Those are also effects that can happen upon taking medication, or month or years after taking the medication. It was pulled from the shelves after just a couple years because it caused heart valve. Fen Phen was a pill that was touted as being a miracle drug. ![]() I also come to this as a teenager whose doctor told it her it was a safe and healthy thing to go on Fen Phen. It is just uncomplicatedly heartbreaking to see this. These guidelines are advocating starting with toddlers. I believe the quote from the National Eating Disorder Association is if you start dieting in your teens, you are 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder. We know the earlier dietary interventions start to take place, the more astronomical the risk of disordered eating and longterm eating disorders becomes. What did you think when you first saw them?ĪG: I read those guidelines and I cried for a really long time. These guidelines recommend more aggressive treatment for fat children, including weight loss medication and bariatric surgery. TV: That brings us to the new AAP guidelines for childhood obesity. You assume other people are right that you deserve whatever treatment you're getting. All of that is really important in how this book moves through the world, or at least that's my hope. It’s you and facts versus bias, and bad behavior, and people who ought to know better, and people who ought to show their care for you. It's not you versus science or you versus fact. My hope is that this starts to chip away at all those things that others are saying to you, that are actually just rooted in things that are either patently false or not the whole story or not interested in your humanity. You assume that everybody else is right and you're just going to drop dead one day because you get so fat you just die. When I think about myself as a fat teen and the fat teens that I know, I remember and continue to have this real sense from the fat teens I know that you just walk around assuming everyone else is right about you because you don't get to hear much else. Whoever comes to this book, if they're up for having a good faith conversation, if they're open to having some assumptions challenged, or revisiting beliefs that they really thought were hard and fast, tried and true facts - I think folks can gather a lot from that. TV: You position the book as a guide to deeper thinking - what does that mean for young people picking this book up who maybe are not super familiar with fighting anti-fatness other than maybe they are a fat teen and experience it?ĪG: The work I do across the board, whether it's the podcast or the books, is contingent on one important ingredient, which is having a good faith conversation. This is the thing to move the people near the people. So less the thing you give to the most anti-fat person you know and more the thing you give to someone who’s close to them, who you commiserate with a lot. Understanding the human impact of things is what tends to move folks much more than, ‘did you read the methodology section of this research paper?’ But I also know that it’s really hard to get people to speak up about this kind of stuff when it happens - to stand up to anti-fatness, or any systems of marginalization, any outdated attitudes, any harmful takes - if they don't feel like they have their sea legs. ![]() Personal relationships do, personal stories do. I come to this works as a longtime community organizer and one of the biggest lessons you learn pretty quickly as an organizer is that facts and figures and information doesn't necessarily change people's minds. Initially, I was really on the fence about. Teen Vogue: Congrats on your new book! Tell me a little about where the idea came from, and why you decided on the myth versus fact format.Īubrey Gordon: This is a series from my publisher. ![]() Here, Gordon talks about her new book, the AAP guidelines, and the confusing and conflicting ways weight stigma crops up across society.
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