Reports the New York Times:

This movement - a loose alliance of therapists, scientists and others - holds that all people, "even" fat people, can eat whatever they want and, in the process, improve their physical and mental health and stabilize their weight. The aim is to behave as if you have reached your "goal weight" and to act on ambitions postponed while trying to become thin, everything from buying new clothes to changing careers. Regular exercise should be for fun, not for slimming.

"Fat acceptance" ideas date back more than 30 years, but have lately edged into the mainstream, thanks in part to public hand-wringing by celebrities like Oprah, Kirstie Alley and the tennis player Monica Seles, who said she had to "throw out the word ‘diet' " to deal with her weight gain. (Oprah now cites her goal as being not "thin," but "healthy and strong and fit.")

Yes, it's perfectly okay for people to engorge themselves silly every day as long as they can trick themselves into believing that their bloated bodies are "normal." So very painfully modern, no?

Of course, the person who stands to gain the most from this is our own Richard Blakeley, who will probably sell more copies of the "This Is Why You're Fat" book because the "fat acceptance" crowd will want to sift through it looking for new recipes. And Oprah, America's thuggish overlord, will gain something from this, of course, because she always does.

Tossing the Diet Out and Embracing the Fat [New York Times]

Jump-cut proficient director Tony Scott has signed on to helm Unstoppable, a thriller about a runaway train that's full of dangerous radioactive goop. The engineer (Denzel? Will?) and the conductor (Dakota Fanning?) find themselves in a "race against time" to stop the goop from gooping out all over everybody. Everyone else is villains. [Variety] On-set freakout proficient director David O. Russell has signed up for The Silver Linings Playbook, based on the novel about a sadsack high school teacher who goes to live with his mom after being released from the nut house. [Variety]

Kathy Bates has joined Sandra Bullock in a drama called The Blind Side, about a hobo who learns to play football. And, to love. [Variety] Emma Stone, a future tabloid queen who we want to have a beer with will star in Easy A for Screen Gems. The comedy is about a high school student who, while reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's book-of-the-movie based on Demi Moore's The Scarlet Letter, decides to pretend she's the school slut so she'll be popular. How one only pretends to be a loose woman is unclear to us. [Variety]

Matthew McConaughey (introduced hilariously by Variety as "Fool's Gold thesp") has signed on to be maybe a little serious for once in his goddamned, sun-poisoned life. He'll play the lead in the legal thriller The Lincoln Lawyer, about an attorney made of logs. Or something. [Variety] In other encouraging movie news, presumed blockbusters like Transformers 3 and The Avengers are securing release dates even though nothing has been signed off on them, nor do they even have scripts. So. Good. [Variety]

Bet there's a money-fight going on right now at Dunder Mifflin. NBC has secured lucrative syndication deals for The Office in all 50 top markets across the US. The comedy will air on Fox affiliates this fall. [THR] ABC has cut its 13-episode order of freshman sitcom In the Motherhood to just 6 for this season. The show premiered last Thursday to low-ish (6.7 million) ratings. [Variety]

You won't have to drive over to the Ruby Tuesday's to watch fat people dating each other anymore. No, Fox is developing a reality dating show called More to Love. Fox alternative programming prez Mike Darnell says of the show, in a statement sure to haunt him in the afterlife: "For six years it's been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that's not what the dating world looks like. Why don't real women — the women who watch these shows, for the most part — have a chance to find love too?" It's true, America. Our real, fat, Bachelor-watching citizenry needs fake, sad reality show love too. Me, I'm just hoping this opens the door for Fat Real World and Fat Housewives of Fat City USA Population: You. [THR]

Meanwhile Survivor guru Mark Burnett is joining ABC in an unholy alliance to produce Shark Tank, an adaptation of a British reality show that is itself an adaptation of a Japanese reality show about rich tycoons giving struggling entrepreneurs money. In this economy! [THR]

Obese girls were only half as likely as non-obese girls to go to college after high school, and were even less likely to enter college if they went to a high school where few other students were overweight, says [University of Texas at Austin sociologist Robert] Crosnoe. But obese girls who went to high school with a sizable overweight population—where heavy girls represented about 20% of the student body — had normal odds of attending college. "The more it makes you stand out from the crowd, the worse it is," says Crosnoe.

Overweight Kids: College Less Likely [Time]

Lola started developing a weight problem at six months, about the time Arconti began giving in to her constant begging, to the point where Lola consumes a bowl of dry food, a 3.5-ounce can of dog food, two Newman's Own organic dog treats, a 4-ounce cup of sliced peaches, and assorted scraps of people food per day. "She likes peaches, and so do I," says Arconti. "We have the same trigger foods."

Then there's this quote, which occurs when Arconti takes the dog to a vet for a diet program:

"I've never met a long-haired Chihuahua over eight pounds," says Deirdre Chiaramonte, a veterinarian with the program. She points out Lola's neck ripples, butt padding, and thigh ruffles. "Awww, you have thigh ruffles!" coos Arconti. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."