While Barack Obama began his historic presidency with a “full plate” of economic and political challenges and an athletic build complete with a “six-pack” duly captured by the long lens of a paparazzo, the woman who had arguably paved the way for his election with her early endorse- ment began her year on a rather different note. Oprah Winfrey started 2009 by appearing in a series of television spots castigating herself for regaining the weight that she had once lost (and gained and lost and gained again over the course of her nearly three decades in the public eye). In this spectacle of self-rebuke that promoted the newest season of her LIVE YOUR LIFE BEST series, Winfrey asserted that everything she has accomplished in every other arena was rendered meaningless unless she controls her weight. “All the money and all the fame and all the attention and the glamorous life and the success,” Winfrey said, “doesn’t mean anything if you can’t fit into your own clothes . . . if you can’t control your own being.”
