Contagion
December 12th, 2007
This morning I woke up to our three year old doing a pitch perfect imitations of his five year old brother’s outraged shriek howl, which is, by the way, an awful way to wake up, but worse was this feeling of, “Oh no, he caught it from him!” If this particular noise is contagious, I expect to be shunned on playgrounds across Portland as I haven’t been shunned since taking a child with a runny nose to preschool.
Still, this had me thinking about how behaviors spread from one person to another. There were several news stories this summer about obesity being ‘contagious’ which were sort of annoying, at the time. Actually, the more I think about them, the angrier I get, because I imagine people getting shunned who are already wrestling with other issues of stigma and shame.
But I do avoid people whose behaviors I am struggling to get over — when I quit smoking I couldn’t be around smokers, and while I am trying to get healthy in acceptance of my body, I don’t want to listen to anyone who talks about food as “bad” or does group-guilt stuff over eating/not exercising, or publicly flagellates themselves for some self-perceived flaw. Of course, it seems like most of the women in my life are or have been capable of such talk at one point or another. So how to be supportive and still stand firm in my own determination to get healthy?
The funny thing is, it was a thin friend who first pointed me at Shapely Prose, and I read over a few entries and thought “Nice writing, good critiques, so glad this is there for _them_” and I ignored for a long time that I am among the _them_, that is people who are not completely able to accept and love their bodies exactly as they are RIGHT THIS MOMENT.
Another ironic thing: I started with completely superficial reasons for thinking body-acceptance/fat-acceptance were important.
1) Whining about your weight seems really boring/unattractive.
2) Hating your body makes you unhappy. When I am unhappy, there is nothing as comforting as food. Hence the vicious cycle thing, and I hoped this was a good place to start breaking into it.
3) I want to be a confident person. Hating my body works poorly with that.
But then it occurs to me that I started with the idea of trying for a little more self-acceptance as a kind of whole other self-improvement plan, there are a so many other valid reasons:
4) Self-acceptance is feminist.
5) A lá Killing Us Softly, I don’t want to give unhealthy portrayal of women in media any more fuel by buying these ideas about how our bodies should look/striving to attain the unattainable.
6) Disordered thinking is contagious, and the defiant inoculating of yourself against ideas that thin = attractive, self-disciplined, virtuous is in the service or public health.
Maybe 6 is really a second part of 5, but I find myself feeling all crusade-y about this, and more sensitive in even my limited media consumption — NPR stories “for your health” that mention obesity epidemics and some of the stereotypes and prejudices that sneak into my own head, that somehow this is the one prejudice that is ok among relatively enlightened and fair-minded people.
December 12th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
The whole obesity epidemic thing is really something, isn’t it? I read health and science articles frequently as a general interest, and I still wonder if this is as much about class and power as the public well-being.
I had to stop and rewrite my comment a couple of times, because this is one of those topics I could babble on for a while, and I ought to get more work done today…
December 13th, 2007 at 8:17 am
OK, so here’s what I want to know, not that I’m promoting obesity or bad health, but, I wonder why the recent finding that people who are obese live *longer* than people who are either underweight or normal weight has not been more widely reported or discussed http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/23210.php?
December 13th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I’m not trying to be argumentative, I’m honestly trying to get the true picture… was it truly reported that obese people live longer or was it as I had heard, (and I believe in this article) slightly overweight… Because this chocolate/chip/soda lovin’ woman does not need any excuses to regain the 70 pounds lost a few years back… truly.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Oooookay well I couldn’t even make myself *read* Shapely Prose, so I’m especially unreliable on this topic (body issues? what body issues? lala lala lalala look over there–) and am not sure what I’m even about to type next.
Oh, it turns out it’s this: I love #6. And I’m pretty sure I started with #1 as well–and its corollary: vegan/gluten-free/sugar-free/free-free friends bored me. I couldn’t believe that otherwise educated, funny and cruel people had NOTHING BETTER TO DISCUSS than what we ate or didn’t eat. Boooooring. Boooored. So I resolved not to be like that….right around the time I started to become not-so-haggard as I’d been all my life, and after years of snapping at friends who asked plaintively, “Do I look fat in this?” I was now sooooo tempted to ask it of others, myself….and sometimes succumbed.
(It’s this wattly bit under the chin that gets me. Which is not about fat but really about age anyway. Nother whole blog post. Right. Where was I.)
Nowhere I guess. Just–yeah! Uh-huh! Baby! Number six! Woo! Disordered thinking is contagious! And we already got WAY more than we need, in so many realms of human thinking or what passes for it….I’m reminded of an old sharp-tongued Zen teacher saying: You want to save the world? WHERE IS YOUR MIND?! Id est, at the risk of diluting that into uselessness: How can we hope to think clearly about class or power or structured violence if we can’t even think clearly about our own goddamned *limbs?*
More on other post sooner, rather than later….xo the Un
December 14th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Oh, and it’s another old Zen saying, paraphrased: Whatever gets you in the temple gate. So it might be “superficial” concerns (self-improvement kick, whatever) but eventually lo and behold there you are practicing for all beings, now how’d *that* happen?!
December 15th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
What an interesting post!
December 21st, 2007 at 1:05 am
Yah! This one’s a humdinger alright. I think every woman has this issue…the why don’t I look like Barbie thing. Over the last few years I’ve been coming to realize that men really like curves. I mean they thrive on them. Not obesity per se, but soft, cozy, sexy curves. As my hubben likes to say as he sighs and holds one of my soft, curvy areas, “I am getting a recharge right now” And then another time I asked him, “Men really aren’t into washboard abs are they….they’re more into soft tummies.” He stopped, got a faraway look and softly said, “Yeah…..I think most men are like that”
Just look at most Venus art….She’s soft, curvy and sexy.
And it’s not all about men…. Science is saying that the fatier areas on women’s hips and thighs actually produce healthier babies. This fat stores healthy omegas which are transferred to babe’s brain. And then later is used to produce milk for babe.
I’m sure there’s more, but I’m too tired to go on…..