Stigma and Counter-Stigma

Posted on February 9, 2006 in Stigma Sugar and Fat

UPDATED

A lively conversation featuring yours-truly-who-can’t-shut-his-trap dashes on over at Shrinkette. There are many good remarks, including those by Travelling Punk, who was upset that the schizophrenic’s weight gain was seen in the context of “beauty”. I agree that this should not be where we should aim our consideration. But the attitudes of the some of the overweight and underweight make it hard not to talk about this.

There are many similarities between the militantly obese and the militantly anorexic. For one thing, ~they~ couch all discussion of their weight in terms of beauty. If you say to a fat right’s advocate (we’re talking hard core here — by no means anything more than a minority) that it looks like s/he has put on a few pounds, you will be accused of imposing your own fashion-industry-clouded-sense of beauty on her/him. If you say to an anorexic rights advocate (yes, they exist) that s/he is growing too thin, you will hear something similar. They both insist that they have a ~right~ to look as they please.*

Fine, though their attitude could be described as a danger to self. But leave this for a moment. The second thing that comes to mind is each faction stigmatizes the other. I know anorexics revile the overweight — and people in the middle. Likewise, the overweight revile the anorexic and often those who have a healthy weight. Beauty issues forth as a line of lances designed to skewer their opposites as unworthy enemies. (Yes, people in the middle do this, too. All the little holes they pierce into the egos of the sick are why they call it “stigma”.) They see their antipodes as unwholesome — which they are — while denying that they, themselves pursue self-mutilation by way of the spoon or the index finger.

A third common factor: they go to great lengths to deny the harm to their health. I’ve been presented with uncorroborated studies that purport to upset our thinking about how much fat is healthy for our bodies. The purpose of these disseminations, I dare say, is to return the conversation back to the beauty issue where the zealots feel they have better grounding. If too much or too little fat is bad for you, they lose the argument. And they know this. So they portray those who care about their survival as oppressors.

In some ways, we are. Many talk about the fashion industry’s effect. Many anorexics are moved by that. Yet the number of overweight Americans is far greater than the number of anorexics. It seems that most people ignore the fashion industry and make themselves thralls, instead, of the food industry. Most of us overweight people don’t like being overweight. It drives up our blood sugar. It makes our hearts work harder. It presses down on our joints, especially in our legs and back. We involuntary corpulents don’t want to turn ourselves into Twiggy: we just want to be back in “the range” of comfort.

People shun people who are not well. Anyone who suffers from mental illness knows this. I am not sure if that’s taught to us or instinctual. Instinct or not, it can be reversed. When we see a skeletal woman, we gasp and back away. When we see a mammoth of a man, we gasp and back away. The trouble is that we also do this to people whose bone structures do not fit our notion of “well”. This gives me suspicion that the stigma may be learned. Big-boned folks mated for centuries. Yet in this age where obesity is more and more common, the large have become identified with the fat.

What bothers many women about the fashion industry — and it is a just complaint — is that they look at their bodies and see a form which does not conform to the slight frames which come down the runways at the big shows**. The message comes to them: you are not pretty. Most of these women and men are, at worst, a tad overweight. They want to be loved for themselves as bodies. It’s all about beauty for them, too.

I can’t say why individuals ~choose~ to be fat or thin. I do know that neither is good for their health — any more than corsets, the beauty item of the 19th century helped the posture and bones of women. I know that the discussion often strays away from health to beauty issues, that there is a stigma against people who are for all intents and purposes sick. Anorexics, I know, sometimes turn out to be either borderline or bipolar. Bipolars often become fat after taking the meds, but I cannot explain the willfully obese.

I do know that there is an epidemic of obesity in this country that is due to fast foods and the use of corn syrup in sweets. Centering discussion around beauty serves as a mechanism of denial for some. We’re supposed to like ourselves as we are but what if we carry that to an unhealthful extreme?

We need to look at our bodies critically. Do we need to lose weight? Do we need to gain it? I’ve told some women that they would look better ten to twenty pounds heavier than they were. One of them was my wife. Was I helping her achieve a healthy weight or was I oppressing her with my idea of beauty? If I tell a friend that he is putting on more weight than is good for him, is that any different? (I wait for them to bring the topic up.)

Within the range, we deserve to love our bodies as beautiful no matter how large or petite they appear.

Beyond our bodies there are the cultural influences: the fashion industry, the food industry, photography, etc. We can best oppose these by taking matters into our own hands, by working with doctors instead of magazines to reach the best weight for our frame and liking ourselves as that.

This is a bizarre time in human history. At no time has such a percentage of our population been so militant about its weight as now. We eat the wrong foods and push ourselves to be like ghosts in a periodical. Instead of being ourselves, we yearn to be someone else. And, at both ends, that is killing us, bringing us to premature ends.

And then there is the big internal contradiction: we scorn the obese and then we saturate our food. We scorn the skeletons*** and buy the magazines and work out on treadmills. The abuse laded upon each does not befit a society which should set health over beauty.

Fallen Angels (Sera) offers her two cents.

*Both movements remind me of bipolar and schizophrenic sufferers who refuse to take their meds because they “want to feel” their altered states.

**Hollywood does it share, but you should know that one reason why it favors the moderately underweight actors and actresses is that it employs wide angle lenses. Wide angle lenses tend to plump you out. Which makes Nicole Kidman’s performance in Cold Mountain even more horrifying to me. Did you see how narrow that corset she wore was!

***I have heard some pretty nasty comments made about anorexics, especially on blogs. For both the obese and the anorexic, it helps to show them that they belong before we can effectively address health matters.