Between Fashion Threads and Gluten

Posted on October 14, 2003 in Consuming Sugar and Fat

I’ve noted that the issue of weight has been wafting over the faces of a few blogs (including my own thanks to the thoughtful words of a guest blogger). I wonder if anyone aside from myself has ever thought of the question like this: we are the battleground where the fashion industry and the food industry attempt to entangle us in either their threads or their corn fibers. The one wants us thin because thin people require less yardage to cover them and the chic that comes with being thin means that they will buy more clothes. The other wants us to eat, so that we will purchase more grain, fruits, and meats. Either temptation, pursued too far, leads to a disease, either of wasting or bloating.

Our commercial masters want us either anorexic or obese so they can possess symbolic units, totally invisible, without substance, and yet more persuasive in our lives than the idea of God.

So how do we, who live by the dollar, become the dangerous people of whom Richard Wright speaks, those who have found a way to live by rules and values that are not of the system which demands that we squabble over money so that we can purchase these extravagances and then, when we have ruined our bodies by excess, seek expensive medical care and gym memberships?

What is the Middle Path?