Two conflicting messages for the public on body weight

In My Humble Opinion
1

How do women cope with messages about weight?

I see and hear two messages in the media:

  1. Women should accept their body. Plus-size women can be sexy. The view of beauty presented in the media is unrealistic. 67% of women are size 14 or larger. (warning: audio will start on that page)

  2. Obesity is a serious problem in the U.S.

I have a hard time finding data that correlates height and weight to dress sizes but this site says that “according to Centers for Disease Control, the average American women is 5’4” and weighs about 162 pounds, which puts us closer to a size 14." (CDC, meantime, has increasedthat weight stat a bit.) If that is accurate, it mean the BMI of a size 14 woman is 27.8–overweight by the guidelines. The CDC guideline for obesity is 30 and above, so one would expect that a size 16 woman would be clinically obese (at 5’4", that would be 174 lbs. and above).

Your obesity threatens your health but be proud of your appearance. How do women cope with this mixed message?

By the way…So why am I casting this about women? (BTW I am a man.) According to CDC, the obesity rate in the U.S. is higher for women, and men (IMHO) do not seem to have the same societal pressures as women for body image. Men are obese too but you don’t see tons of articles telling men to “Be proud of your beer gut!” or anybody even having a concept of “plus size” men. Ever since Marky Mark posed for Calvin Klein (photos of Mark Whahlberg in underwear, may be NSFW for some viewers) you see male models with abs that the average guy can only dream about. But you don’t hear cries about how the media present unrealistic ideals for the male body. Men just don’t seem to be as deeply affected about societal expectations for body type, although maybe I’m just stereotyping. You tell me.

2

Obesity is a national health crises for a large percentage of our population. The risks are well documented; high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, joint damage and the list goes on.

Popular Media, magazines, tv, film present idealized images of men and women. It can be quite harmful to people that try to look like that.

There should be a happy medium. I’m not obese and I certainly don’t try to look like this guy. I have no interest in devoting my entire life into looking like that.
https://goo.gl/images/l3XjKJ

I don’t yo yo diet. I’ve maintained pretty much the same weight since college. It’s crept up 15 lbs since middle age.

3

It is interesting that the media targets men and women with their idealized body bullshit.

I wonder what percentage of the population has a buff body like the shirtless guy I just posted? I see very few guys like that in the real world.

I see a lot of ladies with what I consider slim figures. They aren’t the ridiculously thin waifs we see modeling fashion. Or even the underweight actors we see on TV. Real women have a little body fat. It’s normal.

4

One error you’re making here is to assume that body acceptance and anti-obesity cover the same categories. Body acceptance applies to all kinds of non-obese bodies that just happen to be not magazine bodies.

Beyond that, it’s perfectly possible to endorse body acceptance while also urging changes to diet and exercise for health reasons. The difference is the motivation. If you’re being urged to change habits because you’re ugly and feel ashamed then that has very different effects on your mental health and likelihood of success when compared to lifestyle changes to make yourself more healthy. You can accept that beauty is subjective and learn not to hate your body while still working to be healthier–and you’re much more likely to succeed that way.

I think there’s also room for skepticism about whether being obese is in and of itself a health risk. At a literal level, it is not. IOW, there are plenty of people who are technically obese by the CDC definition but are in fantastic health and have lower risks of heart disease, etc. Of course, they tend to be athletes with a lot of muscle mass (even if accompanied by a lot of fat). If you became obese because you eat nothing by junk, then yeah, that’s not healthy. But does the evidence really show that the amount of adipose tissue you carry around is a risk in an of itself, as opposed to highly correlated with things that do cause risk?

5

It’s really quite complicated. I’ve been overweight pretty much my whole life, and in particular, I’ve gone up and down by quite a lot the last 15 years or so. One thing I’ve noticed is that my health issues like high blood pressure and sleep apnea, while clearly correlated to weight, aren’t on an exactly 1-to-1 function. The last time I tried to lose weight, I got down to about 360 pounds, which is still really big by any reasonable measure, but pretty much all of my health problems had abated.

So, yeah, for health reasons I’d love to lose weight again, but even at a weight at which I’d be healthy, I’d still be the fattest guy in the room in most rooms. So that’s where the body acceptance issue comes into it. Trying to lose even more weight is nearly impossible, would likely lead to other health issues in the attempt, and still wouldn’t do much to improve peoples’ opinions of me.

6

IMHO, obesity shouldn’t be shamed, but it certainly shouldn’t be celebrated, either.

7

It is not an error but it may reflect the sources I consume. Without exception the pieces I have seen that encourage women to accept or even flaunt their non-magazine bodies refer to “plus size” women. They do not discuss women with BMI of 22.5 but less-than-ideal proportions or other not-magazine bodies. Being a man I don’t purposefully seek these pieces out but tend to happen on them in my wife’s *Glamour *or in passing on the Internet, so the pool of material may be greater in scope than what I have personally seen.

8

i think this is the right direction. you can (and should) be able to recognize the flaws about yourself without being ashamed.
you wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) be ashamed of your current job just because you had your sights set on a higher paying one. having a goal shouldn’t be equated with being ashamed of not already achieving that goal!

mc

9

The Buzzfeed article linked by the OP went beyond merely “It’s-OK-to-not-be-slim.”

10

Women get hit for not having a model’s body even if they are perfectly fit. Men just don’t get it as bad. There’s a long distance between a Dancing With Stars pro’s body and dangerous obesity, at least half way along belongs in the Accept Your Body category.

11

Unless you are someone’s doctor or a close loved one, their health is no business of yours. People of all sizes and shapes and with all sorts of conditions are getting medical care every day and putting some sort of strain on “your” tax dollars because of either their luck or their bad choices. You cannot and should not judge anyone’s value or health based on their size.

I’m most likely the fattest woman you know, but I am healthy. I manage my diabetes. I exercise every day. My BP is 117/80, my muscles and bones are strong. I’ve lost over 80 lbs twice now and you know what? I was still over size 20. I was still obese, still single, still lower middle class, still had bad skin, still had high cholestrol, still had problems with my period, still had depression and anxiety. My hair was still curly and untamed and out of control. But whatever size I am, I still have good friends and a loving family, I still go to work every day and pay my taxes and give to charity and volunteer in my community.

My dad’s not an ounce heavier than he was when he was 18 (6’ tall, 175 lbs). He is an alcoholic, a smoker. He almost killed himself and two others while driving drunk. He takes Vicodin and Fentanyl and sits all day and watches Fox News and hates Those People and can’t spell “forty” without asking me if there’s an E in it.

If we go out, I’m the “visibly unhealthy” one. I’m the stupid one. I’m the gross one, the burden on society, the one who should be ashamed.

But whatever. I’m ok with myself. My dad is embarrassed of his skinny legs and his weird hair. I can still walk 3 miles and my dad wheezes while getting the mail.

People can think what they want of me but I think I’m all right. I know people of all sizes have their struggle, and I guess mine’s just more visible. There’s no reason to make assumptions about me based on my weight but here we are.

It took me about 30 years to get here. If it takes other people less time to get here then good. First step to wanting to keep yourself healthy is to love yourself. You can’t put all that time and energy into being healthy if you think you don’t deserve to be healthy. It’s much easier to love yourself if people aren’t telling you you’re gross or ugly or worthless. Acceptance is great. Healthy is great. There’s no need to wag fingers at anyone just because you perceive they are living their life wrong. Point that finger inward first, and let everyone else live their best life.

It’ll be better for all of us.

12

It’s just all so complicated sometimes.

And doctors and dietitians can be just as bad, especially the ones who just blindly follow what the BMI charts say. I am borderline obese based solely on my height and weight. I’m 48, 5’4" and 172 lbs at the moment. But no one looking at me would say I was obese. I have zero health issues, no high blood pressure, no diabetes, nothing. Yet, my previous doctor looked at me, as I sat there in my size 10s and medium shirt, and told me I was still obese. It’s like she didn’t see me at all, just her stupid chart.

13

As Richard Parker said, body acceptance isn’t directed just at the obese. Women in general are measured against an unrealistic media ideal and are left feeling inadequate because of it. Almost every woman I’ve met has something about her body that she hates or is ashamed about (for me, it’s my Popeye calves and lower back full of stretch marks, which I acquired at the tender age of 10 during my growth spurt). You can be non-obese and have plenty of traits that aren’t esteemed by the mainstream (big belly, big booty, cellulite, etc.) and thus feel ugly, even though these traits are perfectly normal.

The body acceptance message is just like any other. It needs to be interpreted reasonably. Encouraging people not to abuse their children doesn’t mean we’re telling people not to discipline them at all. Telling an obese person to accept him or herself the way they are isn’t telling them they should pig out at the Golden Corral every day. It only means that self-hatred isn’t going to get them where they want to be. Self-hatred makes it hard to do the things you have to do to lose weight. (For instance, if you think your body is ugly and hideous, you probably aren’t going to want to head to the gym and exercise in front of people.)

I don’t know if the body acceptance movement has been effective at helping people embrace their bodies. But I’m not ready to write it off just because some people don’t really understand what it means.

14

Women have had much practice in coping with this mixed message, because every newsstand for the past 50 years has had at least one magazine with something like this on the cover: SIX WEEKS TO YOUR IDEAL BEACH BODY!, see inside (and then below that, or maybe above it), 10 DELICIOUS DESSERT RECIPES

15

I definitely go back and forth with the mixed messages. Now that I’m mid-50’s I don’t feel as compelled to try to slim down to be seen as attractive to men, but I do worry that people judge me as being “a fatty” in my business dealings. (Studies have shown that more attractive, tall, thin people are more likely to be hired and promoted.)

And I’ve had the opposite of Rhiannon’s experience with doctors. Not one has ever told me to slim down. I tell myself that they don’t need to, it’s my body so I should take it upon myself to maintain a healthy weight. But I have a few problems that I struggle with: I hate exercise, it actually does NOT feel good; and I can’t tolerate being hungry all the time. I still eat as properly as I can but threw my rhetorical hands in the air when I went to a registered nutritionist last year to ask about diets that could slim me down without feeling starved and she told me that the only way to lose weight was to be hungry all the time. :mad:

16

I deal with it by ignoring it. I banned all scales from my house in 2002. My middle child was admitted to the hospital a few times that year, once at Mass General with a 9-year-old anorexic roommate - something I hadn’t thought existed until I met one. If left alone my girls probably would have obsessed over their weight like all of their paternal family members, but right now they don’t. One of the girls (19) thinks she could a few pounds. She is probably right.

I’m weighed once a year at my physical. Last time my BMI was normal, as was the year before. The year before that, I’d just lost my husband and people were concerned, I’m normally around 145 and I’m 5’7". I weighed in at 120, I looked half dead, and my BMI was normal then too. Whatever.

17

To expand on a famous comedy routine, alcoholism and obesity are diseases you get yelled at for having.

Body-shaming, or making someone feel less worthwhile as a person for having a specific body, is always wrong, both morally and in the sense of it not being a good way to motivate the lasting lifestyle changes which bring about healthy weight modification. But it’s mostly wrong for the first reason: If you body-shame, you’re a douche-weasel, and should be shunned for that.

There are people who take this the wrong way, thinking that any mention of certain body types as being inherently unhealthy is body-shaming. This is usually referred to as the Healthy At Every Size movement, or HAES. They are, as a simple matter of fact, incorrect: A “correct”* BMI of 35 and a “correct”* BMI of 16 are unhealthy. The only way to be healthy long-term if you have an unhealthy weight is to be working to rectify the problem.

*(Yes, BMI is a simple tool and needs to be used intelligently, but it is possible to use BMI in a correct fashion. Thinking it’s positively worthless is common HAES thinking.)

So there is an intelligent message to pull out of all this, once you ignore the lunatics.

18

I’m not so sure this is well-established. Are there many studies of obesity that tease out as separate variables things like diet and exercise?

Imagine an individual who is obese, but who eats a great diet at maintenance caloric intake and who gets a lot of exercise. Is that person really at significantly increased risk of heart disease and all the rest solely because of the fat? Do we have a lot of evidence for that?

19

i am not a doctor or health researcher so i cannot answer your question directly; but i imagine the diet and lifestyle that lead to the obesity in the first place may have already done the damage - along with the continued stress on the heart and other organs due to the excess weight.

20

Obesity causes health issues, but for the most part, most people can’t solve it with current medical technology (short of surgery). Most people who lose weight via diet and exercise gain it back, many gain back more than they lost. It isn’t a solution for a condition affecting 1/3 of the human race.

Obesity isn’t like gray hair, where we have an easy, affordable solution.

In light of that, preaching body tolerance is not such a bad thing because most people realistically can’t cure their obesity.