Fat = Un-Civilized ?? Really?

In Amy Farrell's book entitled Fat Shame, she examines the ideas of civilized vs. uncivilized when it comes to body weight in chapter three. When discussing this chapter in class, my group discussed that the key between these points (civilized and uncivilized) was if you were able to control your instincts. If you were incapable of controlling your instincts about food consumption and had a "fat" body then you were considered uncivilized, thus meaning that if you could control those instincts you were categorized as civilized. (Due to Farrell's lack of masculine influence in her book, I will be discussing about primarily men and their roles in this idea.) But has this always been true?

If you look back into history at King Henry the VIII (left picture), you will see that he was considered to be a large man. But at this time in history, fatness was seen as an image of wealth and power. They had a lot of money so they could afford to eat well, while the pheasants were shown as very skinny signifying little or no money to pay for food. When you compare the image of Henry the VIII (powerful man) to our current President Obama there is an obvious difference. The picture of President Obama shows his slim figure while the picture of Henry the VIII shows his large body size. So in the sense of the power structure, the image has flipped from fat = power to skinny= power. As discussed in class, we decided it would be very, very difficult for an overweight politician to win a presidency because of the social constructs that tell us that fat equals uncivilized.

Farrell states that "Interestingly within this line of thinking the differentiation between women and men was most pronounced the higher one rose in the "civilized ranks", and least pronounced among the more "savage" people, whose size, clothing, and cultural roles appeared scandalously close according to contemporary observers" (pg 63). This sentence emphasizes the ideals of civilized rank and how body weight rises proportionally. Which was clearly visible in leaders of European countries. However this stigma changed after the 16th century, "one of the key bodily signs of inferiority for scientists and thinkers of the 19th and early 20th centuries was fatness" (pg 64). The inferiority was directly related to body weight (fat now equaled un-civilized).

This change seemed to be directly related to the industrial revolution and the want to resist the king and yearn for more and more possessions.

The un-civilized "fat" body is looked at with criticism and scorned for the way that person has decided to act on their instincts of food consumption. However, when looking at a malnourished body, many may have sympathy or the want to help. This clear divide is sad to me because regardless of weight, people need someone to look out for them and help them through problems with weight gain or loss.

Body weight and social class rank have always seemed to go hand in hand even though the ideas have jumped in past decades. Weight will always be an aspect of our culture that we can not eliminate. The "civilized" and "un-civilized" body will always be an area of controversy because of the generalization and categorizing images that place people into these offensive categories.

I leave you with these questions. Where do you think you fit into these categories? Are you happy with your category of civilized and un-civilized?