Does putting on a extra weight requre a good dose of self-hate?

There are few people in the world that have the power of Oprah Winfrey. Dignitaries, celebrities and royalty are at her disposal. She commands huge salaries and even finds time to put her best friend Gayle on her show. This woman may not be a saint, but Oprah’s Angel Network organizes ordinary people to do good work for their community. She hearkens to a spirit of community and basic human decency that seems all together lost in today’s world. Her foundation oversees the building of schools in third world countries and has facilitated the donation of over  $27 million dollars to people in desperate need.  All of this for people she will never meet and never be accountable to.

So why is this woman apologizing to the world for gaining 40 pounds? And why are we so hungry for the latest Oprah weight gain? I can’t believe my ears when she is quoted at People.com exclaiming that she’s “mad at herself” and wonders “how did I let this happen again?” What?? She goes on to say, “Yes, you’re adding correctly. That means the dreaded 2-0-0.” As if there is some magic threshold at which you cease to be a human. At this weight she laments : “I feel like a fat cow.”

I can fully understand why this is eaten up in the media. Powerful women often become targets. And a fat, powerful woman must be simply irresistible to those bent on eradication of any form of female power from the planet. I believe it is because there is a perverse culture of misogyny spreading the stereotype that to be an acceptable woman you have to be a weak, frail woman. I get that. What I don’t understand is why this woman who commands the free world needs to grovel at the masses’ feet about being a BB. It’s not a secret! Oprah is a woman of size. She can diet, she can exercise, she can hoist herself into a girdle, but at the end of the day, she has curves. I don’t remember Calista Flockhart making a public apology for her ribs poking through her flesh when she was on The Practice. So why is The O taking such publicly self-deprecating steps?

And, as if it weren’t bad enough, the article goes on to quote the statistics from the CDC on Winfrey’s overall health. According to the CDC, O’s Body Mass Index of 31.8, she is “at higher risk for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.” Statistics have their usefulness. Sure, someone who is fat might be a couch potato and might be eating foods that contribute to these conditions, but do you really think that The Big O eats bags of potato chips that she gets from the slurp and gulp on the corner? And even if she does, statistics have no real bearing on her actual health status. For all any of us know she may be in totally perfect health at 200lbs, although I have no way to personally know that. But then neither do some statistical analysts at the CDC. Last time I checked, statisticians don’t get a crystal ball to see into people’s individual circumstances. Nevertheless, these details are trotted out to support the claim that Oprah Winfrey has a fat, and very unhealthy ass.

It just seems like it’s never enough. We can be beautiful, famous, powerful, and rich, but if we aren’t someone’s preconceived notion of perfection we are thoroughly and irreparably flawed. While you or I may only have a small effect of the world of fatphobic misogyny, O can do a ton! She can be the one to take the stand for us and proclaim herself free from the oppression of ubiquitous thinness. But, instead, we get yet another dose of that sickly sour medicine called self-hatred. So to Oprah and other big and beautiful women in the media I say: what the hell O, what the hell?