Fat People

The first article I read in the Wall Street Journal this morning was regarding a change in body standards of the Tamil-speaking movie industry of India. I guess that with India’s increasing economic “effectiveness” their movie stars are becoming more “westernized” i.e. wanting to be thin and wearing western clothing. The example the author gave was of a young actress who was 5′4″ and 121 lbs. Still “fat” by American actress standards but leaning towards the thin in an industry that previously provided many more voluptuous images.

So what’s with this need for thinness and how did it get attached to western culture in particular? As many know, in recent European history beautiful women were voluptuous–because this meant you were wealthy–think renaissance paintings of plump, dimpled ladies. Somehow we veered off that course into a land where 121 lbs on a 5′4″ frame is considered pushing the weight envelope, aye carumba!

According to Peter Stearns this skinny ideal began to formulate somewhere between 1890 and 1910 and then morphed into a consumeristic obsession somewhere after WWII. Interestingly enough this strict treatment of body weight emerged as Americans were loosening previous, rigid Victorian customs. Of course, the desire for abstemiousness was nothing new to Western culture which had a sort of Greek-inspired Christian ideal to abstain from too much pleasure, which included eating. However, thinness as beauty was a new take on this old ideal. Previously the word ‘diet’ had indicated a restriction of foods to help with some sort of illness or condition. Diets to help those with diabetes, acne, etc. However, around the turn-of-the-century, clinics which promoted diets to lose weight began to pop up and such products as baths and sweat-inducing rubber garments were promoted for their weight-loss properties. The medical establishment was cautious about associating weight loss with good health so this industry remained outside of science.

The exact origin of this quest of thinness for thinness’ sake is a bit of a mystery. One can point to a few causes: the late 19th century obsession with athleticism, the rise of a feminine fashion culture and ideal, the inherent association of weight control with self control, and the spread of Middle Class ideals at this time period in the West. It is hard to pinpoint an exact cause rather one must look at all these late 19th century social changes and see an ideal of thinness as emerging from this soup of social change.

With the rise of consumerism in the later 20th century one can see this ideal increase over class boundaries and sustain itself through a sort of guilt-riddled advertising culture. Perhaps it is this very guilt nature that led to a separation of the thin obsession from actual eating patterns in the U.S. during the mid-late 20th century. Although people desired to be thin, there was less and less thinness as the 20th century rolled on. This coupling of guilt, sendentariness, and weight gain certainly adds a new even more obsessive dimension to an unattainable ideal of thinness which causes popular culture to think that women who are thin are not thin. I think if I ever have to hear about how J.Lo’s butt is fat again I will scream. If you think J. Lo’s butt is fat you have no clue what fat is!

Alright, let’s get back to India. As India’s middle class grows, sedentary white-collar jobs increase, and more food becomes available through growing affluence; it only makes sense that a similar pattern of obsession with thinness as beauty and self-control will appear. Certainly western hegemony has influenced some aspects of culture in the East, I’ve seen this with ideals of athleticism passed on by British schools, etc. etc. However, there is something to be said for the coupling of thinness obsession with worldwide trends of economic development in office jobs, inflation, and the middle class. Indian peasants have no need for weight loss in their day-to-day struggle for survival against debt-mongerers, however, the rising middle class in India’s cities will soon become more and more obsessed with keeping the weight off. Hopefully this trend will not lead to the depths of obsession that has consumed American culture. Perhaps if homeopathic ideals remain in India’s health culture they will take a different path…

Sources:

Stearns, Peter N. “Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West.”
New York: London; New York University Press, 1997.