Extreme Maggie's Triple Dog Dares
“I’m just a fat old lady who likes extreme sports.”
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As heard on

“She’s just a fat old lady who likes extreme sports.”

Being fat is the most discriminated thing in America. However, fat people are the majority of the population. Fatty's unite! Take back the media!

Maggie Faris, a veteran stand-up comic, hosts this program where she is challenged with a triple-dog dare at the beginning of each show.  The dare is usually an extreme sport or a unique stunt such as the polar bear swim, giving a grown man a piggy-back ride, doing as many flips as possible in a zero gravity airplane, or attempting to goal keep slap shots for the New York Rangers.

Maggie is quite overweight but an incredible athlete having been a nationally ranked competitive ski racer and college soccer player.  Maggie proves, much like characters in The Office or Ugly Betty, there is no need to be a beautiful, skinny, model to be an overwhelmingly loveable character that is active and enjoy sports.  Over half of the US population is overweight and Maggie sets out to give voice to that half and dispel the myth that large people lead dull sedentary lives. Plus it’s always funny to watch someone fall down and go boom.

WHY are we keeping the fatties hidden from the media if we make up 65% of the population?

This is inexcusable!

Eating Disorders
Fear of Fat: Why Images of Overweight Women are Taboo

Fat has been a matter of huge media interest lately, if you’ll pardon the pun. As a nation, we’re wrestling with the fact that we’re getting fatter and fatter all the time—on average, we’ve gained eight pounds apiece in the past decade—and we don’t know what, if anything, can be done about it. The news about fat is confusing: On the one hand, some obesity experts say that even being a little chubby puts us at a greatly increased health risk; on the other, psychologists and exercise physiologists tell us that dieting can be damaging, exercise is what counts, and that weight obsession is a fate far worse than love handles. One headline in Self shouts that 15 extra pounds can kill you; another in Newsweek questions, "Does it matter what you weigh?"

As the media try, on the surface, to sort through the weight debate, what’s being communicated underneath, in many cases, is our society’s deeply held moral and aesthetic prejudice against being heavier than a thin ideal. Magazines may write about the fact that you don’t have to be runway thin to be healthy, but they stop short of picturing anyone with a little extra flab. They know what sells.

As a journalist who has written about obesity for many magazines, and as an author whose book on the diet industry, Losing It, made me the Weight Expert of the Week recently, I’ve seen up-close how strong the bias against fat people runs in the media, and how that prejudice confuses the real news about weight.

Magazines are becoming increasingly willing to write about the fact that it’s unreasonable to expect that every woman in the country should be a size six, but it’s much harder to change the images. Newsweek recently did a well-researched cover story on the weight debate that came down on the side that your weight isn’t very important to your health as long as you exercise; but the cover art, designed to sell copies, was of two perfectly chiseled torsos (male or female, pick your fantasy).

In better women’s magazines, the editors—many of them feminists—are committed to giving their readers solid information about the dangers of dieting, weight loss scams and women’s problems with body image. But usually such articles are illustrated with thin models; of the pieces I’ve written, only Working Woman dared to use a photo of a large woman.

I’ve complained to my editors: Most are aware that they aren’t doing their readers any service by showing only photos of prepubescent girls, and are frustrated that real-sized women never make it into the pages. They know that the message of a story that takes a more forgiving and moderate approach to weight gets undermined with a gaunt model. They do battle with the art departments, and they usually lose. One senior-level editor at a national women’s magazine told me that no matter how often she tries to raise the issue, it’s absolutely taboo to run photos of women who aren’t slender and attractive—even if they’re the subject of a profile.

I took my complaint directly to an art director when a story I wrote was illustrated with a "fat" woman who weighed maybe 135 pounds. "Women look at magazines and want to see a fantasy," the art director told me. "They don’t want to look at real women, they want to see the ideal. You can’t use an overweight woman in a beauty shot, because it’s a total turn-off." In a magazine whose reputation rests on its solid journalism, the art didn’t even illustrate the point of the story, which was that you can be really fat and be healthy if you exercise. No one was arguing that someone who’s 135 pounds is unhealthy to begin with.

There’s a certain cognitive dissonance going on here: The art director told me she doesn’t think that magazine photos of flawless and gaunt models have anything to do with why many women who read those magazines find that their sense of imperfection and self-loathing increases with every page they turn. "I absolutely agree that the obsession with thinness in this country is crazy," she told me. "But there’s nothing we can do about it."

Most art directors feel that way, but there’s some evidence that women readers won’t necessarily shriek and drop a magazine if it contains a photo of a model who weighs more than 123 pounds: Glamour has started using large-size models occasionally in fashion spreads, and readers have been delighted. Mode, a new fashion magazine aimed at "real-sized" women—sizes 12, 14, 16—has been flying off the newsstands, chubby covergirls and all, and editors there have been inundated with letters from readers who are excited and relieved to see women their size who look terrific pictured, for practically the first time, in a hip and glossy magazine.

Too Big for TV
On television, for the most part, fat people are as invisible as in fashion magazines. When fat people show up on TV, they aren’t usually serious people, but are either comics (the jolly fat person) or pathetic talk show creatures whose lives are miserable because they can’t lose weight. They’re circus freaks to remind us that there but for the grace of Jenny Craig go I.

When I’ve helped TV producers put together segments on weight (do any of them do their own research?) and suggested sources, some have immediately asked me about the size of the people I mentioned: "We don’t want to turn off our viewers." (Others have been braver: MTV, which, given its demographics, might be the most afraid of turning off viewers, was more than willing to shoot some smart, sassy and very fat young women.) When a producer for the Maury Povich show called to ask about appearing on the show, she said she’d heard my photo had been in Newsweek. "You’re not the one with the hot dog, are you?" she asked, describing a photo of a fat woman. I wasn’t. "Oh, my God, that’s good," she said.

I’ve become aware of the irony that one of the reasons media people have been willing to accept me as a spokesperson for fat people is that while I’m chubby enough to credibly know something about the issue, I’m not actually fat. I’m not thin, but because I’m thin enough, and blonde and pretty enough, TV producers are happy to have me talk about problems with the diet industry and weight obsession. They’ve managed to work up real outrage that someone like me is considered "overweight" by doctors whose studies are financed by diet and pharmaceutical companies, and that I was put on starvation diets and diet pills when I went undercover to some diet doctors. They listen to me when I say it’s better to stop dieting and just exercise and eat healthfully, because I am the picture of health. They nod along when I say that women are far too preoccupied with their weight, and it undermines their sense of strength and self-esteem, because I don’t threaten them. If this is fat, they seem to be saying, then we really shouldn’t discriminate against people who are fat. "But what about people who are obese?" they always ask. That’s a different story.

The media have been taking some steps toward dealing with the issue of weight more positively and realistically. They have to, because more and more of their audience is getting fat. We’re getting beyond obvious fat jokes, dire health warnings, and ten-day crash diet plans, and we’re a long way from the "Lose Weight While You’re Pregnant" articles that ran in women’s magazines in the 1950s. (Interestingly, a newspaper that has no photos, the Wall Street Journal, does the best job of any national publication of covering diet doctors, pill mills and weight loss scams.)
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It takes a long time, though, before people become more open-minded about a deeply held prejudice, and the media’s first forays into change are almost always tentative and palatable: Light-skinned African-Americans are still more acceptable on TV, for instance. There’s no question that Gloria Steinem became a feminist media leader in part because her good looks didn’t inspire deep fears about nasty-looking lesbians taking over the world. And when Naomi Wolf talked about the ugly politics of beauty, it didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous, either.
I suppose it shouldn’t bother me to realize that media have been willing to listen to me talk about fat because I’m not fat. But it does.
By Laura Fraser

taken from careerbuilder.com
Is Your Weight Hurting Your Career?
CareerBuilder.com

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 65 percent of U.S. adults -- or about 129.6 million people -- are either overweight or obese.

Does weight have any bearing in the workplace? According to Miriam Berg, president of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, it does.

"The biggest obstacle larger-than-average workers face is prejudice, and the second biggest obstacle is the fact that many large people believe that prejudice themselves," Berg says. "Our culture is obsessed with weight loss, and there is a tremendous amount of bias against people who do not fit into the narrow definition of what is attractive.

"Obesity in current society is a stigmatized condition," notes Cornell University researcher and nutritional sociologist Jeffery Sobal. "People who are obese are rejected and discriminated against."

In addition to the emotional cost, the financial costs of being overweight can be high, too. In a study by Charles L. Baum, Ph.D., of Middle Tennessee State University, obesity was found to lower a woman's annual earnings an average of 4.5 percent. Over a lifetime career, that can be as much as $100,000. Baum found that obesity for men could lower annual earnings by as much as 2.3 percent. In a separate study by John H. Cawley, associate professor at Cornell University, a weight increase of 64 pounds above the average for white women was associated with 9 percent lower wages.

CSWD says that heavier workers are also not given raises as often as thinner workers, citing a study of more than 2,000 adults that found wage growth rates were 6 percent lower in a three-year period for heavier workers.

One factor that seems to drive this bias is the cost of health insurance. The CDC has reported that obesity and overweight costs an estimated $117 billion in both direct medical costs and indirect costs, such as lost wages due to illness. Whether conscious or not, some employers may offer less pay to obese workers to offset higher health insurance costs.

"The research showing less productivity and more health problems in large size workers is flawed," Berg asserts. "The false idea that larger workers are less productive is a blatant attempt to deny the fact of weight discrimination. Large workers are denied promotions, are paid less, and are subject to being fired simply because of their size, no matter how excellent their qualifications are or how well they do their jobs."
In a 2005 survey by TheLadders.com, 75 percent of executives said that being overweight is a "serious career impediment."

Berg says she's heard many versions of the same story from her clients: "After reading his or her resume, the company was eager to hire the applicant. The phone interview went very well, and the person was practically assured of the job. But when he or she came face to face with the interviewer, everything changed. Suddenly the job had 'already been filled.'"

Those who apply for positions that interact with the public may feel the biggest sting. "Many employers are not prejudiced themselves, but are afraid that customers may be put off by a plus-size employee, especially in jobs such as receptionist or salesperson," Berg notes.
Jim McSherry, managing partner of McSherry & Associates 2, a recruiting firm in Westchester, Ill., says that extremely overweight applicants may indeed struggle in their job search, especially in companies that are very health conscious. "When two competing candidates are equally qualified, often it is not their appearance that ultimately hurts the overweight candidate, it is his or her self-confidence," McSherry says. " But if a candidate is really outstanding, their size will not be an issue."

"When a large person is looking for a job, we recommend doing your homework, dressing for success, putting your best foot forward, and, most importantly, addressing any potential objections a potential employer might have," Berg suggests. "There is no reason not to bring up your size -- it's the elephant in the room, so to speak. If you are healthy, tell the interviewer that you have not missed a day of work in five years, or however long it is. Point out how strong or fit or flexible you are, or mention that you have great stamina."

Being healthy doesn't simply mean losing weight. "Our advice to large size people in general is to be as healthy as they can be," Berg declares. "Some of the ways we suggest are enjoying life, reducing stress, being physically active, and eating a variety of nutritious foods."

Copyright 2007 CareerBuilder.com.