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UPDATE: 9/10/19: Someone do me a favor and tweet this at Harriet Brown:



Thank you. 😊

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**I actually feel like deleting this. I shouldn't be giving this $%$# the free publicity. Ugh, you're welcome, Harriet.**

And then along came this book, where Harriet Brown has morphed from "curer of eating disorders" to den mother of the Fat Acceptance movement. Unlike her last book, at least now Brown is trying to do something good: she encourages body diversity, shares personal stories of her struggles with weight, and gives life to the pain suffered by those who are fat-shamed.

The attempt is there. It's just that the way she goes about it that makes me want to burn something.

Brown's basic claim is that Americans need to stop trying to lose weight because there is nothing unhealthy about being overweight or obese (cue the mental gymnastics of fat logic).

And in typical Harriet Brown-style manipulation, she backs up her ideas with "research," then juxtaposes her findings with traumatic, first-person vignettes by women who have struggled with weight and body image issues.

Well fuck me running. Oh, but I shouldn't make references to running, lest I be fat-shaming. Where was I?

Ah yes, Harriet backs up her ideas about obesity being perfectly healthy with the biggest data dump I've ever seen.

Of course.

Look, Harriet.

You can't just drop a bunch of out-of-context quotes from outdated publications, statistics from studies shunned by the country's leading medical experts, and inaccurate factoids from Jezebel.com, then footnote it all, and call it "research." I would have failed one of my freshman comp students for less. (I did, come to think of it).

Know why?

Because that's not research.

Real researchers -- you know, the kind paid by universities, publishing houses, corporations, et. al. -- don't hunt around for a bunch of inaccurate, random data points for the sole purpose of supporting their ideas. That's the kind of cherry-picking "research" that the likes of Chuck C. Johnson and 9/11 conspiracy theorists living in mom's basement do. If professional researchers did that, the result wouldn't be research.

It would be a self-serving, unethical distortion of reality.

Kind of like your book.

Oh, wait. Was that my out loud voice?

And this is what I love about Harriet Brown: She can go lower than the slimiest bottom-feeder, so long as some published opinion somewhere supports her own. Some adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii contradicts the leading medical experts at Harvard? Hawaii it is! A 20 year-old study saying diabetes is not linked to obesity? Run it! A dubious study (widely criticized by America's obesity specialists) claiming that it's not unhealthy to be obese? Go with it! We're in Harriet Brown Land now, where academics, doctors, and experts are all wrong, and the quacks on the fringes who can't get their studies published are now the authority on all things healthy-fat.

This is why you don't let someone with an MFA in Creative Writing position herself as a "science writer." (Are you listening, New York Times?)

Well.

When you've got pages upon pages of questionable data, it makes it impossible to argue with an author. It's like trying to debate a schizophrenic's word salad.

Since I don't have 6 months to sift through Brown's half-truths, I will say that I think this woman is dangerous, her logic is flawed, and she needs a serious attitude change.

But don't take it from me. Here are a few zingers for your enjoyment.

1. "[She needed to] give up the fantasy of being thin...let go of the idea...that she would lose the weight and keep it off." Yes. Because losing weight and keeping it off is a fantasy. Well, now, that's encouraging.

2. "When we can't skip a day at the gym, we sacrifice the chance to get a graduate degree, learn a language, acquire career skills, develop relationships..."
Well, that's funny because I have a graduate degree, speak two foreign languages, have great career skills, have lots of rewarding relationships...and I work out almost every day. What the FUCK? So taking 30-60 minutes a day to be healthy interferes with life, Harriet? What an awesome way to see the world.

3. "I'm not a fan of fast or processed food...I haven't drunk soda...since I was sixteen, and I prefer water to juice and other caloric drinks. I eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, nuts, dairy, fish, chicken, and whole grains."
:)
>>cough cough bullshit cough cough<<
Hey, Harriet, remember on page 1 where you said you had friends over and you were "eating lemon poppy seed cake"? Remember how on page 3 you said your family members commented that you were "eating [yourself] into an early grave"?
Remember page 59, where you say "most of us under-report what we've eaten"?
Maybe instead of just giving up on a healthy diet and exercise (and encouraging others to do so with you), you should view food not as "love and community and ritual that...binds us to other people more often than sex," and see it more as going from hungry to full in the least destructive way possible. Maybe skip the lemon poppy seed cake, too. But that's just me.

4. "We certainly know that men find a range of women's body sizes attractive...and that men are attracted to women with curvy rather than ultrathin bodies. And we also know that lesbians and bisexual women are attracted to curvy women who are heavier than social norms dictate."
Sigh.
The use of the collective "we," -- another amateur mistake worthy of a college freshman in Comp 101. A sweeping claim about all straight men and bi/lesbian women, based on a single poll conducted by a British magazine in 2012. And a little swipe at thin people for good measure. Fuck -- really??
This is Harriet Brown at her best.

I wouldn't be so pissed off at Brown if she weren't taking such an important topic, twisting it to fit her needs, and spouting dangerous information. I can't argue with her without writing a book of my own, but I can inject a little common sense to counter the crazy:

--No, Harriet, when a doctor tells a patient to lose weight, it's not fat-shaming, nor is it a conspiracy between doctors and big pharma to make money off of the obese. Obesity specialists (you know, the doctors who wouldn't speak with you for your book--ever wonder what that could mean?) are not out to get you. Despite the obscure medical studies you managed to dig out, the legit studies (that you happily dismiss) link obesity to diabetes, 10 types of cancer, and a host of other illnesses.

--Yes, Harriet, there are plenty of people who are overweight and exercise. You were practically giddy to conclude that because your New York Times pal Steven Blair runs a few miles a day and is still overweight, he's fat and healthy.

Sigh.

Know why he's overweight, Harriet? His body has adapted to running and he eats too much. You can run a marathon a day and still be overweight if you eat too much. Especially if you've got a desk job. Especially if you're over 30.
Does it mean that an overweight person who exercises is healthy? Welllllllll....I could run up to 10 miles a day even when I was a pack-a-day smoker. What do you think? Was I healthy when, after a vigorous 10-mile run, I lit up and puffed away on cigarette number 14?

--Yes, Harriet, you can judge health by body size. You can safely assume that an obese person struggling to make it up a flight of stairs is less healthy than a skinny marathoner. I can safely assume that the smoker who runs 10 miles a day is as unhealthy as the overweight, lemon poppy seed cake-eating author who doesn't exercise enough.
Don't believe me? Look at official death rates linked to obesity and stop waving around some study you found at the bottom of a desk drawer at FU University.
What you can't discern from body size are strength and endurance. That's about it.

--Sorry to break it to you, Harriet, but the doctors saying weight is our personal responsibility are correct. I know you like to cite other contributing factors--illnesses that affect 1% of the population, poverty (whole grain pasta was 50 cents a box the last time I checked), and pollutants--and in some cases, you might be right. I know you also love to divorce all personal responsibility from eating disorders, but in the end, whether people are anorexic or overweight, what they do or don't put into their bodies comes down to personal choice. Your body size is your own responsibility. It sucks. Deal with it.

--Yes, Harriet, exercise is hard, and eating right is harder. I'm glad you're on some body-acceptance kick, but packaging it as "fat is healthy" is dangerous and wrong. I wish you would read Born to Run, quash your food fears, do away with your pathological denial, and fall in love with endurance exercise. It's what the human body is meant to do. Maybe then you wouldn't assume that every normal-sized person is some religious dieter living a rigid, miserable life of deprivation and physical torture.

Or perhaps it's easier to live in Harriet Brown's magical version of reality, where it's perfectly healthy to be obese, where she has zero role in causing her daughter's eating disorder, and the unicorns dance about with the Easter Bunny and conduct "research" in their spare time.

Oh, but wait, the book. The book review.

Sorry, I got sidetracked.

It's just a bunch of repurposed, self-plagiarized articles Brown wrote for the New York Times and the Atlantic. Read one of those instead and save yourself the time, the mental anguish, and the $15.

Or, try it Harriet's way. Read the book. Disregard the medical experts. Forgo healthy eating. Don't worry about exercise. See what happens.

I'll be off pricing headstones for you.

Either way...

SUCKED.