Anorexia, Body dysmorphic disorder, and how jacked up we are...

This is in light of the recent headlines about the Surgeon General comments on Santa being "too fat," and it really got me thinking about how jacked up we are as a society right now when it comes to food, dieting, and body image.

We seem to have no happy medium at all. We have an extremely high obesity rate, coupled with a high rate of people with anorexia and bulimia.

What the hell is wrong with us? Why are we (societally) so schizophrenic with this issue?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7G0ENIwIpg&feature=related

 

What is wrong with us?

Lets see...

Vogue, Cosmopolitan for starters.

Shows like America's next top model
The bachelor with all the beautiful people
Nip/tuk

The commercials for flawless skin and plumper lips.

The way our society idolizes the beautiful people from movies and TV.

That is certainly a beginning.

Raising two girls in this day and age isn't easy. Teaching them the difference between "hollywood" beauty and real beauty isn't easy when they are bombarded on a daily basis from all of the above.

and yet, on the flip side of that we have fast food and minutes in meals. Go to any grocery store and it is filled with ready to eat meals that are high in fat. With families that have both parents working and extra cirricular schedules every night of the week, it is more often then not that we are stopping to "pick something up" on the way to one activity or another.

We are, simply put, killing ourselves with the life styles we are choosing.

 

On the other hand, I can see a backlash forming against this. My wife and I are part of it. People all over are rejecting the shallow, consumerist and ultimately dangerous society that has been created. I see it as kind of a quiet counter culture that is attempting to mind the wisdom of the past and forge a new way forward to the future.

The bottom line is that I don't think we can keep living like we do. Our society is ultimately unsustainable and I think that our body image issues are just another symptom of this.

 

We live in a society that makes overly and obsessively "beautiful" people larger then life. We are told to be thin and be perfect and be happy. We are taught by TV, Radio, Movies, Magazines that only one certain type of body is right, and anything else is very bad. Yet when anyone attempts to meet that goal of perfection they are forcing them selfs to be deathly sick, and fight the food battle every meal. We have fast food, super sized food, quick meals, microwaved, processed, and deep fried something in almost every meal. Then when children are fat its the parents fault, when children are anorexic its the parents fault and when the child is fit and active and eating right and healthy (shocker it does happen sometimes) then they and the parents are over acheviers and the parents are pushing their kids to hard. How do you win in that situation. Then think of the parents of todays kids. Both parents work 40 hours a week, and they have PTA, after school activities, and homework help and maybe even overtime for their job and they are supposed to promote and maintain a healthy life style as well including having a nice well balanced family dinner.

Its news stories like the fat Santa, and how Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen weight issues make me glad i don't have kids and that i am well adjusted enough to know what my body really needs, not what the media tells me is right.
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And going farther back in time, there's Barbie.... From the Wellness Center at Vanderbilt University:

 

Whilst I don't think the problem is quite as bad over here (yet) it is an afflcition that be-devils most of 'Western' society one way or another.

Thankfully, when you get older, it is possible to shake off the shackles and forge your own path (just as well with my expanding waistline ). The time will come when society as a whole will do so too but not until we wean ourselves off the addiction to glitz, celebrity and so-called "glamour".

 

I think you hit the nail on the head here. Our children our so bombarded with pics of "beautiful people" from the movie and recording industry. Instead wouldn't it be nice to have them idolize top female and male athletes who strive to keep healthy bodies, eat right and be at the top of their game. I don't see too many magazines out there with pin ups of top volleyball players.

School systems need better physical education departments and IMNHO more time should be spent in school doing physical activity. I think we need to attack the obesity/anorexia problem from the ground roots up. That means changing the views of our children.

 

My husband and I noticed it's a pretty insidious lifestyle choice in Western society. At least where we live, finding places to walk from place to place can be challenging. Most new shopping centers are built to encourage folks to park, shop...get back in the car...drive a few hundred feet, and shop some more..etc. If you want to park in one spot and walk within a mile to get all your shopping done....then you often have to walk in the gutters, the road, or on those lovely medians pretending to be green spaces in the middle of a parking lot.

Then there is the problem that modern grocery stores often charge more for the healthy things like fruits, vegetables, whole grain products, and less for the overprocessed, high sodium, pre-packaged meals. Fortunately, the movement toward slow food and local food helps with that, if you are willing to seek it out.

I think the Western mentality (and actually, it's creeping into Eastern cultures as well, as they seek to have a "privileged American" lifestyle) of constant performance for image sake, competition without soul, and living "the dream" has led to those lovely side effects of reality tv (why live your own life, when you can live someone elses? blah!):barf:, the loss of sidewalks and natural spaces, the over-convenience of fast food, and the loss of folks who know how to cook with an actual (gasp!) oven.

But it's not all bad. I agree that there is a slow counter culture developing. From the movement of slow food (http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ ...the idea that food should be enjoyed with friends and family, actually cooked by you, and that you should know where your food is coming from..gasp!), the increased popularity of things like yoga, etc (yes, often watered down/changed...but it's a start), the increased interest in organic foods, the increased need and developement of sustainable energy and building techniques, the increased awareness of the obesity issue, the growing awareness of urban sprawl and movements to develope better communities in urban and rural areas.......in other words, we're ****ed up...but we're slowly getting a clue. There is hope!

 

In a way, Cruentus' question could be taken to be a combination of two other questions:

(i) How did it come to pass that the cultural pressures that (as social animals) we respond and conform to passed out out of local communities and became in effect part of a world wide, industry and media-created `game' which allots you more points the more you look like International Celebrity X, drive a car which is closer on some scale of closeness to a Lambourghini Diablo or a Bentley Arnage Turbo, liven in a twelve-bedroom monster house overlooking Burrard Inlet or San Francisco Bay or a limestone `brownstone' two minute's walk away from The Plaza... etc?

(ii) What part does food play in this `game'?

Our distant (and not-so-distant) ancestors didn't play this game; the rules they played by were set by local conditions and, for the most part, very tough personal economics. They worked in sweatshops, factories or on poor plots of land struggling to keep their families alive and they often died poor at an age when most people nowadays are thinking about starting new careers. Increased prosperity, access to medical technology, social mobility and opportunities, have all played their part in creating a world in which we have both the time and disposible income to play this kind of game, so detached from daily necessity, at all.

But the problems come in in (ii), because we are in a sense stuck with a contradiction between our biologies and our sociologies. Biologically, we're built to retain fat. We are not built to construct muscle. Muscle we can live without, past a certain point, but retention of fat, the most compact nutritional source of energy, was absolutely crucial to survival until very recently. And we needed those reserves, as margins of survival under often bitter conditions.

Now we no longer have those conditions, but our physiology hasn't changed. So now, we have to artificially recreate those conditions by deliberately seeking exercise, devising complex aerobic and anabolic routines for ourselves, and equally artificial diet regimes, to utilize the excess stored energy that most people wear around their middles. And only fairly prosperous people can do that. Therefore leanness becomes a mark of prosperity, whereas once upon a time it was our peasant and proletarian ancestors who were the rail-thin ones, overworked and underfed, while the gentry were depicted in their expensively commissioned portraits as (then-)fashionably portly.

In contemporary life, people no longer have a fixed `place' in the world that they share with their ancestors and in all likelihood with their next six generations of descendents; they can be as jumped-up in their social ambitions as they like, and as they can successfully `bring off'. Appearances are how the game in (i) is played—all those people driving leased Porsches and 600-series BMWs that they hope to own, someday, twelve years hence, and living in houses whose mortages they'll never live to see payed off—and that get incorporated into the game that the media dungeonmasters want us to play, along with all the other markers of luxury that come in the game box. Why do we play this game? Again, I think, because rank within the social group and survival of one's offspring were for much of our primate history so closely tied together: we look like better evolutionary bets the higher-ranked we are, because, in the end, it has always been the high-ranked members of our ancestral animal groups who got to pass their genes on.

The bottom line, I think, is that richies used to be plump, but are now thin, because only richies can afford personal trainers and five-day-a-week trips to the gym and high-protein diets and so on; everyone wants to be mistaken for a richie; so thin is the body image that comes in the game box. And to make the point evident to the groundlings, the rule is, be really thin. But the demands on us are not such as to use up all the calories that we're physiologically driven, by our previous two million years of nearly constant hunger as the norm, to seek out. And that contradiction is what has led us to where we are, I believe...

 

Wow! Well said Exile! I do believe biology and sociology have a huge impact on where we are today, and I couldn't have summed it up any better than you just did. However, I have to disagree (slightly) on a few small points.

You said we have to artificially create strenuous exercise regimes and complex diets. I am not convinced that is needed to be basically fit and healthy and look fit and healthy. I think our modern reliance on convenience foods, over-convenience in general (how often do you see walk up ATMs anymore?), and our sedentary lifestyles are just as much to blame. If you look back only one or two generations, when we most had attained an ability to be self sufficient and eat a relatively healthy diet without the threat of starvation or wild predators...many were healthier because they did simple things like mow with a push mower, walk to the store, walk to visit thier neighbors/work/school. I'm sure we all know someone who lived to a ripe old age eventhough he ate crap....but he/she was climbing trees and walking everywhere. While I certainly agree the richies have the benefits of personal trainers and the time to workout multiple times a day...I think most folks could become healthier and lead to looking leaner, etc. if they didn't rely on the convenient so much. Would they be the uber-thin? Probably not...but they wouldn't be the couch potatoes of today either. And getting active is a habit, the more you do...the more you crave (I speak from personal experience here, btw).

Appearances are how the game is played?....um, why? Let's look at some of our greatest thinkers and artists. While some of them were certainly popular...did they try to "fit in"? I'm sure Albert Einstein's hairstyle was all the rage in his time. And yes, EVERYONE wanted Frida Khalo's eyebrows! Perhaps it's just my personal bent...but why is it so important to fit in? I know it's a biological mechanism to be the biggest/baddest/etc. But I think our best and most creative minds actually went against popular appearance; indeed, I think popular appearance sometimes molded itself around them because they were different.
Hmmmm...I think I've gotten on a bit of a :soapbox:...sorry about that!

Bascially, Exile, I think you're right on the mark on how we got to this point...but I question why....in this age...we have to be limited by our biology? We have brains, so why don't we use them to do simple things...and then move on to putting all our energies toward improving things...we're kinda way overdue for a renaissance anyway!
mmmmk....nuff said...sorry for the slight rant....:wink2:

 

Indeed. There was a time when fat was chic - it was a sign of wealth. In the musical version of Fiddler on the Roof, in the song "If I Were a Rich Man" as Tevye dreams of being rich, one of the indications being:

The issue is much more apparent with the female body than the male body. The standards are much stricter for the female body, and require a bone structure that most women simply do not have. Marilyn Monroe was the ideal of beauty in her time - but she was much more curvaceous than the models of today, who are so underweight as to appear to me to be physically ill. Nonetheless, the women's clothing industry centers around styles that cannot like right when worn by the average woman. Most women are simply unable to meet the body standard set by the modeling and fashion industries.

The standards for men are much more realistic; any man who is willing and able to exercise a certain amount can reach the toned appearance that is considered optimum, with a minimum of expense, assuming they have the discipline to stick with a regular exercise regime. It is also generally more acceptable for men to be slightly overweight than for women - and given the differences in clothing styles, it is often easier for men to conceal a slight or incipient paunch than it is for women.

As health becomes the guiding factor, rather than clothing size, the above may well change - and it can't be too quick in coming. None of the above even comes close to addressing other issues that affect body image and clothing, such as the marketing of very adult-style clothing to steadily younger children, especially girls... but I suspect that's a topic for another thread.

 

I happen to agree completely with these points. But my impression is that it's almost only the mavericks, the outliers on the curve, who avoid the path of least resistance, which in our day and age consists of what, in the '50s, was enthusiastically marketed as `modern conveniences'. We have developed, on a group scale, the very bad habit of seeking to avoid as much effort as possible (I've watched people in cars prowling parking lots in search of the very closest spaces to the stores served by those lots—lying in wait for the choice places!—in spite of the fact that there
were many available spaces within a 90-second walk from the Target or Trader Joe's entrance. People would rather spend a quarter of an hour waiting for someone to pull out from a space right next to the handicapped-parking places than spend a minute and a half walking to the front entrance? On a beautiful crisp autumn day?? That sort of thing...

If I were a complete, thorough-going evolutionary psychology type, I'd argue that this kind of behavior is just, once again, the manifestation of a contradiction between our biological and our cultural realities: living things are rewarded for conserving energy—there are actually mathematical rules relating minimization of effort to long term survival in an arbitrary population, and it makes sense intuitively: do the least you have to do to get by, and you have more in reserve for a rainy day. I'm not sure this is the whole story, though; but even if it isn't, it probably does contribute somewhat to an understanding of why we seem to be so damned lazy... and then wind up doing seemingly crazy things like running on treadmills for an hour, maybe on the same day that we hunkered down in our cars for most of a Schumann symphony waiting for the Perfect Parking Spot.

True, but again—over enough time, it's probably what happens near the median that sets the rules of the game, rather than what happens at the outliers. It was precisely because Einstein, Khalo and others had such rare talent that they could afford to be detached from the source of self-esteem that for most people comes from success in winning the approval of others. And that kind of talent will always be rare. So while there may be, in the short term, some kind of emulation of the really unusual geniuses, over the long term, most people will be hovering around the group median for their expectations.

Yes—all true and, I think, crucial to the point. Women do seem to be particularly targeted by this sort of extreme, radically unrealistic body-image marketing. I suspects it's because, even now, girls grow up insecure about themselves and their bodies, and that insecurity can be translated into big bucks by the fashion/cosmetic/diet/relationship industry. Anyone who's looked at the advertising in any of the big-circulation women's magazines can see right away what kind of `hook' they're using to milk billions of dollars from femal consumers who hope to finally come up to standard, as Bette Midler once put it acidly, by buying the right stuff. (Men grow insecure too, but about very different things. All those expensive toys, and 350hp V8 fantasy trucks and so on, are pitched to the male analogue of those insecurities.) I don't have a daughter, but friends of ours do, and you can see it in them already, at age 10 and 11—and this in Ms. magazine's fourth decade of publication.

 

Have you noticed this habit is just as bad near a gym? My husband has goten me in the habit of parking and walking....but it's funny to see folks try to park as close to the door of the gym as possible....go figure! :uhyeah:

Sadly true. I just think I'd rather try to live up to my own standards (which are hard enough) than add the stress of living up to everyone elses expectations as well. Besides, I don't really like a lot of what others expect. But I'm used to being considered a bit "odd-turned" and weird...it's all part of my charm...:rofl:

I just wander if there was a way to encourage more folks to seek thier own ways to happiness...if some of this weird body image schizophrenia and such would fade away? Just a thought and hopeful dream, I guess.

That reminds me of the chorus form a TLC song, "Unpretty":
You can buy your hair if it won't grow
You can fix your nose if he says so
You can buy all the make up
That man can make
But if you can't look inside you
Find out who am I too
Be in the position to make me feel
So damn unpretty

The song is about a girl who felt pretty until she started dating a guy who just couldn't be satisfied....amazing how we can feel good about ourselves, but it can often be easily damaged. by an outside source..hmmmm...probably a different thread...
But since some of my favourite female heroes are folks like Bonnie Raitt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth, Remedios Varos and such...I'm probably not in the norm...heh

Thanks for a great discussion!

 

As an aside of this discussion, my admiration of the actress Jamie Lee Curtis skyrocketed when, some years ago, she chose to pose for a covershot of Rolling Stone magazine without any makeup on, as a statement. I thought, "kudos to you!"

Another source of bad self-image is those supermarket tabloids that have pictures of celebrities that point out flaws in their bodies. Cellulite, a few extra pounds, wrinkles...any movie star caught by the Papparazzi displaying any such "flaws" is plastered and criticized right next to our Reeses candies.

 

That's a good point there, Random - nothing like the pack turning on the Alpha's to really get everyone fretting.

Also, it has to be remembered that not only do those held up as the pinnacle of beauty have the advantages of looking good to start with but that that is enhanced with the best clothes, cosmetics, health care and photographic skills that money can buy.

Cap that off that in this digital age their images are post-produced into unobtainable perfection (i.e. not even they can look like it) and is it any wonder that the vulnerable sections of our society are killing themselves trying to look that way?

 

People do have some jacked-up ideas about their self-image and, no offense, but I think that the use of the all-encompassing "we" when talking about obesity just might be contributing to the anorexia/bulimia problem. Yes, some people have bad eating habits. Some people don't exercise. But when people start saying that "we" have a problem, certain others will draw the conclusion that "I" have a problem and take whatever steps are necessary to correct it.

 

Yes, this last point is absolutely dead center of the target. I remember that in one week many years ago, Esquire came out with Michelle Pfeiffer on their cover with the caption, `What's wrong with Michelle Pfeiffer?... Absolutely Nothing', and some other magazine published details of her various multiple cosmetic surgeries and other ventures into modern applied sciences to preserve her appearance of total perfection. And now in addition, the MPs of the word can be Photoshopped into celebrity physique/physiogomy Nirvana by the most advanced digital massaging the studios can produce... and we know just how spectacular the special effects are in current movies, eh? All that technology turned inward to make Jessica Alba or Reese Witherspoon or.... into someone whom Helen of Troy herself would be afraid to be photographed next to, and what chance does a normal (pre)teen girl have?

It's in the air, is the problem. Kids do it to other kids. They set horribly harsh standards for physical attractiveness and organize themselves into pecking orders based on how close each of them comes to the `hot' celebs du jour. That's where the feverish obsession with looks and appearance is coming from...the peer groups in schools themselves channel those impossible image expectations.

 

I often wonder how much of this is a crafted marketing ploy. If everyone had a healthy body image and people were comfortable with how they looked, how many people would be buying stuff in order to make themselves look better?

This is a very cynical way of looking at this issue, but if you take a look at all of the lies morally bankrupt things that cigarrette companies did in order to make money, how big of a step is it really to intentionally destroy an entire generation's self esteem?

 

I like my HD TV and the HD channels. It is really hard to hide all those little imperfections in people. I actually enjoy it, as they seem real to me know.

I also enjoy the BBC and similar channels as the people look like real people in size and shape. Of course no one is my shape or ungliness , but I mean the average people all here and out in the real world.

 

Here is a question.

Anorexia/Bulemia has been around for a good long time. I had friends in high school suffer from the ailment. One didn't make it 5 years after we graduated. Beautiful girl too.

Is the problem larger now then it was then or is it that we access the media easier with the internet? Go to any page and you are bombarded with adds, some on weight loss, others on getting the perfect body. When I was growing up we had two channels of TV, now there are hundreds with adds running constantly showing us what we could and should look like.

And it is no different for teenage boys. They care just as much as the girls do about appearance and what they are wearing and if the girls like the specific AXE body spray they are wearing. They try to build perfect bodies and be the best hockey/basketball/football player dosing their bodies with steroids at such a young age because the coach tells them they won't get to the top without it and "everyone is doing it."

As parents the only thing we can do is lead by example. Anyone who knows me well knows I don't necessarily get myself all spiffied up to go out to Walmart. Often I leave the house with little or no make up on. Its not because I am fighting the system, its because I refuse to play in it. I have close friends who are much like me, don't wear a lot of make up and are comfortable with who they are.

So far it is working with my girls to certain degrees. My oldest wears little make up. My youngest is in the stage of experimenting and is concerned with her looks, however, she also will just as easily throw her hair in a pony tail and shove on a pair of sweats to go out to volleyball practice then to do her hair and slap the make up on.

Perhaps our best defense against all of this is what we teach at home. 123