Battle of the Bulge

11th June 2007

posted in Body Image, Eating Disorders, Fat Acceptance, Fitness/Exercise, Health/Nutrition, Pop Culture |

Last week marked end of the quarter week, with all its projects and papers due. Now that spring quarter is officially over and summer looms careless and course-free, I’ll be updating with greater Fiberall-like regularity.

For those of you with cable television, TLC had been advertising the show Big Medicine for the past couple weeks. It airs tonight at 9 p.m. eastern time. The commercials feature a bevy of morbidly obese people in their underwear in shadowed lighting so you can’t see their faces, all lamenting how being fat is the absolute worst existence in the world.

The show follows the personal stories of the severely obese who turn to Houston’s Methodist Weight Management Center as a life-changing last resort. At the heart of the operation is passionate father and son surgeon team Robert and Garth Davis, a pair who have dedicated their professional lives to raising awareness about obesity.

From the show’s blurb:

Often as gripping as the patient stories is the colorful relationship between this father and son team where old school meets new school head on… Despite these differences, the pair unites in the operating room to fight a common enemy and change lives forever.

This last line reminds me of a poster I saw while shopping the other day. A new boot camp-like fitness center is opening in a nearby shopping center, run by a man who can only be described as the love child of Rambo and Jenny Craig. “Defeat fat,” the poster declared.

In 2004, then U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona declared a “war” on obesity.

“As we look to the future and where childhood obesity will be in 20 years … it is every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today. It is the threat from within.”

Defeat fat… Common enemy… Terrorist threat… C’mon. This isn’t some communist country or radical 9/11-inspired terrorists we’re talking about here. We’re talking about our bodies. Instead of My Body Myself, we’ve gone to My Body, My Enemy.

Those with eating disorders often describe feeling alienated or disconnected from their bodies. Anorectics and bulimics, like all addicts, are masters at seeking external solutions to internal sources of emptiness and distress. Bodies becomes the enemy, something foreign to be subordinated, tamed and perfected.

The language amongst the eating disordered and these self-proclaimed soldiers against obesity is no different: it doesn’t address the underlying reasons for why someone is obese. Fixing the outside rarely fixes the inside, a point that was lost on me for many years. Like the eating disordered, many obese people suffer under the delusion that always accompanies obsession, which is to view the object of desire as the solution rather than part of the problem.

Instead of seeing our body as the “enemy,” perhaps we should make peace with it, regardless its size.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Body Image, Eating Disorders, Fat Acceptance, Fitness/Exercise, Health/Nutrition, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On June 12th, 2007, fatfu

said:

Beautiful post. As you probably guess I’m wildly in agreement with you on the rhetoric being completely over the top and destructive. I’d add that public health officials have also compared fat to the avian flu and a “tsunami” a “national security crisis” and predicted it will “bring down our healthcare system.”

It’s interesting how body-hate is considered pathological if you’re thin but “healthy” - in fact essential - if you’re fat. In fact those of us in fat acceptance take an enormous amount of flack for even the mildest most oblique comments about self acceptance. For anyone else - almost regardless illnesses or problems - the salutary effect of self-acceptance and loving your body is totally noncontroversial. But for fat people there’s the assumption if we don’t actively loathe our bodies we’re in danger of forgetting we’re fat. God forbid.

How perfectly bizarre that we expect anyone to “accept their body” when that acceptance is so fundamentally predicated on your body being “acceptable.”

My one caveat is I’m not a big fan of assuming there must be a deep interior “cause” for fat. I’ve had too many fat friends spend years trying to “analyze” their eating and their weight, picking apart their flaws and their weakness, and becoming increasingly mired in the proposition that there’s something deeply “wrong” with them - there must be, because they’re fat. And the more they try to be thin and fail, the deeper and more entrenched they decide their psychopathology must be, and the more they dig for further evidence. And of course find it.

But so much of weight is just a physiological propensity that doesn’t require a lot of self-analysis. I think if a person is eating in a very unhealthy way, or not getting exercise, they know it regardless of what the scale says, and *that* could require examination - but it’s not necessarily the “cause” of their weight, and working on that won’t necessarily make them normal weight. So on that you’re so right - just focusing on the object of desire - that perfect body (that will reflect a perfection of the internal self, perhaps) - is so misguided.

posted on June 12th, 2007 at 6:42 am

2 On June 12th, 2007, Rachel

I agree with your caveat also Fatfu - but I do think that just as there are many obese people who are so because of genetics, there are also as many who are obese out of poor nutrition, overeating or a sedentary lifestyle (or combo of all three). That’s why I added the disclaimed of “many obese people” and not “all obese people.”

In my research on the social history/psychology of food, I’ve noticed a steep upward trend in obesity rates since the formation of the industrial city. Today, with the rapid and easy availability of fast food, processed food and food with relatively zero nutritional value, combined with the shameless marketing of junk food guised with clever cartoon characters to kids, I don’t think we can underestimate its impact in obesity rates in the U.S.

posted on June 12th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

3 On June 12th, 2007, Rachel

Oh, and fatfu - I wrote about your first point before. I’ve noticed that things I did when I had an eating disorder are now being recommended for obese people, i.e. The Secret, and many other diet plans out there. It’s unhealthy for thin people to the point the behaviors characterize a mental illness, but its perfectly acceptable for overweight people.

posted on June 12th, 2007 at 1:07 pm