Challenging Stigma and Embracing Change
Tressie McMillan Cottom appeared on the WeightWatchers & Oprah special “Making the Shift”. Check out Tressie’s insightful thoughts in her appearance in this short-and-sweet Round Up.
Stigma? Shame? Solidarity.
On March 18th, Oprah Winfrey hosted an ABC special titled “Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution.” The program featured discussions on the experiences with GLP-1 medications, "food noise," and the associated benefits and side effects. The dialogue also touched upon the shame related to weight issues and the emerging stigma of using GLP-1 medications.
As Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote in her NYT column following the special:
“Obesity is not merely about calories or self-control. It is about physiology and culture. This country has managed obesity as a moral failing because it will not solve the culture of inequality that makes it so easy for Americans to gain weight they would rather not have…
After decades of convincing people that they could lose weight if they incorporated willpower and accountability, WeightWatchers is rebranding. It ended some in-person meetings, its mainstay, and purchased a GLP-1 provider. The new WeightWatchers also offers a GLP-1 program, a concession that it takes more than behavioral choices to lose weight.”
On March 9th, Oprah and WeightWatchers hosted “Making the Shift”, a conversation with a variety of voices, including Rebel Wilson, Busy Phillips, and Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Oprah introduced Tressie while discussing her piece “Oprah, Ozempic, and Us”, and noted how Tressie correctly perceived the fact that Oprah was “settling” in her body and not accepting it. Oprah asked Tressie “It's hard to love yourself when the rest of the world is constantly telling you that what you look like isn't enough. So how did you come to understand that it was a way of settling?” Tressie responded,
“Because women are trained to settle… And part of seeing people ask that of you is that for millions of us, you had everything. And I thought “If they still want Oprah Winfrey to settle, what do they want from me?” That was the big thing. But also, there's a word I think I would love to introduce to our conversation, we've been talking about how to name and label things. And that word is stigma. There's the shame we feel, and then there's the stigma that we label other people with. And I--like you--would love, have loved and wanted all my life to move into his place of acceptance. But the thing is, I can accept myself and other people can still stigmatize me. And real joy is moving into a space where yes, I accept myself and my body reflects the best version of myself… Other people's opinion of us really limits how far our acceptance can take us. And we need to know that because you got to name the thing accurately if you are going to change the thing.”
Watch Tressie’s appearance below.
Oprah concluded their conversation asking, “What’s next?” Tressie answered,
“What I hope will come next is that what we're really saying is not just that we want this for ourselves, but we want other people to treat us better. For that to happen, we've got to treat other people better. So what I hope happens is that that's what we would focus on. How do we make an opportunity for other people to be treated better?”
The two things Tressie notes to make that opportunity are 1) making the GLP-1 drugs affordable and 2) how do we make it so that it is illegal to discriminate against somebody for being overweight in the labor market? “Shifting the attention to how we can help each other not be stigmatized will help us feel less shame ourselves.”
Shifting the attention to how we can help each other not be stigmatized will help us feel less shame ourselves.
Coming soon
May 15th at 12pm [Virtual]: Francesca Tripodi, alongside Zoe Darmé, Mia Sato, and Zeve Sanderson, is a panelist for a virtual event hosted by the Center for Social Media and Politics titled “The Future of Search Engines in the Age of AI”
May 21st @ 6:30pm: Tressie McMillan Cottom is participating in a Center for Brooklyn History talk with Natalie Foster on Foster’s “The Guarantee: The Fight for America’s Next Economy.” It will be in person in Brooklyn- more info here.