Kathleen LeBesco suggests that the body type that is most difficult to maintain is valued the most. We can extend this idea to moral character and personal habits as well - the most difficult habits to maintain (the ones that require the most discipline) are the most desirable. The problem lies in how we assume that practicing those difficult-to-maintain habits automatically produces the valuable body type. In reality, valuable characteristics, such as a good work ethic and self-control, aren’t always tied to food and exercise. A person may have excellent self control in her work - always handing projects in on time and staying late at work even when she really wants to go home to see her family, but she might also happen to be overweight. Just because someone focuses on one aspect of her life (her work) more than another (her body) doesn’t mean that she is lazy or undisciplined; it just proves that we can’t know someone’s personal habits and character based on observing their physical body. LeBesco says that fatness carries certain negative connotations with it, such as laziness and dirtiness. These connotations are all based on our propensity to try to see physical manifestations of internal character. Perhaps this is one of the more potent reasons for our societal acceptance of thin, toned bodies, and our revulsion for fat bodies.
In addition to writing the article we read for class, “The Male Body,” Susan Bordo is also the author of an enlightening piece called “Reading the Slender Body.” This piece is very relevant to the discussion about fat that LeBesco begins. The article explores some of the negative connotations of fatness that LeBesco identifies in Revolting Bodies. I think one of Bordo’s most applicable ideas is that it is specifically the lack of firmness that is off-putting about fat bodies, not necessarily that their actual size is too large. This concept explains why the bodies of men that Bordo examines in “The Male Body” are always so firm and muscular. The “flab” is what we identify as visual evidence of inner laziness and lack of control. It also draws an obvious connection between how we perceive someone’s outward appearance to reflect their inner self.
In chapter four of Revolting Bodies, LeBesco expands on this sentiment: “Fatness marks the individual as a failed citizen in a number of ways: as not of the dominant social class, as an inadequate worker and consumer” (59). She is touching on another very important idea here: since slenderness must be bought here in the West with gym memberships, leisure time to go to the gym, and funds for expensive healthy food, it is much more attainable for folks who belong to a higher class. This association of fatness with lower classes is also why our culture finds it so unattractive.
“The key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight isn't about short-term dietary changes. It's about a lifestyle that includes healthy eating, regular physical activity, and balancing the number of calories you consume with the number of calories your body uses. Staying in control of your weight contributes to good health now and as you age”
In “Reading the Slender Body,” Bordo writes, “On the one hand, as producers of goods and services we must sublimate, delay, repress desires for immediate gratification; we must cultivate the work ethic. On the other hand, as consumers we must display a boundless capacity to capitulate to desire and indulge in impulse; we must hunger for constant and immediate satisfaction.” Fat bodies are perceived as inherently unable to be good consumers while simultaneously they are scolded and looked down upon for being apparently being unable to overcome the desire to consume. The temptations that
Bordo mentions which are thrown in our faces are yet more obstacles we have to overcome to be well-managed, well-controlled individual bodies. The excerpt above from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website is proof straight from the government itself that people are expected to control their bodies, as if bodies are inherently unruly. If they are not policed, they will wander toward chaos - which in this case is obesity.
No comments:
Post a Comment