A documentary film that explores anti-fat bias will be shown at Florida Gulf Coast University this week.
Aubrey Gordon is an expert on fat acceptance and anti-fat bias. She co-hosts the popular podcast “Maintenance Phase,” which explores the poor science behind many health and weight loss fads. Director Jeanie Finlay created a documentary about Gordon’s life that will be shown at FGCU this week.
Gordon was a guest on WGCU’s Gulf Coast Life Book Club in 2023 to discuss her book, “’You Just Need to Lose Weight’ and 19 Other Myths about Fat People.” Here, she explains that the widely used Body Mass Index, or BMI, is not rooted in health science.
“Most folks don’t know that the BMI is not a tool that was ever intended for use in any kind of individual health care. Or any health care setting at all, even in the aggregate,” Gordon said. “It was developed in the 1800s by a statistician and astronomer, who was looking for what he called ‘the average man,’ which to him meant the ideal man.”
The award-winning documentary is free and open to the public on Thursday, February 27, at 7 pm in Marieb Hall on the FGCU campus. The film is sponsored by the Department of Social Work.
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