They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They? was the title of a 1989 episode of a TV show called Designing Women. In the episode the character played by Delta Burke, Suzanne Sugarbaker, always proud of her beauty queen looks, realized that she was now seen as “the fat girl” by her friends at a high school reunion. She was awarded the “Most Changed” trophy at her fifteen year reunion, as a snark at her physical appearance, and she accepted the award with a lovely speech letting everyone know that she was going to take it as a testimony of how she has changed from shallow beauty to a woman of intellectual and emotional substance rather than the hurtful comment on her weight gain it was originally intended.
I remember reading an article about this particular episode a long time ago, because the episode was written specifically to address Burke’s real-life weight gain. She was a gorgeous, sexy slender woman when hired, and her weight gain became a problem on set between Burke and the show’s producers/writers. Burke’s weight gain was due to a combination of physical and psychological issues and the more she felt pressured about it, the worse it got. Since then, her weight has see-sawed and she has launched a line of plus-sized clothing. At some point she shifted from running from her weight to trying to help others who were heavy feel better about it.
I’m outing myself as a fat woman. I have been terrified of old friends seeing photos of me online in the shape I am in currently and I have decided to end the terror now.
Today I’m pleased to have my first guest blogger, Louis Yuhasz, founder of Louie’s Kids. I met Louis only a week ago when he spoke at the Junior League Mid-Atlantic Conference and his speech about watching his morbidly obese father’s decline after having a stroke, and then how he and his organization work with kids and their families today to change not only the numbers on the scale, but their attitudes toward food, toward exercises, and toward themselves through nutritional counseling, exercise programs, mental counseling and mentoring, was inspiring and life-changing. He’s a man on a mission and you can’t help but get swept away when you listen to him. Today, DC Metro Moms is having a special “Topic Tuesday” about Children of the Recession, and you will find my own post listed there. I’ve asked Louis to write about his organization and about the challenges the kids he work with face during the recession.
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Running a non-profit organization that works with kids struggling with obesity is certainly not easy, but there are many instances when it comes with rewards.
After not allowing myself, a former television reporter, to watch the news for weeks because I found the doom and gloom about the economy too stressful, I watched several CBS news clips from the Children of the Recession series online, and when I watched as an emergency room pediatric nurse practitioner showed the x-rays clearly depicting the multiple injuries of a young child — TWO broken arms, TWO fractured legs, I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. And neither could the reporter on the story.
Good Stuff Eatery is the name of the restaurant Chef Spike Mendelsohn, of Bravo’s reality show Top Chef, launched in Washington DC last year, and it was the setting of the realization of my own good “stuff” — I have been invited to be a part of the DC Metro Moms Blog. (More on that in a minute…)
