Female Body Image & Eating Disorders

[jacobhaller]

Kirsten Flames me in Infoshop!

I wrote:

We need to remember that there are different sexist attitudes in different places in the west. While I do not look for even soft-core porn, where I live it is neither available in any public libraries nor available in most supermarkets. or video stores. as expected toplessness is completely absent.

We might ask where we see bodily admiration vs bodily objectification. As a target, I treasured the few whistles I got from women and resented the more whistles I got from men. As a subject, I half-wish I did not consider people's appearance. but I really wish I could consider people's appearence without bodily admiration taking a share of bodily objectification.

What puzzles me the most are the health issues. I can explain my attraction to skinny women as an attraction to healthy women (and often criticise the healthy-body-image movement, first, for picking on people like me, and second, for pretending overweight people are underweight), but I cannot explain my attraction to large-breasted women the same way. At first I tried to deny it. I said that I should be attracted to health, that implants are unhealthy, and that therefore implants should be unattractive. It doesn't often work.

She wrote:

I CERTAINLY KNOW the illogical rationale that men choose thin women cuz they are "healthier" is total bullshit on many levels. If you are gonna use the whole "we chose thin women cuz they make better breeders" argument, well, reality shows that women with some meat on their bones do better in pregnancy and birth than thin women. You cannot judge someone's health by whether they are thin or not! THAT IS ABSURD! I know a ton of women who do SICK things to keep thin, like eat laxatives so they never get the food they eat, like binging and purging, like taking drugs like coc and speed to lose weight, like starving themselves for male fantasy bodies. I know women who are so obsessed with weight that they are literally killing themselves to meet the unnatural beauty standards in America, and these are your "healthy" choices? You CANNOT tell what is going on with weight by looks. And it is insanely stupid to think that is an intelligent argument here. Models I have known live in weight slavery, they live in body fear, I know very few healthy thin women, sorry. Almost every one of them I know lives in real FEAR of gaining weight as if that was the end of their being! Visit Ann Simonton's site at mediawatch.com, she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swin Suit Edition, see what she says about weight and models. You CANNOT make sweeping untrue rationalizations for your wanting trophy women by claiming it is health based, especially when following it with a comment of how much you like your fake plastic tits!!!!

Come on people...some of these comments are really sad and lame. A woman trying to argue she gets power from her tits and wants to keep it that way, arguing tits are ALWAYS sex?! What the hell? So my sisters and I going topless was sexual? No, it was not. Get a grip. American Christian sexual repression is what these comments are about, not about true sexuality or the reality of things without the sexual repression present. I have decided, on the whole, to quit trying to educate idiots who say things like they choose thin women cuz they are more naturally healthy *and* that they love fake tits. I have decided those people can live amongst themselves. Strong, independent, HEALTHY women should just boycott these assholes in everyway is my feeling about it at this point. Let shallow looksists date each other. Maybe it is safer that way...

And yes, let us exalt plastic UNSAFE and DANGEROUS tit implants cuz, geez, men like them, and geez, women get power from them, who cares about the woman's health? All that matters is her sex appeal, right guy? As long as YOU GET OFF ON LOOKING AND SQUEEZING THOSE FAKE TITS, WHO GIVES A FUCK IF SHE DIES? Right? This shit angers me and this is a woman's HEALTH issue as much as anything else.

I wrote:

My whole point was that attraction is what it is, and it not always what it should be. As I said, I can justify my attraction to thinness as an attraction to health, but I cannot justify my attraction to large breasts as an attraction to health. It just is. Sometimes we can change our desires and sometimes we can't.

My next point seems a bit more complicated ... let's start with high heels. We both know high heels are unhealthy and we can both recognize high heels with ease, so there is no doubt, no second-guessing involved. I decided that since high heels are unhealthy, then high heels should be a turnoff. And since that day, they have been. We both know that anorexia and implants are unhealthy but we cannot recognize either with the same ease. I personally am very skinny and I personally have taken constant criticism from the so-called 'healthy body weight' movement over my skinniness. Some assumed I had anorexia because I have many severe allergies and must be very careful what I eat. None realized I eat four or five meals a day. One of my friends had large breasts and wanted a reduction. So in both cases the skinny = anorexic and the large = implant assumptions some made were just wrong.

I can have a very clear conscience about my preference for skinniness, simply because it is not a preference for anorexics [ia], there are healthy skinny people and indeed more people here are overweight than not overweight. I can have a somewhat clear conscience about my preference for large breasts because it is not a preference for implants, there are naturally large-breasted people.

[Why am I forbidden an attraction to skinny women? When homophobes condemn homosexuals' orientation, we rightly call it bigotry, but when Kirsten condemns my orientation, we cannot call it bigotry.]

[Teatree]

I think a little bit of fat, and muscle is alot more attractive then anorexic looking girls. Women with totaly flat butts are actualy kind of disgusting.
I like women who have a little bit fo meat on their thighs.

Being too thin, or Obese in my opinion is not attractive. Weighing 300 lbs is neither healthy nor attractive.

Yet I have to agree that the glorification of these women who are skinny to the point of being unhealthy is a negitive trend in our society.

I think the most beautifull women are of normal weight, healthy amount of fat and muscle, maybe a little more rugged and strong the the typical American.

The media definitly tries to manipulate our idea of whats attractive and whats not.

Kudos on a rather blatant display of superficiality.
I'm sure obese women who now know that not only are they "unhealthy" but also "unattractive" will feel that much better about themseleves when they look in the mirror.

When a person is "skinny" that does not make them "healthy"...they could still be malnourished. Just as when societys' idea of body image deems a person "fat" that does not mean they are "unhealthy".

Lets not be naive.

[Post_industrial]

Maybe that wasnt the best way to express myself.

However, as someone who is studying to be a doctor, I have concern about the health of my fellow anarchists. Women who think they need to be thin, and that being thin is more important then being strong and healthy are misguided from my perspective and should be encouraged to take better care of themselves.
Likewise, women or men who are way too fat dont need to be patted on the back and told that its allright becuase they realy are hurting themselves.

Women and men should be strong and healthy. I am not attracted to women who are boney thin, or women who are the other extream. Its a preference I have, and there is nothing sexist about it from my perspective.

I admire strength. Not just physical strength, but strength of mind and character.

From a health perspective it is not healthy to starve yourself for very long, and its not healthy to eat like a typical american either.

[Levee_En_Masse]

Kind of going on and off-topic at the same time, I have 2 major observations in terms of society and body image....
One is that in America especially, overeating and unhealthy foods are advertised constantly (particularly to kids), at the same time that various fad diets (Atkins, anyone?) and unhealthy body images are advertised constantly (mostly to adults). It's like the two play off of eachother, equally contributing to the commodification of the human body and extremes of unhealthy addiction by contributing to eachother.
Another thing is that as an anarchist, I think one can only be consistent by avoiding either extreme as much as possible. Because for example, an anarchist might say: "I can eat as much as I want, I don't have to conform to these illusory body standards", but then they risk being the typical overconsuming person which has become the norm in America.

[trashycakes]

i'm a naturally thin girl, i get tons of shit about being "anorexic" and people (often heavier than me) saying i must not eat and it's not good, etc etc.
actually, i love food and i also eat pretty healthy and its beginning to be kind of a drag when people accuse ME of following medias ideals.
it works both ways.

[Kropotkitten]

I am sick and tired of being told that skinny women are made to feel as bad as fat women for being out of the range of a 'healthy' body weight [and no, I've been reading stuff from the anti-body-fascism movement for years and I've never once read that healthy looking women were underweight...]

Let me qualify this with the disclosure that I was an obese adolescent as a result of an intake of tricyclic anti-depressants, and when I turned 17 I was freed from them, lost 50 pounds in 3 months and have now maintained a healthy weight for the past 6 years. I have been skinny and I have been fat.

When I was fat I was singled out for it, devalued for it and generally assumed to be lazy and greedy; when I became skinnier I was told that I had an eating disorder and, as a result of having abruptly lost so much weight when I stopped taking the drugs, I was shoved through a litany of invasive and paternalistic examinations. I had a teacher tell the whole class that I was willfully trying to become underweight, that I lied about eating, that I abused diuretics and laxatives. I was taken to a doctor who weighed me naked and did a cavity search to make sure I wasn't concealing weights to tip the scales. It was humiliating.

I still preferred being told I was too skinny and accused of being pathological to being made sexually invisible, devalued by all of my peers and generally perceived as ugly, greedy and lazy as a result of my being overweight. Even when people, heavier friends included, bitched to me that it was unfair that I could now stay so thin, or accused me of not eating, this was absolutely nothing in comparison to the isolation I had experienced as an overweight person.

The fact that I lost the weight so fast also meant that I got to witness, in the space of a short time, a radical shift in how I was treated. My parents treated me better and began to tell me I was beautiful. All of my relatives paid more attention to me. People at work or at school were nicer to me than they had ever been before, suddenly I was invited to more social events, my closest friends treated me better, my boss began to trust me far more and began to include me in fat jokes made about other people.

The fact is that even if those of us who are healthy or skinny [note that skinny doesn't necessarily mean healthy] are envied and resented because of the privilege we are given compared with overweight people, this is a microscopic affliction considering the hateful, rude, unconsciously demeaning assumptions made about obese people. And guess what; fat phobia isn't solving the obesity epidemic anyway.

Considering this is an anarchist forum, I'm a little shocked by the total lack of reference to class as it relates to obesity. The majority of obese people are poor/working class, and people of color are over-represented in this demographic.

Also, I find it interesting that as soon as someone wants to bring up the subject of anorexia and bullimia, they are told that these aren't as big a problem as obesity and we should REALLY be talking about how fat people are getting. As someone who spent my teen girl years in a junior high school where literally half the female student population was bullimic, I'm sick of this trend. I know someone who died and people who almost died because they were told that if they didn't fit a certain model of beauty they were worthless and so they chose a path of self destruction. Some of these people were formerly fat, and had tried to lose weight through other means such as exercise, but when they failed because their bodies were stubbornly chubby, they took it to the extreme.
The fact that women especially are fed propaganda from the age that we could read, that tells us all cellulite is abnormal, that we should be ashamed of larger hips, thicker, even muscular thighs and so on, is still holding a majority of women back from actually liking our bodies. And you know what? We deserve to like our bodies, especially for the simple reason that if we do we are more likely to react to our own obesity by striving to be healthy in meaningful ways rather than starving ourselves to death...

[|Y|]

The reason obesity is so pervasive in current society is that humans were originally hunter gatherers, with a very low muscle to body fat ratio. We'd eat up during the springs and summers, and live off of fat during winters. What then happens is agriculture comes along and makes it so we can eat any time we want, and we do, and we get fat. We are evolved to eat, and we do. Pretty simple.

A healthy person in my opinion is one that is of the same body proportions of a tribes person (which in most soceities is not fat except in later ages as the tribe moves on to support the elders).

BTW, the doctor that did the cavity search? Asshole perverted fucking jerkwad. How much weight could you hide in there anyway? Jesus.

[jacobhaller]

Actually, it's agricultural societies that have the strongest seasonal variation: pre-harvest semi-starvation and post-harvest plenty.

But descent groups which have most relied on agriculture tend to cope with the most carbs, and descent groups which have most relied on hunting, fishing, or herding tend to cope with the most fats. And the old human norm was probably mostly gathering with occasional hunting and, from the upper paleolithic on, occassional fishing, such that they could cope with carbs and with fats.

[|Y|]

iirc huntergatherers did have to deal with seasonal changes, they didn't (couldn't) migrate to the levels that say, fowel do.

But I'll trust your analysis as I don't have the time right now to do some googling.

[libertaris]

well, that´s true there is a body image where only few women can fit into.
But that´s not only because the body image is someone skinny. Is because there are a lot of difference betwen the bodies of one woman to another.

I have friend who are very thin, and the do sports, and they eat very well, they are really healthy.

There are some who are not so thin, intermediate, they do sports, they eat well...and so and so.

And I, and another friends, are not overwigth, don´t know how to say: we have rounded hips, we have bigger breast. And I play volley twice a week, I go footing some days a week...i do sports, and I eat well (mediterranean food). Some months ago i have had a health problem and I loose so much pounds. My body was more similar to that "standard image of beauty girl", but that was not muy healthy weigth. As I get well, I have gained and now are on my healthy weigth.

All of us are healthy. But some guys area tracted by the first, others by the seconds, and no less are atracted by us, the third

I don´t want to "change the body image to another", because this is something static, this is not real. The reality is that there are a lot of bodies, and, of course there are in male bodies.
Not all of you could get the same body of Vin Diesel, it´s absurd! (and i´m sure not healthy)...
...do you understand me? the beauty is not only one way. There are a lot of beautiful girls, but each has a different kind of body.

Well...or that happens in mediterranean area. I hope all that american tv series shere all the girls are blonde and the same body is not real what boring if you don´t like blondes!!!

[patrickhenry]

And I, and another friends, are not overwigth, don´t know how to say: we have rounded hips, we have bigger breast.

I don't know about most american men but this is how I like women no stick figures for me.

[Areté]

Fat women were once generally considered to be beautiful because that was seen as a sign of wealth.

How idiotic. Beautiful? More like premature physical degeneration!

[libertaris]

it was not healthy, it was social class: famelic if you were a worker. Fat if you were rich and to be rich was the real beauty standard

But, anyway, today we call fat what is not really to be fat. Or someone thinks Marilyn Monroe was fat?

[patrickhenry]

well in yiddish we call that "zaftig" unfortunately western culture and media try to tell us what's considered attractive. there is a big difference between "zaftig" and obesity.

[Guest]

Kind of going on and off-topic at the same time, I have 2 major observations in terms of society and body image....
One is that in America especially, overeating and unhealthy foods are advertised constantly (particularly to kids), at the same time that various fad diets (Atkins, anyone?) and unhealthy body images are advertised constantly (mostly to adults). It's like the two play off of eachother, equally contributing to the commodification of the human body and extremes of unhealthy addiction by contributing to eachother.
Another thing is that as an anarchist, I think one can only be consistent by avoiding either extreme as much as possible. Because for example, an anarchist might say: "I can eat as much as I want, I don't have to conform to these illusory body standards", but then they risk being the typical overconsuming person which has become the norm in America.

i highly recommend Susan Bordo's book, Unbearable Weight: feminism, western culture, and the body. It is a collection of essays on this subject, and it begins with a historical look at the contradiction that you're pointing out through underlying western philosophies.

in terms of being an anarchist and being consistent in regards to this stuff, sure, taken out of context, situation, and society, it sounds pretty simple. but not everyone is able to say,well i'm an anarchist so i will choose to avoid both extremes. in many many ways, being an anarcha feminist and also struggling with an eating disorder adds so many additional layers of shame to the mix. just because someone is an anarchist doesn't make them immune. does it make them a walking contradiction? yeah, but just want to point out that because of the shame that's associated with this issue, particularly in many anarchist communities, they aren't often talked about, and since they tend to flourish on secrecy, it's sort of a conducive environment for their continuation. societal influences, media, etc. have an undoubtable influence on body image, dieting, what we eat, and they certainly have a role in eating disorders. but it seems more like they are triggers to something else. Bordo's book talks about this, too and uses comparative examples from earlier time periods.

but yeah, i agree that the goal would be to avoid the extremes and reaquaint ourselves with what our bodies actually need.