Towards the end of last week, the New York Times published an article (read it here) about America's fascination with watching celebrity yo-yo dieters, our relationship to dieting and fat, fat self-hatred, and so on. Obviously this article only begins to touch on this cultural phenomenon of dieting as entertainment and what it means for the rest of us.
anyway, i thought this bit in particular was pretty thought-provoking:
Quote:
“The culture rewards that self-disgust,” said Kate Harding, one of the authors of “Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body.” “Once you acknowledge that your body is not O.K., then people love you, because that’s what expected of fat people all the time.”
A fat person on a diet sends a social and moral message, said Charlotte Biltekoff, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis who researches food and cultural values. That is because Americans equate body size with Puritan values. Thin means self-discipline and hard work; fat implies laziness, gluttony and lack of willpower.
A dieter signals publicly that she is “in the process of self-denial, recovery and reform,” Dr. Biltekoff said. “So the pursuit of thinness may mean as much as thinness itself. Oprah and Kirstie are performing this for us.”
But what I don't get is that 66% of the American population is either overweight or obese! So if society is sending these messages, and society is made up of the population, and the population is overweight/obese in the MAJORITY, then this sounds to me like a whole bunch of self-loathing projected onto other people.
I also think that rather than a "puritanical" basis to our fascination with celebrity diets, there is a huge component of "schaudenfrode" in American society. That is a term that means "taking delight in others' misfortunes". People love to put celebrities on pedestals, but when there is a problem in that persons' life, they love to tear them down even faster! Weight is one of those public issues that you just, well, can't hide. So, people buy the magazines because they actually get a kick, if you will, over reading about how a celebrity has gained weight, despite their homes in Malibu and Telluride and 8 cars and personal chefs. Celebrities come forward because for alot of them, they haven't had much positive press nor been in the public eye for a long time. This is one venue that will guarantee a cover of People magazine or In Touch or Us. And tabloids publish these struggles because people buy the magazines! If people wouldn't purchase them, they would turn to other topics...kind of feeds on itself.
But I don't think that people turn to celebrity weight struggles as a sign of puritanical value judgements. They turn to them because now the celebrity is "just like us".
And isn't it interesting that Oprah came out in January with a cover story on O magazine about her weight? Despite her vow to not discuss her weight publically again? And this boosted her magazine sales (which had been in decline), coincided with TBL at its height this season, and brought her more press coverage than could be imagined...
the oprah thing was actually the framing device of the whole article. and then discussing the way that watching these celebrities publicly berate themselves over their weight makes an average american of similar physique feel about him or herself.
from my perspective, the answer is yes, yes, and yes. all of the above. i think it's definitely a schadenfreude issue. but i also think it is coupled with a heavy dose of self-loathing and the aforementioned stream of puritan values that runs quietly through our culture and our politics. it seems as though we enjoy watching this as entertainment both because we can identify with it as our own collective or individual struggle and because we sit in quiet judgment. i think there is definitely judgment that goes on, the brunt of which is probably shouldered by the morbidly and super obese. we are a complicated nation of overweight people who hate and judge the more overweight. and then to watch a celebrity own up to some sort of almost "moral" failing with which we identify, it's one of the oldest literary tropes in time - the redemption story - except written for the reality television and celebrity tabloid era.
I'm going a little off-tangent here but I'd like to see an article from "the other side" examining how people get big in the first place in this society. For example:
Why are we inundated with commercials for fast food restaurants and why are there so many of them all over the place? And these tend to be the cheapest places to eat so, for a lot of families, it's a pretty obvious choice.
Why have there been so many inventions designed to make us do less work or moving around (i.e., remote control, robotic vacuum cleaners, video games as babysitters)?
We are so schizo as a society, really. Constantly full of mixed messages. But that's because the message is always adapted to convince us of whatever it is we supposedly need or are lacking or will make us feel better, prettier, stronger, thinner, successful, etc. In a 60-second span, we'll be told about the juicy burgers at one restaurant, followed by a weight-loss product/system.
Two-thirds of the population didn't just decide to get fat. They had help. Seriously...we're pretty sheep-like. We'll follow whatever we're convinced will make us feel better or be better people, or whatever makes the kids happy. So the families head off to McDonald's, where the kids get the latest collectible toy that goes with the latest blockbuster movie. Then we'll get the message about people having heart attacks, high cholesterol, etc., and how we must absolutely be on this or that diet plan or in that gym. If there's one thing this country does well it's market.
Last edited by trekkiegirl; 06-01-2009 at 02:55 PM.
That was a very interesting article. I don't follow celebrities and the whole celebrity culture thing--but I did read the Kirstie article in People with a sort of horror. Why on Earth did she give the interview? Why would she say things like that about herself in such a public way? It may have been propelled by a craving for publicity, whatever, but it showed such a lack of self respect it shocked me.
But I think she does epitomize how we as a society think fat people ought to think of themselves. I think that puritan thing is completely driving what we think our attitudes towards big people ought to be. I agree, though, it's horrible.
I do like how the article ended, though. I realised a long, long time ago that if beating myself up and being down on myself actuall motivated me to change I wouldn't be in the shape I'm in!
I love Kate Harding's blog. Sometimes I feel conflicted between knowing that my weight is unhealthy (bad on my joints, glucose tolerance declining and heading toward diabetes, just not comfortable this heavy) vs. knowing that the desire to be thin is culturally inflicted. On the one hand, I want to say to heck with popular culture; on the other hand, I don't want to have joint problems and develop diabetes. It's so conflicting.
kitchen--you can choose to be a healthy weight without choosing to be thin because society says you "should be."
There are excellent reasons to be a healthy weight--you listed them! But society's "pressure," in my belief, goes beyond "healthy weight." Thin is NOT the same as healthy.
Even the body type held up as a "new paradigm" for women in the fitness magazines is not healthy as most of them are underfat so that their muscles will show.
Nope--I do not think there's any cultural ideal to be "normal" and healthy. Not in North America, anyway.
Last edited by Alana in Canada; 06-01-2009 at 07:04 PM.
I love Kate Harding's blog. Sometimes I feel conflicted between knowing that my weight is unhealthy (bad on my joints, glucose tolerance declining and heading toward diabetes, just not comfortable this heavy) vs. knowing that the desire to be thin is culturally inflicted.
That's interesting. You say the desire to be thin is culturally inflicted, but I would say the reality of obesity is culturally inflicted.
I would say that people don't desire to be thin - they desire to the normal, healthy weight that is so hard to achieve in our culture.
I've often said that my weight loss effort was mainly getting "off the bus" of the American obesity culture. No more fast food. No more grab and go food. No just ordering pizza. Actually cooking. Packing lunches. Having a healthy snack in my purse (since it's nearly impossible to find a healthy snack "out in the wild" red delicious apples from Starbucks, excepted).
Sometimes, I feel like a salmon swimming upstream. I face the same ads, the same temptations in the grocery store, the same glossy dessert placards in restaurants. The constant FOOD PUSHING (Starbucks: tall skinny latte please. Would you like a SCONE? Would you like a MUFFIN? Would you like some CARROT CAKE? why yes I would, but I don't have a spare 700 calories in the day for it). Cakes at work, the "girl scout cookie gauntlet" outside the grocery store everyday. Ice cream served in cereal bowls. Restaurant portions as big as a platter. "Wheat" bread (duh, white bread is wheat bread). 44oz sodas, movie theater popcorn a big as the trashcan under my desk. King size Snickers Bars. 1000 calorie "fruit smoothies" at the "healthy" Jamba Juice.
It's hard work, every day. Worthwhile and necessary, but a struggle.
I've been reading Kate Harding's blog lately, too. (Shapely Prose is the title of it.) I tend to agree with a lot of stuff there. The way I currently eat and move, I'm sure that I am at low risk for chronic diseases, despite the fact that I am still "obese" by the (utterly meaningless) BMI standard. But still, I am working on losing some weight. But then again, I may not ultimately become "thin" by society's standards--even if I -could-, I may not want to work / restrict / <insert other puritanical value here> myself hard enough to get there. The thought of eating 1200 calories most days the rest of my life, simply to be thin...well, that just ain't for me.
Ultimately, being ideally "thin" may not be the healthiest thing for me, anyways. People in the underweight and normal categories of BMI actually are more likely to die than those who are "overweight"--and last week I read the statistic that 20% of cancer patients die from malnutrition, not directly from the cancer. Having some protective fat is pretty valuable in the long run.
My mom has pancreatic cancer, it's a pretty serious situation. She's been losing weight, and she didn't start with more than about 5 to 10 pounds to lose, so now she's just too thin. It's scary. Today she asked me what my goal weight was, then recommended (with motherly concern) that I pad it about 10 pounds. And...I actually think I agree with her about that.
Plus, lately, it's been making me sad to see around here and elsewhere how much moral weight we attach to loving food. Food is not bad, and enjoying food does not make me (or you) a bad person. I love food, and I plan to keep eating it, and enjoying it. Yes, many of the things I love are "good" foods, but I also love a thing or three that I eat occasionally which are definitely NOT good foods, like croissants from the local bakery. That doesn't make me a bad/wrong person, or someone who needs punishment or correction or penance.
I dunno. Those are my current rambling thoughts on our bizarre cultural puritanism around food and weight.
That's interesting. You say the desire to be thin is culturally inflicted, but I would say the reality of obesity is culturally inflicted.
And I say both you and kitchencurtains3 are right--hence, all the mixed messages designed to push a lot of buttons on a lot of people. This society is like Dr. Frankenstein--it creates the "monster", then spends the rest of the time trying to destroy it. Actually, it reminds me more of that creature in the original Star Trek who kept changing appearance--it would appear as different women designed to appeal to different men and sucker them in, literally. Market all possible messages out there and people will get drawn in by whatever (to paraphrase Iyanla vanZant) mirrors their stuff back to them.
I don't really pay much attention to celebrities' weights but I notice it when the media see fit to bombard us with it, or the celebs do commercials. I would have never considered Jennifer Love Hewitt or Cheryl Burke fat by any stretch of the imagination yet they were crucified for having gained a few pounds. Lisa Marie Presley was called fat and compared to her father before she stated she was pregnant with twins. Insane stuff.
Last edited by trekkiegirl; 06-01-2009 at 07:36 PM.
I hate seeing things about celebrities weight. The headline of a magazine "Jessica Simpson got fat!" Seriously? She was a size 1 and now she's a 4, OMG!!!! It's either they're too skinny, too fat...half the time it's probably a bad angle or photoshop anyway, and it's ALL OVER. Can you imagine being a celebrity & seeing yourself all over tons of magazines with the slogan of you being fat?
One more thought before I head out the door - the cultural imperative to be thin doesn't seem to be doing much - obesity rates are the highest they've ever been and still going up.
Culture of fast food/biggie fries makes us fat. Cultural imperative to be thin drives us to diet, which slams us up against the culture to be fat, creating a vicious lose/gain/lose gain cycle that doesn't achieve any lasting weight loss, just makes us miserable. I'm fat! But I want to be thin! Losing weight is SO HARD! 95% of dieters regain! But I want to be thin, but there's cake in the break room, and I love frosting and it's free! Thin! But I'm too busy/tired/stressed to cook, I want to order Dominos. Thin! Girl Scout cookies, gotta buy a box of Thin Mints to support my coworkers kid, better order 2 boxes. Thin! I brought this Lean Cuisine for lunch, but all my coworkers want to go out and get BBQ, I want to go...Thin! Everyone always gets popcorn at the movies, I want popcorn! But I'll drink this diet coke. Thin! No, supersize it! Thin! But salad at a restaurant is boring and everyone else is ordering the cheese fries as an appetizer, I'll just share a little. And on and on and on - the struggle between FAT and THIN in today's culture.
But, you know something, the celebrity issues with weight are plastered all over because people/society buys the magazines.
Marketers and corporations advertise the crap and people choose to buy it.
"Society" by definition is the collection of the population, of which 66% are overweight/obese.
BUT, people are so willing to blame the impersonal third person for their struggles -- "society", "the government", "big corporations"-- when ALL of these entities are made up of you and me. I would feel more comfortable agreeing with this is the average person WASN'T overweight/obese. In Europe, for example, there isn't alot of tolerance nor tact with respect to obesity/weight issues, but the average person isn't overweight! In that case, I could see how "society" (made up of thin individuals) could be seen as judgemental. But not in a society where the majority is, well, fat.
So in THIS culture, at least, perhaps it is time to take responsibility for ones' own weight issues. I've said it before, and at the risk of boring all of you, I'll say it again -- no one forces ANYONE to buy the magazines, watch tabloid tv, purchase the junk, nor go through the drive-thru twice a day, nor to supersize anything, nor to go out for lunch every single day. These are choices that the majority of Americans make every single day yet refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
I think the fascination with all of it is simply because of the fact that the general public likes to see public figures struggle -- take them off their pedestals, so to speak. And to know that these public figures are no better, so to speak, than they are. And the celebrities are eager to tell their story if it means a cover on People magazine, a TV show (anyone remember "Fat Actress"?), becoming a commercial spokesperson, or the possibility of launching their very own fitness/diet program for profit. And the tabloids/corporations plaster the details everywhere because people buy the magazines and products.
Stand up! Opt out! Become independant! Don't fall for the advertising! Exercise your free will and REFUSE to patronize those tabloids, tv shows, books, and products! Let YOUR money talk, and the B#S will eventually stop...
Oh, I agree with you about the personal responsibility. But I also sympathize, because I know (deeply know) that it is difficult to reject all cheap/yummy/frosted foods that are everywhere.
I would be a bit of a hypocrite to say "just take some personal responsibility!" since it apparently took me 20 years to scrape up the required personal responsibility to do so myself.
Instead, I try to show the tools/techniques/strategies that enable me to more easily take the personal responsibility required.
It's one thing to KNOW an apple is a healthy snack, it's quite another to have the healthy snack on hand when you're hungry.
I always knew about the apple, it took me a long time to figure out how to have the apple ready (figuratively speaking, of course, today it was cherries ). It took me a long time to figure out how to say no to cake when it was offered and eat my apple instead (we are socialized to be NICE and refusing cake can seem hurtful to the offerer).
The concept of JUST EAT BETTER is simple, but the implementation is complicated (how do you handle social events? How do you plan a healthy menu? Christmas dinner at Grandma's? Wedding shower? Dinner in Vegas when everyone wants to go to a buffet? Walking past the big packages of Chips Ahoy stacked to the ceiling by the milk at the grocery store?)
And it's true, sometimes I just power through with JUST DO IT - PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY YEAH YEAH but after 4 years, even I cave. I had cake at work last Thursday for a goodbye party for someone who was retiring. The icing just looked too tempting (I had a sugar/tremble headache afterwards to remind me why it might taste good, but I might not feel good). I understand why I ate the cake (even though I rarely eat cake at work), so I understand why someone else might eat the cake (and perhaps more often than I would) and I sympathize with them and their struggle and I know it's sometimes not as easy as just DON'T EAT THE FREAKING CAKE. It seems like it should be that simple, but if it were that simple - 60% of people wouldn't be obese and be struggling.
I get where you are coming from, but the issue is that a "feast day" has become EVERY DAY for most people. As you so eloquently described in your earlier post, "I want it" has become the refrain of the day. I WANT to supersize it. I WANT to have the free muffin. I WANT to go through the drivethru because I am tired. It is almost like this has become a nation of little kids who aren't willing to say "NO" to the gimmee-gimmee-NOW voice that little kids have. No one is saying NO anymore...
We will all have food challenges in our lives. And there are times, such as Easter and Christmas and a few birthdays, and an occasional wedding that one may consider as "feast days" -- those days where for whatever reason (social, cultural...) one eats outside of the norm. But if you look at ALL the special "feast days" in a year, there really aren't 365 of them. And somehow EVERY OCCASION has become a "feast day" -- my colleague's birthday, a long workday, my cousin's graduation, my neighbor's bbq, the first day of summer...And these non-feast days CAN be managed through personal choice: do I have to eat ALL of what is put in front of me at a wedding shower, or can I eat the veggies first and half of the pasta and cut back on dinner back home? : do I have to have that piece of cake for my colleague's birthday, or can I take it and nurse it and hide it in my napkin and pitch it out? : do I have to go to the frozen pizza section for dinner or can I get a Lean Cuisine instead -- they cost the same... : if I eat THIS, should I REALLY be going out for pizza later tonight, too? : do I have to have the potato salad AND the coleslaw AND three hot dogs AND some Frito Lays AND 3 vodka coolers AND a piece of banana cake at my neighbors, or can I have ONE hot dog and the fresh salad instead? ": and MAN I have no options right now BUT I will compensate for this tomorrow...
And there is ALOT of info out there about healthy meal planning! In fact, I'll bet that most people do more research on the type of car that they buy, or the refrigerator that they purchase than they do into the food they use to fuel their bodies. It IS there, and it IS free -- anyone can go to the public library and use the internet there (my DH did this across this fine nation when he bicycled from coast to coast three summers ago). And while they are there, there are a HUGE number of books in the diet section that you can take out for FREE. Public Health units often have nutritionists on staff. Your doctor can refer you to resources. Ask someone who has been successful. The info is there for the taking. It takes time, but IMHO there really is NO excuse for not knowing what you want to put into your body.
And no excuse for eating what we ALL know is crap -- seriously, how many people DON'T know that McDos every day isn't good for you...
Rant over -- promise!!! Man this seems to be a hot button for me!!!
Thanks for listening
Kira
Cultural Fascination with Dieting Struggles
Market all possible messages out there and people will get drawn in by whatever (to paraphrase Iyanla vanZant) mirrors their stuff back to them.
). It took me a long time to figure out how to say no to cake when it was offered and eat my apple instead (we are socialized to be NICE and refusing cake can seem hurtful to the offerer).
