Reading the first chapter of Fat Shame brought forth a couple of emotions in me: namely disappointment in American beauty culture and a feeling of vindication. The latter traces back to a conversation I had with a friend of mine over the summer, who we’ll call Ben. The chat started with a healthy debate over his outrage that an extremely fat person, who used a motorized scooter to get around, would be so audacious as to demand that certain business in her area be more accommodating to the handicapped such as herself. Although Ben and I were good friends, I knew he wasn’t perfect and that he was quite the ableist, but I had no idea of the extent of his discrimination. He told me sickening things, like that ALL fat people were utterly disgusting, and that if he had a child with a woman that he found relatively attractive and she kept the weight that she gained after the birth, he’d leave her. The whole time I was reeling and outraged at both his ignorant words and the fact that there was so little it seemed I could do, given that he was so stubborn and absolutist.
After getting started with this reading I can now say that I’m equipped with enlightening facts that have helped me understand health issues regarding fat people (and also might have shed some light for Ben too, stubborn as he may be), but have also made me start to think about why it is that we’ve come from loving the natural fleshiness of our bodies to despising the very matter that makes us up.
For starters, Farrell mentions that many of the medical reports trying to establish obesity as a disease “were written -- or ghostwritten -- by those with a large financial stake in research: pharmaceutical and medical firms that focus on eradicating obesity” (11). Ben knows as well as I do that usually pharmaceutical companies are up to no good, and are focused on making profits rather than making people healthier. Pharmaceutical companies are linked with government agencies like the FDA, whose actions and policies can very easily be swayed by the motives of individual people or in this case, a pervasive societal ideology; that fat is repulsive and malignant. I must also note that some of these articles were ghostwritten, meaning that whoever actually conducted the research created an outline which would then become the basis of the actual report that someone else would write. (It’s how John Grisham publishes so many novels.) Obviously there is a lot of room here for error and embellishment, which would then be passed off as hard fact. But this is just speculation. After all, I’m no scientist.
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| Image taken from http://www.adipositivity.com/ (NSFW) |
But even so, I can’t help thinking that we must have been doing something right before this epidemic of fat-phobia. Farrell discusses 19th century Americans being able to gain weight and keep it on due to lower prices of food and better healthcare on page 18, and the fact that a heavier body was a class status marker. I know for a fact that the female sex hormone estrogen is stored in fat cells*, which is why very underweight women eventually stop getting their period and why many plump women face usually no great health risks due to their size. Farrell touches on this as well on page 12, with the account of the women studied at UC Davis who were able to increase health factors without becoming thin. Correlating meatiness with health just kind of makes sense to me, as opposed to stick-thinness. While I still personally don’t see being very obese as healthy or desirable, I still firmly believe in letting others live their lives the ways they feel they should, because it’s not my place to force my ideals onto their bodies.
Yet others do. I feel that no matter what generation you are a part of in America, you’ve got some experience when it comes to either normalizing or being normalized, in terms of weight. Thinness is a social marker that now represents popularity and beauty, completely alienating those who fall outside of its narrow bounds and pushing them to the other side of this dichotomy, the place reserved for the ugly and socially outcast. I found it striking that according to Farrell, “if [the fat body] had a color, it would be black, and if it had a national origin, it would be illegal immigrant, non-U.S., and non-Western” (8). Although we’ve striven to become more and more politically correct and equality-happy over the decades, fatness is still shunned, being seen as a choice and not a disadvantaged category a person is born into, like being Black or foreign-born. While you can’t change your citizen status or your race, you can lose weight to gain social acceptance, with increasingly drastic measures becoming more mainstream. It’s no mistake that there are about 80.5 million Google search results for “lose weight” and only 37.2 million for “gain weight.” Hopefully in the coming years something will come along, some wave of empowering inspiration that breaks this tragic cycle.
*Forgive me for using Wikipedia, but this was the only somewhat reliable article I could find quickly that was NOT related specifically to weight loss products/methods.
You go, girl! I can't even begin to count the number of times I have seen a look of disdain towards not-thin people. Not everyone has the opportunity to gain or lose weight depending on body structure and habit, especially when class is involved. There are criteria for most medical procedures and I won't even get into the health care system and their lack of actual HEALTH care.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the question we should ask is why it is assumed that not-thin people need to lose weight. What has our media and even news reports told us about being fleshy? Better yet- when they show pictures of people's asses and body without their permission to prove a "point"? Knowing what is "healthy" is the first step, because most of the time it is assumed that anyone with meat on their bones need to lose weight-prove it to me.
ya know?
I agree with you that each generation has had different experiences with normalizing or being normalized, in terms of weight. From my own personal experience I have always lived in a world where thinness was the norm and being fat was considered ugly and abnormal. It is unfortunate that we live in a world where we must diet and fight against our bodies to be socially accepted. It seems unfair that the media bombards us with images of foods that we must have but then tells us we are fat and wrong for eating them. It is a cycle that is destructive for every American. Personally, I will be watching Food Network (an entire television channel devoted to eating) and I will want the food but would never eat it because I know it could make me fat. The media is responsible for the desire of food as well as the negative emotions while eating it. Is there any way to escape the media's cycle of positive images of food and their association with negative messages about being fat?
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a lot of women on women bashing going on when it comes to female body image. It’s not just men, like Lillian’s friend Ben, who are complaining about women being overweight. I know many girls who have criticized their peers for being, in their words, “hefty” and “unattractive.” And at the same time, there are those, and I shamefully include myself among these people, that have criticized individuals for being “too thin.” Both of these criticisms are founded on what we perceive to be the individuals personality. If they are “fat” we think that person is lazy. If they are too skinny we think they are way too obsessed with their physical appearance and don’t eat. Neither of these viewpoints takes into account actual medical information. Maybe that person that you perceive as overweight actually lives an active and healthy lifestyle. It’s also probable that the skinny girl has a naturally fast metabolism.
ReplyDeleteBut why do women, or anyone for that matter, feel the need to criticize other people’s bodies? As has been suggested in the previous comments, the media has managed to keep the public’s mind perpetually on the way an individual’s body looks. It’s a source of conversation and gossip. Also, it’s a way people can visually make judgments about other peoples lives.
In a way, the dieting craze that has swept America is a social class issue. To illustrate I’ll use the example of popular fashion. Magazines, TV, movies, advertisements, etc., promote the “in” clothing styles. If you are wearing the newest styles you thus become one of the “cool,” “hip,” people. If you don’t wear the current trends presented in fashion magazines you are not considered modern or “cool.” This is similar to the idea of being thin for several reasons. #1: the thin body ideal has been created and promoted through the media (ex. Fashion magazines). #2: those that fit the media’s model of the right body are granted more societal acceptance (people that wear trendy clothing). #3: those who do not fit into media’s ideal are condemned (those that don’t wear stylish clothes).
It's quite ironic (but sort of fitting) that a country which is so overwhelmingly overweight would also be so anti-fat. And that's certainly a huge part of the problem.
ReplyDeleteLike you so fittingly pointed out in your analogy, Americans have developed the mentality that fat is bad, and skinny is good, yet they fail to consider the ramifications that that sort of thinking can have on both themselves and others.
As Farrell acknowledges in Fat Shame, we need to start emphasizing the importance of health, not just looks.