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Plus-Size Advocates

© Peggy Hoehne

Sometimes it feels like the whole world is skinny and promoting skinny as the only way to be. This is not true, though the media does overwhelm us with skinny models, diet fads and medical warnings.

If you have ever felt the need of an advocate for your size, plus-size, I would like you to know they do exist. Let's take a look at a few of the people who stand up and take a stand.

Lynn McAfee

Lynn McAfee is the medical advocacy director for the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, a consumer advocacy group that seeks to change society's attitudes towards the obese.

She has been fighting for people of size since the early 70s. When others were protesting the war or chemical companies, Lynn McAfee was part of the Fat Underground, a Los Angeles-based support group. This group intended their initials, FU, to have a meaning for the diet/weight loss establishment they were battling.

She and her friends were making statements already then that we are hearing much more frequently today. Some of those early statements were :
1. Behavior modification does not work. Weight lost on a diet will be regained even with lifestyle changes.
2. No known weight loss system works, which has been proven in scientific studies.
3. The diet obsession is part of a conspiracy to keep women feeling bad about themselves. The fashion industry, the diet industry, the movie industry, and the food industry all benefit from women's obsession with thinness.
4. We must rise and stand against the oppressor and proclaim that all women, of all sizes, are beautiful.
http://www.cswd.org/medlynn.html

These days she is speaking before such groups as Federal Trade Commission (FTC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). She is pushing for controlled studies of weight loss programs. Most weight loss programs are unwilling to conduct such studies.

She is our advocate in fighting medical prejudice, has fought to stop the sale of harmful diet drugs, and wants everyone to understand that obesity is not a disease. Read an Interview with Lynn McAfee at http://www.radiancemagazine.com/issues/1...
"Weight: What's Fat, What's Not, What Can We Do About It" Barriers to Treatment: A Patient's View
A speech by Lynn McAfee to NIH (National Institutes of Health) Seminar June 4th, 1998

Camryn Manheim

Most of us are familiar with Camryn Manheim from her years of playing defense attorney Ellenor Frutt on the popular TV show, The Practice. She has been named one of the "Most Intriguing People of the Year" by People Magazine, one of the "Most Fascinating Women of the Year" by Ladies Home Journal, and one of Glamour Magazine's "Women of the Year".

The copyright of the article Plus-Size Advocates in Body Issues is owned by Peggy Hoehne. Permission to republish Plus-Size Advocates in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.