The previous post discussed a stressful event from when Oprah Winfrey’s career was just taking off — her interrogation and public shaming by comedian Joan Rivers who was, on that day, not very humorous at all.
We do not presume to read Oprah’s mind. But a rudimentary understanding of human psychology (and especially, personal experience with therapy) could inspire a person to imagine how the effects of such strenuous and ubiquitous harping on weight could cultivate a preoccupation with the subject that would carry into the future.
It could set up an ongoing conflict between being perpetually overweight oneself, and the seeming necessity to buy into the fat-hating, fat-shaming culture that America and many parts of the world had converted to. This is what appears to have happened to Oprah, while at the same time, over the ensuing years, she also had learning experiences and personal revelations about the harm caused by the whole anti-fat zeitgeist.
The path of twisted reasoning
It might make sense to perceive that 1985 event as something that loomed large in her subconscious, drawing her more and more into the fat-despising state of mind, while at the same time coping with the mental conflict that demanded she must of course despise herself. It would, after all, be a logical conclusion. If you are required to hate Fat, and yet also supposed to love yourself, well, that is simply too much cognitive dissonance for the mind to handle. Therefore, if you hate fat and and are fat, you must necessarily hate yourself — which somehow turns out to be easier than exploring the illogical root of the contradiction.
Aunt Joanie really cares
Also, logically, if such a prominent person as Rivers took the trouble to give advice — rough as that widely broadcast counseling session had been — it must mean that she truly cared, and only wanted the best for this TV guest who aimed for a career in entertainment. It was as if a respected aunt warned a troubled teenager that she had better straighten up and fly right, before she encountered the juvenile justice system and wound up in the reformatory.
If fat is bad, then as an honest and upright person you must hate all the fat, even your own. And if that awful stuff is part of you, you must be pretty awful. So to redeem yourself, the least you could do is become a missionary for the abolition of fat — which might account for the many shows having to do with overweight that Oprah produced and hosted over the years. Who knows? It might even connect to her later alignment with WeightWatchers, which could, uncharitably, be read not only as an investment opportunity, but also as “virtue signaling.”
In 1986, with the humiliation by Rivers still fresh, Oprah told her TV audience, “I still hate myself because of my weight.” Soon afterward came the quotation we already mentioned, which included the damning words,
If you can’t fit into your clothes, it means the fat won. It means you didn’t win.
And it’s not as if Oprah had never recognized the issue. For at least a decade, it had already loomed large in her mind. As far back as 1977, when she first consulted a diet doctor, she had been striving to win. Whenever a new fad diet came along she tried it, with consistently unsatisfactory results.
The session with Joan Rivers was later confirmed to be connected with the incident (three years later, in 1988) that Oprah eventually came to recognize as the “biggest, fattest mistake” of her career. In an article published only last year, Clare Stephens wrote,
Oprah recently acknowledged her role in perpetuating diet culture during a livestream for Weight Watchers. “I’ve been a major contributor to it.” she said… The wagon of fat has gone down in pop culture history as an example of our pathological obsession with weight loss…
[T]he wagon of fat seems like the insidious start of it all. A moment of stigmatizing fat, and telling an audience of primarily women that if they just cared enough, theirs could be set aside too, rather than attached to their bodies.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “In 1985 Joan Rivers asked Oprah a Question,” MamaMia.com, 05/13/24
Image by Pat Hartman
FAQs and Media Requests: 
