Weight Stigma History

This past week was Weight Stigma Awareness Week, an important reminder for all of us to be mindful of how we treat people of all shapes and sizes.

Yet why is this stigma so pervasive? It is not simply about health concerns. It has a very moral focus, including beliefs that those overweight:

-       are lazy

-       lack willpower and self-discipline

-       are not intelligent

And to be clear, these characteristics are applied to people not only in relation to weight control, but in all areas of life. For example, some people might hesitate to hire a fat person because of the assumed laziness and lack of intelligence. But why would anyone have this assumption?

Author Peter Stearns addresses the “why” question in his book Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West, a fascinating delve into when, where, and how the opposition to fat came into play in America and France.

He talks some about the medical aspect, and how public opinion started to turn against fat when certain tests showed that excess weight contributed to some health conditions. But he also focused heavily on the moral aspect of weight stigma, something that I found more interesting.

Stearns argues that the stigma against obesity took on religious overtones – connotations of sin, guilt, punishment, judgments of food and eating as good and bad – once people started having greater freedom in other areas. Fat became a “secular sin,” with success resulting in “painful but rewarding control” even as other areas became more out of control.

Specifically, America became a more consumerist society. People began to heavily indulge their appetite for things, which had not previously been considered acceptable, so they needed some other way of establishing “moral credentials.” Dieting and weight-focus provided the perfect opportunity.

Stearns further commented that equating fat with laziness worked as a way of identifying those with good work ethics during a period when more leisure time and focus on consumerism directly opposed the Victorian middle-class work ethic. “By extension, an appropriately slender figure could denote the kind of firm character, capable of self-control, that one would seek in a good worker in an age of growing indulgence; ready employability and weight management could be conflated….” (p. 59)

Another area of freedom came with changes in women’s sexuality and clothing. Sexuality and dieting almost went hand-in-hand, since more revealing outfits, designed to be sexy, displayed more of the body, making women yearn for slim figures even more. This aspect of it focused more on women, and still does.

And the fact that people, men and women alike, eased up on religious discipline, encouraged them to reference eating and the very obvious result of heaviness or slenderness as examples of good character. This was a benefit “to those who might through diet salve their consciences, made somewhat uneasy by growing consumerist and sexual pleasure.” (p. 64)

Stearns offers many more examples and thoughts in the book, and although it doesn’t make weight stigma go away, I personally found it helpful to gain a greater understanding of the history of it. It provides me a better sense of what might prompt people to badly treat those overweight, and with that understanding, find the best ways to change those attitudes.

You Were Made Beautiful

Note: The religious references in this are based on my understanding, which may be incorrect, and if so, my apologies. This is not intended to offend anyone’s religion or beliefs.

What if you woke up every morning simply knowing that you no matter what size or shape, you were beautiful? What if, when you looked in the mirror, you did not see flaws but only the good, and your thoughts were not about how you looked but how you could make your inner self as beautiful as the outer self? What would that feel like?

This is essentially unheard of among most women I know, but when I talked to Sara Schwartz at the Portland branch of the organization Slim Peace, she said that for the Muslim women she had met, this is the norm.

She said that Muslim women believed that God had made them beautiful, and that they did not have the same body image issues as the other women. This made me curious, so I looked up more information about Islam, I found an article about the hijab, which included this thought by Saba M. Baig: “How beautiful I think of myself and knowing that Allah finds me beautiful makes me feel beautiful.”

For most women I know, this concept of considering ourselves beautiful because we were made that way is likely hard to grasp. So many instead instantly think of the negative aspects of their body, how much weight they believe they should lose, how unsightly certain parts are, etc.

I thought it would be wonderful to start thinking this way myself. The only problem is that I don’t believe in god, or any deity. Then I remembered an entry in my journal from the summer of 2010:

I once tried to shun the physical world, live only in my head, but no longer. My body ties me to this world, its atoms composed of stardust and the molecules of my ancestors, and this is all to be celebrated, not ignored.

And I realized that I don’t have to subscribe to a particular religion in order to believe that I have been made beautiful. I understand that for some, the belief in a deity creating them this way is very meaningful and powerful, but this approach does not have to be restricted to them. We can all find our own way of coming to that idea.

For me, thinking of evolution, of the sheer wonder of my body, and knowing that we are all comprised of stardust is enough for me to know that I am made beautiful.

I’m now going to try keeping that in mind when I think of myself, and I invite you to join me, in whatever way works for you. Let’s see what it feels like to consider that we are lovely by design.

Does Your Plate Matter?

Does the plate you use affect your eating?

I didn’t think so until a few years ago when I experimented with it by getting a new plate and discovered that having something pretty to put my food on did make a difference in how I ate (see my post about Eating With Our Eyes).

So you can imagine my sorrow a couple of weeks ago when I dropped the plate while cleaning, and it shattered all over my kitchen floor.

I had gotten used to it, and while the novelty had worn off, I still enjoyed it, something I didn’t fully realize until I didn’t have it anymore. I had other plates, of course, and while they weren’t ugly, they weren’t anything particularly special.

I therefore ventured out to look for a new plate and quickly realized that it wouldn’t be as simple as I’d hoped, since I now had certain expectations.

One: It should be pretty, but not overtly ornate or ostentatious. Two: It shouldn’t be too large or too heavy. Three: I wanted something of a similar color to what I had before, blue but not a solid color, since some contrast was nice. Four: I also didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg on it.

I wandered around some of the pottery places in downtown Portland, but nothing quite worked. Then I checked out Georgetown Pottery online and quickly found something I liked, a dessert-sized plate – in fact, I found several items that I liked, but I only ordered one, and it arrived yesterday:

While it wasn’t the same as my first plate, of course, I did have fun using it, and it again made me focus on trying to make my food presentation match the prettiness of the plate. It also makes a good base for any food photos, like the cookies I made:

I still wish I hadn’t dropped the other one, but it’s been a good reminder of the importance of plating, and how a nice presentation of food adds to the enjoyment of eating.

The Safety of Being Overweight

If you’ve struggled with losing weight, have you ever wondered if being heavy provides some benefit, protection, or safety?

It’s not easy to think about, and certainly not something I ever considered until I started losing weight in late 2000 and had a moment of panic. It took me completely by surprise, particularly since I hadn’t lost that much – twelve pounds out of an eventual 135. But I had enough of a start to know that I would get to my goal, and that frightened me.

As I wrote in my journal in November 2000:

“If I go through with this, which I have every intention of doing, I will at some point have to deal with the fact that I will be attractive. That shouldn’t be a scary thought, and yet somehow it is. Because in that case, if someone rejects me, I won’t be able to have the comfortable, superior thought that it’s because of my weight – it would be because of me.”

I had never before realized how much I relied on my weight as a balm to wounded pride. While I’m sure that sometimes people did judge me and treat me harshly because of my weight or what I ate, it probably wasn’t the case all the time.

I simply didn’t want to look at myself more closely to see what might cause someone else to reject me or be mean to me. I felt that I suffered enough in my daily life, with the burden of my size and other adolescent differences, and leaning on the weight as a scapegoat became very easy.

That moment in November 2000 forced me to think that perhaps part of me hadn’t wanted to lose weight those earlier times because I found some measure of unacknowledged safety in my size. Confronting that truth humbled me, making me understand myself in ways that I hadn’t wanted to admit.

On the flip side, only by acknowledging that truth could I let go of my safety net and summon the courage to continue losing weight, recognizing that I did it for me, to achieve my goals, not based on what anyone else thought.

And having come through that, I have learned that while some people may still reject me, or be mean to me, it’s not because I’m a bad person. Certainly I make mistakes, and I can’t please everyone.

Even more important, though, I’ve often found that if people judge me harshly, it’s often not because of me at all – it’s because of their own issues. I only wish I had known that sooner, so I might have had an easier time letting go of that safety to be my authentic self, no matter what size.