Fatphobia

What makes Americans afraid of growing fat?  Although it is estimated that over 60% of all Americans are overweight to some degree, we still seem, as a people, obsessed with weight-loss and “fatphobia”.

Up until the end of WWII, chubby women were sexy.  Having a bit of “extra” flesh provided curves and softness in women, in particular.  Farther back, in medieval Europe, fatness was a sign of opulence.  One who had weight could afford to eat.  Thin, was the “fat” of the Renaissance through the Industrial Revolution, when the bourgeoisie capitalists could become “fat cats”–conspicuously consuming their wealth in front of their malnourished factory drones.  Yet, even then, women managed to maintain a stockier state.

Obsessive thinness doesn’t seem to really “hit” us until the 1960s, with Twiggy, of course, but perhaps even prior to that with the advent of moving pictures.  The camera always adds weight to it’s subjects, which is neither good nor bad as long as no one cares.  I suspect that as Hollywood improved its cinematic skills it began to realize that “normal” people did not actually “look” normal on the celluloid.  Perhaps they “encouraged” actresses to lose a bit here and there, or perhaps the women took it upon themselves to shed pounds so they might better impress their directors.

But, I don’t think Hollywood carries all the blame.  The 1950s was an age of techno-fascination.  Kitchen gadgets came to foreground as helpmeets for the middle class housewife, cars grew in number, and advances in aviation, medicine, science in general blasted us out of our comfortable round fatness into “keeping up with the Jones”.  Included in much of these developments were also changes in diet.  Not only did fast food hit our culture, but restaurant eating in general increased, and the advent of the pre-packaged meals (TV dinners) and boxed foods with dubious nutritional value and high concentrations of carboyhydrates, fats and petroleum by-products.

Jet forward to the 1980s and 1990s and we see our junk food culture in full bloom.  Instant macaroni and cheese, Chef Boyardee ravioli, Hot Pockets and a vast array of both standard and “lite” insta-meals and foods plague the grocery stores.  Many people (women predominantly) no longer prepare meals from scratch, but from boxes, or shove something into the microwave to “heat and serve”.  People lack the “time” to “fix a meal” and many (including myself) opt to eat out several times a week rather than slave over a stove.

Of course, this means ingesting lots of calories and little nutrition.  And growing fat as a consequence, because simultaneously we exercise less, get out less, stress more and sleep in fits.  Our entire lifestyle is frantic, and when people worry they eat–mostly the wrong foods.

Yet, this isn’t all.  As the middle class, the people who once took salacious pride in showing off their wealth by purchasing Wonder Bread and Hostess Twinkies, became the working class and the working poor, the cost of these unnatural, high-caloric foods became cheaper, relatively.  In fact, they are often half as much as any “natural” equivalent.  Broke?  Hungry?  A bag of Doritos is less than a buck.  Try to make a sandwich for that.   Or a casserole.

Welfare did wonders for fat people.  Since the poorest people in our society had little money to buy food with, they became creative.  Hamburger Helper stretches meals, so who cares if it puts on the pounds.  The kids gotta eat.  Calories and carbs are addictive.  Humans have a disposition toward fatty food with high carb contents.  Box meals fill that need very well.  And cheap works.  So, keep the crap cheap and the poor get fat.

The wealthy, by contrast, now conspicuously consume by purchasing at Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s, where they by “organic” brands in small quantities, or pre-made meals claiming to be handcrafted.  Or, they have professional cooks make their meals.  Either way, they can afford to eat right, to purchase a membership to the YMCA–in essence, they can afford to be thin.  The people who once flaunted their opulence through girth, now do so through thin.  Oddly, they seem to have lost their tolerance for fatness–perhaps because they have never had tolerance for the poor.  When they and those of their ilk were fat blobs rolling in their gold coins they loved their obesity.  Now, they despise it because it reminds them too much, perhaps, of the poverty they equally disdain and attempt to ignore.

Which means guilt also plays a role in our “fatphobic” culture.  The question is whether it is guilt for ignoring poverty as a greater problem, for creating a situation in which the poor must each unhealthily to live, or for rejecting fat to begin with?  Or, some combination of it all?

The question I raise now is who is actually more obsessed with fat?  Fat people or thin people?  Both?  It seems that regardless of the persons size, weight bubbles to the surface in many conversations, particularly with women.  ”I’ve got to lose a few pounds.”  ”No, thanks, I’m dieting.”  ”I think I can afford just one.”  These and other such statements indicate fat looms ever-present in the minds of many people.  Some more obsessively than in others.  Few people can simply eat and enjoy without some offering of how they are “going off diet”, or will “exercise it off later”–as if they are confessing a hideous sin that must be repented and absolved before the next day’s meal.  This, to me, is obsession.  (But arguably so is keeping a blog about fatness.)

Yet, contrarily, we seem to have an equally difficult time talking about fat.  Not in the Hollywood/television way in which fat people are mocked or equally insulted by viewing the fat as somehow to be pitied for lack of control as if fat is some kind of ~ism to worry about.  The conversations we cannot have about fat are those similar to conversations about race we seem unable to have effectively, either–conversations in which we can acknowledge the differences but understand that we need not dislike, distrust or mistreat each other based on these differences.

A what a wonderful world it would be.  [To be continued...]

Tags: conspicuous consumption, fat, fat culture, fatness, fatphobia, food, nutrition, poverty, wealth