Why We Hate Our Bodies
Ah, springtime. A time of lots of allergies, and a ridiculous amount of ads reminding us that we need to “get our bodies back” before the…
Ah, springtime. A time of lots of allergies, and a ridiculous amount of ads reminding us that we need to “get our bodies back” before the summer sneaks up on us.
I’m sure that you’ve seen adverts come up with taglines like, “say goodbye to 2020 and the quarantine 15,” or “step back into normal life better than ever,” with a super bubbly person showing off their body or that weird mirror thing that Lululemon keeps pushing on everyone.
Every year around this time, you get pummeled with companies trying to remind you to hate your body, but did you ever ask why you are meant to hate your body in the first place?
Chicken or the Egg?
We don’t realize the extent that society over the years has shaped a lot of subconscious beliefs that we may hold today, and one of those beliefs is about bodies.
Many might say, “No, I just hate my body. I need to lose weight.” And while I never want to invalidate anyone’s experience, I think it can be useful to look at the historical influence over why we all tend to gravitate towards hating or wishing our bodies to be different.
At one point in time, our bodies were only seen as tools for survival. I mean no one gave a shit if we were considered a size 6 or a size 12 when we had to fight for our lives and our food every day. We just were. So something must have happened along the way, right?
We can gain a lot of knowledge of the views of bodies through art, actually, most of our knowledge on the views of bodies comes from art. The first sculpture depicting the female form, for example, was found from the Paleolithic Era. This was a full woman, with large breasts, a large stomach, and large hips. They infer that this was a sort of fertility goddess, showing that large bodies were valued as being able to bear a lot of children.
So for a large portion of history, large bodies were seen as good. Fast forward to the Greek Era and we can begin to see a shift in perspective towards bodies.
To be a Greek God
Gods were the focal point of everything in Ancient Greece. Civilians wanted to emulate those gods, believing that if you had a healthy body, then you also had a healthy mind. So, if you were beautiful, you must be a good person as well since it was a gift from the gods. If you were wealthy in Ancient Greece, you were probably spending your leisure time working out, sometimes for 8 hours a day (probably naked too.)
These values typically focused on men; however, there was an ideal body type shown in sculptures of women, shown by Venus de Milo. This came with a price though. In Ancient Greece, a handsome man was a gift from gods, but to be a beautiful woman was a curse (e.g. Helen of Troy being a “distraction,” Medusa, literally any woman in Greek mythology).
Having these high values for a healthy body and mind wouldn’t be so bad if the flip side of that wasn’t so detrimental. If you were not considered healthy or beautiful, you were seen as immoral, and being fat was a sign of mental imbalance.
As Christianity began taking over, this idealism with weight seemed to remain, with many early Christians believing that to have a physical body was the “enemy of the soul.” This led to many developing a holy anorexia to get closer to God. Being fat was a sign that you committed the sin of gluttony and were considered immoral. This immorality linked with being overweight also played out in communities
To the Masses
Up through the Great Famine, the morality of being overweight was heightened as more and more people had little to eat. This Christian idea of the flesh being a sin may have had a ripple effect in society, as many viewed those that were overweight as greedy compared to the many that were malnourished.
This was countered a bit into the Renaissance, as large women were painted in romantic ways and fat characters in works and plays were written as jovial and happy, where thin characters were distraught and unhappy. While this can be seen as a good period for overweight people, I would argue this is more of a satire on fat people being happier because they have more than those who can’t eat and are therefore slim and unhappy, which could make society angrier with this stereotype. That’s just a theory though.
The first diet book to be released was in 1558, by Luigi Cornaro, who at the age of 40 had an epiphany after being extremely overweight. He only consumed 12 ounces of food and 14 ounces of wine a day and ended up living to be almost one hundred.
Most of the diets that began coming out during this time were far and few in between and were mostly written by men who had become overweight, were depressed, and decided to write a book telling everyone to follow in their footsteps. So, I won’t be including those, but I did want to fast forward to the 1800s, a time that I find particularly interesting.
Solidifying the Body-Image
The first industrial revolution created a movement to cities and all that jazz. People slowly created more disposable income and the American Dream was in full effect. This is when diet books became a bit more frequent and when marketing started becoming a thing. Mass production led to an easier time obtaining items and less time doing everyday tasks, so more leisure time.
Christian ideals were still a prime focus during this time, and in the 1840s the Presbyterian minister, Sylvester Graham, began advocating for a plain, simple diet for women. This continued into the 1860s, with William Banting creating the Banting diet (basically Atkins) on the foundation that being overweight should be considered a physical disability. That paired with the brand new concept of advertising, led to a massive anti-fat obsession.
This was also when fashion began shifting towards a more fragile and romantic aesthetic; form-fitting garments were becoming popular. And between the 1850s to the early 1900s, something called “Victorian anorexia” became a popular method for women to become thin and frail.
The mid to late 1800s was really the beginning of shifting dieting off of men and onto women. With mass production and getting more efficient products, increasing leisure time for women while men were away at work, and women being the ones to run errands, it was natural for the initial stages of advertising to start focusing on women.
This focus deepened even further once men began going off to war.
Blame it on Hollywood
With the idea of the American Dream, the creation of marketing, and the boom of Hollywood, these romanticized versions of what it meant to be successful and happy were thrown in people’s faces, especially during wars when the government had to persuade men to fight and women to take on the labor force. I talk in more detail in the post here, but this all led to a visual account of what Eastern European culture had been pushing over so many years.
To recap, we have Greek ideals that led to Christian ideals that led to ideas of morality during famines, and a satirical view of fat people as more leisure time during the Renaissance led to more plays, which then led to the industrial revolution, new fashions and finally to blow up into the American Dream and the boom of marketing. And now we’re in the 1960s.
As Hollywood began gaining traction, fashion became more accessible, and technology was connecting media easier to the consumer, attention started to move away from religions and onto celebrities. It was no longer about spirituality or fashion or the American Dream, celebrities became a huge marketing point to really have the diet industry take off (Jane Fonda’s workout videos anyone?)
Now, I am skimming over most history, but when I started diving into this more, I saw how in recent years, our ideal body types have changed to match the celebrities that we idolize (looking at you Beyonce, and J. Lo). When we zoom out and look at the big picture of cultural views on ideal bodies over the years, we can really see that now with all of the social media and being more connected to celebrities that come from all over the world, we are more appreciative of more bodies compared to in the past. And it makes you see how much of this body-shaming culture is rooted in Eastern European colonizer ideals that have been pushed into us through most areas of life.
Is there Hope?
I grew up where being rail-thin was ideal, with those super low-waisted jeans. But then, as I was entering college, I noticed the shift to more curvaceous body types. Over the course of the last ten years, I would say we are slowly gaining traction to accepting bodies as they are, so is there hope? I think so, but only if we address the deep-seated associations that fat is inherently immoral.
This still occurs a lot with the body positivity movement, which I will discuss next time. People will post about their bodies, showing their “flaws,” even if they are considered objectively thin. This perpetuates the idea that there is something inherently wrong with fat. So until we can stop, “othering” fat, we still have a long way to go to shed that Greek concept of beauty=morality.
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