Body image and cultural stupidity

[hummingwolf]

Back in June, nellorat posted an entry called Outrage, Good for the Soul (Fat-Phobia Remix), to which I'd posted this comment (with just a little froth at my mouth):

All I really have to say is that people's attitudes towards weight seriously weird me out. I mean, the new medication I'm on can do unpleasant things to people's livers and (for women, at least) reproductive systems, yet the most common complaint people seem to have is that "Oh noes! It might make you fat!"

And there are people who think that I can't possibly have as much pain as I have because everybody knows that chronic pain is a result of weighing too much and all chronic pain patients need to do is find some willpower and lose that fat, so what does a thin woman like me have to complain about?

And when my mother was dying of lung cancer and looking very much like death warmed over, people complimented her, telling her she looked great--because she'd lost so much weight. (Maybe they were just trying to cheer up the dying woman, but some of those compliments seemed disturbingly sincere.)

And while I remember my mother as always being quite large (at least until the cancer), an old friend of hers tells me that she was dieting way back when they were in school and my mother was a size 10. I don't know what the dimensions of an article of size 10 clothing were in the 1950s, but I'm pretty sure that a 5'9" girl wearing size 10 wasn't fat by any rational standard. Gah.

Yep, I remain seriously weirded out.

nellorat responded in part with "Thanks for all this-- I feel like I kind-of had to deprogram myself from a lot of societal craziness about weight, because the only alternative was to go on hating myself for being fat, so I'm always happy when I learn that people without that motive see the bizarreness, too." This comment of hers stuck with me for one simple reason--it didn't occur to me that I didn't share that motive. Having been raised and marinated in this same shallow culture, I can't claim to be disinterested when I talk about popular perceptions of "fat people." Mostly because if you believe what you read in the magazines, at least 90% of Americans are overweight and the rest are in constant danger of ballooning up at any moment. Even when you are secure in the knowledge that you're thin, hearing Hollywood stars much skinnier than you being referred to as "fat" does wear on you after a while.

All this is hitting me again since either hormonal wackiness or the above-mentioned medication side effects have changed my body shape recently. Not having a scale, I have no idea what kind of weight change is involved, and I'm not at all sure how obvious it is to anyone else--but it's obvious to me and it feels very, very strange. The rational part of my brain is saying that I can easily afford to gain weight, especially if my overall health improves in the process. The rational part of my brain isn't the loudest voice in my head right now.

I was thinking that if my choices were between, say, gaining 20 pounds and being healthier or staying the same weight with the same disabilities I have now, I would easily choose the weight gain with health benefits, no problem. But now I'm thinking about the consequences once a choice is made. If I weighed 30 pounds more than my starting point in June, my weight would be at the 50th percentile for a woman my age and height--and pretty definitely overweight by those crazy BMI standards. Let's imagine me weighing 40 pounds more (some people have gained more than that on Depakote, though most gain less), but being fit and healthy because, hey, I could walk 5 miles a day without having to deal with seizures and migraines and their aftereffects! Whee!

Well-meaning people would tell me I needed to lose weight "for your health," even if the reason I got to that point was because I was improving my health. Less well-meaning people would of course tell me I was disgusting and lazy and needed to stop stuffing myself with all the junk food I obviously must be eating.

Now, my doctors and I would know that I was healthier after the weight gain than I had been before. We would also know that the weight gain wasn't my or anybody else's fault, but simply a result of something done to improve my health. Would that knowledge help me to deal with the fat-phobic reactions of people around me? Would it help me to deal with my own internalized anxiety? I honestly don't know, and the fact that I don't know really disturbs me.

Sometimes I hate this society.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i hate this society much of the time. it's superficial and vain and preoccupied with stupidities. that's just to begin with. when you consider that such a high percentage of us are overweight, to whatever degree, and still there's a deep bias against fat, it makes you wonder, and it can't be healthy.

your weight gain sounds minor (by my standards, that is, which admittedly are ratcheted much highter than yours likely are) and definitely worth the improved health. but i'm sure you're right that it's not a simple issue.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

a high percentage of us are overweight, to whatever degree, and still there's a deep bias against fat,

And the definition of "overweight" keeps changing, which doesn't make the least bit of sense.

your weight gain sounds minor (by my standards, that is, which admittedly are ratcheted much highter than yours likely are) and definitely worth the improved health.

Well, yeah, it's minor and possibly even a temporary thing, for all I know. If my health improves significantly, it's more than worth it. I know this full well because I know the stress of everything I've been living with for the last 17 years or so. But the thing is--if I gained a lot more weight than this, and I knew rationally that the weight gain was both not my fault and a sign of improved health, would I be able to resist the urge to blame myself and try to do something about it anyway? I don't know. In a remotely sane universe, this wouldn't even be a question. But I honestly don't know.

[aekiy.livejournal.com]

And there are people who think that I can't possibly have as much pain as I have because everybody knows that chronic pain is a result of weighing too much and all chronic pain patients need to do is find some willpower and lose that fat, so what does a thin woman like me have to complain about?

And when my mother was dying of lung cancer and looking very much like death warmed over, people complimented her, telling her she looked great--because she'd lost so much weight.

This is the sort of thing that bothers me a lot.. sometimes, I'm rather upset by the fact that I look okay. It's deceiving. I'm so very much not okay, but no one knows that because I look fine. I don't know how to take a compliment on how I look when I'm busy trying not to be trapped in focusing on my pain. There's a part of me that almost wishes that I looked as terrible as I feel, just so people would understand.

[yasminke.livejournal.com]

Will the weight gain put you OUT of pain? Will you be healthier?

Those are the issues you need to focus on, and society be damned, CB. I remember when I fell ill and suddenly weighed a lot less than normal (I think I dropped to 55kgs). I hurt all the time, felt horrible and gained the weight (plus some) back. Recently I was told to lose "a little weight" for the blood pressure, which I am doing, but it will never be down to what it was at that point, even if I "look great".

And this from someone who weighed less than 100 lbs in high school.

I say you do what work for you.

[gythiawulfie.livejournal.com]

I am, fat. I know this. While I don't look like I weigh in over 300 lbs, I do weigh that much.

Yes, I Do have the distinct advantage of being 6 feet tall, extremely broad shouldered, and when I weighed only 210, I also only had an 18% body fat level, which is unheard of for someone at my size, but if you saw me, you would have said "Hello Mrs. Ahhhhhhhrnold Swartzenegger" (I was not feminine looking by any standards, is a wonder I ever got asked out.)

I will say this however, Then? I hurt like hell, my joints ached, my back hurt, some muscle hurt, everything hurt.

Now? I have a messed up neck *from the activities from above* and bone spurs in my knees.

Health is a matter of what doc says.

I am 'healthy, but overwieght'.

I dare someone call me fat. I really do, because I guarantee you I could pick them up with one hand and hold them above my head.

If a few pounds more, make you feel better.... I wouldn't give a crap what the rest of the world thinks... and in 10 years, science will probably reverse its standards all over again.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole idea that you can tell how sick a person is by looking at them is not just inconvenient, but manifestly untrue. How many healthy-looking people have to drop dead of heart attacks before the general public figures this one out?

There's a part of me that almost wishes that I looked as terrible as I feel, just so people would understand.

Oh yes, I know this feeling well.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Well, this is all a thought experiment for the moment. Right now, I'm just a somewhat different shape from what I'm used to being, probably from taking a drug which may or may not be helping with the seizures. If it helps with pain (other than migraine, which it *does* help with), it will be indirectly.

Until now, I've never gained or lost more than a few pounds without some obvious illness going on, so body shape changes are new territory for me. (I did lose weight once in the '90s because it was physically impossible for me to digest food for a little while. Once I could eat again, I put on 25 pounds pretty quickly, then went down to my usual weight. No idea if extra weight helped or hurt me then--there was too much else going on for me to figure out what part weight might play in the way I was feeling.)

Re: I say you do what work for you.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. At this point, I have no idea whether the drug I'm on is helping me or destroying my liver or how long I might keep taking it, so this post was more of a thought experiment than anything else. Well, that and me wishing our society had fewer stupid ideas about weight. People do so much damage to themselves trying to lose weight when the real focus should be on being healthy (which has a lot less to do with weight than most people think).