Reacting to the social pressure to lose weight
I’m writing a hypnosis script for myself because I want to lose weight. (I will share it with you all when it is finished.) I want to lose weight/get in shape because I like to feel healthier and ALSO because I hate the lack of status from having more fat on my body than my culture deems optimal. I admit it, I feel the social pressure. I hate that anyone thinks they are better than me because they are thinner. It’s so ridiculous!
On the other hand, a huge BENEFIT of having more fat on my body than is deemed optimal by some people, is that it is easier to spot those people. I have great friends who just don’t care. Also, men are interested in me who just don’t care. I can earn enough money to care for myself, I’m loved, I get invited to lots of parties, I have fun.
So, as you can see, I am still of two minds about losing weight. My core motivation for getting healthier is to live longer so I can be with my family for as long as possible, and I also want to live a healthier life style so I will be thinner so I will have more status in society, but I have a competing motivation to thumb my nose at society for having such ridiculous and very harmful criteria for status.
BeaTricks who was commenter #4 on a post over at Feministe that asked why people are so angry at fat women expressed the thumbing my nose part of myself very well:
“…Having a rich and rewarding life while being fat is a form of opting-out. It’s a way of giving a giant middle finger to the establishment. It undermines men who enjoy the ego boost of a woman’s deference to patriarchal beauty standards. Also, it undermines women who devote a significant amount of time and effort in becoming/staying thin in order to meet the beauty standard since attaining it often comes with nifty privileges that fat women aren’t supposed to get.”
Bugger.
I have drifted into health so many times and thus my ideal weight (which is still considered plus size by the fashion industry) only to have my healthy lifestyle derailed when someone says something like, “oo, look at your waist, aren’t you getting thin!”
I know that people aren’t thinking of the deeper cultural significance of their statements when they comment on my body, but it infuriates me because it is such crap that thinness grants status in some people’s eyes. So, I sort of unconsciously drift back up in weight as a protest against that value.
I would like to just not care what society says and not have my weight, up or down, be in reaction to establishment values. BUT, I am a mammal and it’s normal for me to want enough status in my group to be treated with respect and to have access to resources. Bugger.
Can anyone relate? Do you have any tips about how I might be less reactionary to societal pressures? Wise things I might tell myself? Places I might move to? ;)
This was very well put and I feel your challange. I started the year with over 100 lbs to lose. I have lost almost 50 at this point. People were not noticing in the colder weather because I was wearing thicker clothes. I am self conscience and while I feel good when people compliment me, I’m tired of being asked how I am doing it. I don’t want the expectations people place on thinner people. I could hide in my fat and just blend in. No one expected anything of me. I think I need to move somewhere that I need a think sweater all the time so no one can see the changes in my body.
[Reply]
I love the feeling of opting out - of not getting anxious when everything’s in place to make me anxious. I haven’t quite gotten in the rhythm of it, but it’s a wonderful liberation when I hit it right.
But I totally understand what you mean about fat. I think the only way I ended up keeping weight off when I lost some accidentally in grad school was that I had developed persistent acne, which kept me “ugly” enough that I didn’t feel self-conscious (or, interestingly, survivor’s guilt) having slimmed down, or get attention I didn’t want. Like RK said, I didn’t want new expectations placed on me because I fit the standard more.
[Reply]