Body Image: Society, grow up and shed the puppy fat.
By Ruby Thomas
My mother was always careful I didn’t internalise the destructive body image culture she did in her youth. Growing up in the 1970s, she was surrounded by obsessive diet culture, where extra weight on a woman was a shame no one desired. It was normal to read incessantly about fad diets, weigh yourself multiple times a day, judge other people’s bodies, and caringly gift scales to someone who wasn’t so fortunate to be slim. An overweight woman wasn’t much more than disgusting, unattractive, and by extension, less deserving of respect as a person.
Cleo magazine, September 1991, proudly dedicated 34 pages to a ‘forever slim’ dieting handbook. A side note: I do wonder whether the editors felt any guilt about publishing this messaging, whether soon after or decades on.
Three decades later I was born, and negative body image was still pervasive. I remember deciding to myself at age nine, with an odd calmness, that all I would eat during the school day was a banana. I don’t remember having any explicit thoughts about whether I was ugly or fat, it was just something I decided. I was later taken to the doctor and told my diet was nutritionally insufficient. My mother started to feed me chips at dinner, knowing this was a food I would never resist. This early experience wouldn’t be the only time body image took up my headspace.
Later in high school I had a friend who developed a dangerous eating disorder, resulting in diagnosed anorexia nervosa. She was admitted to hospital and developed early-onset osteoporosis, which would make her bones irreversibly brittle compared to before. She stopped having her period, another sign that various parts of her body were shutting down. It seemed very difficult for her and those in her life.
Interestingly, body image wasn’t something that really occupied my mind for much of my adolescence. I had other priorities, but undoubtedly, my caring mother likely played a part in this. We never owned scales, and she never made comments about my periodically fluctuating weight. However, when I moved out of home, I started to think about exactly what I was protected from. The flatshare I moved into, like many households, contained a pair of scales. I quickly developed the habit of weighing myself everyday after work. Although I was more than capable of logically understanding the bounds of a healthy weight, I would feel a hit of dopamine every time I weighed less than I had the day before. It occupied such a place in my mind that I would easily remember the four digit figure from 24 hours earlier. I was also puzzled to observe in myself how good weighing less day by day made me feel – even if I knew I was lighter because I was dehydrated. It was unhealthy, and I knew it. How could I be so aware of my damaging attitude while simultaneously feeling great every time I was a few grams lighter? Reflecting on this question, I thought about my high school friend. She was one of the most intelligent people I had ever met, yet her obvious malnutrition, it seemed to me, was always overridden by the need to chase validation and better self-esteem.
Thankfully, public voices and the media have promoted the body positivity movement, encouraging young people in particular to embrace their health and natural body shape. The narrative was meant to push away messaging that told people skinny was better, declaring instead that a healthier, filled out frame was something to be proud of. But, in my opinion, like many public discourses, the pendulum easily swings the other way.
In the last decade or so, there’s been a lot of discussion in the public sphere about body image, leading to terms we’re now familiar with such as “body shaming” or “fat shaming.” They’re terms thrown at people when they criticise the weight of another person. I believe that the spectrum of healthy body sizes should truly be celebrated, but it seems to me that somewhere along the line, we forgot to keep the concept of health in the conversation. Divisive figures such as Tess Holliday emerged. Some people vehemently championed her as a representative of positive body image, while others criticised her weight. Amidst this discourse, journalist Lionel Shriver received backlash for her criticism of a body-positivity protest, linking the movement to her obese brother, expressing concerns for his health. Lionel didn’t need to justify herself for too long when her brother died soon after.
Amidst this tide of public opinion, it’s easy to be labelled as behind and unkind when expressing concern about the promotion of obesity under the banner of body positivity. Whether unpopular or not, it’s an opinion I share with Shriver. Let me be clear: I’m not advocating for the judgement of people’s bodies, I’m saying that we should be careful not to lose the focus on health. Neither malnutrition nor fat around the organs are to be promoted, but health is. I really hope that collectively, as a society, we will be able to have a mature attitude that doesn’t widely sway to extremes. As they say, it’s time to shed the puppy fat and grow up.