm that does this to us, to all of us.
- Jane Fonda, 2004

Via Larry Buttrose