Obesity and its Discontents
“She had small piggy eyes, a sunken mouth, and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly like it had been boiled. She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage”
From James and the Giant Peach, R. Dahl
Throughout history, the of concept of overburden, or obesity, presents some interesting contexts that relate to wellbeing, morality, Darwinism, psychosexuality, aesthetics, and mythology or religion. All of these contexts — with the exception of medical arts — are highly subjective, with little basis in reality. Despite that, obesity is an ever popular and suggestive topic and landscape for a surprisingly resilient stream of social consciousness. For better or worse.
Center for Disease Control reported that by 2020, 75% of Americans will be overweight. In 2016, over 36% of all Americans were obese. The annual medical cost to Americans (including a subset of the 36%) to care for the obesity is $148 billion dollars, annually. Obesity rates vary across income and educational levels, as well as ethnicities and location. Concentrated areas tend to be exurban areas, where the rate of overweightness and obesity is considerably higher. In the US, cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, have lower rates than say, Jackson, Little Rock, and Memphis.
‘Airlines calculate ballast all wrong: they weigh the luggage, but not the passenger, and surcharge for only the luggage overburden. An obese person with a carry on weighs three times what I do with mine, yet we pay the same fare.
The Fat Gene
Despite never really being in any real danger of being overweight, I have always struggled mightily with my (and other people’s) obesity. The reasons for this are somewhat complex, and I am not wholly to blame for my stereotypes, as they were inculcated in a traumatic childhood.
In my family, the ‘Fat’ gene wasn’t a predisposition to weight gain, but a birthright aversion — even repulsion to it. We were hyper-aware of fatness. Obesity was held in contradistinction as undesirable from a natural selection perspective in all our subconscious. This was even true of animals; we leaned toward sleek, small-bones oriental cats as pets. These animals thrived long before us humans, and can do so with or without our help.
We never, however, equivocated fatness with badness, as that denotes an utterly unfair moral prejudgment, a perception inconsistent with our upbringing that such presumptions were cynical and hateful to others. But that was no redemption. Despite our idiosyncrasies, we believed, at heart, that people of any weight or size were equally deserving of one’s love and respect as anyone else. Our family had relatives and close friends — some of whom were overweight or obese, a detail we never thought to consider, because we loved them.
Perceptions of Obesity
When people are perceived as malevolent as a consequence of their actions and behavior, they are resented, and held in high disregard. But when the persona non grata is obese, his character begins to take on mythic, if not epic dimensions: Gargantua, Caligula, Bluebeard, Queen Hatshepsut, Hank Quinlan, Big Daddy, Hermann Göring, Kasper Gutman, Jabba the Hutt, Boss Hogg, Sir John Falstaff, Fat Bastard, Bluto, all evil personas amplified exponentially by their girth.
Some cultures regard overweightness as a virtue, and some have it both ways, for example Santa Claus, Fats Waller, Fats Domino, Minnesota Fats, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Gleason are admired and celebrated for their heft..
Conflict ensues when obesity, a physical attribute, is conflated with badness — a moral bias, : we erroneously begin to equivocate thinness with, goodness:
If this passion for beauty stopped at sales women, clothes, table lamps, and automobiles, it would be no big deal. Sadly, it spills over into morality and, I repeat, induces us to confuse what is beautiful with what is good. Only in Italian does there exist an expression like fare bella figura.
In addition to ’evil, nasty, and dishonest,’ overweight villains must become ‘fat bastard, fat hog, fat shit, fat fuck,’ or some such sur-connotation. It’s not OK to use those connotations in regard to obese everyday people, but when obese people misbehave — all bets are off. This penchant betrays a social stereotype that trickles down into the mainstream, where overweight kids are subject to verbal abuse and bullying from their peers — a problem that hashtags has not as yet discouraged..
Of course, it doesn’t stop there, an overweight person will be self-conscious his entire life, if his past experience include abusive episodes — especially through his teens. Even more pressure is put on girls to maintain svelte figures, if they want to excel at whatever they are pursuing — a man, job as a model, impressing other women. Hopefully, they don’t feel compelled to be self-conscious of their appearance their entire life. It is especially, and unfairly more difficult for an obese female, than male — a double standard predicated on sexism.
The History of Art, and its Analogs in Obesity
You will nary see depicted an obese Virgin Mary, nor a ‘bony-ass’ buddha: a phenomenon of inverse perceptions of obesity that exists between oriental and occidental philosophy. Byzantine Virgin depictions were likely to be plump, as in Giotto’s Virgin Maesta (inset, and below). Fat Mary’s didn’t come into vogue again until the late, ‘Cinquecento’ Renaissance. They appear ‘fat’ as compared to the ideal put forth in the collective media conscious.
The Sienese school were the first Europeans to represent a thin, attenuated Virgin (and baby Jesus) a forerunner to the international gothic style that was inspired by middle east and Asian influences along the newly carved Silk Road. Even facial features were more eastern looking. Did they go through some sort of anorexic phase? Or, perhaps it can be said that this adjustment had nothing to do with modesty or humility, but was merely a reflection of the trending women’s fashions- exotic silks and linens from the orient.
Mary Complex
There can be no argument the church reinforced skinny idolatry. Men might no longer attend churches dedicated to the worship of the Virgin because they would no longer find her sexually attractive, fantasize about her, at least on a repressed subconscious level.
Of course, these would be considered blasphemous thoughts, which is precisely why men subconsciously conflate the image of the version, with feminine perfection, in form.
The opposite sensibility is found in certain primitive cultures, e.g., women, and goddess fertility totems were always depicted as full hipped, child bearing bodies, and well developed physically, to give birth to big, healthy, babies, who would turn out to be be good hunter, providers, mothers, and warriors.
Partnering
The Darwinian dynamic is somewhat different for pack and herd animals. They may have a more cynical attitude toward obesity than do their human counterparts.
For instance, they may subconsciously avoid obese mates as a function of natural selection: pack animals rely on the group acting effectively and in unison when they need to hunt, eat, defend territory, concede it, or take it over. If part of the group is overweight, they invariably will be immobile, equally poor hunters and defenders, who take up more than their share of the group’s food in proportion to their contributions.
‘I am still fascinated with the diverse dynamics of a blubbery arm or rolls of pygmy-like lard, their density, water content, texture. Are they parsnip-like, or loofah-like in texture? Marshmallow or squid?
They drag down the speed at which the group can react to change, creating vulnerable conditions that put the group at risk. They’re likely to get sick and die before their svelter siblings, becoming a group liability. If there was a ‘Lost’ for animals, they’d be the first voted off — but then no one fat is ever allowed on the show.
Eating ‘Their’ Food
We know now that obesity is largely attributable to one’s genetic makeup — both emotionally and physically, and that many obese people suffer, feeling powerless to control their affliction, yet that does little to change people’s attitudes toward them. We don’t feel as badly for an obese person just being obese, as we do watching an obese person smacking down a McDonalds dinner. As if to say “you have your own lack of discipline and will to blame for your gluttony, which if you were concerned with redeeming, you would eat less, and more healthily.’
Unfortunately, the concept of fast food — like McDonalds, is inculcated in their brains from an early age. That’s how they’ve always eaten.
Think about that. It’s an aesthetic judgment — it means “to make a good figure” — which is not quite the same thing as making “a good impression.”*
the Bible teaches us:
But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation …. — Deuteronomy 32:15 (KJ)
And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them … (32:19)
They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. (32:24
But Fat Jeshurun, and his tribes were not “abhorred” by God for being fat: it was their gluttony that he found so repugnant.
Perhaps no writer r has rendered a better taxonomy of gluttony, since Chaucer, in his Persones Tale
“He that is usant to this sinne of glotonie, he ne may no sinne withstond, he must be in servage of all vices, for it is the devils horde, ther he hideth him and resteth. This sinne hath many spices.
The first is dronkennesse, that is the horrible sepulture of mannes reson: and therefore whan a man is dronke, he hath lost his reson: and this is dedly sinne. But sothly, whan that a man is not wont to strong drinkes, and peraventure ne knoweth not the strength of the drinke, or hath feblenesse in his hed, or hath travailled, thurgh which he drinketh the more, al be he sodenly caught with drinke, it is no dedly sinne, but venial.
The second spice of glotonie is, that the spirit of a man wexeth all trouble for dronkennesse, and bereveth a man the discretion of his wit.
Read: “drinking to excess will soon liberate you of better discretion.” True dat!
The thridde spice of glotonie is, whan a man devoureth his mete, and hath not rightful maner of eting.
Read: “if you handle your food like a farm animal, than you may just be one.”
The fourthe is, whan thurgh the gret abundance of his mete, the humours in his body ben distempered.
Read: “big meat eaters are going to get fat, dyspeptic, flatulent, and die from heart disease before they turn 50.”
The fifthe is, foryetfulnesse by to moche drinking, for which sometime a man forgeteth by the morwe, what he did over eve.”
Read: “Excessive drinkings’ worst incarnation is the inability to remember what you did last night.
*Excerpted from La Bella Figura, by Beppe Severgnini Copyright © 2006 by Beppe Severgnini
#obesity #dieting
