Kirstie Alley’s War With Fat Shaming

Actress Kirstie Alley, a two-time Emmy-winning actor who rose to fame with her role as Rebecca Howe in the NBC comedy series “Cheers” passed away after a brief battle with cancer. She was 71. Unfortunately, the fat shaming she received throughout her lifetime didn’t die with her.

Fat shaming pierces my heart because I witnessed how detrimental it was to my former boss, Luther Vandross‘s diabetes wellness. For years his fans commented on how much better a ‘fat Luther’ sounded versus a ‘thin Luther.’ He seemed miserable every time the scale tipped over 200 pounds. In his eyes, every professional success was overshadowed by his inability to maintain his weight loss. I felt he believed he couldn’t be happy until he lost the weight.

Thankfully a new crop of musical talent has abandoned the “if I lose weight, everything in my life will be better” belief.

Singer-songwriter Lizzo is known for telling her audiences, “go home tonight and look in the mirror and say, ‘I love you, you are beautiful, and you can do anything,’” she also often speaks publicly about the challenges she has faced in accepting her body. Lizzo is not shy about citing bullying, negative media images of women who look like her, racism, and misogyny as factors in the difficulty she experienced in coming to love herself and her body.

Her openness about coming to love herself and her body makes her one of music’s most prominent icons for body positivity. She’s happy with her shape, evident in her commercials for Peloton workout classes.

But long before Lizzo entered pop culture, Kirstie Alley made people think about fatness on TV, often at her own expense.

But whereas Lizzo appears comfortable with her shape, Kirstie Alley was in a continual battle with hers. From hawking weight loss programs, Jenny Craig and her own, to losing weight on Dancing With The Stars, Kirstie never stopped trying to change the number on the scale.

In interviews or her reality TV series, “Kirstie Alley’s Big Life,” or her TV show, “Fat Actress,” she portrayed a keen sense of self-awareness and frustration.

Who can blame her?

Who can forget the vicious way she was shamed on the cover of supermarket tabloids? I probably would have crumbled from the duress. Imagine seeing yourself and your shape chronicled every week. Hateful headlines such as: “TV bosses tell Kirstie Alley, ‘You’re too fat!’” and “She admits to gaining 30 pounds, but it’s really 50!” were commonplace.

In what I think is one of the biggest displays of personal strength, she said this constant bullying led her to lose weight.

“Honestly, I didn’t know how fat I was,” Kirstie Alley told Oprah in a 2004 appearance She claimed the media’s attention to her weight had led her to become a Jenny Craig spokeswoman. Two years later, she wore a bikini on Oprah’s show to show off her 75-pound weight loss.

Unfortunately, she gained the weight back. And because of that, we rooted for her again and again.

A few years later, she dropped 100 pounds after appearing on ‘Dancing With The Stars.’ And once again, she spoke of not feeling comfortable in her body before this weight loss: “I feel I’m back in my element. I honestly didn’t realize what I looked like,” she told “Entertainment Tonight.”

She used humor as she routinely divulged details of her diet, calorie count, and weight. But she couldn’t rid herself of the layers of shame built up over the years. In my opinion, the jury is still out on whether or not Kirstie Alley was a body-positive activist — whether she meant to be one or not! Maybe her struggle is a lesson for all of us. You can’t manage your health if you don’t love yourself the way you are today.

Some poor fools believe that making overweight people feel ashamed of their weight or eating habits may motivate them to get healthier.

However, scientific evidence confirms that nothing could be further from the truth.

Fat shaming is harmful to health and may drive weight gain.

Singer Angie Stone is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, producer, actress, and mother. She was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1999. “I was always on the go, and thought I was too busy to develop something like this,” Stone said. “I thought at the time that diabetes went along with bad habits, but I was the last one in my family to eat junk food.”

She didn’t realize that she was a perfect candidate for diabetes: She had a family history of diabetes and was fighting weight problems.

“I came to accept my diabetes when I realized just how many people around me, even in my own family, were living with diabetes,” she says. “It gave me a lot of courage to see all these people just like me, going places, involved in normal things, and I became determined to learn what I needed to better manage my diabetes.”

Guests: Poet Lorraine Brooks, PCOS Diva founder Amy Medling, Dr. Beverly S. Adler, PhD, CDE, Dr. Sara (Mandy) Reece PharmD, CDE, BC-ADM- PCOM, Patricia Addie-Gentle RN, CDE, Jeff James, and Mama Rose Marie.

Throughout this podcast, we will feature songs from ‘Stone Hits: The Very Best of Angie Stone’ courtesy of SONY Music.