Following Paul McAleer’s talk, I somehow found myself falling in step with Paul Campos, who was wandering out of the building in the same direction I was. Dee and I had planned to lunch with Paul McAleer following his talk, but there was a lot of confusion and lots of fat people headed for the parking lot, making lunch plans for a place called Rodney’s. I got some very easy-sounding directions to the place, and hoped to God we’d be able to find it, considering our lost-in-Massachusetts track record.

And here was Paul Campos, walking beside me and talking, in his sarcastic, dryly humourous, lawyerly way. He didn’t seem to care much about where he ended up for lunch, or whether he ended up anywhere. I extracted Dee and Paul McAleer from the throng of chatters in the ballroom, and we determined we’d all walk the short distance downtown to find the restaurant where everyone else was meeting. Of course, we didn’t find it. I think we gave up one block short of our destination, and settled on a Chinese/Japanese restaurant instead. Thus began one of the most interesting lunches I’ve ever had.

Dee and I sat across from the two Pauls and began a roundtable discussion on fat. I wish I could remember more of what we said, but basically we laughed a lot, and were outraged over each other’s stories, including one Paul’s experience of losing a job due to involvement in fat acceptance, and the other Paul’s difficulty in getting his book about fat published. I ate shrimp in chili sauce and was disappointed that they weren’t hotter than the horseradish sandwich that nearly killed me during the road trip. One Paul quietly struggled with his chopsticks, but no one noticed. Due to the chili sauce dissolving all traces of the sticky in my sticky-rice, the crudeness of my chopsticks skills was given entirely away. On the walk back to Smith, another Paul told hilarious stories about one of my favourite, love-to-hate obesity researchers.

I was overcome with the post-lunch drowsies, so I did not get many notes on Stefanie Snider’s talk. I do remember it was incredibly dense, and I wished I’d had the papers she was reading from in front of me to read, re-read, underline, and make notes on. The images she showed were challenging, and deeply interesting. I jotted down some of the artists’ names. I found the themes of visibility and invisibilty intriguing, but I’m sure I largely missed the point. I’ll blame it on the post-lunch drowsies.

Kathleen LeBesco, who was sharing her chocolate with me and just generally being a sweetheart, gave Dee and I directions to the nearest mall which housed a Lane Bryant. The prospect of shopping at Lane Bryant was far more exciting to us than it ever should be to anyone, anywhere, simply due to the absolute dearth of good fat clothing stores in Canada.

When we entered the store, we were like ravenous children in candy land. The American consumer is alive and well within me, and she grabbed armfuls of pretty things to haul into the dressing room. We complimented each other’s outfits with, “Oh, that makes you look so FAT!” and trying not to laugh. “Really? I’m not sure it makes me look fat ENOUGH…”

I took in a nice haul and gave my credit card some much-needed exercise. Hilarity ensued when Dee and I lost each other in the mall. (In case you’ve missed it, the score is now Massachusetts: 3, Us: 0.) I paged Dee, she paged me, and neither one of us heard either of the pages. Eventually she found me sitting on a bench, forlorn, like a lost child. We raced back to the car and the conference to hear Pattie Thomas. We were late.

When we arrived, Pattie was showing some slides of various newspaper headlines and articles. One of them was an article entitled “I Became Alli” by Allison Beaulieu in Obesity Help Magazine. It was a story of this woman’s ‘transformation’ through weight loss, and how that change necessitated a change in her very name. I found this creepy, to say the least. Pattie elaborated on how the process of weight loss is often interpreted as the way a fat person can ‘become human.’ Creepiness confirmed.

She talked about the Richard Carmona’s (the Surgeon General) propensity for talking about obesity in militaristic language, including a claim that the “”obesity epidemic [is] a bigger threat than terrorism”" and referring to obesity as “the terror within.” Pattie’s suggestion was that, because the huge, attention-grabbing public health issue of bioterrorism was turned over to Tommy Thompson, the Secretary of Health & Human Services, the office of the Surgeon General was left with little to talk about. Subsequently, Carmona started referring to obesity in terms of terrorism. We do not think this was a timely coincidence.

Pattie began to talk about advertising, starting with a Jenny Craig ad from the Fall of 2002 that stated, “I used to be fat, then September 11th happened.” It was the story of a school teacher who felt it was her patriotic duty, and her duty to her young students, to lose weight so she could be physically capable of dealing with emergency…implying, of course, that being fat somehow renders people incompetent and costly liabilities in emergencies. Pattie explained how this is one example of advertising using stigma — in this case, the stigma of the fat body — to encourage people to “purchase normality and equality,” rather than demanding an end to stigma and an equal place for all members of society.

She moved on to a discussion of how various interests are co-opting the language of fat acceptance and Health At Every Size in order to sell weight loss. One such example was Jeremy Likness, whose seven keys to weight loss (such as: be positive, make it a lifestyle, listen to your body) sound suspiciously like the language used to promote HAES. As an aside, he’s also fond of using the terrorist imagery in his discussion of fat.

This led into a discussion of ambiguous words, and Pattie’s point that the words we choose are important. She explained that words have the power to contain entire cultural histories that survive through thousands of years, even in cultures without the advantage of written language. They must be used wisely. As she said, it’s “not simply semantics,” which is a commonly used dismissal of this discussion.

What is “fitness?” Suitability, worthiness? Does it mean someone else is not suitable for something? Not worthy? Not suitable or worthy for what, exactly? Fit, or not fit, for what? What does it mean to eat “right?” Is there one right way to eat? Is eating right a moral issue? What is “junk food?” Is it garbage? Are people who eat it “junk people” by association? Who has the privilege to determine what food is junk and what isn’t? Certainly not the people who have trouble finding ENOUGH food to begin with. When we use the terms “lifestyle” and “wellness” what do we actually mean? Why do we repeat these terms if we’re not clear on their exact meanings?

She mentioned John Ott, whose memorial in Obesity Help Magazine described his passing as due to “complications from his obesity” when he died two days after undergoing weight-loss surgery. Why did they not say he died from complications of the surgery? Talk about choosing your words wisely.

Pattie talked about how chronic diseases are now beginning to be measured and tracked, epidemiologically, the way communicable diseases traditionally have been. This raises questions about government monitoring (”New York City Starts to Monitor Diabetics” Washington Post, Jan. 2006), and whether such monitoring might facilitate employment discrimination. Some companies now require weigh-ins and activity level assessments as a means of ensuring employees’ compliance to health insurance standards.

“One way to control a workforce is to keep them divided,” Pattie told us, “to increase competition between workers by using categorizations that encourage racism and sexism. In our society, these divisions are no longer acceptable, so now weight and health are the focus.”

Pattie’s talk awakened the part of me that has lately been devoted to questioning the definitions of health. In my nutrition class, I determined that my own definition of health has little to do with a person’s disease status, or even their basic health indicators and vital signs, and more to do with their ability to cope with the illness and death that are inevitable in every human’s life. I believe that health means having access to good information and good health care, and using those resources to develop coping strategies for when things inevitably get rough. Health is NOT a meritocracy, a moral state, or an end in itself.

And it’s personal. I believe authorities exist in order to put out the information and provide the resources for us to make educated decisions about our own lives…NOT to make the decisions for us, even through cutesy little health promotion messages that stress “making healthy choices.” Because if one choice is already identified as “healthy,” by default the other is not. And if we’re being encouraged to “make healthy choices,” it’s actually a way of letting us know, in no uncertain terms, that the choice has been made for us. I do not look forward to the day when my lifestyle is determined for me, and even now, I hate living in a world where my choices leave me open to moral judgment from outsiders and authorities.

After Pattie’s talk, Dee and I ended up again with the two Pauls. We were determined to find Mexican food and margaritas. When we arrived at the restaurant, a gaggle of fat people from the conference were already seated at a large table. There was not room for us all to sit together — that, or else the management were afraid all those fat people together would be way too rowdy — so we again found ourselves at the fat roundtable. This time with tequila. Paul Campos was in need of comforting (you can see why here) and we did our best. The Mexican food stank. Dee and I had been looking for some good old-fashioned American/Mexican cuisine. Then we remembered we were in New England, which is possibly the worst place to find Mexican food, outside of England itself. At least the margaritas were drinkable.

We all walked back to the car, and I imparted to Paul McAleer how surreal it was to find myself under a New England moon, tanked up on tequila, walking beside two of my heroes in the fat movement. Okay, I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I didn’t use the word ‘heroes,’ but it’s what I meant. He laughed, and then we talked about pirates. It was a splendid evening, and we didn’t even get lost driving back to the bed & breakfast.

Us: 1, Massachusetts: 3.