Skinny is to beautiful as obese is to\u2026 Ugly? Repulsive? Lazy? The ease with which such words come to our minds speaks to the embarrassingly seamless connection that has developed between fatness and all of its negative connotations.<\/p>\n
However much our obsession with appear\u00adance has progressed since the olden days of pow\u00addered wigs and foot bindings, we can\u2019t ignore the culture of impulsive judgments and first impressions that still dominates today\u2019s social interactions. The standards of normalcy are cutting, and their biggest victims are the overweight. By mainstream logic, skinniness goes hand-in-hand with happiness and glamour, and, inversely, obesity with laziness and illness.<\/p>\n
But harsh as the associations may be, are they factually incorrect?<\/p>\n
The answer can be found in the same scien\u00adtific evidence that is used to support a slim waist. Essentially, a small size is encouraged because of its relation to a small and, consequently, healthy diet. But when size zero espouses the one-size-fits-all for\u00admula for health, the logic trumping the small begins to fail. Not only is a supermodel waist size unnecessary for well-being, it is also physically unattainable for some and, as such, must be rejected as a defini\u00adtion of health.<\/p>\n
Numbers speak volumes about the correlation between weight and health. Although the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) <\/em>states that average weights for the population have been steadily increas\u00ading, average ages of death have also been following in their stead.<\/p>\n This is not to suggest that more pounds don\u2019t come with their own slew of physical illnesses. Heart disease and type II diabetes are but two cholesterol-related diseases that ail the larger individuals of the popu\u00adlation. But a 25-inch waist is not an es\u00adsential component to liv\u00ading a heart-healthy life.<\/p>\n Ironically, it may even be detrimental to health. In fact, the JAMA <\/em>defined a healthy weight as having a body mass index (the measure of body fat based on height and weight) between 18.5 and 24.9, proving that the elusive perfect waist size is but an unnecessarily extreme solution to a problem that can be met halfway.<\/p>\n First, we must learn to sort through the health advice that is pro\u00adfusely marketed to the general popu\u00adlation. Rather than tuning our ears to our own bodies, we are being forced to shape our eating and exercise hab\u00adits after advice that actually only ca\u00adters to the physical predispositions of a fraction of the population. The ma\u00adjority of this propagated information relies on the faulty assumption that bikini-body lifestyles are both readily attainable and essential.<\/p>\n Studies from the American Psy\u00adchological Association actually reveal that socioeconomic class is strongly correlated with obesity. The wealthier a person is, the more fancy, green, Whole Foods groceries she is able to purchase, and vice versa. Racial incli\u00adnations also show that appetite is an inherent predisposition. Some ethnic groups are more prone to gain weight as suggested by infant studies.<\/p>\n The list goes on and on, sug\u00adgesting that weight management is perhaps one of the most individual\u00adized courses of maintenance we must adopt. Perfect proportions are physi\u00adcally impossible and, more important\u00adly, unnecessary requirements for long and happy lives\u2014which goes to show that, while magazine features and friends\u2019 weight loss fitness regimes may motivate us to get active, they should not hinder us from developing a personal, and not canned, relation\u00adship with our bodies.<\/p>\n The human body is also an individuated machine that does not respond to demands and changes con\u00adsistently among people. Contrary to popular belief, appetite is elastic. As defined by an article in the Atlantic, the elasticity of appetite pitches the idea that \u201cwe have no idea how hun\u00adgry we are, so we respond to growing portion sizes with growing appetites.\u201d<\/p>\n This explains that while por\u00adtions offered in public diners have grown, Americans\u2019 appetites have grown with them, instead of plateau\u00ading at a healthy volume. Following this train of thought, establishing good eating habits must involve shrinking our appetite more than our plate. One person\u2019s idea of a smaller portion may be a plate of pasta, while another\u2019s may be a colorful salad. Neverthe\u00adless, that diet change must adhere to personal body proportions and eating habits, not this month\u2019s new diet fad.<\/p>\n But how do we go about re\u00adworking psychological associations that have become embedded into men\u2019s and women\u2019s brains since their first Barbies and GI Joe dolls? Some\u00adhow, that primeval connection be\u00adtween weight (the number) and health (the state of well-being), must be bro\u00adken.<\/p>\n Some thinkers out there, both frustrated and motivated by the so\u00adcial prejudices at hand, are already at work. Originating in the 1960s, the \u201cfat power\u201d movement has worked to change the beliefs that buttress many contemporary cultural and political norms. Weight-based discrimination occurs on several levels and in various environments; whether it\u2019s workplace bias, denial of public access, or hiring discrimination, overweight citizens everywhere are being treated unfairly and not for concern of their health.<\/p>\n And although the media may be an easy outlet to blame, other fac\u00adtors are also at fault for stagnating the debate on weight and health. Primar\u00adily, ourselves.<\/p>\n Some \u201cfat\u201d activists, for ex\u00adample, have gone to the extremes, burning diet books and verbally bash\u00ading fellow skinny friends. But certainly such activism is not activism at all.<\/p>\n The problem with such mili\u00adtancy is that it has increasingly gravi\u00adtated toward victimizing the people, and not the system, that underlies this faulty belief system, un\u00adwittingly persecuting an innocent stratum of the population. In the midst of this dialogue, it is es\u00adpecially awkward to be an individual at either extreme of the scale.<\/p>\n If we make the argument that weight is a biological trait over which we have control only up to a point, shouldn\u2019t skinny colleagues alike be equally respected for their weight? While the social and biological pre\u00addispositions of some may mean more flesh to go around, for others, it may equate to the longed-after stick skin\u00adny body. Either way, the translation of health must not involve cursory judg\u00adments of either extremes of size.<\/p>\n The real culprits responsible for confounding the relationship be\u00adtween health and weight are the cul\u00adtural practices, which, through habit and practice, have sneaked upon our subconscious and compounded our harsh judgments of others. Celebrity worship, devious fast-food practices, and superficial nutrition education are just some of the institutions that must replace the scapegoat position that skinny and fat individuals hold in this dialogue.<\/p>\n Rewiring a size-obsessed cul\u00adture will be difficult, but we can each contribute to a change for the better if we really ask ourselves: since when did being healthy necessarily mean being a size zero?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Skinny is to beautiful as obese is to\u2026 Ugly? Repulsive? Lazy? The ease with which such words come to our minds speaks to the embarrassingly seamless connection that has developed between fatness and all of its negative connotations. However much our obsession with appear\u00adance has progressed since the olden days of pow\u00addered wigs and foot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,233],"tags":[118,117,116],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature","category-vol-2-issue-1","tag-michelle-no","tag-society","tag-weight"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}