Response to People Magazine
The People Magazine article was very interesting to me because it shows the kind of dysmorphism we have culturally about weight. These are three women who have been particularly damaged by our culture's obsession with women because they are in the public eye. No doubt the very magazine who was interviewing them in the context of critiquing 'Shallow Hal' has run articles targeting their weight as an object of spectacle!
I think Emme is on the right track with her statement, but that it is quite problematic in other ways. I believe that fat is one of the last acceptable prejudices - something that is so codified into our culture, it leads nearly everyone to believe that health, body size/mass/weight and beauty are all inextricably linked, that bodies which are too large cannot possibly be considered beautiful. The fat positivity movement is still gaining visibility and momentum. For many people, it is hard to 'take it seriously' because it is interpreted as something people of size can change regardless of genetic makeup, economic class, and a million other factors - making it even harder to address. Emme's statement probably comes from the fact that we are conditioned to pit ourselves against other oppressed and marginalized groups to gain that visibility. (I could draw correlations here to the awful "Gay is the new black!" trend in the media since Obama winning the general election and Prop. 8 passing in California along with similar bills elsewhere...) To combat this, the marginalized must work together in solidarity, to draw commonalities between our experience, instead of driving in various wedges between groups.