by Jessica Jernigan
Borders.com Books Editrix
AUGUST 10 (1999) was a bad day for fat. TV cook and hell-raiser
Jennifer Paterson died of lung cancer, and sometime celebrity Carnie
Wilson got her stomach stapled.
As one of the Two Fat Ladies,
Jennifer Paterson was a televangelist for the high life, roaring around
the English countryside on her Triumph and taking over unsuspecting
kitchens with treacle tarts, streaky bacon and deviled kidneys. In an era
of body guilt and low-fat extremism, she and her partner, Clarissa Dickson
Wright, put the joy back in eating. Their unapologetic love of lavish food
and their no-nonsense style earned the pair legions of fans all over the
world. Even as she lay dying, Paterson provided a radiant example of life
fully lived -- she turned her hospital room into a salon full of friends,
and instructed visitors to bring tins of caviar instead of flowers. Nor
did her death provide the fat phobic an object lesson on the evils of
hearty consumption. She lived to the respectable age of 71, and it was the
two packs of Woodbines a day that killed her, not the heavy cream, whiskey
or well-marbled meats.
While the world is poorer for the loss of this bon vivant, the very
richness of Paterson's life is a consolation. The sadder story is Carnie
Wilson's. You may remember her as a member of Wilson Phillips, or from her
short-lived talk show. However you remember her, you no doubt remember her
as fat. This is, of course, the reason for Wilson's radical weight
loss plan -- not the fat itself, but the way it defines her public
image and her sense of self. While there was no way for Wilson to hide her
weight -- not that the directors of Wilson Phillips' videos didn't try --
she has consciously chosen to publicize her gastric bypass. From her
initial reflections and consultation with doctors to the surgery itself,
the whole process has been covered live on the Web. The very existence of
adoctorinyourhouse.com (now spotlighthealth.com), the host site, raises a number of questions
about our culture, about our increasingly grotesque voyeurism and our
celebrity fetish, but Carnie Wilson's obese odyssey also offers valuable
insight into the way we demonize fat.
Watching the archived
footage of Wilson's webcast, Weighing the Alternatives (pun presumably
intended), is purposefully painful. The video opens with Stephanie Powers
(Hart to Hart) walking down a hospital corridor, acquainting the viewer
with the many horrors of adiposity. She applauds Wilson for her decision
to "open up her heart and let us in on the pain and suffering of an obese
person in this weight-obsessed culture." Powers lets us know that "there's
a stigma attached to being overweight that contributes to feelings of
isolation and despair." Finally, she presents Wilson as a victim of
corpulence: "Throughout her life, Carnie has been plagued by obesity. And,
even though today she's in good physical health, her doctors' prognosis
for her future health is grim."
Power's soliloquy introduces
the two greatest strengths of the weight loss industry -- social pressure
to be thin and the perceived health threat of obesity. While Powers does
make mention of our "weight-obsessed culture," subsequent critique of that
culture is slight. In a rather bizarre guest appearance Margaret Cho
describes the abhorrence of fat in Hollywood, and she and Wilson agree
that society is hurtful to the heavy. This brief moment of social
criticism, though, is crushed by the ensuing infommercial for thinness.
Throughout the video, Wilson, her doctors and her family accept fat phobia
and celebrate the gastric bypass as Wilson's last chance for a normal,
happy life.
Through laughter and tears, Wilson describes her
struggles with fat and her lifelong wish to, as she puts it, "look good."
She recounts the taunts and the insults. She describes her feelings of
failure and weakness. Family and friends, including her parents and
siblings, tell her how happy they are that she has made this decision, how
her choice to have her stomach reduced to a thumb-size pouch has filled
them with happiness and pride. Brian Wilson suggests that his daughter's
surgery will be "an inspiration to her. It's going to change her life.
She'll be happy again. She'll be able to, you know, go out there and make
records, and go on stage, and be proud." How her current weight is
preventing her from doing any of these things is left
unsaid.
Of course, a doctor occasionally chimes in to list
the health benefits Wilson will enjoy after the gastric bypass, lest we
think that her skinny desire is superficial. The striking feature of this
new wellness, though, is its hypothetical nature. Over and over, we are
told that Wilson is in great health, that there is nothing wrong with her
physically. Rather than make her more healthy now, the gastric bypass may
protect her from medical ills that may arise in the
future.
This argument is a popular one with the weight loss
industry. Fat hatred is not just a weakness of the shallow and image
conscious; it is, rather, an irrefutable, scientifically supportable,
medical position. The problem with this argument, though, is that the
scientific underpinnings of fat phobia are not irrefutable. A growing body
of research suggests that it is possible to be fit and fat, that the two
are not mutually exclusive. For instance, the Cooper Institute for
Aerobics Research has found that how much a person exercises has more
impact on longevity than how much a person weighs. In their study, men who
were thin but unfit had three times the rate of early death as men who
were fat but fit. Wilson's excellent bill of health would seem to lend
support to this idea, and it also presents an interesting contrast to the
health risks she will face after the gastric bypass. In addition to the
usual dangers of major surgery, Wilson will face a lifetime of nutritional
deficiencies, as well as intolerance to red meat, sugar and milk. She may
suffer from persistent nausea and vomiting, constipation and ulcers. Fluid
from her gastrointestinal tract may leak into the abdomen, causing serious
infection. Ten to twenty percent of patients who have this surgery will
require follow-up surgery. And there is the slight chance that she will
not lose any weight at all.
In any case, the health risks of
obesity are largely beside the point. From listening to Wilson talk,
reading the comments on her obesity support group bulletin board, and
absorbing the messages of weight loss ads and articles, it's clear that
fat phobia and the resulting self-hatred among fat people is primarily a
social phenomenon, not a medical one. The desire on display is to be
beautiful, not to be well. And, in her attempt to achieve self-love
through self-mutilation, Carnie Wilson has consciously designated
herself a role model for fat people everywhere -- hence the very public
nature of her surgery.
The saddest aspect of this story is
that Wilson already was a role model. Before she became a cringing victim,
she presented herself as a self-assured, stylish woman at home in her own
body. Big beautiful women looked to her for confidence and support in
their battle for self-love. In a 1996 interview with Radiance: the
Magazine for the Large Woman Wilson
said:
I'm fat. I'm a big girl. It's my feelings about myself that I think about. I feel attractive, I present myself well.... That image has been good for heavy people. I'm proud of that. I feel like a spokesperson for heavier women. I feel like I'm saying, You can have anything you want, you can be or do anything you want. You can be successful, whatever your size.
On August 10, the fat movement lost two of its champions, one to lung
cancer, the other to self-loathing. While I never thought much about her
before now, I am sad for Carnie Wilson and for everyone who looks to her
as a role model. It fills me with dread to know that medically sanctioned
starvation and malnutrition has become a viable alternative to fat. While
I also mourn the passing of Miss Paterson, I am gladdened by her fearless
example and the knowledge that her spirit will live forever in reruns,
cookbooks and rich cream sauces.
If you have any questions or comments about Grrrl Talk, please send
your
thoughts to bookeditor@borders.com.
Afterward: it is unknown how happy being thin has really made Carnie Wilson.
About 3 years after her gastric bypass, she became a poster child for another
product - one which she felt really helped her to combat transfer addiction - Wellbutrin, an
anti-depressant.
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