Two Sides to Every
Story
America,
known for being the “land of the free”, a capitalistic country where we have
the freedom and equality that some countries lack and envy, but we are also
known for other things. We are known for being the country with the highest
obesity rate in the world, we are known for the coined term “lazy American’s”
and we are known for our fast food industries and unhealthy eating habits.
“How
to address obesity in a fat phobic society” touches base on the idea that most
“lazy American’s” actually have genetic makeup that causes their bodies to gain
weight at a more rapid pace than those without it, making it even more
difficult to lose that weight once it’s gained. Doctors sometimes overlook this
characteristic when patients come in complaining about weight gain. It’s, “cut
the carbs” or “try this new diet,” never a conversation about how the patient
may actually be genetically prone to this disease.
So
if that’s society’s view on the American’s that even seem to be just a little
chubby or overweight, how do they feel about those American’s who seem to be
just a little underweight? Unfortunately, that’s an easy question for me to
answer. If you’re overweight, you’re seen as lazy and undesirable, if you’re
underweight, you’re seen as sickly, and some new terms start to bounce around
in the mind’s of the people that think they get to decide whether your body
type is desirable or not, like “eating disorder.”
It
seems that the perfect time to develop an eating disorder is at the age of
fifteen. This was the first time I was called into my guidance counselor’s
office. Imagine being a freshman in high school, lost, confused, trying to find
exactly where you fit in and on top of all the stress of school work you are
being accused of starving yourself in order to maintain a “skinny” body image.
When I walked into my guidance counselor’s office, and saw the student
assistance counselor and vice principal waiting for me, I thought I had done
something awful. My mind was racing when I sat down in the cushioned chair across
from these three big figureheads who all had a stern concerned look on their
faces.
The
student assistance counselor was the first to speak. She asked me about my
eating habits. Three square meals a day, etc., did I feel like I was gaining
too much weight? Did I feel like I was fat? All these questions confused me,
but at the same time made me consider the idea that I didn’t have the “ideal”
body image for someone my age as I believed I had. Did I look fat? No, of
course not, I was a skinny girl. I was 5’7 and only weight 110 lbs. I knew I
was small. Apparently, no one else was blaming genetics. No one else considered
my mother graduated high school at 100 lbs. It wasn’t addressed that I had been
an active athlete since I could walk. All that mattered was the way I looked.
When
they first introduced the idea to me that I had an eating disorder, I was
shocked. Me? Sure, I eat small portions, but only because I was skinny and
didn’t need that much food to fill me up. I eat whatever I want whenever I want.
How could these people, who barely knew me, think that I would be capable of
such a thing? Concern for myself turned to anger towards my accusers. Are they
serious? It turns out, they had begun an investigation on my “body image” in
the first few weeks that school began. Watching what I bought at lunch, what I
ate for breakfast, etc., like I was a science experiment. Taking notes on my
habits like a guinea pig they kept in a cage. I have never been more furious in
my entire life.
A teacher had
brought this to the attention of the administration due to the fact that I had
apparently been wearing a lot of “oversized sweatshirts” to school, in attempts
to hide from my peers the fact that I had also been purposely losing massive
amounts of weight, another assumption that disgusted me. I denied all the
claims brought against me and left the office in a hurry, practically in tears.
I was fifteen years old; all I knew about my body was that I liked it, in a
time period when I should have hated it, like everyone else does for their
teenage years. I didn’t want to hate my body, I didn’t want to have an “eating
disorder” and I didn’t want my entire school to think I had one either just
because I had trouble gaining weight when compared to anyone else.
I
can compare these feelings back to the anger and frustration that was felt by
“Ellen,” Courtney Martin’s friend that was written off in her doctor’s
appointment because she was overweight and her doctor decided she would just
need to “cut the carbs” in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and
completely overlooking the fact that she had a genetic history of obesity in
her family. Since I attend the local
pediatrician in my small hometown of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, I feel like I’m
one of the lucky ones. My doctor’s knew my family and I well enough to know
that I had never developed an eating disorder, although I remained 20 pounds
underweight until my senior year of high school. They knew the right questions to ask that
would put up any red flags, and they never reported me for anything, although
my doctor did admit when I told her about my eating disorder accusations that
she had been “worried” about my lack of weight gain for the past two years, but
knew it was nothing that I had caused myself.
It
makes me wonder how many other children were accused of eating disorders
because of their weight at my high school. Was every obese child called in for
nutrition tips? Or were the children with the skinny body type who only ate
small portions at lunch the only ones targeted. Here’s the difference between
the obese and the anorexic children; we as a society have a sick mindset that
basically states that eating disorders and underweight children can be “fixed”,
all they have to do is eat a little more than usual, right? But the obese
children, the ones that are “lazy” and “fat”, they cannot be fixed. If you’re
lazy, how will you have the drive to workout? Fix your “problem”?
I
found myself at that young age of fifteen, completely exposed and somewhat
insecurely conscious of the way my body looked, something that I had never
experienced before. It never got to the point where I was wearing certain
things to hide my body type from my friends, but I did start looking at my skin
a little bit differently than I used to. My high school’s administration
destroyed the innocence of a fifteen year old due to their impression of her
body image, not based on facts they asked her doctor, or by confirmed rumors
sent around by her peers. An oversized sweatshirt shattered my mindset that my
body image was perfect and there was nothing wrong with the way I looked, which
is the saddest thing of all.
“Addressing
Obesity in a Fat-Phobic Society” opened my eyes to the ideas that our society
might not only be “fat-phobic”, but just plain “body image-phobic”. Even being
on a college campus now, we have the calories of all food that’s served written
on each station, a constant reminder of how much we’re consuming. We have our
portions laid out for us to prevent us from “overeating”. I can’t sit at a
table with my friends without someone complaining about how “college food makes
you fat” and hearing about someone’s longing desire for that second slice of
pizza that they’ll never get the courage to stand up and go get because we all
have a deep anxiety that we’ll have to work out for an hour to replace the
amount of calories we’re about to intake. If you’re a little chubby, you’re
lazy, obese, and must have unhealthy eating habits. If you’re a little skinny,
you’re sick, too thin, gross to look at, and you probably starve yourself.
The
assumption presented to us by our body image is what makes America a “body
image phobic society.” It’s what creates the labels that describe the obese as
fat, and describes the underweight as sick. Doctor’s are starting to write us off as
disorders instead of reading into our genetic history. America as a whole is
deteriorating into this society of counting-calories where everyone is weird
about how much food we all consume and how much food we don’t, and for what,
the pursuit of the perfect body image? To run away from the labels of lazy just
to fall into the labels of too skinny and gross? It’s time to start addressing
the genetic heredity of these assumed diseases, rather than writing people off
with label’s just because we did not take the time to consider a genetic
explanation to their body image.
The rhetorical situation of this essay was the focus of eating disorders in the United States and to address the way we deal with these eating disorders amongst teens. My audience was generally anyone I had even come in contact with in high school along with my college peers, describing the hardships I wen through as an underweight teen in an overly sensitive high school. These events led me to be able to write this paper with the amount of knowledge that I have on the topic, and how I can remember specifically how it felt to be targeted for absolutely nothing. The media also definitely influenced me. Many articles are written daily about eating disorders in america and how the percentage of young teens effected by these diseases are rapidly growing, but instead of saying it's because skinny youth are targeted they brush it off and say it's because of "bullying," not saying that that can't be a reason but I'm also saying before we point the finger at other teens with their own issues, we should be pointing the finger at ourselves for making these diseases so open in the media, almost making them famous. My example from the text that supports this analysis is "
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