with being poor? I am from a large family with 6 children. We grew up pretty poor. I can still remember the day an older man (drunk) in our small hometown made the comment that me and my siblings were all skinny because we were poor. It took me many years to learn that I took this to heart. I did my best in school and completed college. I remember thinking as I got fatter that I could afford to eat whatever I wanted now. My new "curves" were like a sign to the world that I wasn't poor anymore.
It is just the opposite for me now. I have learned that taking care of your body isn't based on financial status. I really think this may have been a mental roadblock for years with me where my weight was concerned.

Interesting. I always think of this as being related to being better off financially. You know, like LA actresses or plastic surgeons or tanned lawyers.

I know where you are coming from. My Grandmother has a similar thing. She thinks that if you are thin, you are ill. If you are chunky, then you are healthy. Too funny.

I can see it both ways though, i have seen the poor skinny kids and i have also seen the poor fat kids. To me, at this point in my life, i think of thin, i think of more money. It costs a lot of money to get to a gym, buy fresh veggies, and fruit. It is a whole lot cheaper for my family to get a bunch of processed carbs for really cheap, think beans, rice, and pasta...all that is dirt cheap.

SO i guess all in all, bony thin, i think of undernourished. Healthy weight i think good income. Overweight i think poor, cheap diet.

Interesting question.

Interesting. Used to be that tans were associated with working outdoors (poor) and pale skin with a life of leisure (rich). Now tans are associated with people who have lots of time to play outside ($$$). Same thing with weight. Chubs meant $$ to spend on more than enough food. Now that the cheap food is often sooooo unhealthy (think dollar menus), poorer groups tend to have higher rates of obesity.

Same thing with breastfeeding. I see many immigrant women who want to formula feed so that they can be like "rich Americans"....but of course that is changing cause women with more education (and more $$) are breastfeeding and with WIC supplementing formula costs and terrible working conditions (pitiful maternity leaves, nowhere to pump), breastfeeding is now becoming more of a "privileged" behavior....women with less money often choose to formula feed at a higher rate...

All perceptions based on what people want to believe about the haves and have-nots.

I am the oldest of seven, six of us together at once (littlest came later) and I really didn't have a concept of money then, but looking back we def didn't have a lot of money. My problem was getting enough food, if you didn't eat fast you didn't get more! And even then you might not get more. Today I still eat WAY too fast! And when I was able to buy my own food, I could eat what I wanted, when I wanted and I ate it fast. Like I couldn't think that there was going to be a tomorrow and I had to eat NOW. I can't seem to get the speed of how I eat down, but I have def cut the portions!

midwife, I know exactly what you mean about the breastfeeding too. I chose to breast feed both of my babies even though I could have afforded formula. I actually had some uneducated people tell me that breast-feeding was just for poor people. Come to think of it, it was my sister, the one that calls me anorexic. lol. She also told me that breastfeeding my babies was "unfair" because it didn't allow for her and others to hold the baby and feed it. Now how stupid is that.

I now associate being thin with having more money for the proper food. When I was young I definitely ate too fast. Even though we were poor, there was always enough food. My mom fried everything and made biscuits and gravy every day. Plus, always a cobbler for dessert. We were all skinny because we played sports and played outside every day. Something most kids don't do these days.

An interesting thought to this is to read up on the casting for the original "The Grapes of Wrath" movie, starring Henry Fonda. The movie was about of poor, poor people who were moving from the dust bowl of the American Prairies in the Depression to California in order to find work. The interesting thing about the casting was that the woman who played the mother was really, really overweight. When asked why he didn't cast a thin woman as the movie was about poor, displaced people who had all of their belongings loaded on a truck while they moved West, the director said that a LARGER woman made more sense. This is because he knew through research "back then" that the cheapest food source was potatoes, and a diet rich in starch would make you large. Only the rich people could afford beef/chicken, and with a balanced diet, would be thin.
Interesting...

I've never had that association, but I know that a lot of other cultures do. I know that in India and Africa it is a sign that a person is wealthy if they are carrying extra weight because the "average" people don't have enough money for food or at least not an excess of food.

On the thought of eating to fast or hoarding food... I don't remember this, but my older sister has told me that as a child my alcoholic mother didn't feed me while she was incapacitated so my sister would have to break into our house to feed me. So in my case, there truely was a time I didn't get "enough" and have been told numerous times that it could be a reason I've have such an odd relationship with food.

Thanks everyone for the comments. It took me literally many years to realize that this may have contributed to my over-eating as an adult.
I can also remember my grandmother telling me that being sun-tanned and thin was a sign of being really poor when she was growing up. It meant you had to work all day in the fields.

Fascinating thread!

Lillybelle, it's good you know better than to listen to that sister of yours!

Thanks Phantastica, I never listen to her. I think her problem is that since she is the youngest and had always been the smallest for years, that she just hates me and my older sister being smaller than her. I wish she would lose some weight for her own health (she has high blood pressure and colon problems) but there is no way to get someone else to lose weight. She will do it when she is ready. I love her dearly but her comments often get on my nerves.

Wow. That seriously blew me away. Does she think breast are only there as decorations??? I never knew there was any kind of stigma attached to breast feeding. You learn something new every day.

As for the thin=poor, I never made that connection. I think the poorer kids when I was young tended to be fatter, as is the trend today.

not to me... it costs more to eat properly and heatlhy and in a way that will generate weight loss. Poor people fill up on white cheap starches like pasta and rice....

Yeah, I usually associate being thin with having money.

But I totally understand why you felt that way for so long.

A weight/money related story: a really close friend of mine was adopted when he was 8 into a very loving family. His life before that wasn't so good and he was malnourished when he was adopted. For a while after they brought him home, he would steal money and hoarde food in his bedroom. They had no idea until it started smelling. He was hiding entire sandwiches under his bed, that sort of thing. He's at a healthy weight now, but he still associates food and weight with money and security. He eats faster than anybody I've ever met, like somebody's going to take it away from him. Things from your childhood really stick with you...it's amazing how our relationship with food is formed.

I don't know that it's specifically monetarily poor. In other countries, poor means you can't afford to eat 3 meals a day. But for America, it means you get assistance. Not enough that you can eat the best of everything, but enough to help out. You get what food pantries have in stock, and it may not even be fresh, much less healthy, fare. You get what foodstamps will buy until they run out. But you don't miss meals. Now if you have parents that neglect you, while they may be poor, you're not missing meals because they don't have money, but because they just don't care.

But I think that the poor are more uneducated about eating too. Not only is it cheaper to buy a 5 lb. bag of potatoes and some pintos and flour, but it's the only way they know to eat. Their mothers ate/cooked that way, their grandmothers and great grandmothers. It runs in my family. I never did learn how to make the family buttermilk biscuits. Good thing now though since I avoid white flour. Though I can make a mean gravy...mamma taught me how. And you can always rely on grandma to make a 5 gallon batch of potato salad when company's coming over.

Now they grew up poor, but my parents have enough money that they can eat out at least 6 or 7 times per week...and they do. But rather than make a batch of buttermilk biscuits, they just head to Tudor's Biscuit World and buy buttered biscuits. Dad will get a Gravy 2 platter everytime (2 biscuits - and they're HUGE - with gravy), and can never eat more than one of them and throws the rest out. Why? Because his eyes are bigger than his belly (though they don't look it) and because it's all he knows I guess. But man what a waste.