White Goodman Lives!

Posted By elissa on Jul 15, 2009 | 3 comments

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Dodgeball”, then you know who White Goodman is.  Played by comedian Ben Stiller, the over-the-top fitness nazi and owner of “Globo Gym” is a short man with an oversized ego.  As he quips in the TV commercial that opens the movie: “Here at Globo Gym we’re better than you… and we know it.”

Needless to state, White Goodman is always looking out for Number One, and doesn’t care who he steps on in the process.  A formerly-obese person himself, he’s still battling his own personal demons w/respect to food and self-control.  But his daily struggles don’t provide him with any insight or empathy… just the opposite, in fact. Goodman feels his success entitles him to hold others in contempt – which he does, in spades…

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In short, White Goodman has “issues”, but rather than acknowledging and dealing with them, he “normalizes” them… in his worldview, his self-absorption, arrogance and belligerence are virtues.  Globo Gym isn’t so much a service, as it is a monument – to himself.

Even though I’m a member of the fitness community being lampooned by Goodman and Globo Gym, I can laugh at how it’s depicted in the movie, because it’s such an obvious caricature.  While the gurus and trainers I know are certainly physique-oriented, they understand the challenges that go with losing weight and changing habits, and – to a man/woman – offer warmth, support and encouragement to their clients and readers.  Needless to state, I’ve never encountered any White Goodmans.  He’s a wholly fictional character. 

Or so I thought until today – when I read this post about MeMe Roth.  I’d never seen or heard of her before, so I did some searching… and found out more than I ever cared to know.

Who is MeMe Roth?  The name she chose, “Me!” “Me!” speaks volumes: she’s a self-anointed anti-obesity activist whose “in-your-face” tactics earned her the title of “The Ann Coulter of the Fat Police“.  Roth is to the fitness community what PETA is to the Humane Society: she’s outrageous and headline-grabbing, but abrasive and alienating.

In other words, she’s a female White Goodman – minus the physical aggression.  According to an extensive interview in Elle:

Roth is particularly well-known for saying things that few others would dare speak aloud, much less on national TV. Last year on Fox News, after Jordin Sparks won American Idol, Roth called the size 12 teenager overweight and a bad role model. When photos of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s dimpled butt in a bikini appeared in the tabloids, Roth proclaimed it a wake-up call for American women—if Love Hewitt has cellulite, imagine how bad the rest of us look!

How nice of her to rain on an overjoyed (and very healthy) teenager’s parade, or pile on the tabloid trashing of a perfectly normal-weight actress?  But low blows are standard operating procedure for Roth: she thrives on confrontation.  She apparently sees herself as a latter-day Cassandra, speaking uncomfortable truths and courageously defying the status quo.

Similar fears about her own children’s health turned Roth to activism in the first place. In 2005, after noticing that her son was repeatedly being served a bagel with cream cheese and Pringles at his elementary school, Roth complained to the parent-teacher organization that created the lunch plans. She got a frosty response: “Please consider moving,” e-mailed back one PTO member. So Roth decided to use her experience in public relations to, well, go public. “I remember the exact moment of jogging around Taylor Park in Millburn, New Jersey, and asking myself, Can I really issue a press release about what’s going on in my own children’s school? I decided not to wuss out and went for it.”

WTF???  This isn’t “activism”.  Where I come from, it’s called “being an a**hole”.

When my kids were in elementary school, I had my complaints about various issues too.  But I didn’t whinge and insist others meet my demands: I JOINED the freakin’ PTO and worked WITH the other parents, teachers and administrators.  I didn’t go out of my way to piss people off, and I certainly didn’t write press releases.  I got what I wanted by working hard and assuming a leadership role within the group and the school.

But why be part of a team when it’s more satisfying to be a prima donna?

Roth is a little apprehensive because she was thrown out of a Y in 2007—and not because she wasn’t a member. She was living in Pennsylvania and had been pressuring the organization with letters and phone calls for several months when, one day, arriving at her local branch to work out, she grew incensed at the sight of employees giving away ice cream sundaes. “I called the local president and said, ‘You have one hour to offer something healthy with them or get rid of them.’ Then I went back and threw out the toppings,” Roth says, deploring the hypocrisy of an organization whose mission is to promote physical health and yet provides high-calorie freebies. The Y called the police, who escorted her out of the building. Undeterred, Roth, a former VP at Edelman public relations, unleashed a hailstorm of press releases about the incident, noting the “full-fat ice cream” and “an overrepresentation of obesity among employees and volunteers.”

Did she ever think of suggesting more positive alternatives and volunteering to help implement them?  Nah: that would’ve run the risk of actually being effective! Better to be a drama queen.

Like White Goodman, Roth seems to think that being personally obnoxious and provoking fights are ways to score points.  And just like her cinematic counterpart, Roth evidently has issues with food.  Major issues. I’ve dealt with members who have eating disorders on the forums before, so her compulsive, “burn the candle at both ends” approach to diet and exercise looks chillingly familiar:

I try to pin her down to something more specific. Let’s just do a sample day, I say. What about breakfast? Roth grimaces. “I hate to say this, because I think it’s counter to what most people should do, but I never in my whole life have enjoyed breakfast. For me, it doesn’t work as well as other things.”

Right, I say. So how about lunch?

She squirms visibly. “You’re taking me where I don’t want to go … What works for me doesn’t work for a lot of people.”

Well, you’ve said that, I insist, so taking that into account: lunch? Roth hesitates. “I discovered when I was in college that I work best when I get a workout in and eat after that. Sometimes I’ll delay when I eat until I get a workout in. But I don’t let a whole day go by without running four miles.”

OK, I go on, but supposing you couldn’t work out until four o’clock in the afternoon – would you not eat until after that?

“I might.”

I look at my watch. It’s 3.30pm. Alarm bells start to ring in my head. How about today, I ask. Have you eaten at all today?

Roth is a little quiet.

“No,” she says.

There is a pause.

“But I feel great!”

Uh-huh.  I don’t doubt that she does, because not-eating is a perverse form of self-indulgence – it represents a victory over the bitter angels of her nature.

The resemblance is almost eerie when you consider how White Goodman looks down on women.  So does Roth. She wants to believe she’s helping women with campaigns like her “Wedding Gown Challenge”, but the words ring hollow.

In a publicized annual campaign, she urges married women to try on their wedding dresses as an incentive to stay slim. “The average couple puts on 25 pounds each in the first five years of marriage. Now, you can choose to grow old and fat together, but women pay a higher price,” she cautions.

And why do women pay a higher price?  Could it be because of people like Roth, who unfairly single them out for special attention – and disapproval?

So much for sisterhood. 

And daughterhood.  Roth is especially harsh on mothers – starting with her own.

Roth’s mother, father, grandmother and uncles are all obese. Her father weighs 300lb. Her mother is diabetic. Her grandmother needs 24-hour nursing care. When I ask what her family thinks of her crusade, she acknowledges that “it’s hurtful”, but says they are “highly supportive”. The thing is, Roth doesn’t just see her parents as victims of obesity: “I’ve been to obesity,” she says, “and I don’t want anyone else to go there.”

Her suffering was apparent early on. “When I was in kindergarten,” she recalls, “no one taught me to be ashamed of obesity, but the day, on my birthday, that my mother was to bring cupcakes to my class, I put my head on the table because I knew that within minutes my mother would be there and everyone was going to know that my mother was fat. I felt ashamed. I was grateful that down the block there was another mother who was fatter than my mother.”

I cannot even begin to describe how much WRONG there is in this tale.  Like Roth, I also had a fat mother.  And my mother brought cupcakes and other goodies for class parties, too.  Yet, when I was a child, it never occurred to me to be ashamed of my mother’s weight.  Why would I be?  My mother was well-known in the school and community – she was respected.  Like most kids, I got teased periodically: about my freckles, my very curly hair, my last name (“Pratt” – which rhymes with “rat”, “bat”, “brat”, etc. ).  But no one EVER teased me for having a fat mother, even though everybody knew I had one.  As far as I or anyone else was concerned, “Mrs. Pratt’s” weight was simply a personal characteristic, like having brown eyes or long hair.  It was a total non-issue for me, both personally and socially.

Yet here’s Roth – claiming to be ashamed of her mother’s weight – at age 5???   If she was teased about it, I’d be willing to give her a pass: when you’re a child, it’s tough to cope with peer pressure and harassment – kids can be cruel.  But Roth doesn’t actually state this ever happened, and – in fact – implies the opposite by pointing out: “no one taught me to be ashamed of obesity.”

In other words, her embarrassment was based on her own childish thoughts and feelings.  The focus of her story is what she IMAGINED her classmates might think, not on anything they actually said or did.  Yet she doesn’t seem to recognize that.  Nor does she seem to realize that – by telling this story – she’s tacitly throwing HER OWN MOTHER – the one who made cupcakes for her birthday – under the bus (so to speak) in order to justify her attitude about obesity. 

That, my friends, is TWISTED.  To the nth degree.

Look, when I was 5 years old, I used to worry about monsters hiding under the bed – and would experience a moment of panic if I woke up in the middle of the night with a hand or foot extending over the edge – I was only protected if I stayed within the borders!   But even at that age, I intellectually understood that my fears had no basis in fact – I never asked my parents for help; and the “monsters” never actually stopped me from going back to sleep.  And it wasn’t long before I put it behind me forever.

In other words, I grew up and learned to separate which feelings were “real” and which were based on my (very fertile) imagination.  Roth apparently hasn’t. 

By now, I think it should be abundantly clear that Roth doesn’t speak for me, or represent the fitness community any more than White Goodman does.  Like Goodman, she’s a narcissistic, antagonistic – and in the end – absurd figure who needs to get her own s**t together, before I can even begin to take her seriously as a credible spokesperson on obesity or food/weight-related issues.