Throughout the day, I receive 36 spam e-mails suggesting I should lose weight. Every time I log into my e-mail, I am treated to a large banner ad telling me I can “look better naked” through a certain weight-loss plan (an ad I see a total of 28 times during my workday).
Four times throughout the day, I pass the hallway vending machine, where the healthiest treat is a bag of pretzels, ridiculous with sodium.
By the time I am ready for bed, I have been reminded in 19 different ways and around 130 times that I am fat; that fat people are unattractive and undesirable; that fat people should be made fun of and feel ashamed of ourselves; and that we need to lose weight to be accepted, successful, beautiful.
Worth a look. (Brought to you by the Colorado Springs Independent by way of the Pittsburgh City Paper.).
You must know about this site: http://www.fatso.com/
It has, among other things, a classic interview with the Sultan of Fat, Daniel Pinkwater.
Thanks for this post, PDP.
Actually, Paul, I hadn’t heard of that site at all. Thank you very much for pointing it out to me.
One of the most wonderful things about the NY blogger gathering at Julia’s house on Saturday was that all of us women were middle-aged and NORMAL looking! Not a stick figure in sight. It was so nice not to feel weird for a change!
The issue for me is that large people and their poor eating/health is that they cause insurance rates to go up for everyone else. America is a fat FAT country. Go anywhere else in the world and you won’t see this preponderance of fatsoes.
Also, a lot of the fat people I deal with seem to be pushier than the average Joe or Jane. And why are they always sweating profusely?
The issue for me is that trolls and their poor posting habits is that they cause online rates to go up for everyone else. America is a spammy SPAMMY country. Go anywhere else in the world and you won’t….well, you will see the preponderance of trolls and spammers.
Also, a lot of the trolls and spammers I deal with seem to be pushier than the average Joe or Jane. And why are they always telling me to enlarge my penis?
I’m going to assume for a second that hi’s comments aren’t satirical and aren’t trolling. I’m willing to give him or her the benefit of the doubt.
First off, poor eating, health, and weight are not necessarily connected in all people. It’s entirely possible to be “overweight” and in perfect health, as that article made a point of mentioning and as this post discusses. Some people are naturally fat and cannot lose weight in the same way that some people are naturally skinny and cannot gain weight (for instance, I’m six feet two inches tall, eat more than most people, exercise regularly, and cannot weigh more than one hundred thirty pounds, which qualifies me as dangerously underweight according to my doctor, no matter how hard I try; it’s not difficult to imagine that people with different frames and metabolisms–different genetics, really–would have an inverse situation).
Second, your insurance rates, as presumably a person of average weight, because fat people are routinely denied insurance, or simply charged much higher premiums, based entirely around the fact that they’re larger than is allowed on the insurance companies’ height/weight charts. If they’re denied insurance, or charged exhorbantly higher insurance fees, how is it that your insurance goes up because of them?
Third, simply saying that America is a “fat FAT country” does not justify your position because it’s a somewhat more complicated issue than that. Americans do, yes, consume on average far more calories than they need in order to survive. Yes, this leads to some Americans who would otherwise not be fat to be fat, but there are other things to consider before saying that the world is so skinny and America is so fat. The first thing to consider is that all people gain weight as they age, which means that most thirty- (or twenty-) year-olds are going to be fat (especially by our culture’s ridiculous weight standards) no matter how well they eat and no matter how often they exercise. The second thing to consider is that large proportions of the world population are malnourished, which is hardly a fair standard to compare Americans to. Americans could eat less, and the world could eat more. As I understand it, Americans aren’t significantly fatter than people in other developed nations.
Fourth, I’m sad to see that you’ve brought up the stereotype of the pushy, sweaty fat person because this isn’t a true, or even largely true, stereotype by any stretch of the imagination. In my time as a retail worker at a department store, and just in my time as a person capable of rational thought, it’s my observation that skinny people are just as likely to be pushy as fat people. And sweaty profusely is either a result of a.) genetic predisposition, or b.) being out-of-shape. The important thing to understand about the phrase “out-of-shape,” though, is that it doesn’t mean skinny. As I mentioned before, it’s perfectly possible to be fat and be in perfect shape (although the phrase itself, “out-of-shape,” seems to imply that the problem is more with physical appearance, and therefore the beauty myth, than with health concerns). Conversely, it’s entirely possible to be skinny and out-of-shape, which means you’ll see skinny people getting to the top of long flights of stairs and see just as many skinny people out of breath as you will fat people.
I made a comment just now that, I think, needs expanding on: a lot of people’s concern over weight, and the stereotypes and misperceptions that revolve around that concern, are a significantly related to the beauty myth, that myth that there is some sort of platonic ideal of beauty that all people, most especially women, must adhere to. The current beauty myth is that women should be grossly, unhealthily skinny with smaller, rounder breasts and, often, teenage features. In the last decade there have been more older models making appearances in magazines, but there have also been an increasing number of younger models.
The point, though, is that a lot of people’s perceptions of weight are guided by the idea that there is some sort of “normal” weight and “normal” body shape and that if one deviates from this norm then one is less than those who have that normal shape. The idea that fat people are not normal allows them to be set up as stereotypes for easy ridicule and quick jokes, which in turn perpetuates the idea that fat people are abnormal and that what they’re showing you in the fashion magazines is normal.
(I should make it clear that I differentiate between beauty and biological attraction, because the former is not the same anywhere in the world while the latter is a set of genetically ingrained features our human minds look for to determine fertility. Unfortunately, biological attraction is often used as an excuse to perpetuate the beauty myth by distorting and exaggerating the facts of biological attraction. Lustrous hair is attractive because it’s a sign of good health, but that doesn’t mean that all people need to have supermodel-esque shiney hair; by biological standards, only people who are terminally ill don’t have attractive hair (which is entirely the point). Incidentally, being fat with large breasts and large hips is supposed to be biologically attractive and yet I’ve never heard someone say that because that’s biologically attractive it should be included in the cultural definition of beauty.)
Of course, the beauty myth is a larger thing than just setting up fat people as abnormal freaks; the beauty myth actually has more to do, I think, with keeping women from being empowered by making them feel wretched for not being normal and therefore still less than men. I’ve noticed that women’s standards of grooming, weight, and personal health care are seldom, if ever, applied to men. A man with a paunchy stomach is middle-aged and still attractive; a woman with a paunchy stomach is fat and ugly.
How the idea of platonic beauty is used to oppress women is an entirely different post, though.
Duh, Aaron. They’re telling you to enlarge it so you’ll have to spend more money buying new pants and underwear. Not to mention those “Magnum” condoms that are niftily wrapped up to resemble Chanukkah gelt. Do I have to explain EVERYTHING around here ?!?! :p
I thought that Aaron had to enlarge his penis because those sex toys are a threat to him.
I love this post.
Fat people don’t raise insurance rates. Insurance companies raise insurance rates. If you want to be mad about the high cost of insurance be mad at them. They created the BMI. In 2002, when the surgeon general decided to change the definition of who was fat, much of the population became fat over night. Who benefits from that definition?Insurance companies.
Thanks for the post!
It’s ‘hi’ again. My comments were neither spam nor trolling. And I appreciate PinkDream taking the time to address them.
1. While that post is moving, it does nothing to convince me that the MAJORITY of overweight people couldn’t be thinner by more excercise, better eating, etc.
2. Your statement about insurance is incorrect when you consider group insurance through an employer. People of all sizes are covered because ALL employees are covered. No one is denied insurance and when overweight folks have lots of health problems (which they do, disproportionally), it causes the insurers to raise the rates for the group. And I’m in the group.
3. Americans ARE INDEED fatter than people in other developed countries. I travel extensively and it’s always shocking and somewhat embarassing to return home.
4. I work in a public service/contact position and maybe it’s different in retail, but my large coworkers sweat profusely, and need extra fans blowing on them. While I see good in bad in customers of all sizes, I can count on more angry, pushy, defensive interactions with larger people.
As far as your comments about the beauty myth, let me add that nothing I sad was about appearance.
This reminds me of a time when I was with Marilyn Wann at a teach-in she was doing around fat stereotypes. When the issue of how much fat people sweat came up she asked if athletes sweat. One young man said, “Yeah but they sweat water.” It was obvious to everyone in the room (and judging by the look on his face, even to the young man) that he saw fat people sweating in a different way than he saw thin or average sized people sweat.
I’m suggesting that we all see things through our own experience and our own prejudices. I’m not going to argue anyone’s experience but I might ask that we question our prejudices. My experience comes from years working in kitchens where it is hot and you can’t have fans because you need to keep the food hot. I’ve also worked with people of all sizes. In my experience some thin people drip with sweat. Some fat people never seem to sweat.
And, when I (Have I mentioned that I am fat? I am. Really, really fat.) deal with people in public service positions I go out of my way to me nice. In part that’s because I’ve done that kind of work. But I also notice the difference in how really, really beautiful (by current cultural standards) people are treated and by how I am treated in those situations. It may be that some people who are regularly treated badly (oh let’s just say fat people) become defensive and that may have an impact on their behavior. It’s possible.
But maybe I’m just seeing things the way I want to see them.
The thing is fat is a loaded word. When I hear the word “fat” the image that comes to mind is of a boss I once had who was morbidly obese and a bitter asshole. Then, since I’m the self-reflective type, I think about how I have some very good friends who would have to be considered fat, but I never think of them as “fat” rather “overweight” or “husky” or something. And I think therein lies the problem. To say fat, at least in my mind, is not to make an assertion about one’s physical appearance, but has some added implied meaning there to indicate an assholeish self-absorbed personality. Which I think brings up the problems Tish and implicitly hi bring up, which is that when people hear “fat” they think “selfish” or “mean” or something similar as well as “overweight”. It becomes a character flaw rather than a physical attribute.
>the hallway vending machine, where the >healthiest treat is a bag of pretzels.
This always bothers me, too. Granted, places like Wawa (7-11-ish chain here in PA and surrounding states) are starting to have neat little prepacked salads and such for sale, but to an overwhelming degree most of the readily available food you’ll find in the course of a business day is, well junk. Some of it is pseudo-healthly junk, like the various ‘meal replacement *-bars, but still . . .
I’ve wondered for a while why one doesn’t see more healthy&yummy snacks in vending machines &tc., at least in major cities. Presumably most places there isn’t enough actual demand when it comes down to cash and desire?
One can ride this line of thought into the slow-food neighborhood,a la arguments about how schoolkids need not just healthier lunches but nice tableclothes, a leisurely lunch-hour, and a meal with the teacher (my girlfriend found that last to be a bizarrely popular option among her 3rd-graders last year, so perhaps they’re onto something there?)
“4. I work in a public service/contact position and maybe it’s different in retail, but my large coworkers sweat profusely, and need extra fans blowing on them. While I see good in bad in customers of all sizes, I can count on more angry, pushy, defensive interactions with larger people.”
Strange, I work in a public service position, too. I don’t notice any difference between the overall behavior of co-workers OR customers that are fat vs. those who are skinny. Chop-busting customers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, hues, ages, and backgrounds. So do co-workers. Frankly, your attitude about fat people comes across here as burdened with several ugly, shallow misconceptions and a fair amount of unthinking meanness. If your attitude here is much like your public face, maybe the fat people you meet come across as angry and pushy to YOU because they think YOU come across as a fat-phobic asshole.
Warmest regards, :p
— Fat Amy
First — fat people are denied insurance all the time — even when the insurance is offered through an employer.
Second — it’s been shown, scientifically, that the more “in-shape” a person is, the more they sweat.
Third, no one is going to deny that Americans have very bad diets and excercise habits. What is denied is that this inherently leads to fat. For the record, the majority of “compulsive over-eaters” are thin. Cholesterol levels are related to what a person eats (and excercise), not to weight. This last can lead to some very dangerous assumptions, unfortunately. Take me — everytime I go to the doctor, they say they have to check my cholesterol. Fine, I say, as I know that it will (as it always has) turn out to be low in HDL and high in LDL. And my blood pressure is perfect. OTOH, a classmate of mine went into the hospital for seizures — massive seizures. It took 3 days before they tested his cholesterol levels (he was thin and athletic, so they didn’t even think this could be the cause). Sure enough, extremely high cholesterol — and the cause of his seizures. But his regular excercise routine couldn’t compete with his regular diet of cheeseburgers (usually about 3 – 5 a day) and fries and little else. Oh, sure, he looked thin and healthy enough. Little good that did him.
An unhealthy diet and too little excercise is bad. However, these two things are not always directly related to how fat a person is. Many fat people eat far more healthy than the average thin person (I personally know 2 fat women, both over 400 lbs. who are the healthiest eaters I know — really, their diets astound me, and I’ve yet to see a thin person eat even half as healthy — or as little — as the two of them). When my best friend and I get together, she’s always astonished at how little I eat. She usually eats fairly healthy (with many trips to McDonalds thrown in), yet she can’t manage to get over 95 lbs. When we lived together, she was constantly making food for herself, and trying to get me to eat, even when I simply wasn’t hungry. (I usually eat 1 – 2 meals a day, and some snackfood in between.) Of course, when I did force myself to eat more — to be in-line with her cooking schedule, I lost weight (about 10 lbs. in a month and a half).
The interesting thing is that the ever-growing body of evidence linking obesity to biological factors seems to make a rather undersized dent in people’s attitudes. In my mind this always seems to spring from the same sources as much of the ADHD backlash – namely, the fear that such ideas can fatally undermine deeprooted moral and economic values like self-control and responsibility. Remember the outrage with which some greeted the admitedly-weak McDonalds lawsuits? Tom Wolfe voices this mindset with characteristic if misguided skill:
” Of course, I have no way of knowing whether this “disorder” is an actual, physical, neurological condition or not, but neither does anybody else in this early stage of neuroscience. . . In an earlier era [the child] would have been pressured to pay attention, work harder, show some self-discipline. To parents caught up in the new intellectual climate of the 1990s, that approach seems cruel, because my little boy’s problem is… he’s wired wrong! .
“Meantime, the notion of a self–a self who exercises self-discipline, postpones gratification, curbs the sexual appetite, stops short of aggression and criminal behavior–a self who can become more intelligent and lift itself to the very peaks of life by its own bootstraps through study, practice, perseverance, and refusal to give up in the face of great odds–this old-fashioned notion (what’s a boot strap, for God’s sake?) of success through enterprise and true grit is already slipping away, slipping away…slipping away…The peculiarly American faith in the power of the individual to transform himself from a helpless cypher into a giant among men, a faith that ran from Emerson (“Self-Reliance”) to Horatio Alger’s Luck and Pluck stories to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People to Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking to Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World –that faith is now as moribund as the god for whom Nietzsche wrote an obituary in 1882.”
Of course, the diagnostic ancestor of what is now ADHD was orginally described as an explicitly moral condition back in the 1900s. And the best recent studies actually support this, after a fashion, except mediated through biochemistry in a way that its opponents seem unable to accept. Similarly, they seem to miss the related connection *with* self-improvement and transformation, albeit conceptualized differently . . .
Personally, I think this Wolfian view – whether regarding pluck or fat – is up there with those 19thC. Englishmen who argued, with great rhetorical skill and appropriate skepticism of special interests, that rabies in dogs was rather caused by environmental conditions and efforts to control it were inhumane and should be stopped (fascinating story in its own right). But then again, I’m biased . . . and too sleepy for more reasoned analysis.
The Beauty Myth is also the title of a great book on this very subject.
I’ll just note my relief and joy in seeing my 16-year-old niece emerge this summer from a year of anorexia. I believe that it will not have dramatically increased her chances of osteoporosis.
I guess Tom Wolfe would say that the fatness of the average desk jockey could be fixed if we’d all just stir ourselves and become CEOs. Then we could make our own hours, hire personal chefs, and work out at will while fobbing off all our more unpleasant sedentary and repetitive chores on some other poor slob too stupid to understand how bootstraps work. What a crock of shit. Thanks for reminding me why I hate that pompous asshole so much, Dan. :D
There is one company in particular that has sent out a lot of beef with growth hormones. I can’t remember the name, but it comes up a lot in discussions about obesity. Does anyone here know its name? I can’t remember. I remember reading that growth hormones, the larger portion sizes at fast-food joints and restaurants, and lack of exercise contribute to American’s being overweight. I also read recently that obesity is getting to be a world-wide problem. On the other hand, puericulture helps the French stay quite a bit healthier than Americans. It’s not merely the “miracle” of red wine.
The biggest problem I have with arguments like the one articulated by Mr. Wolfe is that it supposes that external and internal factors and personal responsibility are mutually exclusive phenomena. Saying that some people are naturally going to be fat (or overweight, whatever the term is) doesn’t mean that people aren’t responsible for taking care of themselves, just that one shouldn’t supposed that because a person’s body shape is other than a culturally-enforced ideal doesn’t mean that they’re lazy, stupid, or unhealthy.
(And then these opponents of biological factors turn right around and say that men can’t always control themselves in sexual situations. Que?)
But back to business… “hi” said:
It’s ‘hi’ again. My comments were neither spam nor trolling. And I appreciate PinkDream taking the time to address them.
No problem.
1. While that post is moving, it does nothing to convince me that the MAJORITY of overweight people couldn’t be thinner by more excercise, better eating, etc.
Thinner or thin? There’s a careful distinction between the two. All people need to take care of themselves and be in as good of health as they can manage, but there’s a catch: that doesn’t mean that people will necessarily lose any weight, or at least not the kind of weight that people are expected to lose.
Here’s why, and how, I differentiate between “thinner” and “thin.” Thinner means that they’ll lose some of the weight they have now; thin means that they’ll live up to the cultural concept of “trim,” which is actually underweight. Most people, no matter how much they exercise and no matter how well they eat, will never be thin. They may become thinner (and indeed they may not) but most of them will never be thin without endangering their health.
2. Your statement about insurance is incorrect when you consider group insurance through an employer. People of all sizes are covered because ALL employees are covered. No one is denied insurance and when overweight folks have lots of health problems (which they do, disproportionally), it causes the insurers to raise the rates for the group. And I’m in the group.
Actually, people who are overweight are not any more likely to have health problems than people who are on-target with their weight or are underweight. When weight in and of itself is no longer considered a health problem, people who are overweight aren’t any more likely to develop health problems than others.
The people most likely to develop a health problem are people who are living an unhealthy lifestyle. There is some overlap between people who are naturally overweight and people who don’t take good care of themselves simply because not taking care of oneself can lead to weight gain (although it doesn’t, necessarily, as bean gave examples of). Unfortunately, people who eat like crap and have a lot of other bad habits are usually jumped on as having been overweight when really the weight was the least of their problems.
3. Americans ARE INDEED fatter than people in other developed countries. I travel extensively and it’s always shocking and somewhat embarassing to return home.
I’ll have to take your word for this, as I’ve not travelled much outside of the United States.
4. I work in a public service/contact position and maybe it’s different in retail, but my large coworkers sweat profusely, and need extra fans blowing on them. While I see good in bad in customers of all sizes, I can count on more angry, pushy, defensive interactions with larger people.
I can’t speak to this, as it is personal experience, but I think it’s unfortunate that you seem to be taking your personal experience and applying it to a broad group of people. There are a lot of factors that could contribute to why you have problems with overweight people or why the overweight people in your office have fans blowing on them all the time (do no skinny people in your office ever have fans blowing on them?)
As far as your comments about the beauty myth, let me add that nothing I sad was about appearance.
I know, but I felt it an important comment to make because your comment seemed to be built around some myths about weight that are directly related to the beauty myth because the beauty myth seeks to perpetuate the false image of fat people as being universally unhealthy, unpleasant, and a burden on other people. There’s a very big glow-in-the-dark connection between the two and I felt it was necessary to point that connection out.
[Channelling the spirit of *Temp Slave*, even though I’m not a temp:]
You know, as long as I’m ranting anyway, I’d like to state my utter lack of interest in shedding any tears for the poow poow business world and how much my fat ass is costing it.
First of all, as the initial post pointed out, it’s obvious that the people that rule the business world don’t give a shit if I’m healthy: You have only to look at the selection in your local office vending machine.
Second of all, I have worked in at least one office where it was pretty blatant that physical fitness was a class privilege. The brokers (all male) would go on long lunches/workouts, shower and return to work at leisure, etc. The support staff (80% female) was allowed to do no such thing. If I’d run out on my lunch hour to some downtown swanky gym (which I’m sure I could’ve afforded on my $9 an hour were I not fussy about things like food, books, and so on) come back all sweaty and raced through the reception area on my way back to work, my ass would’ve been grass. In fact, it was the unreasonable hours and multitasking demanded of the support staff, with its accompanying tendency toward lousy food, or at least food gulped down under stress, that made it *possible* for the upper tier in that particular office culture to enjoy the privilege of working out when they were on the job. (These people were, of course, all salaried, as well. Most of the support staff was hourly. Any extra time spent exercising would thus come out of a support staffer’s hide, but not that of a broker.) Don’t get me started on my current office’s gym and the accompanying bullshit we put up with from management for the right to use it. Hey, did I tell you about the memo we all got once from Senior Management commanding us not to “loiter” about the gym, the security desk, or the area outside the office for fear that a terrorist might slip past us and blow up the building while we were selfishly pondering how many months it might take for our abs to shrink ? Fuck. Kafka was an amateur.
Thirdly, if the rulers of office culture gave a shit about my health, they could save me a lot of stress and exhaustion, and free up more of my calendar space through the very simple means of allowing me SHORTER WORK HOURS. Helloooo ? Americans are OVERWORKED. Don’t even get me started on the bewildered look that crossed my Head Supervisor’s pan when I tried to get through to her my desire for more from life than forty hours of deadly dull grind followed by 48 hours to somehow do all the other shit that languishes during the week while I bang my head against the public service wall until I’m ready to scream.
Screw the business community. I don’t give a shit if I’m a leech on them. They’re ten thousand times the leech on me. I don’t need their goddamn crocodile tears or their goddamn whining about how I’m not conducting myself in a matter suitably profitable for them. They know damn well what they could do to make me healthier and happier, and they choose not to do it out of greed, malice, and stupidity. In the end, it’s more important and satisfying for them to control me and the other proles as much as possible than it is for them to save money in the long-term. So what else is new ?
[This rant’s for you, Keffo. :) ]
alsis –
Thanks for the class analysis! That’s what I was going for but was far too sleepy to get at . . .
Speaking of the whole myth about fat people not being athletic, do you ever watch football games? Notice the defensive linebackers (sorry if that’s not the right term. I’m a baseball fan, not football) Those guys are quite often 350 pounds or more. And it’s not all muscle, they’re actually fat. And sure, they don’t sprint, but they knock around linebackers and seek out quarterbacks. That’s physically exhausting stuff and they do it week after week.
Also, for more of an extreme example, watch Sumo Wrestling sometimes, with men who weigh at least 500-600 pounds and most of it fat. But under that fat is extremely well-toned muscle that allows them to move that massive bulk with remarkable agility and speed.
The lesson here? Being thin and being athletic are not linearly related. Keep that in mind.
Oh and Amy, fuck those brokers. Fuck them right in the ear. They’ll be the first against the wall come the revolution. (class warfare’s got nothin’ on me)
Hi all,
I lurk because usually by the time I think of something worth saying, one of you clever folks has already said it, and better than I could have.
I do have something to add in this case, being a confirmed fatso of some duration. Two years ago, I got off my ass and started exercising. I now exercise between two and four hours a day five or more days a week. I dropped 15 pounds rapidly and have stayed at 290 pounds for most of the time since then.
Here’s a dilemma for anyone who says the fat can just exercise more and get thin: it takes a lot of calories to make a 290-pound body ride 40 miles on a mountain bike. I eat enough to give me the energy I need to do that and consequently stay at 290 pounds. I won’t pretend it isn’t a LOT of food. It is. I’ve tried dieting, but end up feeling listless and cranky, at which point my exercise starts falling off and I get unhealthy.
Most people who argue that fat people are lazy forget that a good exercise regimen and healthy eating tends to maintain body size – not reduce it. Otherwise the thin fit would just keep getting thinner and thinner until they disappeared. I was the fat child of fat parents and I grew up with bad habits. By the time I started getting a handle on changing them, I weighed over 300 lbs. Before I started exercising, I was gaining 10 lbs a year steadily. With exercise, I dropped and have maintained, and that is a HUGE deal – but I have little doubt that people still look at me every day and see nothing but a lazy eyesore and a drain on the healthcare system (I enjoy leaving these people in the dust on long rides – – -see, fat people ARE pushy!).
I can’t say I’m happy to weigh as much as I do, especially after all this enormous effort, but I’d rather be fat and fit than totter listlessly around for a year on a liquid diet so I can trim down. Life is too short.
My point is, I guess, that it’s a little flip to offer up exercise/healthy eating as if it were some kind of “unroll, peel and eat” recipe for slimness – as if it simply hadn’t occurred to the lazy fat person to try this revolutionary approach. Amy S. is right…it takes time, money and a whole lot of support to go from fat to thin, and the price is usually an obsessive concern with weight that casts a pall over everything.
Also PDP, I can second hi’s claim about the thin-ness of Western Europe at least. It’s true, but mostly because of the baldest and most relentless beauty policing you can possibly imagine (frankly, it makes the American version look polite). In 1993 when I weighed only about 200 lbs (and having a largish frame looked pretty ok), an elderly woman I did not know came up to me while I was waiting for a train in Italy and told me I should eat less so I would be thinner. My Dutch and German friends’ mothers expressed themselves with similar frankness while I was staying with them. Greek high school students whose families were supposed to house members of our choir during our stay actually refused to take one girl because she was fat.
Oh, and by the way, I haven’t been to the doctor for anything but annual exams in years.
Thanks for reading my rant, to anyone who does, and thanks for your interesting posts, which I have enjoyed.
Cheers! MG
The trend to obesity is worrying. It’s not just a matter of changing standards of beauty. Americans are fatter than the citizens of other developed nations, and getting fatter. Yesterday in USA Today:
About 40% of Americans, or 68 million people, will be obese by 2010 if people keep gaining at the current rate, government researchers predict… About 31% of Americans are now obese
For comparison, it’s generally said that only 7% of French are obese. If this is so, it’s hard to argue that the difference is primarily genetic.
I’ve read that every year the average American adult gains two pounds after consuming nearly 150 pounds of sugar and 30 pounds of frozen potatoes, among other things. It’s certainly normal to gain weight as you age, but just how much is normal seems to vary from place to place.
Unfortunately, as the article and many previous posters point out, it’s an intractable problem. Excercise – which has multiple benefits – takes time that few people have. In most of suburban America it’s impractical to use your legs for transportation or to eat well. Our consumer market has collectively designed a lifestyle which makes most of us relatively fat. But if we’re getting fatter all the time, we probably need to start making some changes.
Shorter work days seems to be the popular choice. Shouldn’t hurt.
—
In Sunday’s NY Times Magazine, one article suggests that cheap grain is to blame, and Helen Epstein considers the health problems of the urban poor, with some intriguing speculations on stress and diet. In the Guardian, Peter Preston compares school lunches in Barcelona with cheaper English fare.
Great post, Mary Garden. I’d hate to run into you in a dark alley ;-)
Americans have tended to be bigger than Europeans, so standard measures like Body-Mass Index tend to make Americans look relatively overweight.
That being said, it seems clear that too many of us eat like atheletes while watching sports on TV.
I’ll have to do some more research before I’m willing to stand 100% behind this, but it’s my understanding that the Body-Mass indeces (is that the proper word? if not, it should be) are pretty bunk. The first ones were, I believe, developed by an insurance company who based their conclusions on data gleaned from their primary policy holders (ie, white males). The government, then, based their index on the insurance company’s index. I’m not certain of it (again, I’ll have to do more research) but I don’t believe there’s been a really controlled study done on the subject.
Here are a number of random thoughts about the subject.
When considering the increasing number of obese people in the U.S., there are a number of factors to take into consideration:
WRT the BMI (and yes, PDP, you are absolutely correct about that), they are bullshit, and can’t really tell you anything about what a person “should” weigh. Want to know what you “should” weigh? Eat a healthy 3 to 5 meals a day (3 larger meals or 5 smaller meals), excercise at least 30 minutes a day 3 days a week. Do this for at least a year. Whatever you weigh is your body’s ideal weight. Forcing your body to go lower than that or allowing it to get higher than that can be extremely unhealthy (although, it’s far more healthy to be too fat than too thin).
On another board, Amp once linked to a very interesting study — the largest of it’s kind (I believe they used a sample of 10,000 women). The study was done, I believe, in Norway (perhaps if Amp doesn’t know exactly where that link is, I can try to find it when I’m feeling a little more up to it). Anyway, because the basis of weight and health does so often rely on the BMI, that’s what they used in the study, too. They compared women’s BMI and mortality rates (in this case, they specifically used age when the woman died). Turns out that the longest-living women were those who had BMI’s 1 – 2 levels higher than the “recommended” BMI. Those with the shortest life span were those who were 1 – 2 levels lower than the “recommended” BMI.
As for fat being “unhealthy” — well, there are a number of questions about that. I wish I could find a link — maybe when I’m feeling a bit more up to it I’ll do a better search, but there was a study recently that showed that body fat in women can, in fact, serve as a protector against heart disease. Other recent studies have shown that fat is not related at all to strokes. Also, being underweight can lead to certain diseases/illnesses/health problems, as well — of course, not that you’d ever hear about that in the news. To take just one example, while obese people are more susceptible to Type II diabetes, underweight people are more susceptible to the more dangerous Type I diabetes.
And, for that matter, recent studies have shown that fat may actually be a symptom, rather than a cause — and reducing the symptom of fat, as in all cases, does not cure the originating problem. See Asking if Obseity is a Disease or Just a Symptom (.pdf file). There was also an article on this topic in The New Republic last January, which is now, unfortunately viewable only with a subscription — but here are a couple of relevant quotes:
And
Is this something that’s said to skinny women, or just to skinny men?
Definitely just to skinny men. I read an essay once by a recovering anorexic once — I wish I had access to the quote, because it was absolutely heartwrenching (not to mention I’d be able to give you the exact fat percentage she had, but this is close). But the gist of it was this. While in the hospital being treated for anorexia, she had a day pass to go out with her mother. They went to the mall, and at one point, they separated. She saw an excercise-machine store that was giving free “fat tests.” She took one. The man giving the test said, “You have 10% body fat. That’s the best we’ve seen all day. That’s amazing!” (All said with a big grin on his face.) The people standing around started clapping for her. She just looked at him and at them and said, “I have anorexia. I’m dying,” and walked out.
Think about it — when you see a person who is thinner than the last time you saw them — particularly a woman, what’s the first thing that people usually say to her/him? “Have you lost weight? You look great.” No one ever thinks to ask why the person lost weight. How would you feel if you asked someone that question and the person looked at you and said, “yes, I have lost weight, I have cancer?” People just don’t expect it — but there are many reasons people may have lost weight — and they aren’t all intentional.
bean, that’s brutal. It should be run as an ad on national TV.
I too believe the big problem in this country is forced (and voluntary) sedentarianism (is that a word?). Many of us sit all day in front of computers (particularly support staffers, while our bosses get to run around, per Amy’s anecdotes), but the work (and the commute) is still often so mentally and emotionally draining that it takes a Herculean effort to push ourselves to exercise when we get home. And I do think that “hi” is right to an extent about the relative comfortable body temperatures of fat and skinny folks. The skinny gals in my office are always shivering in temperatures I find quite comfortable due to my natural insulation. The solution would seem logical – it’s always easier for people with higher temperature thresholds to put on a sweater so everyone’s comfortable than it is to create an atmosphere where some people are sweating because they’re feeling too warm (and who can’t do anything about it because we can’t exactly disrobe at work or peel our skins off…).
Another thing: Health insurance companies refuse to cover any nutrition and/or exercise programs.
If they really cared about not passing costs related to an unhealthy lifestyle on to the general public, wouldn’t you think they’d offer some kind of prevention program instead of waiting until it’s a (expensive) matter of life and death?
http://wcco.com/health/health_story_286145350.html
I remembered the name of the company that produced meat enhanced by bovine growth hormones — Monsanto. I wrote about Monsanto and the presence of BGH in our children’s milk on my blog (http://trishwilson.typepad.com/blog/2003/10/fat_is_such_a_h.html). BGHs in milk is one reason I read that obesity levels are increasing worldwide.
A very good line of comments here. I just have a couple of things to add. Most of which are in support of the general feeling expressed here.
1) As a skinny guy: Many people try to get me to eat more.
2) The height to weight charts: It’s interesting to look at a chart from the 70’s, a chart from the 80’s & a chart now. The 70’s chart I at least come close to the range for my height. The 80’s…. well, I don’t think that I could ever come close. And today? Closer than the 80’s but not as close as the 70’s. Of course I have no guarantee that any of the charts I have were “accepted norms” for their time.
3) America becoming fatter: I don’t think that there is much question of that. The big question is; Is it unhealthier? I think, to some extent, the answer is yes. I’m constantly amazed at how few of us know how to prepare ameal. The vast majority of us use mostly prepackaged foods in meal preparation. An awful lot of that has to do with how we learn to eat as children.
4) Most of us cannot judge our own appearance. My former spouse saw herself as nearly as wide as she was tall. Anybody who knew her can tell you that that just wasn’t so. Sometimes I feel like I’m too heavy. And that’s just ridiculous.
5) Fat people are pushy & sweat a lot: What can I say? Goes right along w/ “that ethnic group is very loud & smells funny.”
6) Beauty & weight: Everyone has their own taste wrt sexual attraction. But it sure don’t help that the idea that the most beutiful women are 5′ 10″ & 100 lbs. Ewww. I grew up seeing enough Holocaust photos that I could never see that as attractive.
7) And, hey! I may die young, but at least I’m thin! (Yes, that was sarcasm).
Re the U.S. vs. Europe: Europe disgorged its peasants on the United States from approximately 1840 – 1920. These people started out dirt poor, working extremely hard, and often didn’t have enough food to develop properly, or were at the mercy of Mother Nature if they farmed.
Fast forward to their great-grandchildren today – many people still have the same attitude towards food, even though there’s a surfeit of food today, even for the lower-middle-class. (Of course, you also have my grandmother, who alternately asked if I was eating enough and criticizing me for being too fat. :)
This applies both to white immigrants and African-Americans, who both had to eat filling, high-energy foods and cheaper cuts of meat. The work has become much more sedentary, but the dietary habits linger. Add increasing work schedules and family obligations, and the increasing prevalence and portion sizes of restaurants, and it’s no wonder people eat more.
bean — Great post. I’m tempted to subscribe to the New Republic just long enough to print that article out and mail it to everyone I know. Just one thing: whatever link you had after decrying the Atkin’s diet (something that needs decrying)–“Not to mention potentially deadly.”–doesn’t work. It takes me to a banner ad at the Guardian UK, and that’s it.
– – – – –
hi — I read the article you linked to, the WCCO article, and most of what it says has already been addressed in this thread. To recap: the latest boom in obesety has a lot to do with the fact that the government just changed its BMI standards so that more people are obese without having gained an ounce. Yes, eating poorly and not exercising is directly related to Americans being fatter than other countries. There is no direct correlation between heart disease, high cholesterol, arthritis and weight.
I think the most sickening quote I’ve read today, in light of my own research and the other quotes I’ve read, is:
– – – – –
I hadn’t thought of this as being related to class, but now that you mention it…
A lot of good comments here, especially Mary’s. (Thanks, Raznor & Dan S.) And I don’t think bean’s comments about the difference between disease and symptom can be stressed enough. One thing I know as an asymptomatic PKD carrier who saw the disease work on her Dad: A large amount of weight loss in that context is usually a sign of screwed-up electrolytes and extreme dehydration brought on by failing kidneys. Not to mention just plain old loss of appetite owing to feeling like crap. I only hope that when I go through that, I’ll maintain enough physical strength to shin-kick the first idiot who complements on how much weight I’ve lost. :p
My town, West Lafayette, Indiana, has more restaurants per capita than any other place in the United States. Food testers also consider us “middle Americans”, great test markets to see how food will sell over the world.
We were one of the first towns to have the McDonald’s diner, a McD’s that serves traditional hot plate food like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, in addition to it’s regular food. I also believe we are one of the first to have McD’s new adult happy meals, gourmet salads packed with a bottle of water and a “stepometer” (or pedometer, as you and i call them) to try an encourage adults to get more active and presumably to stop blaming their company for adding to America’s weight gain.
I give them props for adding healthy choices to their menu, and the salads are delicious! (this is coming from a virulent McD’s hater – they’ve pulled me in)
But despite our middle-American demographic, one must also acknowledge that our little city is a hotbed for the creation of the overweight. We don’t have the privilege of the metropolitain areas of having the ability to walk anywhere – our area is too suburban and spread out. Nor are there many options for exercise in gyms – three commercial gyms and a series of Curves stores. And yet we have more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the US.
I have no opinion other than to say that healthier beauty images should be added to the paradigm and that healthier choices should be encouraged by every food service company, not just those that are getting sued for contributing to US health problems.
I have been thin, fat, thin, fat, and thin again. And there was much more to that equation than food or exercise.
I’m surprised no one (that I’ve seen) has brought up women’s bodily changes after pregnancy. Anyone have any views on this?
ms. lauren — I had read somewhere that some of McDonald’s salads and such were just about as unhealthy as the rest of their foods (if you put the dressing on, that is). I’ll try to dig the article up on the web, or dig through my recycling bin and see if I can find some juicy snippets.
How weird about that Guardian link — I’ll try it again:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1046662,00.html
Ms. Lauren,
I have been hesitating to comment on this thread for a variety of reasons- mostly because the comments I would bring up are really complex and would lead to a long post, but you brought up the pregancy issue.
Eight months ago, I had my first child. I am 34 years old. I had always been afraid of getting pregnant- because I was afraid of the weight gain. Of all the reasons, I had to be ambivilant and scared about having a child, the predominant one was weight. That is perhaps the saddest thing I can think of, for me. I cried yesterday as I read the link PDP posted. I avoid mirrors and only get dressed in the dark because I hate how my body looks. It is an issue that I face every day, and it takes away from my quality of life- and for that reason, it affects my son too. I work really hard to keep my issues buried when I am with my son.
With that said, the rational part of my mind knows this is ridiculous. I am not what anyone would classify as overweight (although the number on the scale always makes me feel so.) I have struggled since I was young with my size. I was a competetive swimmer for 15 years and even when I was training 4-6 hours a day, I felt fat. Even when I had a body fat of 10%, I felt fat. ( I weighed 128 pounds and looked like most people would look at a much lower scale weight)
I finally came to an uneasy truce with myself by reaching the conclusion that my size fit my personality. I will never be a waif. I am muscular and have a very solid big bone structure. My “joke” is that my body fits my personality- both are hard to ignore!
My husband thinks I am much more attractive now. He thinks my body was too hard when we first met. I was a gym junkie, but couldn’t drop below 140 without starving myself.
Now, eight months out, I struggle everyday with my feelings about weight. Why? My husband thinks I am infinately more attractive now. I struggle because I have an unrealistic standard in my head of what I should look like. Where did this standard come from? Media and society mostly I think. Pregnancy changed my body in many ways. My breasts are not firm anymore because of breastfeeding. My stomach muscles aren’t as firm as they were. I have added weight on my hips and thighs which won’t go away despite dieting.
I didn’t begin to have issues with my weight until I was about 12. Interestingly enough, I didn’t have regular access to television until then either. Perhaps the convergance of television and puberty twisted my view of myself, I don’t know.
I do know that pregnancy ended my uneasy truce with myself. I have a group of friends who had children at the same time I did. Every time we talk, the issue of our weights and how we feel about ourselves, comes up. EVERYTIME! There seems to be no relief.
I don’t know what this adds to the discussion except that I am glad this discussion is happening…
Oh, and while I am at it, can I say how much I had the latest Special K commercials. The “internal” monologues of these average women are a sad view because the are so realistic. When will we wake up and realize that if that is the kind of insecurity we instill in half our population, that we have a very unhealthy society.
Samantha,
Yes but….. that fear and insecurity is very profitable. And profit is what makes us great.
Samantha, I hate those Special K commercials too. I hate them so much! Also thanks for that post.
Does anyone else here remember that Onion editorial, I lost 25 pounds in 20 days and died!. I couldn’t find it in the online archives, I just remember the pertinent quote, “Yes, I really lost all that weight. And, yes, I really died.” Nothing I can think of sums up the problem with our national diet fad so perfectly.
One thing I’ve learned in doing Kenpo for many years is never judge a person’s abilities until you’ve actually seen what they can do. One time I sparred a woman who looked to me dangerously underweight and wirey. I figured that I’d have to go easy on her, as she would likely be weak and unable to fight that hard. I was grossly mistaken. In fact, I had to work really hard to keep her at a distance from me, because if she came in too close she could work that thin wirey body with such amazing agility and skill that she would completely control the fight.
So after random anecdote #918B, I really don’t have much more to add. And Amy, I’m glad you appreciate my posts.
Samantha, if you haven’t read it you might enjoy “The Beauty Myth.” I just went to get the author but I must have lent the book out. It’s about 200 pages long, and the best book I’ve ever read on what the US media does. Worth a look.
My sister and one niece both gained over twenty pounds in pregnancy and never really lost it. They both look great IMO.
I believe that the author of “The Beauty Myth” is Naomi Wolff. I haven’t read the book, but I thumbed through it in Barnes & Noble long enough to know I wanted it but couldn’t afford it.
I share an office with a very warm-blooded person. He’s got a fan under his desk, I’ve got a heater. I let him control the thermostat because I can always put on more layers, and I don’t really want him taking off any. ;)
My daughter is a string bean – one of those little kids who is active all the time. She’s all muscle and sinew. She’s ten, and we’ve already had the eating disorders talk (she asked me if she was too skinny). I’m hoping that if we teach her how to maintain a balanced diet and *like herself the way she is*, she’ll make it through her teenage years without too much trauma. (At least, about her body shape.)
I had put in my weight loss story, but it sounded too much like prostelyzing.
I should mention I had a friend in high school who was really short, thin, and he’d wear shorts and t-shirts while roling around in a foot of snow. Knowing him led me to believe that temperature tolerance is mostly mental, and since knowing him have drastically increased my tolerance of cold, to the extent that, while up here in Portland (I’m from Flagstaff) I wear t-shirts, although not everyday, certainly most days of the year regardless of season.
Naomi Wolff sounds right to me.
It is Naomi Wolff and it was so much fun watching people try to apply the standard “bitter feminist who can’t get a date” label to her. If you haven’t seen her, Naomi Wolff is extremely beautiful. It’s unfortunate that less spectacular looks would have been enough to destroy her credibility with a lot of people.
Bean, wow – I wish every woman struggling to get by on 10% body fat were as brave as the woman in your story (that goes for the rest of us too). What a horrible story.
bad jim – I also prefer my dark alleys empty : )
PDP – ironically, another thing I found out in my travels is that the very overt beauty policing in many other parts of the world is America’s fault. The high school girls in Greece who would not take in our fat alto were disappointed with the way most of us looked. Since we were Americans and young, they thought we would look like the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 (one of them explained this to me later).
I saw a great (and very sad) story in the paper a while back (see…this is why I love reading this site – I never can remember my sources) about one of the Island countries that had just recently gotten access to American TV programming. Eating disorders and body dissatisfaction among young women immediately soared. Wish I could remember where this was – it was a place that had previously favored women with some meat on their bones.
On the body changes with pregnancy issue, has anyone else noticed the preponderance of “sexy,” tight or belly-baring maternity clothes in the past few years? Ugh…ugh…ugh.
I saw a great (and very sad) story in the paper a while back (see…this is why I love reading this site – I never can remember my sources) about one of the Island countries that had just recently gotten access to American TV programming. Eating disorders and body dissatisfaction among young women immediately soared. Wish I could remember where this was – it was a place that had previously favored women with some meat on their bones.
You are thinking of Samoa. And they not only favored women (and men) with “some meat on their bones” — they preferred them fat. And you’re right, the number of girls with eating disorders soared after that little introduction. Ironically, the show most connected with this new “trend” was Beverly Hills 90210. (Ummmm… Ironic because you just mentioned that show, not because of the show itself.)
mary garden:
there’s a poster in the maternity section of my target store featuring a thin “pregnant” model in a belly-hugging sweater. every time i walk past it, i jab at my boyfriend and say, “that’s not what pregnancy looks like! that looks like me after a large meal!”
samantha:
i’m with you much of the time. i was traumatized my my body changes because i had my boy so young and wasn’t aware that women didn’t just “bounce back” after pregnancy.
although i still have some issues at times, i’ve managed to change a few things about my attitude that help. i read naomi wolff’s book among other feminist authors, decided to exercise on a regular basis and concentrate on health instead of weight, and stopped lying to myself with push-up bras, support hose and corset bands.
in addition, i get rid of cable every once in awhile – i just unplug the tv and find other things to do for a few weeks. the media purge helps a lot.
and something less traditional that i’ve done that has made me love my body immensely is having gotten a tattoo around my waist. it’s a band of orchids that starts at the tops of my thighs and curves around to cradle the top of my behind. i chose orchids for two symbolic reasons. orchids are both the symbol for the mother on mother’s day and an ancient symbol of a prostitute – it reconciles and symbolizes my madonna/whore complex that i’ve wrestled with as a young, unmarried mother.
i think i sound very frou-frou as i type this, but you know what? it worked for me.
these outside forces are constantly pressing upon us, attempting to mold us into neurotic consumers. it’s a shame that those forces are so damn effective. i think the answer for women is to find new and innovative ways to reclaim one’s body.
anyone else have anything along those lines?
ms. lauren,
it is interesting that you mention the tattoo. Actually, as part of my road to acceptance before my pregnancy, I got a tattoo; it winds down my body, starting next to my breast. It is a tattoo I designed. it incorporates symbols of balance and harmony. For me, it was my way to accept my sexuality, and my femaleness- all of which are intimately tied to my acceptance of my body. I have been thinking about another tattoo to “celebrate” my son’s birth, but I will have to wait until I have reached more peace with myself. I LOVE the idea of your tattoo, and I think it is a powerful way to celebrate.
I have always been an exercise person. My diet is pretty good most of the time. (My husband is allergic to wheat and gluten, so our diet eliminates bread entirely- except for my occasional binge at a restaurant.)
The hardest thing with diet and exercise is that I work full time now. The pull to spend all the time I can with my son, and be good at my job (teaching) at the same time, adds a whole realm of complexity to the situation. However, that is another topic!
As for the way this society sabotages us (men and women), there are so many policies that are contradictory. I was going through my medical reciepts last night so I could file for my “flex spending” and I found that the following things were not “reimbusable”:
health club memberships, weightloss programs or supplements, personal training, non prescribed vitamins and a variety of other “optional” exercise related things. I am not sure if appointments with a nutritionist would be allowable.
I suppose I could understand that if someone else were paying for these things they wouldn’t be “reimbusable”. BUT it is MY MONEY; taken out of my paycheck. Granted it is a slight tax benefit, but if we were serious in this country about making sure people were healthy- rather than being obessed with their “weight”, wouldn’t it make sense to encourage people to create a healthy lifestyle.
Sigh.
I wonder if you could justify gym membership to your insurance company if you convinced your doctor to prescribe regular exercise…?
probably not, ms. lauren.
as insurance companies are notoriously “cost effective,” so they’d likely go with “we’ll give you a 5 dollar deductable on a pair of running shoes. exercise using things you find around the home.”
now, unrelated comments
I don’t know if it’s been covered yet (it jumped from 18 comments when I read yesterday to 56!) but has it occured to anyone else just how frequently standards of beauty deviate from what is “healthy?”
we can blame this rather nicely on money (or rather, the existance of a leisure class, as money makes it possible to be “fit” without any physical characteristics)
in fact, the LACK of physical activity has been for quite some time the standard of beauty: pale skin, from being indoors rather than working outside, corsets, thin hands, small feet (to the degree of foot binding in ancient china) and long, unpractical hair have been seen as standards of beauty for quite some time (thin hands, small feet, and the hair are still common, even among “enlightened society”)
in fact, what would today be considered “fat” was quite attractive up through the renaissance, as it showed that one could afford to not work (lack of tone) and could eat plenty (as opposed to starving peasants)
now, “attractive” is still puneocentric, just in a different way, gym membership and many hours spent toning the body are hours that could be spent earning cash, which means they can afford leisure time, and that which natural exercise can’t offer can be made up for with costly plastic surgery.
so “thin” isn’t the sexy part, it’s “having money”
I’m sure in 30 years or so, cybernetic implants will be a status symbol and quite “sexy.”
not sure if I’d marry a girl with glowing red eyes and a built in targeting reticule, though…
This has been a great discussion to read. Especially that idea that social class plays such a large part of “fat hatred” and denigration. I really believe this to be true, both in the way fat people are potrayed, and the way that food is distributed and manufactured in this country. Try to find processed foods and build a weekly meal without corn syrup or sucrose; it’s difficult. And the cheaper the brand, the more likely the higher sugar/fat ratios.
That and the issues of time that others have mentioned. I walk an hour before work, and work a 10-12 hour day. If I fit in a fully regimented workout and make my meals completely from scratch (the lifestyle that will get me to that look that is so coveted), where is the time to fit in living, socializing, etc.?
I fit in to the “average” of average American women, size 12-14, 5’8″, 155-160 lbs. In college I got down to 140, still a number that makes most women cringe. The main reason I got down to that weight is that I was starving! I had no money, so I spent $15 a week on groceries–I lived on beans and potatoes and broccoli and oatmeal–filling foods that are cheap. I also looked like a skeleton (remember, at 140 lbs). My mom came to visit me and freaked out, buying me all kinds of food and wondering if I had an eating disorder. Now I really do look better, and feel better, and still obsess about my weight.
I recently read Palace Walk by Naghib Mahfouz. The book is set in Egypt in the 30s and 40s I believe. One of the things that stuck me was the way the main character, a sensualist, desribed the women he lusted after. He delighted in seeing a women with rolls of fat around her waist and arms, he found them beautiful and the most highly desirable. Through his eyes I too could see the sensual delight and beauty that the softness could bring. It was an upfront reminder that beauty and desire are at least part culturally created and maintained.
samantha and ms. lauren: My insurance company (Providence) actually runs health and fitness classes that its own policies do not cover. Talk about adding insult to injury…
That’s unbelievably lame about the flex plan limitations. Like you said, it’s your money, and it’s not like you’re asking them to tax-exempt funds so you can buy yourself a hideous doll collection from QVC.
bean: thank you! I don’t know how long it would have taken me to remember Samoa.
I agree w/karpad about the financial basis for “beauty,” but I also think it has something to do with the “shiny button” mentality that makes people devalue anything that’s known to be plentiful or common and value out of all proportion anything they believe to be rare (a habit we share with apes and budgies).
wow, so many points.
1) MG, thanks for the rant. I have wondered how much of the difference between the US and Europe, say, was due to genetic variation (tough to sell over time), structural forces (that make it easy for most folks to bike, walk, or take the train, rather than drive, to work most days), or social forces such as you describe. Or, similarly, that the overweight “hide” where tourists (and critics) don’t see them . . .
2) In most of suburban America it’s impractical to use your legs for transportation or to eat well. This is a decision one has to make. I have gone out of my way over recent years to live within walking distance of a reasonable bus or train line, and was willing to look much longer in order to make this choice. The difference between walking every day and not is one not only of weight for me, but also of energy levels and mood brightness. You have to make your personal health a high priority in structuring your life — would you relocate for your kids’ better schools? why not for complete family fitness prospects?
3)BGHs in milk is one reason I read that obesity levels are increasing worldwide. Trish, I think you’re mixing apples and oranges. All milk contains BGH, which is a natural hormone in the cow. Supplementing it to increase milk production is of unknown effect. However, the way that we raise cattle generally, both with hormonal supplements and preventative antibiotic dosing, certainly sets us up to have manipulated body chemistries as consumers…
bleah. how sad that it is so difficult for our society to progress in this area. what happened to “Rubenesque” views of beauty? why should taste trends override our health goals? we are a complicated people, much happier to judge than to try to understand . . .
Heh. I am Botticelli’s wet dream – round where women should be round, curvy where they should be curvy. According to the charts, I am overweight and bordering on obese. And yet, when I put on a costume, cinch up my (not to tight) corset and display the ample cleavage that comes with carrying 30 extra pounds – I am suddenly more attractive than the half-dressed skinny chick you came to the party with. Go figure.
Yes, for the record, I exercise every day. If you can’t seem to motivate yourself to walk daily, I suggest getting a husky-mix and taking down your fence. You will either walk, or the dog will bolt past you and you will chase it around town several times per week. Either way, you get that pesky exercise. :)
This is an amazing exercise in collective deception! The number one killer of American women and men are coronary diseases related to obesity, NOT anorexia! Please educate yourselves here.
Only ONE PERCENT of American girls are affected by anorexia and of those one percent, fifteen percent die from it. That means .15 percent of American girls die from anorexia.
And which disease do so called “voices for women” focus on? The one that kills millions upon millions of women, obesity related health problems, right? Or that one that kills several hundred a year, anorexia?
Well contrary to reason or compassion they focus on the latter rather than the former. What humanitarians!
“But American culture oppresses women with unhealthy, unattainable thinness” is a phrase that is often shrieked. No, American culture oppresses women and men with “supersize it” advertising, jump into your gas guzzeling SUV to go a block to shop, “don’t sweat it, it’s too hard!” attitudes that are pulmigated in TV, radio, and magazine ads.
Frankly it seems there’s a lot of sour grapes being vented here.
Anne,
I’ve no sour grapes to vent. I’m the skinniest person I’ve ever met.
In response to your saying that the leading killer of women is coronary diseases related to obesiety… I’ll repeat myself: there is no direct correlation between obesiety and heart disease. Dr. Dean Ornish (and I realise he wrote diet books, that doesn’t make his medical research less valid) among others has proven, as near as anything can be proven, that coronary diseases have little to do with weight and everything to do with poor diet and lack of exercise.
Unfortunately, in its effort to demonize excess fat for the sake of making sure that women are still sexual objects that “look right,” the popular culture has conflated being overweight with eating poorly and not exercising, when in fact the two are not necessarily related. Let me put it this way…
People who eat poorly and don’t exercise have a tendency to end up overweight. This doesn’t mean, though, that all people who are overweight are lazy and eat like crap. What you’re doing is saying that since chickens tend to be birds, all birds are therefore chickens, which is not the case.
No one here is supporting the “super size” lifestyle. What we’re saying is that people should eat healthfully, but that people should also realise that not all people who are overweight are that way because they’re lazy and slovenly. Do you see what I’m saying?
So I’ve been perusing this site, and especially this post, for a few days. I’ve found it fascinating and refreshing to know especially that other people are dealing with the same sort of enforced sedentary life style that corporate America requires of its support staff and to read how other people handle the images of unattainable human form paraded daily via every available media. I have dealt and continue to deal with my body image issues. If you have managed to escape this, Anne, more power to you. I don’t think anyone would disagree that Supersizing is potentially dangerous in whatever form it takes. Fast food, SUVs, televisions, consumer spending, you name it. However, as far as sour grapes are concerned…well, take it from a woman who is at or below “normal” weight that being offended by anorexics in magazines isn’t sour grapes. It’s human.
Great thread, campers.
Samantha: regarding your husband’s celiac disease, check out the Gluten-Free Trading Company; they’re in Milwaukee, but they do mailorder and have a catalog & are on the web as well. Everything they sell is gluten-free.
acm: all milk doesn’t contain rBGH, though, which is a hormone that some dairy farmers give to their cows to increase yield. You can get milk (and ice cream–Ben & Jerry’s) that is from places that explicity do not feed their cows rBGH.
There are a lot of hormones in a lot of meats. Eat less meat, and, if you can afford it and it’s available, get meat that is from animals that haven’t been fed extra hormones.
Get a little exercise, every day if possible. You don’t have to join a health club (and the Y is probably cheaper and maybe more likely to be available). Walk briskly around the shopping mall; many are open in the morning before the stores open precisely for this purpose. Find something you enjoy, then do that. Set reasonable goals for yourself, especially at first–not the “exercise every day for two hours” type goal–because you won’t succeed and then you’ll quit completely. Start with 15 minutes three days a week. Personally, I feel so much better when I exercise, and so much worse when I don’t, and you probably will, too.
With regard to food, I think one of the major reasons for all of the uncertainty is that a lot of people have a lot invested (literally and figuratively) in one or another approach. Look at all of the atkins products on the market now, despite continuing concerns about the diet: It’s making someone rich. But a lot of evidence suggests that whole grains (not refined flours) are good. That fruits and vegetables are good. That the less processing your food has had, the better for you. Here’s where I’m going to sound moralistic, but it’s just not that damned hard to cook from scratch–well, cheaply, and tastily, as well as, with a little preparation, quickly. Again, start slowly, a little at a time. Experiment. Get a good cookbook (the Moosewood low-fat cookbook is a particular favorite of mine, as well as another recent one i can’t for the life of me remember right now). Experiment. If you don’t live alone, get the other people in your house to experiment with you.
For an interesting read on diet, check out “Perfection Salad” by Laura Shapiro, about women & cooking since about 1900.
And someone above distinguished between “dieting” and “changing your diet,” and that’s really important.
As for “fatness,” well, I’d like to see something between “anyone over 120 pounds is obese” and “I weigh 350 pounds and I love every one of them.” There are 230 pounds of difference between those two statments–a whole ‘nother person’s worth of difference–so it seems like we could find some kind of middle ground that (a) recognizes that every doesn’t have the same body, (b) variety is not only the spice of life, it’s also delicious, (c) health and weight aren’t the same thing, and (d) asking people to act in healthier ways isn’t unreasonable, even as we acknowledge that (e) you can’t always tell by looking at someone whether they do, in fact, act in healthier ways.
Anne,
I agree that American culture makes it easy for people to get fat. Attacking the industries that profit from keeping us in our big ol’ cars and add unnecessary hydrogenated fat to our giant fast food portions is a very worthwhile pursuit (I know a lot of feminists who do this, including me, and Amy S. who was one of several here who mentioned the curse of the enforced sedentary lifestyle for the non-wealthy in the US).
I’d be curious to know what about obesity you would like to see discussed in a feminist forum. Most feminist arguments about health issues deal with the psychological, sociological and political aspects, only dipping into brass tacks physiology to support arguments in one of those areas. Comments about the evils of french fries are more likely to find an audience in a forum that deals directly with diet and weight loss.
If you are advocating more feminist discussion of the social, political, psychological and economic factors contributing to obesity (which is the character of most feminist discussion about anorexia), I am totally with you, and I thought that was what we were doing here.
Your sour grapes comment confused me, as I’ve noticed a lot of the fat people who posted here mentioned exercising and eating healthily (I don’t own a car, let alone an SUV and being a vegetarian never eat fast food). I think what most of the people here have been saying is not that being fat is in itself healthy, but that thinness doesn’t always equate to health, and that a fat person who exercises and eats well can be healthier than a thin person with a sedentary lifestyle.
As I said before, healthy habits do not automatically result in a thin body, especially not if you spent the 25 years before you started establishing your good habits (no easy feat, by the way) gaining 150 extra lbs. Would you criticize someone who has smoked for 20 years for quitting because if she had quit sooner, she would have done less damage to her body? People’s lives are not that clean, and childhood habits combined with the cultural discouragements you mentioned are the very devil to combat. Each one of us has only a limited amount of energy to throw into various causes, and changing your life so you can lose 200, 100 or even 30 pounds is a Cause with a capital C – one that takes loads of time, support and money. I don’t blame people for not being willing to sacrifice the other things that are important to them so they can put in the tremendous amount of energy it takes to effect such a change.
Also, if you are fat, is there really any reason not to love your body and be happy with the way you are? (tell me if I’m wrong, but I thought your post implied that that was a problem). Even if someone my size does start losing weight, doing it healthily would take years. Should I be suffering and thinking about how unhealthy it is to be fat that whole time? All of us have habits we would be better off if we changed. What if we never get around to changing them? Are we better off accepting the way we are and making the most of our bodies or constantly loathing ourselves? It’s pretty well documented that constantly loathing yourself (chronic stress) can lead to horrible health problems, including heart disease, stroke and fibromyalgia, not to mention suicide.
MG
Anne,
I agree that American culture makes it easy for people to get fat. Attacking the industries that profit from keeping us in our big ol’ cars and add unnecessary hydrogenated fat to our giant fast food portions is a very worthwhile pursuit (I know a lot of feminists who do this, including me, and Amy S. who was one of several here who mentioned the curse of the enforced sedentary lifestyle for the non-wealthy in the US).
I’d be curious to know what about obesity you would like to see discussed in a feminist forum. Most feminist arguments about health issues deal with the psychological, sociological and political aspects, only dipping into brass tacks physiology to support arguments in one of those areas. Comments about the evils of french fries are more likely to find an audience in a forum that deals directly with diet and weight loss.
If you are advocating more feminist discussion of the social, political, psychological and economic factors contributing to obesity (which is the character of most feminist discussion about anorexia), I am totally with you, and I thought that was what we were doing here.
Your sour grapes comment confused me, as I’ve noticed a lot of the fat people who posted here mentioned exercising and eating healthily (I don’t own a car, let alone an SUV and being a vegetarian never eat fast food). I think what most of the people here have been saying is not that being fat is in itself healthy, but that thinness doesn’t always equate to health, and that a fat person who exercises and eats well can be healthier than a thin person with a sedentary lifestyle.
As I said before, healthy habits do not automatically result in a thin body, especially not if you spent the 25 years before you started establishing your good habits (no easy feat, by the way) gaining 150 extra lbs. Would you criticize someone who has smoked for 20 years for quitting because if she had quit sooner, she would have done less damage to her body? People’s lives are not that clean, and childhood habits combined with the cultural discouragements you mentioned are the very devil to combat. Each one of us has only a limited amount of energy to throw into various causes, and changing your life so you can lose 200, 100 or even 30 pounds is a Cause with a capital C – one that takes loads of time, support and money. I don’t blame people for not being willing to sacrifice the other things that are important to them so they can put in the tremendous amount of energy it takes to effect such a change.
Also, if you are fat, is there really any reason not to love your body and be happy with the way you are? (tell me if I’m wrong, but I thought your post implied that that was a problem). Even if someone my size does start losing weight, doing it healthily would take years. Should I be suffering and thinking about how unhealthy it is to be fat that whole time? All of us have habits we would be better off if we changed. What if we never get around to changing them? Are we better off accepting the way we are and making the most of our bodies or constantly loathing ourselves? It’s pretty well documented that constantly loathing yourself (chronic stress) can lead to horrible health problems, including heart disease, stroke and fibromyalgia, not to mention suicide.
MG
Is there a middle ground between accepting ourselves just as we are and self-loathing? I struggle constantly to modify some of my behaviors–I want to do better–but I don’t loathe myself for not being perfect. I try to learn from my mistakes, which means identifying them and so on, but I don’t expect myself not to make any mistakes. (I do realize, however, that those behaviors are not as charged, or as visible, as the ones being discussed in this thread.)
What if we change our habits to ones that we consider to be more healthy and not worry as much about weight, per se? I guess I’m trying to understand the “even if someone my size does start losing weight, doing it healthily would take years” comment. So what if it takes years? Do you have to loathe yourself until you get to some predefined goal? Can you give yourself credit for taking healthy steps, rather than focusing on a goal that can feel very far off? And a lot of healthy steps are self-reinforcing: exercise feels good; healthy food feels good. It seems that the path–doing things healthily–is a goal in itself; if weight loss comes as a result of that, okay, but if not, okay, too.
Unfortunately for the world as a whole, conclusive studies have not been done on what is biologically attractive about men to women. It’s assumed that women are attracted to status and power, which is true, and that that’s as far as it goes, which is not true at all. (For example, one study found that women prefer slightly feminized features in photos of men: men who had low, thick brows and thick beards were thought to be dangerous and mean, while men who were clean-shaven and had wider eye areas were rated as intelligent, sensitive listeners.) Fortunately what I’m about to say largely concerns women and their bodies and attractiveness.
Make no mistake: there is a standard of attractiveness that is universal and transcends cultural norms. The human brain is hardwired to notice certain features about other people in its search for a healthy mate that will produce a healthy next generation. Let me remind everyone before I continue that this standard is not something that necessarily has one damned thing in common with what’s popular in our culture, or in any culture. It is, instead, based entirely on health and fertility.
A woman who has shiny hair and skin that lacks pimples, enlarged pores, cellulite, and stretchmarks is a woman (according to biology, remember, not necessarily modern technology, medicine, or cosmetics) who has a high estrogen level, and thus is a woman more likely to carry a pregnancy to term. Enlarged pores are in fact hair follicles that have never had hair grow in them (actual pores are microscopic), and body hair is a sign of the presence of testosterone (as is, ironically, a balding head). Pimples are small infections: I think it’s easy to see why the presence of harmful bacteria would not be desirable in a potential mate. Estrogen, further, promotes skin elasticity (which is why women start to get wrinkles around menopause: the body is no longer producing nearly the amount of estrogen it used to do).
Roundedness of individual features is also a sign of high estrogen levels, and thus reproductive health: estrogen causes the body to store fat, and because of it, women have an evenly distributed layer of subcutaneous fat cells that make them curvy: round shoulders, curved arms, round knees, hips, waist, cheeks, breasts, et cetera. And this roundness is all an intimation, or better say an imitation, of one thing: her ass. Bottoms are, for many species of mammal, the primary sexual signal, as the genitalia can be viewed and the stage of the female’s reproductive cycle can be judged from them.
Because humans are an upright-standing species, however, and because they are a species that has face-to-face intercourse as naturally as rear-mounting intercourse, human women have developed *another* primary sexual signal: breasts, each one topped with a lovely clitoral mimic, the nipple. You’ll notice, too, that bras try to make breasts more round, and make cleavage a pressed-together line rather than a shadow.
Full, moist, pink lips are mimics of another pair of lips, the labia minora, which flush and become moist with sexual arousal. (Yes, that’s correct: lipgloss serves a biological purpose.) Large, dark eyes pull at heartsrings and turn agression into a protective instinct rather than a harmful one. (Beat other people up to protect me, but don’t hit me when you’re mad, in short.) Notice people who are trying to look adorable, innocent, and appealing widen their eyes, and people, male or female, who are trying to look sexy and mysterious, darken and lengthen their eyes’ shape with cosmetics. Blushing cheeks: again, another sign of sexual arousal, or welcome. Or, if nothing else, a sign of youth. And the younger a woman is, the more likely she is to produce viable, healthy offspring, and survive the process of doing so.
Legs work the same way. You’ll often see pinup girls, asses playfully displayed, whose legs are half again as long as they should be. (Most women have legs that are as long from top of the thigh to bottom of the foot as the woman is from top of her head to the top of her thigh: in other words, about half her body length.) Girls who are going through puberty, while their growth spurts are usually more subtle and gradual than those of boys, have legs that grow disproportionately fast to the rest of their bodies. Again: young female mate, healthy mother and child.
Researchers have also found that, across the globe, men find women who have a low waist-to-hip ratio more attractive than those who have a high one. That is, women who curve in and then flare out markedly are more attractive to men than those who are more willowy. And it doesn’t matter if the woman is fat or thin; what matters is the amount of curve. And guess what: according to hospital records, women with low waist-to-hip ratios have easier, shorter childbirth experiences and shorter recovery times after giving birth.
That’s attractiveness, from a biological standpoint. Notice how there’s nothing in there about color of skin, or relative kink of hair, or tilt or color of eyes, or height. Or weight.
Standards imposed on those grounds are biologically false: they’re cultural, or personal preference.
Nevertheless, a lot of the photographs you see, images of beauty that come from the popular culture, *do* relate in some way to biological attractiveness. Pantene commercials, for example, or lotion advertisements. (Isn’t the alligator cute?) And even then, they fuck us (people, not just women) over, and royally so.
Behavioral science research has shown conclusively that men who are exposed in quantifiably viable and controlled environments and situations to mass media images of beauty, including televison actresses, movie stars, beauty ads in magazines, and mainstream pornography, rate the attractiveness of their mates, or their potential mates, as much less than their non-media-exposed counterparts. They even rate the attractiveness of their mates as markedly less than they *themselves* did before they were exposed to the ads. Not only that, but they rate their satisfaction with their sex lives and the health of their relationship with their mate *overall* as less after being temporarily inundated with these images.
Okay, fine, you say, but you have to admit real women don’t take care of themselves like movie stars do.
Except that that’s actually not true. The images you see of beautiful women as presented by mass media are… how to put this simply…NOT REAL. God gave real women estrogen; She did not give them airbrushes. If you’d like to see just how not real a swimsuit model, for example, is, try this link,
http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html
, which is the homepage and part of the porfolio of a professional touchup artist. Consider this: Jennifer Lopez has a *full-time* body makeup artist. Yeah: body makeup. He uses an airbrush on her. Not on pictures of her, on HER. Or this: many of the most popular female porn stars have plastic surgery to make their breasts larger, their nipples smaller, their faces more feminine, and their hips and thighs less fatty. And they have body makeup, too. *Lots* of it.
Start looking at the magazine covers and the faces in the cosmetics aisle of Target a little more closely, because most touchup work isn’t done particularly well. That lipstick model? They banished the circles under her eyes, deleted the flyaway strands of hair, smoothed her skin, evened her lips, and lengthened the line of her smile so she could look like she was smiling wickedly, invitingly, without actually having to make any lines in her face (No, really, I swear: I think she’s Revlon, but I can’t remember for sure. It’s not just a hypothetical example.)
I’ve asked of my boyfriend that he stop looking at porn, and that, if he has the desire to, we both go shopping for some indie porn that’s a little more reality-friendly. After a few months without it he made a comment about how shocked he was at how much more attractive I seemed to him and how much better our sex life (which hadn’t really changed, in the sense of my suddenly getting a lot better at fucking) was.
So pardon me while I air some sour grapes.
I am a size eighteen, and I am *gorgeous.* My cheeks are cup-able, my breasts magnificent, my hips fingered with a delicate silverfish girdle of strechmarks like a medieval belt, my shoulders lush, my belly eminently pettable. I have skin and hair and eyes that glow with health, and they are helped by a disgustingly healthful lifestyle and consistent cosmetic pampering. And I am, yes, one of those women who has the low waist-to-hips ratio going on. I look like a painting by John William Waterhouse.
I’m told, frequently, however, that I need to lose weight. I won’t go into how I’m told this, or my awful childhood or my even worse adolescence or my stressful adulthood: I think others on this blog have pretty much covered how fucking miserable it is to be pudgy. NOT FAT– just pudgy. God has blessed me by allowing some thin, pretty girls who are not mean, but who are instead sweet, kind, funny, intelligent, and fun to enter my life, because I’m afraid I developed (and still harbor) a real prejudice against girls who fit the American cultural norm of beauty.
And I developed it because they seemed to use that beauty against me. It was a trick of fate that they got it– it’s not like I’m less attractive than they are, just less “beautiful”– and it seemed to me that many of Them (the beautiful people, the beautiful people, duh nuhnuhnuh Nuh) used the social power they were given in entirely inappropriate ways.
“Ugly” girls can scream all they want to that they’re not being treated fairly. While there are still “pretty” girls posing for *Playboy,* trying to get on the cover of *InStyle* or, hell, even *Ladies Home Journal,* no one is going to listen.
As a “beautiful” girl it may benefit you a great deal, financially and socially, to model, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with modelling. But I beg you to consider what pictures of you are going to be used for. Modelling in a nudie magazine, or a beauty magazine, may be a healthful celebration of your acceptance of your body to you, but that doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to be seen by the people reading it, and while you’re using it to get ahead on an individual level, you’re setting feminists, females in general, and the mistaken males who look at that stuff and think that it’s real, back centuries. And though it may sound whiney, those images are severely damaging the quality of life for many, many women, *most* women, in a very real way.
You are culpable for this, models. Those of you who think that one shoot or modelling career makes no difference in the grand scheme of things would do well to remember Kate Moss, or Twiggy, and how profoundly they changed, no, *warped,* the sense of beauty in Western culture. You are responsible for the prevailing cultural attitudes of ignorance, prejudice, and hatred for those of us who wiegh more than 120 pounds, just as those people who drive cars that get terrible gas mileage are responsible for draining natural resources and increasing air pollution unduly. You have every right to think you are lovely, just as you have every right to drive– there’s little you can do about the shape of your body or the burbclave layout of American cities– but the least you can do is try to avoid making life shittier for the rest of us. I have to breathe, too, you know.
And I have to stand in line at the grocery store, looking at the candy bars and the magazines next to them. I have *seen* people look at the magazine covers, look at me, and sneer.
Or flinch.
I guess I’m trying to understand the “even if someone my size does start losing weight, doing it healthily would take years” comment. So what if it takes years? Do you have to loathe yourself until you get to some predefined goal? Can you give yourself credit for taking healthy steps, rather than focusing on a goal that can feel very far off?
Hi Carla,
What I meant by “it takes years” was pretty much exactly what you’re saying. If you do decide to try to lose 100 pounds (or if you don’t for that matter) you need to be able to use, enjoy and appreciate your body no matter what size it is, because the alternative cannot be sustained for the amount of time it will take to drop that hundred pounds.
Also, if you accept and enjoy your body as it is, you will be way less likely to drop your new healthy habits if they don’t make you thin.
If anyone’s interested in reading some real life accounts of what it’s like to try losing 100 pounds or more, there are several really great blogs, including the amazingly tough and funny Robyn Anderson’s
The reason I brought up self acceptance at all is that most attacks on obesity do demand that fat people (women especially) be suitably ashamed about their condition, which I find really weird.
MG
You, know, I really don’t like the “bio-sexist” arguments very much, even when they’re well-intentioned. I don’t believe that people are doomed to behave like animals, for one thing. Hence I have a deep distrust of theories that describe a certain body type’s inevitable “fertility signal” or whatever to a potential mate.
I could have my ovaries removed tomorrow without in the slightest altering my weight or the rest of my appearance. While I do weigh more during certain stages of my ovulating/menstrual cycle, my appearance is pretty much the same no matter what stage/location that damned egg is in. So it just seems more than a tad strange to reduce a discussion of weight down to who looks the most “fertile” and who doesn’t.
With all due respect, Amy, I think you may have misinterpreted what Morphienne was saying in her comment.
You said, “You, know, I really don’t like the “bio-sexist” arguments very much, even when they’re well-intentioned. I don’t believe that people are doomed to behave like animals, for one thing. Hence I have a deep distrust of theories that describe a certain body type’s inevitable “fertility signal” or whatever to a potential mate.”
Unfortunately, you’ve conflated saying that there are biological reasons behind some of what people do with saying that people are “doomed to behave like animals.” This would be like saying that since people have an instinctual aversion to (say) eating green leaf vegetables with blackened edges, an indication of likely rot and therefore unhealthy food, doesn’t mean that people are acting like animals if they don’t eat it.
As I mentioned in my rape post, though, I don’t think that “bio-sexist” arguments, as you called them, are relevant precisely because humans have the option of obeying their instincts or acting in counter-instinctual ways. I think this is what Morphienne was getting at with her post: that there may be some darn good biologically-based arguments as to why overweight women would be attractive to men but that that instinct has been superceeded by cultural concepts of beauty.
Amy, you also said, “I could have my ovaries removed tomorrow without in the slightest altering my weight or the rest of my appearance. While I do weigh more during certain stages of my ovulating/menstrual cycle, my appearance is pretty much the same no matter what stage/location that damned egg is in. So it just seems more than a tad strange to reduce a discussion of weight down to who looks the most “fertile” and who doesn’t.”
I think you misunderstood Morphienne’s use of the word “fertility,” here. As I read it, and I could be wrong, she was using the word fertility to mean “capable of bearing children” and not necessarily “capable of becoming pregnant at this present time.” So the location/stage of the egg during the ovulation/menstrual cycle, and the removal of your ovaries, doesn’t really have much to do with her argument as the biological signals she mentioned would be present regardless of where a woman was in her ovulatory cycle and would simply indicate that she had ovaries, or at least a great deal of estrogen in her system, during puberty. Do you see the difference? You’re speaking of fertility in the temporally specific sense, while she seems to be speaking of fertility in general, if not right now.
Disclosure: I know Morphienne personally, so while I may not necessarily agree with everything that she says, I have a good idea of her position and arguments. I think her original comment was perfectly clear, but that could just be because I’d already talked with her about the subject in general and the original post’s article specifically.
(Shrug.) I wasn’t trying to impugn Morphienne’s character, PDP. Sorry if that’s how it sounded.
But I still don’t like arguments based on the principle of a woman appearing to be capable of bearing children. Again, because appearances in that case can actually be quite deceptive. It’s true enough that women who lose, for whatever reason, enough weight will eventually stop menstruating and become infertile. But it’s also true you can grab two random women of childbearing age off the street and not have any idea whether one, or both, or neither, is fertile.
Also, I dislike it because it’s too easy to turn it against either fat or skinny women: The degrading use of the word “cow” against large women (usually prefaced by the word “stupid” or “silly”) is no mistake, I’ll wager. In that context, one’s “breedability” is clearly being mocked. And if a woman must be lauded for projecting an “aura of fertility” than it would seem that some women (the skinny, the ill, the elderly) must be mocked and denigrated for not projecting it. (No, I don’t mean that you nor Morphienne has done this.) That doesn’t sit well with me, either.
I’ve also heard of women being mocked as “stupid bleeders” or “silly bleeders,” which is simply a variation of the same thing: Fertility (embodied by menstrual blood) naturally being a sign of a small brain. :(
Furthermore, I’m not sure that “there may be some darn good biologically-based arguments as to why overweight women would be attractive to men but that that instinct has been superceeded by cultural concepts of beauty.” I’d consider it more acurate to say that the fetishization of breasts and youth in mass media is a moderation of the image of the fertile women. It’s considered a beauty ideal for a woman to be extremely skinny, but to have large, “youthful” (ie- gravity defying) breasts. In real life, it’s pretty rare to acheive that end without surgical intervention. :( But I gather that if you and Morphienne are correct, the breasts are now standing in for the other parts of the female body that used to send out the “fertility vibe,” or whatever we should call it.
It doesn’t sit well with me, but that’s not meant to be a slap at Morphienne, nor you, okay ?
I wasn’t saying that I thought you had tried to slap at either Morphienne or me; I was just saying that I thought you may have been misunderstanding what she was trying to say. So hey, no worries.
Firstly, I really must apologize: I don’t think that I presented clearly my three themes. Instead I nattered a great deal, and I fear my points got rather lost along the way amongst the specifics. Please allow me to clarify in a (hopefully somewhat) abbreviated fashion.
Firstly: there is a biological standard of beauty that the human mind seeks. The tenets of this standard, as far as women as a subject are concerned, relate entirely to health and fertility, the latter being a term I should have defined as “indicative of the ability to become impregnated, the likelihood of developing a genetically and phenotypically healthy fetus and carrying that fetus to term, and the ability to give birth to healthy offspring and survive the process of doing so long enough to raise the child.”
Certainly this is a theory, in the scientific sense of the word: a hypothesis that has been accepted as true due to consistent and repeated results of the same type in scientifically sound studies. But I must object to it being called “biological sexism.” Every species of animal in the world has some set of characteristics, the presence of which in an individual of that species renders that individual more sexually attractive to members of the species who are looking to mate.
I never for one moment, however, meant to imply that that standard is something our bodies force us to adhere to, and that women who lack those characteristics will end up loveless and alone due to poor genetic material. To think that would, I fully realize, be blatant horse waste, and for several reasons. Firstly, we cheat at it all the time. Those of us who don’t have shiny hair buy VO5 hot oil. Those of us with the money, the ignorance, and the mammary lack get boob jobs.
Secondly, and more importantly, humans have free will. Our biological programming suggests, but it cannot govern, which I believe was the point of an earlier post to this site. There are a lot of things that in the end are SO much more important than attractiveness when it comes to choosing a mate. For many of us, gentle kisses, intelligent conversation, and not leaving sodden towels on the bathroom floor trump even a spectacular set of boobs any day.
But the ability to overcome our programming so easily is a double-edged sword, which was the main, um, thrust of my point. Are super-skinny girls that look like starved twelve-year-old boys biologically attractive? Nope. But they are the cultural ideal of beauty at this point in time. (A few months ago Target stores had models on the ends of their display racks, *skinny* models, mind you, the photographs of whom they had cut up and reassembled so their breasts wouldn’t appear so large.) Biology is being beaten by Gucci and its heroin-chic cohorts. Or, to rephrase: attractiveness based on *health* is being beaten by Society.
And even biological attrativeness is being cheated, in an entirely unrealistic manner, even by those parts of mass media that have decided to go with the biological standard rather than set it aside. Hence the ubiquitous plastic surgery on female mainstream porn stars, the CG resculpting of all those Maybelleine Galateas. All of these images add up to a deluge of Superbeauty that’s so unrealistically beyond the way that actual, healthy, even stunningly beautiful people look that even that even natural beauty, which *wasn’t that important in the first place,* has developed into a ridiculously unfair standard that NO ONE can acheive.
And it’s a standard both sexes fall prey to believing is attainable. Thus heterosexual men are more demanding about the looks of their potential partners, and believe that their mate’s beauty has an effect on the happiness of the relationship in a magnitude thousands of times greater than it actually does; and women think poorly of themselves (it doesn’t help that many of the guys they know think poorly of them, too) because they think that they’ve failed, somehow, or were fated to be less of a person, less capable of gaining and sustaining both their own happiness and the happiness of a mate, because they don’t have the “benefit” of Photoshop instead of a bathroom mirror.
And the women who pose for these ads are culpable in part for helping create this unfair standard. They are using their own cultural acceptability to advance themselves financially and socially on an individual level and in so doing are degrading the spirits and lives of other individuals in a very real way, and that bugs me.
I hope I said this all in a way that was a bit more clear this time ’round. *sighs* It certainly wasn’t any more concise, was it.
Entering late in the game:
Although I share Amy’s nervousness about the bio-beauty arguments, Morphienne’s smart posts and self-description have made me fall in love! Oo la la, girl!
It may be possible to conclude from all of these posts that fat people are smarter and more interesting. ;)
(PDP: present company excluded, of course.)
But it’s also true you can grab two random women of childbearing age off the street and not have any idea whether one, or both, or neither, is fertile.
This is a simple misunderstanding of how biology works. Selection for instincts (such as sexual attraction) don’t act on a 100% certainty basis, merely on increased likelihood of the desired outcome. So if one caveman tends to go for healthy-looking, rounded chicks, while the other prefers a bony look, the former has a slightly better chance of ending up being a father (and thus producing more children with that slight attraction to health and roundness). That preference could be wrong a third of the time (about the mate’s youth and fertility), but that still gives it a 2-to-1 advantage over chance selection of mates. . .
And yes, social influences are now more important in “mate selection” than simple caveman attraction, but that doesn’t mean that the latter isn’t an ongoing influence in what attracts the eye and thus what gets put into advertising and other media.
just to close the link in the argument…
a
???
Well, that was nice and incomprehensible. Maybe I need to ramp up my caffeine consumption again…
I want ot answer this question poasted above:
One thing I’ve run into a lot over the years is harassment from well-meaning, concerned people about how I need to be sure to eat a lot and find a sport I like so that I can “put some meat on those bones.” Is this something that anyone else has experienced? Is this something that’s said to skinny women, or just to skinny men? It seems to me that this is an expression of the concept that men are supposed to be large and muscular and, well, manly.
Both skinny men and skinny women are lectured to eat more and put meat on their bones. I am 5’4″, 125 lbs, which is near the optimum weight based on minimum mortality (study by Calle et al.)
I am often told to eat more. People suggest I might be anorexic. (Why would they think that. I’m 44. My weight has been stable for a long time.) People push desert on me.
Not most people. Strangely, it’s usually strangers! But, sometimes friends.
The fact is, people like to lecture others on their weight. Fat, thin, whatever. Hopefully they won’t start lecturing me on skin care….
You all might be interested in http://www.poundy.com. She’s extremely funny, and, at least in the “about” section and in the posts I’ve read so far, she fits in with many of the issues raised in this thread.
Spam deleted. – PDP
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