Would You Rather Be Called a Slut or Fat?
Interview anyone these days about food and no matter what their gastronomic predilections, chances are they will speak of them with a fervor bordering on religiosity. The vegan preaches her diet -- nay, lifestyle in the truest sense of the word: it is not just food but an overarching style of life -- with a proselytizing zeal reserved in earlier times for Christian missionaries in Africa. The low-carb Paleo follower punctuates his scientific claims with rhapsodic sermons about miracles although the results skew more towards reappearing abdominal muscles than healing leprosy. Consider the last time you were "preached" to about your diet. I'm betting it was fairly recent.
It seems almost impossible for people to talk about their food without invoking a larger meaning. I do not know anyone for whom food is simply sustenance. And perhaps it has always been this way; a cellular mechanism designed for survival in lean times. The colloquial term for this is food porn. And our infatuation with it is growing. If the proliferation of food blogs is any indication, then food has become the new sex and our obsession with regulating food, the new national religion.
Mary Eberstadt of the Stanford-based think tank the Hoover Institute, has noticed this change but in addition to the deifying of food she adds the secularization of that other great appetite: sex. In an interesting switch, food and sex have completely reversed their roles in society. And all within only a matter of two generations.
Think of it: what if humans were given access to limitless food and sex. The bottomless cup of hedonism, if you will. What does common sense dictate that we would do? Most would think we would become unrestrained in both areas, succumbing with equal glee to both gluttony and promiscuity. Yet for the first time in history we have a very large society in exactly this situation and the answer is not what anyone expected.
Eberstadt illustrates her point by using the example of Betty, a 1950's housewife, and her contemporary granddaughter Jennifer summing up their attitudes by saying, "Betty thinks food is a matter of taste, whereas sex is governed by universal moral law; and Jennifer thinks exactly the reverse."
There are many implications stemming from such a startling conclusion but one in particular has been weighing heavily on my mind: the idea of fat discrimination. While Eberstadt refrains from moralizing, I cannot help myself. If food is the new sex, meaning in the sense that our society has constructed strict mores about its consumption, followed by swift repercussions when those mores are broken, then publicly pillorying fat people is the modern equivalent of sending away a pregnant teen until her shame resolves itself. There is a new scarlet letter in town: it's spelled XXL.
Take this picture currently making the Internet rounds:
I've come across this picture in at least 4 different occasions this weekend, each time under an increasingly insulting heading. It first showed up on Reddit under "If a single image ever stood for a generation..." and getting progressively worse as it made its way through various social media before ending up in the geek-chic clearing house of "cool" Google recommends, officially jumping the shark before it was even 48 hours cold.
What makes it so compelling? Certainly not that it is a picture of two obese people on a motorized scooter. Nothing inherently humorous is happening in the picture. But it certainly has the ability to garner attention. This, my friends, is the modern equivalent of the stocks. We have put this couple in the public eye, allowing the citizenry to bombard them with verbal stones as a punishment for their crime. Take some of the following comments, for example:
"There are three cows in this picture!" Immediately followed by, "Hey! Hey! Don't insult bovines that way!"
"One word: Forklift"
"How do they f***?" Rejoinder: "Hopefully they don't." And the final crack: "They get mixed up with whose boob is whose."
"Fake! -notice lack of BIG GULP cup holders -notice lack of Beef Jerky wrappers in fat folds -notice buildings and cow not leaning into their gravitational pull."
And last but not least a plethora of Yo Mamma jokes, middle-school style.
So what is their crime? Being fat? Rather, being caught being fat. These people symbolize to our strangely moralistic-about-food society the sluts of gluttony. Not only can they not temper their appetites but they have the nerve to go out in public and flaunt their food-whorishness on a scooter. Picture instead of two heavies on a bike, a pregnant woman sans wedding ring. Would we ridicule her in such a manner? Would we teach our children to make jokes about her? The thought is absurd. Such a woman today would be entirely unremarkable -- unless of course she managed to pop out eight babies at one time in addition to her other six. We mock them because we are so afraid of becoming them. And we fear them because being fat has become the worst sin you can commit today.
Which is worse these days: Being called fat or whore? If magazines are any indication, every woman in America would rather be known for being promiscuous than being a porker. Praise be to Nelly Furtado for making that distinction into a catchy little tune so we can all internalize it.
Happy Eating Disorder Awareness Week everyone!
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Food has replaced sex for me. I'm putting a mirror over the dining room table.
I am guessing there was suppose to be a moral to this story.....I completely lost it with your use of the word "porker" in the last paragraph. Doesn't the use of that derogatory and nasty word just negate your entire point!
It amazes how people can get into an uproar over some body fat!
Good lord, aren't there more dire issues that require our attention and energy?
BTW - If I was called a slut, I would punch that person in the face.
If I were called fat, I'd do the same.....just on GP.
I saw a woman in Target today who was morbidly obese and riding in one of the store's mobilized scooters. My immediate reaction was one of judgment and anger at the woman and then I caught myself.....I knew nothing about the woman, why she got that way, what her choices are, etc. I realized that my initial, knee-jerk reaction was cruel and thoughtless. I tink that the bottom line is that we should not judge.
I don't see why you have to be called either one. And I don't see why you would call anyone else either one. It's rude and unnecessary.
Very true.
Being promiscuous (a slut if you will) causes little harm to society or to yourself, with the easy access we now have to contraception and abortion.
Being fat causes damage not only to yourself but to society that needs to bend around you. Of course, I am talking about hugely fat. Not only are you consuming more than your fair share of the worlds energy through organic consumption, but society have to bend to your knees. And this article seems to support the idea that society should bend even more to the will of those who take in more than they need of the worlds resources.
Biologically most people have to go out of their way to become grossly overweight. We are not build for it, and it is very damaging to our physical condition. Like smoking, it is a choice we should not condone nor enable.
I don't like condoning or enabling moralizing.
Why do you?
If you own a car, that's more consumption of resources than most people on Earth have access to and it's a lot more than a person eating food.
If you use electric lighting, use running water... these all have environmental costs associated with them.
The problem with world hunger is not insufficient food anyway, it's bad distribution of the food there is. So I think you might want to reconsider your pseudo-environmental views on obesity. They lack a certain "weight".
ha. excellent response.
personally, I would like to be considered smart.
Well... you are smart :)
so are you.........; )
I understand the point you are trying to make but nevertheless am having difficulties with the choice I´d have to make.
Its either - in the broader context - the loving of food, the enjoyment of food ie the frequency or the enjoyment of sex ie the frequency. So, if I eat a lot, I shall be considered "fat", if I like sex a lot, I am a slut.
The choices themselves reek of superficial obsession.
Yes indeed, and also superficial judgments made by others. And a society which lauds the superficial over the substantial almost every single time.
Is a woman who has a lot of sex with her husband still a slut?
Most people would likely say no. It's not really sex, but promiscuity that lies at the heart of judgments made by others.
It's far true of women than of men. A promiscuous man is called a "stud". Even the term "manwhore" is widely used in a positive sense. Unlike men, female sexuality is "supposed" to be meek, compliant and modest and any deviation from that is widely regarded as immoral.
There's no such salvation for the overweight, male or female. They're just uniformly seen as weak for liking to eat more food than they need. That runs right across gender lines. Furthermore, there's no real equivalent of "fidelity" when it comes to eating an excess of food - unless that means eating healthy foods to excess, like having bulk lettuce and a bag carrots for breakfast.
The worst thing anyone can be in today's world is a "fat slut" who also smokes.
The unholy trinity.
To all of those pointing out that obesity is a medical issue: yes, that's true.
But so are STD's. And just like you wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) think about publicly chastising a promiscuous stranger, you should realize that an obese stranger's medical condition is none of your g*dd*mned business.
In other words, if it truly is a medical condition -- and I'm not arguing that point -- let's let it remain private between the person and their doctor, shall we?
Where the hell did good manners and common courtesy go? At what point did everyone else's business become our god-given right to gossip and make snide remarks about?
Grow up, America.
I am one of those "Paleo" people that "lectures". But this comes out of personal experience, and based on my *dogs* returning to health with a diet based on the wolf. Because I come from a science based family, I look for a science based approach. But, you have to see it to believe it and if I hadn't seen what happened with my dogs when I gave them a diet based on evolution, I would not have believed it could happen with humans too. I have met people over the internet who have had their dogs reverse cancer, get rid of arthritis, get rid of allergies, skin problems and all sorts of chronic diseases when they gave them a raw foods diet. Since I have doctors in my family, I can surely say that they are not trained in nutrition and give it very little thought, their main focus is pharmaceuticals and what they have the small amount of time to read in medical journals, which all deal with drugs.
Do you know how big the market is for type II diabetes?
We are getting conditioned to believe that food doesn't really matter only how many calories you consume and that is so far from the truth that it is frustrating to combat. The best argument, besides personal experience, is to base everything on science. Isn't that what the drug companies do? If you could eat your way out of taking many drugs, would you?
Fat. Because it's true.
I think this is a false dichotomy and one that privileges the experience of adult women. I think for teenage girls BOTH being considered fat or being considered a slut can be socially and psychologically devastating.
Hypothetically, yes.
In reality, it's been over 30 years since the blockbuster "Grease" showed American girls that Olivia Newton-John was much happier as a sexualized vixen than a self-respecting virgin. And that was a story set in the 1950s and that, however fictional, probably had some basis in historical reality.
So maybe Eberstadt is on to something.
A person can always lose weight but a bad reputation can stick with you for a long time.
One thing to consider is our media depiction of beauty. Models and starlets are uniformly very thin, with few exceptions. We have been programmed to think that only bone-thin is worthy. Yet a century ago, Lillian Russel was considered a great beauty, and bu today's standards, she was quite heavy. Reubens and Renoir depicted the beauty of their times - fleshy women, ample in all ways.
It's one thing to be terribly fat like the people on the scooter, but we draw the line far below that. Jessica Simpson was called fat at her ideal weight. So i don't think the equation posited here quite works. When we think a normal size person is plus sized it goes beyond fat discrimination to media brainwashing. We are being taught to think that only very skinny is beautiful, and we are being controlled by that brainwashing.
No, food and sex don't belong on the same page. Obesity leads to serious health problems and often a shortened life. Sex (save the glib retorts about VD or AIDS) is natural and part of being human. Ever notice that it is so often economically disadvantaged people who are grossly overweight? Who pays for the excessive medical care that they end up needing?
It's the odd person who doesn't equate STDs, including AIDS, in the "problematic" category. The people, overcat, who pay for the excessive medical care are the same people who pay for problems resulting from sex. A key difference is that people can lose weight; once infected with HIV, HPV, and Herpes, it's yours to keep. Not so sure people infected with any of these would consider the subject "glib".
Your attempt to diminish the impact has failed. Sorry.
What's easier to prevent, heart disease and cancer or HIV?
Vitamins or no vitamins? Eggs or no eggs? Downwind from a coal generator or living on top of a 1950s aerospace chemical dump? Is it fine to be overweight, or do you need to exercise 30 minutes per day?
Now imagine making CONDOMS free and available, everywhere, including high schools. Imagine teaching the dangers and benefits of various sexual choices, using explicit language. No? Yeah, that's why we live in a country where bumpkins like Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston bungle their lives as teenagers.
I was in great shape and hiking 7-9 miles a day and doing "The Firm" videos on the highest level until my knees wore out and ruined my mobility. I gained weight fast with my athlete's appetite. It will cost $70,000 for knee replacements for my bone on bone grinding knees. I don't have health insurance. That makes me one of those people you are looking down on in your grandeur. Nobody pays for the healthcare for the ininsured. They go without. I peddle a recumbent exercise bike because that's the only thing I can do without excruciating pain. Very low income people (renters) eat a lot of processed foods because they often lack cooking facilities, know how, or free time for "slow food". They go to the ER when beset by a health crisis and just don't pay the bill. They have nothing to lose by it. I own my home and eat wholesome "slow food" but without healthcare I tough out emergencies at home rather than jeaporadizing my property in bankruptcy after a horrendous ER bill. My life is shortened by the system, not my weight. Thanks for the condescending superior tone. That really made my day.
I think I would've preferred a more appropriate title like "Would you rather be called a drunk or a fat f@#$?"
The analogy between an unwed pregnant woman and an obese person is absurd . . . other than the loose relationship between them given the social stigmas.
Substantively, they offer two very different scenarios. There is no legitimate cause for concern healthwise with an unwed mother (unless of course you are Nadya Suleman), whereas obesity is infact a serious health issue.
A more appropriate parallel would've been that of alcoholism or drug addiction and obesity (or what is usually food addiction). While all three can be equally devastating to physical, mental, and social health, obesity alone suffers the unbridled ridicule of the rest of society. Most people today understand that addicts and alcoholics need clinical help and compassion, not hostility or comedic attacks. But when it comes to food addiction, well then it's just a matter of will power now isn't it?
The reality is that the difficulty involved in not eating that second donut and not ordering that second drink is one in the same. But at the end of the day, if you put Amy Winehouse (on a good day), Lindsey Lohan, and some fat woman all in a room together, chances are that only the fat gal is going to suffer the ridicule because the stigma isn't really about the food or the fat . . . it's about what society finds physically attractive and acceptable.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
