“Two hundred is a number on the scale and Oprah’s value as a person cannot, and should not, be determined by the size of her physical body. This is a woman that runs a network, a magazine, a radio show and of course the Oprah Winfrey show. She has raised millions of dollars for charity and has personally donated much of her fortune to help others. Instead of speaking about her philanthropist activities, and how similar acts by others in this rough economic time would help to reduce the social anomie, we are focusing on her weight.”

Hmmm, reading is fundamental.

What Renee is saying (very well) is that we as women and society should love our bodies as they are, and stop trying so frigging hard to be something we can’t be. Hope I’ve cleared that up, and in the future it would be appreciated if you would read the actual article, not just what read what you want to read.

I’m one of those “middle ground” women you mention. And every day I fight against a society which tells me I am imperfect, that I shouldn’t eat that, that I ought to be in the gym morning, noon and night in a quest for the body I will never have. Don’t even try to tell me that middle ground women have it easy; and don’t you dare piously mouth about how all would be well if we women would just exercise and not eat shit. You missed the point by such a margin you’re in the wrong fucking zip code.

“Culturally we have made the skinny, near-to-anorexic body out to be the ideal. Women have died living on chicklets in an attempt to gain the much beloved size zero.”

The problem i have with this comment is that you speak as if there are only two options. Either you are fat or you are a size zero. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is middle ground there. If maintained a healthy diet and exercised regularly then she would be a healthy weight. Which for her would probably be the 160 she weighed before she fell off the wagon by her own admission.

“skinny people die of heart disease too”

I also have a problem with this statement. Because it does not really respect the effects that obesity has on health. There are people who don’t smoke that still get lung cancer. It doesn’t mean that cigarettes are not extremely dangerous.