Personally, I’m not too fond of the alliteration. But as far as blame is concerned, both that and the “h” are Cindy’s doing.  Dad simply said, “What? Oh, okay, I won’t veto it.”

It seems like all rethugs prefer their women Coulter-giest like- starved, rabidly evil, racist, sexist, self-hating and wearing crosses in a non-ironic way while behaving so.
Kinda sums up the whole party.

I hope they keep eating themselves.

“Caboose.”

No wonder we tend to win elections now.

”“Caboose.”
No wonder we tend to win elections now.”

Well gosh darn it, mister, what the heck else would we call it?...

There’s the superfluous and annoying-to-type extra “h” in her first name, for one.

Hey!!!

There’s the superfluous and annoying-to-type extra “h” in her first name, for one.

Hey!!!

That’s nothing.  My sister’s name is spelled Meaghan, Irish-style (whoever it was who transliterated Gaelic into the Roman alphabet was not merely drunk, but mean drunk).

I work with high school kids, and I haven’t met one M*g*n in the past five years who didn’t spell it Meghan, unless you count the one who spelled it Meagan. Extra letters are the way it was spelled for anyone born after 1985, I think. All the ones my age (35) or anywhere near it are Megan. I went to high school with probably 10 Megans and one Meaghan, and we thought the extra letters were weird. Now the simple phonetic spelling is probably boring and passé.

Wow. That Political Byline guy is unhinged.

I clicked on the link to Meghan McCain’s story and she say she is a size 8 or 10.  That size is by no means fat.  That means her waist is between 27 inches and 29 inches.  Since when was that fat?

I clicked on the link to Meghan McCain’s story and she say she is a size 8 or 10.  That size is by no means fat.  That means her waist is between 27 inches and 29 inches.  Since when was that fat?

Since Ann Coulter bought the one black dress she owns in 1997.

Then again, weight/body image stuff affects all women, not just women who are morbidly obese.  Shit, today someone said to me: “this is a great time of year to bake because you can put on 5 pounds and nobody’s going to notice.”  I think she meant the general you, not me specifically, but it was really sad to realize that I can’t even have casual small talk without hearing crap about weight.

I hate to agree with Meghan McCain, and certainly don’t think it’s The Last Prejudice Of Our Time (in fact I tend to poopoo the whole “looksism” thing when it gets to a certain point), but girl’s got a point.

I thought Ann Coulter bought that dress in 1985 right after Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video came out.

Something is wrong with the way I spelled “pooh-pooh”, and it’s really disconcerting.

Weight shouldn’t be an issure, right.  However, it isn’t her weight, it’s the damn RethUGLIcan dress code.  Perhaps Amanda would like to comment* on how having a better aesthetic sense about what fashions can flatter a woman would benefit Ms. McCain.  I’m seeing this from the point of view that they can’t criticize the fashions, because dowdy seems to be equated with virtuous by the wingnutters, so it must be the woman wearing them.

*no snark intended, seriously would like to hear your analysis.

I can’t remember how it was spelled, but I used to work with a chick from upstate that actually had a fucking apostrophe in there somewhere.  It’s like the Vulcan spelling of Megan.  We are, of course, talking about a society in which the letters “I” and “Y” and the letters “Z” and “S” are treated as interchangeable.

Isn’t that the conservative thing, from stem cells on forward? When something wingnut affects you and yours, you suddenly realize that perhaps the doctrine is not all-encompassing. But conservatives never seem to make the next step, which is recognizing that this doesn’t mean being a right-wing asshole is OK except for that one tiny thing.

“I clicked on the link to Meghan McCain’s story and she say she is a size 8 or 10.  That size is by no means fat.  That means her waist is between 27 inches and 29 inches.  Since when was that fat? “

By BMI standards, it is. I crossed into the ‘overweight’ category when I wore a size 8. When I was a size 10, I was 10-15 pounds short of ‘obese.’

I’m now very definitely ‘obese’ at a size 14, and get crap from my doctors all the damn time.

So, on my frame, ‘normal’ is size 6 or smaller. How fucked up is that?

Well gosh darn it, mister, what the heck else would we call it?…

Yeah - “ass” is so generic in reference to Republican pundits…

@Ashley,

That is extremely fucked up, not the least because people who are merely overweight by BMI standards are actually healthier than people of “normal” weight, with healthier meaning “less likely to suffer and die from preventable illness.”

BMI is a ratio between weight and height.  So a short woman who is a size 8 can have a higher BMI than a tall woman who is a size 8.  BMI does not take into account a person’s body composition of fat and muscle.  So the woman who is a size 12 can have a lower body fat composition than a woman who is a size 2.

However, a 35 inch waist on women is one of the indicators of metabolic syndrome a precursor to diabetes.  And metabolic syndrome has been linked to heart disease while BMI has not:  http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2004_03_30/clinical11_06.htm

To continue my comment:
So Meghan McCain is not fat nor obese by any standard other than that of the assholes who want to shame her into silence for breaking St Ronnie’s law of no Republican or conservative speaks ill of another.
They cannot come up with a valid argument against her, so they do what conservatives do best which is to go ad hominem on her.

If this keeps up, they’re going to make Meghan McCain into Stephanie Miller.

(whoever it was who transliterated Gaelic into the Roman alphabet was not merely drunk, but mean drunk).

Probably just trying to stay true to the source material.

Get it? Because all Irish people are drunks! Get it!?

...NOT RACIST!

Malkin and Ingraham are shitstains. Meghan McCain is not her own person; as far as they’re concerned, she’s an uppity bitch and a traitor like Chris Buckley.

I hope Meghan takes her dad’s better traits and runs as far to the left as she can with them. The Right doesn’t want her, and she doesn’t seem to have much love for them.

I’d like to see the waist/inseam ratio of the top twenty conservative male bloggers.

Well, Meghan is considerably larger than her mother, who is quite tiny even when she is not thin.  That means that, because she shares her build with her father and paternal grandmothers, she’s fat because she isn’t think like her mother.

Or something like that.

Eight or ten?  I always thought she was bigger than that—just comparing to how I looked at an 8/10, and I’m pretty shortish.  Maybe she’s shorter.  Height does make a difference, as we learned in the JLH Butt Scandal.  I’m average-short and a size 4/6 and the kids I teach call me fat.  So.  Anyway.  (And honestly, if she didn’t look pudgy then they’d find something else to complain about—TOO SHORT!  TOO TALL!  FUNNY NOSE!  Etc.  Republicans are like kids on a schoolyard.)

If you think Meghan is bad, I knew a girl in high school who was Meaghanne.  And this was well before people got into that habit of yoonik names.  It must suck for your name to be “Megan” but you can’t fit all of it into the scantron sheet during tests ...

Republicans are like kids on a schoolyard

No. Comforting, but no.  Misogynists are like that, and you can look at the recent-ish MM thread on Wonkette to confirm that, if you have the stomach for upwards of a hundred liberal guys talking about they’d hate-fuck her to shut her up even though they think she’s fat. Not really “even though,” even, because the point is that fat, being contemptible, makes her extra female and sexy (because those things are code for contemptible.) They aren’t Republicans over there, they’re just plain old woman-haters.

Or, for a less extreme but still stomach-turning example, just look at a creep like “phylosopher” in this very same thread, in what is widely known as a feminist blog. Yes, Republicans are worse than we are, no question, but it wasn’t a Republican who wrote that famously hilarious screed about raping Ann Coulter, and it’s very much not only Republicans who want to talk about humiliating Meghan McCain for being a woman.

The “caboose” language is a sure sign that these men are about to turn into Old Ones and gobble up the town of Sunnydale.

I suspect that many Republican pundits are working on related projects. A lot of their columns are clearly burped up directly from the Hellmouth.

All the things they could attack her for and *this* is what they came up with?

It seems to me that they are proving her point for her.

Or, for a less extreme but still stomach-turning example, just look at a creep like “phylosopher” in this very same thread, in what is widely known as a feminist blog. Yes, Republicans are worse than we are, no question, but it wasn’t a Republican who wrote that famously hilarious screed about raping Ann Coulter, and it’s very much not only Republicans who want to talk about humiliating Meghan McCain for being a woman.
sophonisba on 03/15 at 10:21 PM

Whoa there!  I’ll be happy to put my feminist creds up against almost anyone’s anyday.  I was trying to get a read on the ReThuglican female mind (yes, ouch it hurts, very small print).  Not being familiar with Meghan McCain, and the 8/10 debate coupled with having been engaged in some personal weight loss etc, I looked up some of her pics.  In some she seems to be wearing clothes that appear almost dowagerish. Generally, this is a complimented look in fundie world. 

So, I’m frankly not getting where you’re taking offense and such vehement offense at that.

That is extremely fucked up, not the least because people who are merely overweight by BMI standards are actually healthier than people of “normal” weight, with healthier meaning “less likely to suffer and die from preventable illness.”

Okay, I’m a firm opponent of the fetishization of BMI as some kind of universal health metric (though it has its uses, IMO), but I’m going to need a cite to believe that one. Not because I believe the converse, but because either claim strikes me as questionable. In short, the idea that having a “normal” BMI means that you are, statistically speaking, more likely to die from preventable illness, implies causation, in the sense that a “normal” BMI actually means that an individual is underweight to the point of not being able to muster the physiological resources to effectively battle disease. I suspect that whatever study you are referring to has a considerably more limited conclusion than that, such as survival rates upon hospitalization for some disease or other. It’s far cry from that to saying that a higher BMI equals greater health, which is just as absurd as saying that a high BMI equals less health.

Or, in other words, it’s just as stupid to make pronouncements about health based on BMI from one side of the BMI Wars as it is from the other. Part of the problem is really crappy science and health reporting in this country. The lay public, including many of the well-meaning people here who want to fight back against a body size-obsessed culture (with good reason!), really seems to have developed a greatly exaggerated sense of the scope of the results of your typical scientific or medical study. A study that looks at the survival rates of patients in a hospital pretty much tells you jack shit anything else, such as the likelihood of survival outside of a hospital, or about the likelihood of contracting a given disease. So you can have on study that shows that, say, people with an “overweight” BMI are more likely to get heart attacks, while another study could well show that people with a “normal” BMI are less likely to survive their hospital stays IF they have a heart attack. Those are both very limited and very different conclusions. I would strongly recommend against extrapolating from a given study anything more than what it actually says.

Okay, I’m a firm opponent of the fetishization of BMI as some kind of universal health metric (though it has its uses, IMO), but I’m going to need a cite to believe that one.

Here you go.

About two years ago, a group of federal researchers reported that overweight people have a lower death rate than people who are normal weight, underweight or obese.

For the first time linking causes of death to specific weights, they report that overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.

Some who studied the relation between weight and health said the nation might want to reconsider what are ideal weights.

Laura Ingraham is not hot, by the way. Kipling’s phrasing of “A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair” came immediately to my mind.

“Concerning weight in general: Americans are generally heavier than they used to be, and heavier than most Europeans, and this is probably not a good thing.”

I don’t know. I think in many european countries it is just a lag effect, the UK being 10 to 15 years in fatness behind the US, Germany (and I think Benelux) 15 to 20 years and France 20 to 30.
In the case of France the old theory that the mediterran lifestyle: olives, red wine and seafood kept them htin and their rate of infarcts low is crumbling. France is catching up on heart diseases.

Regarding Meghan McCain: I did give in to my shallow (I hope not mysogynistic) instincts and looked at her photos on the net. She looks perfectly normal to me. In the time of Rubens she would have probably considered as a bit to thin…

“About two years ago, a group of federal researchers reported that overweight people have a lower death rate than people who are normal weight, underweight or obese.

“

Of course one of course has to consider that the people in this study may have genetically been predisposed to being overweight and had biologicaly been compensated by having lower incidencines of heart diseases etc. Just like some studies on certain families have found that these families have shocking rates of high cholesteral they had certain factors that negated the risk wheras most other people would die from having blocked arteries with cholesteral.

BMI is a tool a usefull tool but a tool that has to be used right. Genetic studies could be the next usefull tool. Imagine going to a doctor having a blood test and be told what veggies meats to eat to lose weight if you are obese or gain weight if you are dangerously skinny. See some people get fatter on certain foods more then other people would while certain people can eat tons of fatty foods and not get fat even though they don’t exercise much but if you feed them so called healthy foods they get all bloated.

Hector B., kindly STFU.  Making that type of criticism of Ingraham is exactly the same old shit as what all of those mouth-breathing douchenozzles are doing to Meghan McCain.  Just because it’s pointed in the opposite direction doesn’t mean it’s OK, and especially not here. 

Bash her words, beliefs, and deeds as much as you want.  That’s entirely fair game.  Bashing her looks, and rating her worth based on your perception of her “hotness,” just makes you the asshole, and a misogynist one at that.  Capice?

The only time I ever was considered “normal” by BMI standards was when my thyroid was running rampant and completely out of control.  My metabolism was so whacked I felt the need to eat an entire cow four times a day.  I was a size 8, and could easily have gotten down to a size 6 if I could control the urge to stuff my face.

However, I also had excruciating joint pain, a weird skin rash, tremors in my hands, was sweating and hot constantly, and god help me I was inches away from boogly eyeballs.  I was also having heart palpitations and various other cardiological symptoms.

So basically, in order for me to meet the BMI standards, I need to have a serious medical condition which could and would affect all my internal organs.  I don’t believe the BMI is anything other than a medieval flogging tool.  I work out most every day, I walk my dog at least a mile every day, and I’m still a size 12.  I eat regular portions and try to incorporate fruits and vegetables in every meal.  Screw the BMI.

it wasn’t a Republican who wrote that famously hilarious screed about raping Ann Coulter

Was it about *raping* Ann Coulter? As I recall, the site was called “I fucked Ann Coulter in the ass” or something along those lines. Admittedly I only skimmed it once, and that was quite a while ago, but I don’t recall anything non-consensual going on in that “story.”

Of course, I may just have missed / forgotten about any rape in that story, or we may be talking about two different pieces of slashfic.

Or, for a less extreme but still stomach-turning example, just look at a creep like “phylosopher” in this very same thread, in what is widely known as a feminist blog.

Yes sophonisba, and I suppose that Amanda has hired you to spout screeds at every opportunity to make sure that is soooo carefully enforced, even when you take everything out of context at any and all opportunities to make your point.

But your fecal matter emits no odor ever, no doubt.  If you would stick to proper analysis and lay off the out of context and namecalling, somebody might actually pay attention to the substance of your comments once in a while.

Laura Ingraham is not hot, by the way. Kipling’s phrasing of “A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair” came immediately to my mind.

Hector B.

So?  Aren’t her “ideas” ugly enough for ridicule?

Just to toss this in there…

Size 8?

Size 8 bought WHERE?

Nancy Reagan used to boast about her small dress size.  If you shop at Saks and Needless Markup and Nordstrom’s, you will find clothes are cut far more generously than if you shop at Express or Old Navy or Target.

As a smoking hot college co-ed, I was a size 7/8 at the malls, but a size 2 in the fancy dress departments.

So…it’s possible that the rich are just so truly privileged that they don’t realize that their size 2 is a Target size 8 and that their size 8 isn’t carried at Old Navy, but would be available on-line.

American women’s clothing sizes suck.  Hell girls’ clothes sizes suck, too, even if they are a bit closer overall.  But the fact that there is no standardized “Size 8” makes this bitching even more ridiculous.

I wonder if Ingraham et al are just mad that Ms. McCain showed more brains and class than they do, and made substantive counter arguments about how weight-baiting was foolish and divisive, rather than get into a name-calling cat fight?

Get it? Because all Irish people are drunks! Get it!?

...NOT RACIST!

Not all, but enough to make it one of our favorite topics of self-deprecating humor.

Bash her words, beliefs, and deeds as much as you want.  That’s entirely fair game.  Bashing her looks, and rating her worth based on your perception of her “hotness,” just makes you the asshole

OK, here are Laura Ingraham’s words, beliefs, and deeds regarding Meghan McCain, as reported by Ms. McCain:

Recently my not-size-0 body has come under fire again by the conservative pundit Laura Ingraham. On her radio show recently, she sarcastically commented that I was “too plus-sized to be a cast member on the television show The Real World” and needled me about my weight with a comment about Barbie’s 50th anniversary. Instead of intellectually debating our ideological differences about the future of the Republican Party, Ingraham resorted to making fun of my age and weight, in the fashion of the mean girls in high school.

I hope I’m permitted to say that these words, beliefs, and deeds are really dumb.

But, as a general rule, when one woman criticizes the looks of another, she’s really saying, “Look at me! I lack the flaws of this other woman; I’m really the attractive one here.” Which she’s not.

It’s analogous to slut shaming—Ingraham is painting herself as desirable,  by calling out the presumably bulbous McCain.

But, I guess it’s possible that Ingraham was implying that gaining weight showed a character weakness that Ingraham didn’t have, or that she did have but suppressed by constant discipline. But I didn’t get that out of her comments at first reading.

Not all, but enough to make it one of our favorite topics of self-deprecating humor.

And seriously, have you ever tried to read Gaelic?  Somebody was on something.  How would you pronounce the word raidhfil (if you pronounce it right, you’ll know what it means), or the name Proinsias?

It’s analogous to slut shaming—Ingraham is painting herself as desirable, by calling out the presumably bulbous McCain.

... Hector B.

So? That means she needs to be brought down a notch by exactly the same sort of behavior?

Or does Ingraham’s BEHAVIOR need to be described and deconstructed for the distraction that it is, as Meghan McCain has so artfully done, without buying into the sexism?

“But, as a general rule, when one woman criticizes the looks of another, she’s really saying, “Look at me! I lack the flaws of this other woman; I’m really the attractive one here.” Which she’s not.”

...or, she could be just pulling a feminine version of the Limbaugh Maneuver (or the Howard Stern Maneuver).

Neither of those worthy gentlemen have ever seen Brad Pitt looking back at them from the mirror, yet they feel qualified to comment on the looks of any woman without recognizing the essential dichotomy (and cruelty) of a troll calling someone else ugly.

Happens all the time — still don’t make it right…

Extra letters are the way it was spelled for anyone born after 1985

Whew, I’m lucky.  I was born just in time.  I was born in 1985 and my name is spelled Megan, the correct way.  However, I can never hold it against people who spell in Meghan, because they didn’t choose to spell it that way; it was their parents’ fault.

Re drunken Irish: Not all, but enough to make it one of our favorite topics of self-deprecating humor.

Way too true, alas.  Too many alcoholics in my family, that’s for sure.

I really shouldn’t have found the Family Guy introduction to Ireland quite as funny as I did…

As someone who’s studied both Old and Modern Irish/Gaelic, the spelling makes perfect sense, it’s just that Irish has more sounds than English does, and they try to account for that.

The biggest difference, by far, is that every consonant and a ‘broad’ and a ‘slender’ sound, which is indicated by the vowels surrounding it. Also, consonant shifts are a common grammatical marker, which is done by adding an ‘h’ after the consonant in question or another letter before it.

The problem isn’t that Irish is weird, but that it should have never been put into the Latin alphabet.

Or, one other fun thing is to realize that English has more sounds than the Latin alphabet can cover, but we by and large try to ignore that. For instance, we have two ‘l’s (note; little) and to ‘th’ (the, this) which are spelled identically despite being different sounds. 

*******

On to the weight thing, I highly recommend that everyone read this post by Kate Harding: http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/

Even if you accept the premise that being larger is inherently unhealthy, the bottom line is that there is absolutely no way whatsoever to permanently and safely reduce weight. Dieting doesn’t work, exercise doesn’t work, bariatric surgery doesn’t work, fucking with your hypothalamus doesn’t work, etc. etc. etc. The vast vast vast majority of non-skinny people (those with a BMI of 25 or above, on my body a size 8 from Old Navy/Kohl’s/JCPenney or larger) are that size naturally, not because of any bad habit. Research has shown time and again that fat people and skinny people eat and exercise in by and large similar amounts; shockingly, everyone’s body is different.

In order for me to get down to a ‘normal’ BMI I would literally have to starve myself. The one time in my life I was ‘normal’ was when I was suffering from an eating disorder. I think having a bit more girth is a hell of a lot healthier than starving yourself (or rearranging your insides, or implanting shit into your brain), and at a size 12-14 pre-pregnancy (I’m 7 months pregnant so my size and habits are all sorts of screwed up right now, but this is how I know I can eat 1/3 of my usual fare, throw up half of that for 2 months solid and only lose 5 pounds…which made me STILL obese) I’m far more healthy than I was at a size 4 in every conceivable measure. BMI, and therefore doctors, totally ignore that.

People with French names shouldn’t thow stones at us poor gaels for extra letters.  Especially this close to St. Padraig’s day. 

Besides, Siaobhan spells Shevaun whether you like it or no.   

So? That means she needs to be brought down a notch by exactly the same sort of behavior?

The Empress is fully clothed, I suppose. And there is no tit for tat.

Also, it is impolite to remark on the soot adhering to the pot.

So…it’s possible that the rich are just so truly privileged that they don’t realize that their size 2 is a Target size 8 and that their size 8 isn’t carried at Old Navy, but would be available on-line.

Really?  I find exactly the opposite.  I’m pretty consistently a 4/6 in designer stuff, but at Old Navy and The Gap and Target and places like that, I’m a 0 or 2 or XS.  Which is scary, because though I’m a bit shorter than the average girl-bear, I am by no means skinny.  Also, taller people will tend to wear larger clothing sizes than smaller people. 

Which is all to say that I think dress size as an indication of anything should be tossed in garbage the heap along with BMI.

BMI was designed to assess the relative fatness of populations, not individuals.  It has very poor predictive value in individuals, due to all factors mentioned.

The only time that I was slightly below the “overweight” category, I wore what would now by a size 7/8 (judging from measurements) and worked out three hours a day.  My roommate was two inches taller, about 5-10 lbs heavier, and had about the same BMI.  She wore a then size 20 (now more of a 16-18).

Now I’m horribly obese.  But that doesn’t seem to stop me from cycling to work, walking several miles a day if I don’t, skiing all day, snowshoeing and paddling for miles, etc.

Oh, and at 5’4” and 200lbs, my “obesity” ala BMI doesn’t seem to keep me from wearing size 14 or 16 pants, either.  I’d wear similarly sized shirts/jackets, but my shoulders and boobs are too big for anything less than a 16/18.

“I was a size 7/8 at the malls, but a size 2 in the fancy dress departments.”

EXACTLY. there’s also the issue inconsistency in sizing even at the same store, depending on whether you’re talking about pants, shirts, dresses or whatever. i myself have a 4 to 6 size discrepancy between my upper half and my lower half, and yet i don’t appear to be disproportionate.

i’ve also wondered how the fat-girl shamers in our society reconcile their own inconsistencies? i mean, there was that whole jennifer love hewitt and the OMG SHE’S SO FAT SHE’S LIKE A SIZE 8 AND SHE DARES TO WEAR A BIKINI thing a few months ago. and yet, scarlett johansen (who could probably share clothes with j-love and maybe even meghan mccain) is widely considered a bombshell.

I personally am disappointed by at least 40% of the commenters on this thread not telling me what size they are.

Crap, even within stores I find vastly different fits/size ranges.

To give an idea, here’s the fit list for pants at Target:

the Mizrahi stuff fits only in a size 18.

Merona means 14W or a 16-18

Cherokee stuff fits best in a 14

Sweatpants by Hanes?  Large; Champion: XL; Prospirit: XXL

The best shaped for me would be the Merona 14W. But the point stands: same store, different sizing.

I also find that a 14 petite at Lane Bryant fits well, but an Avenue 14 can anywhere from “just right” to “falls off” (which sucks, becuase they don’t have 12). 

I bought some 14W pants off the rack at the Talbot’s Outlet Store, and took them back for 12W.

(W means “womens” but really means “curvier and shorter waisted” for the most part).

I’ve gotta back up Grolby here that people try to draw way-too-broad conclusions from scientific studies.  The New York Times is not the place to get the real scoop (although even their headline says “less likely to die from SOME diseases”).  Looking to even just the abstract from the original JAMA article (I don’t have access to the full article where I am right now), it’s not about anyone being omre or less likely to die in general, it’s about which specific diseases affect which BMI groups.  I’m taking no “side” here, except the side of being against overgeneralizing scientific results, which drives me CRAZY!

Here, from the original study authors:
Results:  Based on total follow-up, underweight was associated with significantly increased mortality from noncancer, non-CVD causes (23 455 excess deaths; 95% confidence interval [CI], 11 848 to 35 061) but not associated with cancer or CVD mortality. Overweight was associated with significantly decreased mortality from noncancer, non-CVD causes (–69 299 excess deaths; 95% CI, –100 702 to –37 897) but not associated with cancer or CVD mortality. Obesity was associated with significantly increased CVD mortality (112 159 excess deaths; 95% CI, 87 842 to 136 476) but not associated with cancer mortality or with noncancer, non-CVD mortality. In further analyses, overweight and obesity combined were associated with increased mortality from diabetes and kidney disease (61 248 excess deaths; 95% CI, 49 685 to 72 811) and decreased mortality from other noncancer, non-CVD causes (–105 572 excess deaths; 95% CI, –161 816 to –49 328). Obesity was associated with increased mortality from cancers considered obesity-related (13 839 excess deaths; 95% CI, 1920 to 25 758) but not associated with mortality from other cancers. Comparisons across surveys suggested a decrease in the association of obesity with CVD mortality over time.
Conclusions:  The BMI-mortality association varies by cause of death. These results help to clarify the associations of BMI with all-cause mortality.

CalliopeJane, there is one additional important note to your most proper statement of the actual conclusions, something the authors themselves appear to have missed:

Epidemiology deals with groups of people.  The problem with BMI is that is easy to deal with for large cohorts, and therefore favored for studies.  The imprecison and misclassification inherent in the BMI as an individual predictive measure of fatness tends to cancel out in very large groups of people being studied.

BMI is not particularly predictive of body fatness (or, really, anything) at the individual level.  It is only a good indicator of fatness in about 25 to 40 percent of the population.  Any other screening tool that inaccurate would be tossed out if it weren’t cheap, easy, and loaded with a tone of social bullshit - not to mention all the researchers and funding agencies who won’t answer the important questions about the appropriateness of BMI as an individual indicator of anything because they fear they will lose their funding to push numbers around.

I do like that this group keeps it in the realm of population, not individuals.  Good move.  I suspect JAMA is getting harder-nosed about that.

The “conclusions” that jump from studies of BMI in large groups to what BMI has to mean for an individual are as bad as the “conclusions” from studies of air pollution that make statements about how “women who are pregnant or want to get pregnant should avoid air pollution”.  If you don’t see such spurious “gotta say something about individual behavior even if it is sexist, stupid, impossible, and has downstream consequences I can’t envison” conclusions in an air pollution paper after 2008 or so, thank me, okay?

I personally am disappointed by at least 40% of the commenters on this thread not telling me what size they are.

I have nature’s most perfect shape—the sphere.

So hector, instead of getting pants in size “##W ##L” you buy, say, a 36r?

BMI is good if you’re 1) withing two inches or so of average height, 2) male, 3) not an athlete and/or on steroids.

The first and third exception is understandable, but it’s really stupid they don’t adjust it for women.

BTW, clothing sizes have been inflated in recent years so it’s not necessarily an accurate predictor, either.

What are these “pants” of which you speak?

Here’s a reasonably close description of how clothes are made for me:

http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/imaging/globe.html

liberal guys talking about they’d hate-fuck her to shut her up even though they think she’s fat.

then they are not liberals. i don’t care what you call yourself, if you’re a misogynistic prick, you are lying if you call yourself a liberal. EOD.

I have never understood women’s sizing. I know exactly what size to look for, even if it always means shopping online because no one carries my inseam in the stores.

Why can’t the industry just go to a standard form of waist x hips x inseam system for everyone? (this could even be useful for us guys who only get a waist x inseam measure)

I actually don’t buy that clothing sizes have been inflated in recent years, or even months. I sew, so I keep up with my measurements pretty meticulously. I’m also, as I said above, 7 months pregnant, so I haven’t worn normal clothes in quite awhile.

Pre-pregnancy I was wearing a size 12-14 in pants, which meant mostly a 12 at Old Navy, 14 at, say, New York and Co, and either at JCPenney. I’ve gone back and looked at the sizing and it’s changed. Going by the measurements I had 6 months ago, I’d be a 16 at JCPenney (compared to a 12-14), a 14-16 at Old Navy (even going with the exact same pants, of which I own a size 12, and STILL FIT at 7 months pregnant) and a 14 at Target.

So, in the past 6 months I would have gone up one or two sizes despite identical measurements. What was a couple sizes from the top end of the ‘normal’ clothing is just about plus size now, and that’s with NO CHANGE to my body.

Some places do inflate sizes, but several places are in fact dropping them rather significantly.

MAJeff: That wouldn’t even help someone with my figure. I have a ‘swayback’ which means my butt curves out more than ‘average.’ Being that pants are designed for women with flat asses compared to round ones, even if my hip and waist measurement fit a pair of pants, the pants wouldn’t fit me.

And that’s not even getting into things like ‘what if your boobs are disproportionately too big?’ Nowadays, if I wanted to buy a shirt or a dress that fit my boobs, it’d be 5+ inches to big in the waist!

Reasons why I sew; I’ve all but given up on clothes shopping.

The sad thing is, women actually will be influenced to buy clothing because that number on the tag makes them feel good, regardless of the item’s actual size.  I was visiting my mother and went into a clothing store called “Chico” - we don’t have that chain where I live, so I was unfamiliar with their vanity-sizing.  I picked up a tunic that totally looked like it would fit me (usually about a 6) and the size on the label was “0”.  I expressed confusion and a saleswoman said “oh, a 6 is our size zero.”  Apparently they have their own 0,1,2,3… sizing for 6, 8, 10…  It actually makes me a little LESS likely to buy the clothes because I hate feeling manipulated, but I know it does work on so many women. My 6’ tall sister is overjoyed to put on something with a “4” on its label, even when she knows it’s fake-flattery-for-selling-purposes.

I have stuff in my closet with numbers from 4 to 11 that all fits me (not counting that 0 tunic from chico, that I did get just because I liked it & it was WAY on sale).  I just wish we could have sizes in inches/cm like men’s clothes do!  It would certainly make mail-order shopping easier!

Hector B., quit being so freakin’ ingenuous.  Your comments about Ingraham’s looks were inappropriate and misogynist.  I don’t give a fluttering fuck what SHE said about McCain.  What I’m saying to you is that to revile what she said is fine and dandy.  To revile her for her shitheaded beliefs and unthinkably stupid pronouncements on her show are all fine and dandy.

What isn’t fine and dandy is you using her looks and perceived level of “hotness” to deprecate and shame her.  That is exactly what we’re fighting against as women and as feminists, not to mention as decent people.  A person’s looks have nothing—-repeat, nothing—to do with their worth as a person or the worth of their ideas and beliefs. 

One way misogynists on both the right and the left ALWAYS try to shut women down is to comment on their looks and their perceived lack of “fuckability.”  And yes, that’s exactly what you just did, and if you’re an honest person, you will admit that and stop with the cutesy excuses and misdirection.

I think what it comes down to is this—Meghan McCain wants to be her own person, and the fact that she’s a little bit plus-sized is okay with her. Reich wingers seem to be obsessed with appearances, are criticizing her credibility based on this, and she doesn’t like it, nor should she. Good on her for taking a stand and refusing to be a wingnut’s bitch (in the prison sense, not the female sense). (Of course, sorta-plus-sized or not, she’s a very attractive woman anyway, and she actually seems to be a good writer. All this points out is the essential bankruptcy of the right.)

sophonisba:

Said “screed”, if you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, didn’t involve rape. If anything, it was a fantasy of Ann Coulter as an extremely pushy bottom.

I’m not overweight I’m just too short… My height should be 8 ft to accommodate all my pounds

I kind of   like Meghan McCain. She is one of the few conservatives I can stand reading without feeling the need for throwing the computer out the window. Considering where she comes from (ewww!!) she actually seem to have some braincells.

One way misogynists on both the right and the left ALWAYS try to shut women down is to comment on their looks and their perceived lack of “fuckability.”

In future, when they start talking smack about another woman’s looks, I will simply note the misogyny of the Laura Ingrahams of this world.

Here’s a reasonably close description of how clothes are made for me:

Wow - Talk about projection!

Rumblelizard, you are my new favourite person.

Meghan McCain wants to be her own person, and the fact that she’s a little bit plus-sized is okay with her.

Actually, MMC is pretty average size, if not a bit smaller, than the average-sized woman in the US.  That shows exactly how warped one’s sense of size gets when the average size women we see on TV are four inches taller, fourty pounds lighter, and six sizes smaller than the wild type.

“fat people and skinny people eat and exercise in by and large similar amounts; shockingly, everyone’s body is different”

Sorry Ashley, lie to yourself if you want, but the above is just ridiculous.  Judging no one but myself here, if I’m sedentary, I gain weight.  If I exercise off it goes.  If I exercise and watch calories up to a ceratin point it goes faster. 

So, I can be fat me that doesn’t exercise or I can be skinny me that does.

if I’m sedentary, I gain weight.  If I exercise off it goes.  If I exercise and watch calories up to a ceratin point it goes faster.

So, I can be fat me that doesn’t exercise or I can be skinny me that does.

Wow, phylosopher, it’s almost as if your body has a natural size it returns to when you’re not restricting your food intake and maintaining an artificially high level of activity!

What’s the term for that again? Oh yeah ...

I hope Meghan takes her dad’s better traits and runs as far to the left as she can with them.

I don’t want her to run to the left. There’s always going to be a right-wing, and it’s good to have a healthy opposition.

It’d be nice to see American politics reconfigured so that there’s a conversation with people like her and John Cole and Andrew Sullivan on the other side, and the loons like Ingraham scratching at the door, wondering why they’ve been locked out for pissing on the carpet.

seriously, have you ever tried to read Gaelic?  Somebody was on something.

Nonono. The Irish-language spelling and pronunciation committees met in separate rooms. In separate buildings. In separate towns. If you look the old ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ columns you’ll find some funny ones with dialogue in English spelled according to Irish rules.

Oh, Ms Kate, you are *so* busted as a bio geek.  Wild type indeed. 

Hey, wait…maybe that’s what the W in the women’s sizes means!

phylosopher:

if I’m sedentary, I gain weight.  If I exercise off it goes.  If I exercise and watch calories up to a ceratin point it goes faster.

So, I can be fat me that doesn’t exercise or I can be skinny me that does.

kristin:

Wow, phylosopher, it’s almost as if your body has a natural size it returns to when you’re not restricting your food intake and maintaining an artificially high level of activity!

What’s the term for that again? Oh yeah ...

Why assume that phylosopher is overexercising?  Maybe the level of activity phylosopher likes is the higher level.  Phylosopher didn’t make any comment about how much phylosopher eats.  Maybe it’s already a lot. 

In other words, just because phylosopher is generalizing incorrectly from phylosopher’s experience (that it’s easy to lose weight if you just exercise) doesn’t mean you should pick on phylosopher’s size and assume that when phylosopher is not fat it’s because phylosopher is exercising unhealthily.

I know people who like to exercise or don’t, eat a lot or a little, and are skinny or fat or in between.  All different combinations, some the same people at different times.

Why assume that phylosopher is overexercising?  Maybe the level of activity phylosopher likes is the higher level.

Good point, JoAnne. In that case:

I can be fat me that doesn’t exercise or I can be skinny me that does.

Wow, phylosopher, it’s almost as if your body has a natural size it returns to when you’re not unusually sedentary for you!

In any case, I didn’t say “overexercising”. I said “maintaining an artificially high level of activity”.

If someone is running every evening because they love the way it feels to run (or dancing or skating or doing tae kwon do, or whatever) then that’s not an artificially high level of activity.

If they’re running every evening although they’d really rather not, because that’s how they keep the weight off, and when they stop doing it then the weight comes back, *that’s* an artificially high level of activity.

Let me elaborate, Kristin.  There is no size that I “return to.”  Frankly, this is the heaviest I’ve ever been and the shittiest I’ve ever felt.  In other words, I keep gaining-no leveling off.  My guess is I could let it go up to Biggest Loser candidate size.  However, watching what happens to people who do “let it go”  and their correspondent health problems, Type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, etc.  I get back in shape out of FEAR. I happen to like being able to walk across the room without stopping for breath, ya know?  I don’t want to have carry insulin with me and do daily injections, I want to be able to get up from a chair at 65 and not fear breaking a bone.

Let’s go further, as a former weight lifter, I know my body pretty well.  I can boost my metabolism with some heavy duty lifting, and cardio, etc.  It is a matter of how fast is the metab running + a simple calories in /energy out calculation.  You seem to think there’s some sort of natural size governor in that equation; I call that b.s.

I do think in that equation there is also the influence of hormones and fluctuating levels of same as we age.  Up to 25-30 I may have agreed with you.  Ate like a horse and never gained more than 5 pounds, no matter if I was cramming for classes (very sedentary) or doing manual summer labor. So Kristin, for @ 35 years of my life, I was underweight, (initally a candidate to be a jockey until I got too tall, then did some modeling, but never got tall enough) and that was my natural size.  Now I run @ 25-30# above that, but only for @ 8-10 years - so, how do I decide what is my “natural weight?”
And I’m not a “dieter.”  I tend to eat instinctively, which means seasonally adjusted, in retrospect.

You also don’t make a distinction which most of us need to, that while getting out to run is often problematic mentally or timewise, when we do run, we enjoy it.

I’m in the Ingraham-opened-the-door camp.  Once you spew vicious and demeaning comments about a person’s looks - especially about women and their weight - you’ve just entered the dunking booth.  She tried to body-shame a woman into not speaking her mind, and she tried to use sexism and fat-prejudice to marginalize what McCain was trying to say.  That’s something you expect out of junior high kids, not nationally known political pundits.  I’m so happy McCain went out and appeared publicly, showing her body, using this bullshit hullaballoo to increase her national audience.

Sorry, Ingraham deserves whatever nasty shit about her looks comes her way.  Sometimes getting as good as you give (or worse) is the only way to teach people what complete fucking asses they are.  It’s the old And how do YOU like it?

As someone who battled bulemia for years (and is still in counseling for it, though I’m in recovery, fortunately) one of the biggest things I’ve had to overcome is the “evil voice”.  When I looked in the mirror and saw fat where ideally there should have been none, or saw stretch marks where ideally my skin would have been perfect, I immediately went into “body hate” mode, which easily turned into “self hate” mode.  Because of that, I avoided mirrors and eventually avoided scales and would only get on one if I really thought I’d lost weight.  I hated clothes shopping (again, mirrors) and went into mini panic attacks any time the smallest size I bought at one store didn’t fit at another store.  My wardrobe was years out of date, not because I didn’t have the money to spend on new clothes, but because mentally and emotionally I couldn’t handle trying on clothes in a store.  I have a huge regret in my life that I didn’t have sex with someone I really cared about because I was embarrassed about my body and thought the moment I took off my clothes, all his interest in me would vanish and I’d be a laughingstock, just like I was in high school.  It was the whole overweight = unworthy thing.

Trying to get my head screwed back on straight and actually digest my food, and then learn how to eat properly was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life.  I still struggle with it and I’m 31.  Food issues often overtake my life and I can’t stand it, because if I could have one wish fulfilled in my life, it would be that I could just stop thinking about food.

When somebody like Laura Ingraham publicly ridicules another woman about her weight, that to me is as serious as overt, malicious racist commentary.  It’s deeply hurtful and wrong.  If there’s any justice in this world, some network exec at Fox will pull a Deborah Norville on her and can her ass for someone younger and prettier.

Deep6, the point I’m making is that what Ingraham did was incredibly wrong, and the last thing we should be doing is imitating her.  She’s a hateful, vicious, nasty misogynist, and she uses whatever misogynist weapons she has in her arsenal to shame and put down women who disagree with her. 

Commenting on a woman’s looks to shut her down in an argument is a misogynist tactic, one that is used all the time by people of all genders and on all sides of the political spectrum.  It’s a powerful weapon to use against women because of the belief that’s hammered into us by the patriarchy that as women, our looks are the sum total of our worth as people.  Well, fuck that!

To stoop to that level of discourse, to use misogynist weapons like that to try and gain a point, is both abhorrent (because it’s a disgusting thing to do in and of itself) and self-defeating, because it helps to reinforce the use of women’s looks to shut women’s voices down—people can say (and often do, even in this thread) “Well, women are doing it to each other, so why can’t I?”

It needs to stop, and we need to stop it.

And HectorB., thank you.  You do that. 

You got to wonder about a group of people who claim to occupy moral high ground at every turn, yet think that illegal prescription drug abuse is okay and having a natural amount of fat on a female body is not.

I think there is a word for them ... several actually.

Phylosopher: The thing is, studies have shown, repeatedly, that as populations fat people and thin people eat and exercise in very similar amounts. Science backs me up there.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/08/healthscience/snfat.php?page=1
http://kateharding.net/2007/05/11/you-dont-have-to-be-fat-to-be-fat/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15175588
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/

Moreover, nothing, at all, works to permanently change a person’s body, let alone safely. Any weight loss scheme, whether it’s diet and exercise, or bariatric surgery, has a 5 year fail rate of 95%. You simply can’t change your body, unless you’re willing to go anorexic, which is getting close to being blatantly suggested.

Now, personally, I’m at my heaviest, but I have a diagnosed and treated endocrine disorder. I’m also at my healthiest, by far, by any standard of measurement other than weight. I’m fitter than I’ve ever been (or at least was pre-pregnancy, and will return to that once I’m physically able to walk more than 2 blocks without my hips separating), eat healthier than I ever have, and feel better. And yet I’m fatter.

Now, I could significantly starve myself and be sick all the time to get to a “healthy weight” or I could go on exercising and eating well and be my heavier self. And because of the disease I have, my diet and activity levels have jack all to do with my weight.

Ashley:

First, please learn what science and a credible article mean.  The first NY Times piece cited very tiny studies and some with rather bizarre participants and seemingly not addressing exercise as a factor at all.  (No women in that prison study - which is a common bias exhibited in many medical studies). 
The second and fourth are blogs- no real citations, just a critique of a certain brain implementation technique.
The third is only an abstract which looks like it may have some good info; I can’t access from home.

I do agree and so do most good exercise physiologists and trainers that there is a mechanism in the body that slows metabolism when one’s calorie intake drops drastically and stays there And 600 calories is a starvation diet( one study in those articles).  However, there is also incontrovertable evidence (you can look this up, it is predominantly in the area of beef sheep and swine nutrition, accessible from google scholar if you can then access the databases or journals) that an increase in muscle size/fiber density increases metabolism.  Off hand, I think it’s the fast twitch that primarily does it.  As you probably know, certain hormones also affect your weight, as well as stress and environmental factors.  Then there’s the depression cycle, being depressed tends to make one inactive, which leads to more depression.

Increases in muscle mass also mean fewer inches, thus smaller size and all kinds of other benefits. 

What I’m trying to get at here, is that metabolism and weight gain (as you know with an endocrine disorder is highly complex.  So I’m not denying that genetics (a natural weight) has some influence.  But Kristin went way too far, claiming or at least implying that it was the sole factor, which is a dangerous attitude to promote.

Both parts are absolutely correct and indisputable.

Don’t let your head get stuck in the door on your way out.

Kristin went way too far, claiming or at least implying that it was the sole factor, which is a dangerous attitude to promote.

Oooooooh, I’m DANGEROUS! The scary fat is going to KILL YOU ALL if you’re not appropriately terrified of it and self-hating about it!

What the fuck ever.

The comments in this thread about

1. she’s not fat, or even if she is she’s hot!!1!
2. the other lady is not hot so, uh, THERE!!1!
3. the dude who’s taken the opportunity to warn everyone (at great length!) about the HAZARDS OF FATNESS

are pretty much boilerplate for every public discussion- left, right, center and whackadoo fringe- of women and size. Ever.

Let us take a moment and savor this irony.

Oooooooh, I’m DANGEROUS! The scary fat is going to KILL YOU ALL if you’re not appropriately terrified of it and self-hating about it!

What the fuck ever.
kristin on 03/17 at 07:31 PM

Same to you sweetie (where is that emoticon giving the finger?)

Let us take a moment and savor this irony.

Which irony?

The classic reactions of “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” “It takes one to know one,” and “Look at the pot calling the kettle black” resonated with me in a way that the subtle point re misogyny didn’t.

Further, Laura Ingraham is unchristian, because she violated the plain teachings of Christ in Matthew 7:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Mk. 4.24

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.