Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [128]
After a commercial break, she returned pulling a little red wagon loaded with sixty-seven pounds of greasy white animal fat. Bending down, she tried to lift the bag of blubber. “Is this gross or what? It’s amazing to me I can’t lift it, but I used to carry it around every day.”
Then she became very serious. “This has been the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life.… It is my greatest accomplishment.” She then made her personal diary public, reading entries she had made after talking with an Optifast counselor about why she wanted to lose weight. “What is the bigger issue here? Self-esteem. For me, it is getting control of my life. I realize this fat is just a blocker. It is like having mud on my wings. It keeps me from flying. It is a barrier to better things. It has been a way of staying comfortable with other people. My fat puts them at ease. Makes them feel less threatened. Makes me insecure. So I dream of walking into a room one day where this fat is not the issue. And that will happen this year because the bigger issue for me is making myself the best that I can be.”
The next segment of the show featured a congratulatory call from Stedman in High Point, North Carolina, to say how proud he was of her. At that time he was working for his mentor, Bob Brown, and seeing Oprah only on weekends. “I hate it,” she told reporters then. “It’s going to last another year. Then he says he’s going to move back to Chicago.” Her regular viewers knew who Stedman was, although they had yet to see him. She was saving that introduction for a February sweeps show titled “How Fame Affects a Relationship.” Stedman’s phone call of congratulations was followed by a video clip from Shirley MacLaine, whom the audience knew to be Oprah’s movie-star guide to all things paranormal.
The “fat wagon” show became the most watched show of Oprah’s career, with her highest overnight rating ever in sixteen of Nielsen’s maj or markets, meaning that 44 percent of the daytime television audience watched. “These are unbelievable numbers,” said Stephen W. Palley, COO of King World. “Those people who didn’t see the show certainly heard about it.” Oprah’s eye-popping weight loss riveted the nation’s media for days after the show, as nutritionists and doctors and commentators debated the merits of protein-sparing fasts, with everyone wagering on how long Oprah would keep the weight off.
Lost in the hullabaloo of headlines from coast to coast was the ill-timed salute of Ms. magazine (November 1988) to Oprah as one of six women to receive its 1988 Woman of the Year Award:
“In a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality.… But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant—damned near gorgeous—with her drop dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality.”
Oprah wanted no part of the tribute to her weight. “I never was happy when I was fat,” she said. “And I’ll never be fat again. Never.” She became irritated with people who asked if she would maintain her new size. “Asking me if I’ll keep the weight off is like asking, ‘Will you ever be in a relationship again where you allow yourself to be emotionally battered?’ ” she said. “I’ve been there—and I don’t intend to go back.” She said her romance with Stedman would keep her highly motivated. “I feel so much sexier.… We’re just sexy, sexy, sexy now. My weight loss has just absolutely changed our relationship.”
In a stand-up routine, Rosie O’Donnell said she was sick of hearing about Stedman. “Now that Oprah’s thin, she talks about Stedman all the time. Every five minutes it’s Stedman this and Stedman that. If she mentions Stedman one more time, I’m gonna fly to Chicago and force-feed her Twinkies through an IV tube.”
Oprah vowed never to blimp up again because she was afraid of the grocery store press. “I have fear of tabloids because of the stories they would print.” But the pressure became intense, and the press began piling on. For the next year she was subjected to a national Amber Alert on her food