Single Focus

As I said recently, I've been reading an interesting book called Women Afraid to Eat.  I don't agree with it 100%; it was written in the late 90s, so there are suggestions to go low fat and low sodium sprinkled throughout, but the rest of the book is fascinating.  It's a shocking exposure of what our society's focus on weight really does to women.  It's definitely opened my eyes.

The author, Frances Berg, talks about a lot of things; the shocking long term results of dieting both physically and mentally, the fact that 70% of women don't get enough of the nutrients they need to be healthy, how people unfairly judge women based on their appearances, and the surprising fact that the health benefits that you get from dieting and losing weight are very tiny compared to the health risks.  I haven't quite gotten through the whole book yet, but I'm finding it to be pretty inspiring and I plan on looking into these subjects more soon.

The last point there is the most annoying to me.  People that are obese or overweight are, yes, statistically at more risk for many health problems, such as hearth disease and diabetes.  The risk, according to Frances, isn't as high as you might think, considering how loudly health experts are yelling about it.  In some ways, it's actually healthier to be overweight or even obese; some recent studies have shown that overweight people actually live longer than normal weight people, and are less likely to get dementia.  And race plays a big role in it, too.  Apparently, black people can be healthy at slightly higher BMIs than white people, and Native American people can have much higher BMIs than white people and still be healthy.

So what's the deal?  Why is skinny "ideal", anyway?  I just don't get it.  And I certainly don't understand those people who are in favor of public fat shaming to get people to lose weight.  As a person who has never been a normal weight, I can tell you for sure that fat shaming doesn't work.  It rips a deep scar into your heart that never goes away.  I'll never forget being called hippo hips, or thunder thighs, or being barked at and called a dog.  I think the one that hurt the most when two boys came up to me, and one said, "I think you're pretty, but my friend thinks you're ugly.  That must mean you're pretty ugly."  It's hard to look in the mirror and see a beautiful woman; all I see is an ugly fat person.  And there are health experts out there that want to promote this kind of treatment!

 A recent study really got me riled up.  It was a cohort study that tried to see if there were different kinds of obese people.  And, apparently they found six types, though because this was focused on a group of people in England, they suspect there are even more groups globally than they found.  I think this kind of study is awesome; they're actually looking at obesity as a set of different types of people instead of fat vs. skinny.  I went into the article with high hopes, thinking yes, now they'll see there are some healthy obese people.  And they did find healthy obese people!  Obese young women, and obese older affluent adults.  Great, wonderful, glad to hear them say they're healthy.

But then they go on to say that these two groups, the healthy obese women and healthy obese affluent older adults still need to lose weight.

Why?!  Why do they need to lose weight if they're healthy?!  That makes no sense!  If they're healthy, and living a health promoting lifestyle, why does it matter if they lose weight or not?  Shouldn't health be the first priority?  RRR!

We're all individuals.  I can never be skinny; my genes won't allow it, and I'm not just blowing smoke here.  My mom was a beautiful woman when she was younger; she lived on a farm, in the days when everyone walked everywhere (she walked to town most days, a five mile hike up and down a huge hill), and she ate real whole food her parents grew and that grandma cooked with love.  But she was still a size 18 at her smallest.  All of my maternal female relatives (seven aunts and many cousins) were like that; we're a family of strong, tall, big boned, robust, and voluptuous women.  Grandma  was never skinny (though never fat, either), and she was vibrant and healthy until her death at 102.

I tried to find the data behind the news article for that study about types of obesity, but apparently you have to email the lead scientist for it.  Although I'm interested to see what it says, I'm not really that good at sorting through the data.  Besides, I doubt they'd send it to me for a blog post a few people are going to read.

I came across an article on the New York Post's website, with an excerpt from a book called Body of Truth.  After reading the article and the reviews of the book, I had to order it.  It's a serious look at the science of obesity and what it honestly says about the health risks of being fat and also of dieting.  I feel like I need to get to the bottom of this.  I want to read about the real science behind obesity, rather than just what the health experts are screaming.

So that's my rant for the day.  Hopefully, when I read more into the book, I'll have something more interesting to say than RRRRR! 

Love Goggles

The other day, on a whim, I asked Chad if he ever looked at girls to see if they were pretty.  I'm sure at this point he panicked, as any sensible man would if their wife asked them that question.  After a few seconds hesitation, I told him that I wanted to know because it had to do with another question I had, and that it wasn't a trap question.

When he answered that he does sometimes look at other girls to see if they're pretty, I asked him what shape he preferred on a girl.  If he liked rounder, curvier girls, or skinny flat-tummied girls.  To my surprise, he said he liked the rounder girls better.  That the longer he's with me, the more he likes round, curvy girls, because that's what I am.

I'm pretty sure that's what they call love goggles.  I'm sure there might be a girl somewhere that would have been offended by what he said, but I found it to be incredibly sweet.  And it got me to thinking about society and our standards of beauty.

The media, with a few exceptions, glorifies women who are thin, tall, and very beautiful.  If they don't have a lot of natural beauty, they get heavy doses of makeup and professionally created hair-dos to make up for their plainness.  Women everywhere have to see beautiful, perfect celebrities staring back at them from the cover of magazines, on tv, in the movies, in ads.  Their perfect beauty is almost inescapable. 

I began to wonder if having those women as standards of beauty has changed what we as a society think of as beautiful.  Like Chad's love goggles, perhaps we've developed love goggles for thin, tall, perfect women.

Then this weekend, I clicked on a link over at Weighty Matters.  It was a page full of Photoshopped celebrities, and it made me realize that, not only are we basing our ideas of beauty on perfect people loaded down with makeup and hair extensions, but then the photos of them are completely overhauled.  Check it out.  And if that's not enough, this page has some extras.

There's one that made me really stop and think.

 

If that's too fast for you, here's a side-by-side:

What were the folks photoshopping this picture of Jennifer Lawrence thinking?  The before shot is beautiful.  She's well toned, curvy, smooth, and genuinely lovely.  But they didn't want curvy and well toned; no, what they want us to see, what they want us to see as beauty, is a woman that looks emaciated.  They want us to see her ribs sticking out, and her hips poking through her skin.  They want her face to look gaunt.  They want her arms to look skinny and weak.

You know what the phohoshopped version reminds me of?  A picture I saw recently of Portia de Rossi, an actress who has written a book about the struggles she's had with anorexia. 

Portia is the one on the right.

At her lowest, she said she was 82 pounds. For a woman that's 5'7, that made her BMI 12.8.  Here's another terrifying picture of Portia at her worst:

So here we are, in the middle of an obesity epidemic (or so the authorities tell us), and the media is showing us almost nothing but tall, beautiful, perfect, nearly anorexic women.  It's all we see, on tv, movies, magazines, ads.  And then real women look in the mirror and see non-perfection, wrinkles, a little arm jiggle, maybe cellulite or stretch marks, and they begin to hate themselves.

Our ideas of beauty are skewed.  And I believe our ideas of "ideal weight" are also skewed.  Who decided what ideal weight is?  BMI has serious flaws, including the fact that it doesn't distinguish between fat and muscle, and it doesn't care if you have petite or thick bones.  It also doesn't care if your genes tells your body to store extra fat in certain parts of your body, like your butt or your breasts.  Does a woman with large breasts have a higher BMI than a woman with small breasts?  Of course she does, because she weighs more.  And that's ridiculous. 

Last August, Discover magazine had an article about BMI in it, and how researchers have decided that BMI is a bad way to measure obesity.  So you know what they suggested?  They suggest lowering the BMI obesity threshold from 30 to 24 for women and 28 for men.  Great.  Now almost everyone will be obese.

I think over the years, ideal weight has gotten lower and lower.  And our love goggles has made it so we as a society only see tall, rail thin women as beautiful.  I don't think most people can even recognize normal, healthy weight anymore.  Look at this before-and-after picture of actress Mischa Barton and tell me which one you think is normal and healthy.

Now check out these actresses from the early part of the 20th century.

Gloria Swanson

Anita Page

Anne Baxter

Lucile Ball

Marilyn Monroe

Betty Grable

They're beautiful.  They're curvy.  Some of them are well toned (look at Lucy's arms).  But they're not exactly skinny by today's standards, are they?  They're almost...  normal.  The kind of  beauty that doesn't threaten average women.  Yes, they're beautiful, but it's a more natural kind of beauty, where there are flaws and imperfections, but those only add character. 

I think we've been lead astray by the media into believing that skinny equals beauty, and that you have to have perfectly smooth skin and a flawless face.  But it's all an illusion.  Celebrities are real people, under the makeup, hair products, and photoshopping.  Just for fun, google your favorite actress's name with "without makeup".  Here's a couple of  mine.

Penelope Cruz

Now here's a real girl without makeup, without fancy hair products, just trying to live a normal healthy natural life.

This is me!  Wearing a dress I made!  And holding a cucumber I grew!

I know I'm not in the same league as any of those celebrities up there, especially not when they're all made up to look perfect.  But just because I don't fit into society's idea of beauty....  does that make me ugly?  Or does true beauty allow for natural differences and individual uniqueness?