And yet attackers are using “health” as the rationale behind their pro-fat/pro-thin arguments
Meanwhile, the public has lost sight of the primary reason both of these women gained fame: their accomplishments, Sparks’ fantastic vocals and Roth’s indefatigable advocacy to eliminate ‘fake foods’ from the food supply and bar junk food from schools.

Sure, we could dust off the feministic rhetoric that our society, once again, is using women’s bodies as the battleground for larger cultural issues. The position has basis. Who would think to overshadow Babe Ruth’s hall of fame career with epithets directed at his portliness?

But this fat fight goes well beyond gender. The media’s zeal for controversy, coupled with the explosion of information and communication via the Internet, makes it easy to bury talent (Roth called Sparks a “vision of unhealth” and cited a litany of the singer’s future medical ills) or to discredit expertise with medical terminology such as “BMI” (for body mass index) and “anorexia nervosa.” (Supporters of Jordin Sparks noted that MeMe Roth is a 5 foot 6, 120 pound anorexic – and, transgression of all her transgression, she sports a BMI of 20, which by medical definition falls within the normal weight range, BMI 18.4 to 24.9).

This exploitation of medicine is heedless and damaging. Physicians themselves are in heated debate about exactly how adipose tissue equates with disease. Studies show that the placement of fat on the body (i.e. apple-shaped versus pear-shaped figures) plays a role. So do behaviors that often lie behind obesity, such as binge eating as well as the type of trans-fatty foods that some obese individuals eat.

Those debates now rage within the medical community as organizations such as the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are trying to come up with adequate guidelines just for terminology, i.e. what to call “obesity” (right now, BMI at or above 95th percentile) versus what to call simply “overweight” (BMI between the 85th and 94th percentile).

Oblivious to these debates and their impact on heath, the average “net”-izen feels entitled to use language frivolously to medicalize discrimination, without consequence. And once out on the Net, the information stays. For a long time. Which makes the Jordin Sparks battle all the more troubling.

Her fight should have stayed on the stage around issues based on her ability to sing versus that of her opponents. Now, as bloggers have joined the shouting match, quickly, reflexively and without thought about the consequences to a 17-year-old and all her fans, those impressionable minds will live the rest of their lives, at best, doubting their flesh, at worst, desperately embracing the behaviors that lead to life-long eating disorders.