Minna Bromberg started dieting when she was eight. “It was self-initiated,” she says. “I didn’t like my body. I think it had a lot to do with the feeling that other people would like me better if I were smaller. Although it’s interesting when I look at pictures of myself now. I was chubby, but I wasn’t a particularly large kid.”
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Four years ago, as a student at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Massachusetts, she traveled to Connecticut to attend a Fat Feminist Caucus meeting. At one workshop, “Growing Up Fat,” people talked about their experiences. “I met a lot of people who had it much worse than I did,” she says. “You get gym teachers who tell you you’d do better in class if your body were different and doctors telling you that it’s unhealthy for you to be the size that you are.”
Politicized, Bromberg moved to Chicago in 1997 to work on a PhD in sociology at Northwestern, focusing on health activism. Now 25, she volunteers for the Lesbian Community Cancer Project and is active in the local NAAFA chapter. “My interest is finding a way for fat women to be more aware not just of the health risks but the fact there’s not a lot known about what the health risks are. So many fat people have dieted, it’s hard to distinguish the health risks from weight from the health risks of dieting.”
“The most important thing is that people need to be accepting of their own bodies, and then become more accepting of others’. They shouldn’t draw lines–this person is fat, this one isn’t. People of all sizes need to treat their bodies in a more loving way.”
