Fat or thin? How your environment dictates your size
As a child of the 1990s and a proud millennial, I grew up in a western world that promoted thinness as success. That saw fat as failure and had everyone competing with each other to reach this prized accolade of weight and size. Wealthy people were thin as they had access to good diets and those less wealthy were poor. I saw it in my own family, with fortune and success literally sizing people up and those less wealthy wearing their wages as their weight. Fear of getting unhealthy and “failing” was one of the many many factors that contributed to my own anorexia, as I tried to “win” and “succeed” and this meant in part, getting and staying thin. When ill, I saw fat as failure and didn’t want to get fatter and “fail”. However, in African Caribbean communities, larger body shapes are something to aspire to. I have a much younger sister and cousins, work as a mental health mentor for teenagers and also teach science to the new-gen X and I am seeing a real shift in attitudes towards size, with a more rounded frame encouraged. This has got me thinking if I was born in a different country, to a different family, in a different time, would I ever have suffered from anorexia?
The model “anorexic” look
The “Twerk” obese look
In African Caribbean countries, the prevalence of heart disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes is much higher. This is because a large round shape is seen as an ability to buy richer foods and therefore a sign of wealth. A larger frame is a sign of success and is something to aspire to. Fat is a sign of fortune, not failure. There is none of this fat-shaming malarkey of the western world, instead, there is thin shaming with “where are your curves, you’re so tiny and flat.” Curves are seen as sexy and the “twerk” dance move, involves shaking a big bum. Boyfriends encourage their girlfriends to be bigger, something I find strange as to me if a boy called me fat when I was a teenager, I would have felt so ashamed and worthless, it would have been an insult not compliment. I find the idea of boyfriends promoting weight weird, as my anorexia came in part (a TINY part in a big storm) from having a boyfriend who called me fat when I was a strong marathon-running sporty athlete. This decreased my confidence and made me feel vulnerable, disgusting and small and want to be small. I am not someone who completely cares what other people think as I am a pretty secure and stubborn person and have a strong sense of self, but when it is someone you care about, it hurts and you feel it. It became part of the “perfect storm of factors” that swirled up to cause my anorexia. Years later, I started dating my best friend and joyfully recovered from anorexia. I fell deeply in love and was desperately happy. However, my fears of losing this happiness, mixed with other fears and caused anxiety (my anorexia on/off switch as anxiety steals my appetite) which made me hyper and not hungry and so I lost weight. Ironically this happy and loving relationship ended because I was causing him to worry as I relapsed completely with anorexia and it was too hard for him to watch me waste away in front of him. I was “too fat” for one guy and “too thin” for the other. Maybe like porridge, the next guy will accept me just as I am, myself and healthy.
Subconsciously everyone lets outside factors influence them and their attitudes to food and weight. We tend to eat the way our parents and friends eat, eat what food is available around us and look the way is socially attractive in our environment. The aim of a species is to survive and have fertile offspring and so as a species, humans will adapt to their environment to try and acquire a mate and have children. We don’t even realise we are doing it, our brains drive our behaviour atomically and so whilst some people pride themselves self-righteously in their ability to withstand peer pressure and social cues, in reality, it is those that are weakest who go against society, as evolutionarily they were most likely to be exiled from the herd and not reproduce and die off. Those that go against trends, go against our biological survival instincts as a species. We cannot shame and blame those who want to be accepted by their community and acquire a mate. Denying yourself a community and mate is denying yourself love and happiness and we cannot ask people to do this. It is the environment, not the person we need to change. We need to change the herd dynamic.
There is that there is a difference between being curvy and being obese in the same way there is a difference between being thin or lanky and being anorexic. All my life I was naturally skinny as I was athletic and active and I have recovered to be this person again. I recovered to be healthy and I intend to stay healthy. We should try as a society to change the size of our judgements. They say that beauty is in the inside not out and this is true, but not when it allows people to use it as a get-out clause to stay unhealthy. Obesity and anorexia kill people and not actioning change with this, is slowly dying. We need to be encouraging a healthy beauty and I am encouraged to see gen X doing this. Promoting both under and overweight bodies is not sustainable and is unhealthy. Each man and woman has a unique body size which is unique to them, and their bodies and we should encourage people to determine what size is healthy for their bodies and promote acceptance at this size with personalised diets and exercise. Food and exercise is medicine and each person should take their own medicine. We can change what is deemed attractive and shift attitudes to a more healthy beauty. Not fat or thin but middle. We can change what is attractive to something promoting being healthy and at peace with food and your body. An anti-food extremist reality. That sounds attractive to me.
COPYRIGHT LAURA CAMPBELL 20/01/2020
