Weight loss news

Fired because she was too fat to fit into a little black dress

Who could really be surprised at the news there’s been a huge upsurge in the demand for obesity surgery following the Fern Britton revelation that she’s had a gastric band? And who could possibly be shocked that she wanted to keep it all quiet?
There’s no doubt that, unwittingly, Fern has become a walking advertisement for the surgery – a bit like I did (and didn’t ) when almost exactly the same thing happened to me!
When news of my gastric band broke, all I could do was moan that I’d had the operation, but none of the benefits! I thought I’d bought into a stupid gimmick. I’d gone abroad, to try and get a cheaper, more confidential job – and ended up with egg on my face!
Sales of gastric band operations, at least in the private sector, instantly plummeted. Patients on waiting lists rang their private clinics and cancelled. Then, after I discovered that my band had been put in the wrong place and needed fixing, and consequently I did then lose weight, suddenly the whole industry perked up again.
Now that Fern seems to be still diminishing in everything but public affection, sales are going through the roof. Obese people who have been struggling all their life, want to get their lives back.
My local PCT alone, in Oxfordshire, reports a staggering 16 per cent increase – and at around £15,000 for a bypass and about £8,000 for a gastric band – that’s big money. But obesity, and all of its co-morbidities, could be much more costly in the long run.
Yet still there’s such a stigma to going “under the knife” to solve the fat problem. Fat is still such a four letter word. Celebrity or Regular Joe, you can still find yourself flailed by the fat insult – you can even lose your job.
This month saw the triumphant return to Britain of a hugely famous and respected woman who was fired because she was too fat to fit into a little black cocktail dress!
She’s an enormous figure in the field of opera - internationally famous Deborah Voigt – and for her the show was over even BEFORE the fat lady sang.
She’s 47, and has been obese all of her life. She was the kid who felt singled out because she loved to play the piano instead of with other children – so she ate at the keyboard. When her family moved to California where all kids were slim and surfers, she felt worse – and so she ate even more.
“I used food as a way of stuffing down emotional feelings,” she says. Then, as her career soared, so did her weight. In opera, it was entirely acceptable.
Until, in 2004, the director at the Royal Opera House in London, actually fired her because she couldn’t appear dressed as he wanted in a little black dress. Even though, being world famous, she’d been booked because of her huge reputation!
The humiliation was too much. Deborah went home to the USA and booked herself in for a gastric bypass – and has now lost about 10 stones!
And this month, she’s back at the Royal Opera House singing in that same role – and wearing a stunning black dress!
So who won? I’ve been asking that question myself. Deborah says she loves being called “gorgeous” for the first time in her life, but I can’t help thinking she’s done it all to have the last laugh over the unfeeling and insensitive director.
He was brutal to stigmatise and penalise a woman who’d fought obesity her whole life and lost. It’s interesting that it happened in Britain, and no other city on the international opera network
On the other hand, perhaps he did her a favour. Because, at 10 stones overweight, her size was killing her.
But why do we Brits feel the need to be so pitiless about obesity? And even more nasty, in Fern’s case, when a fattie tries to slim with surgery? Perhaps we’d prefer them to continue yo-yo dieting, and watch them bounce? It’s a negative side of the British psyche and we should be ashamed.

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