Obesity – Evolutionary and Cultural Understandings

Details:This week’s topic is about the interplay between “Culture”, “Body” and “Beauty” in reference to what people eat, how they move and what they therefore idealize in beautiful bodies. All these take place in different food systems, environments and ecosystems. This means that the “crystal” of this topic can be turned in so many ways to refract meanings about appropriate and beautiful bodies. We looked at some of the evolutionary factors that have played into being bodies that are able or not able to conserve energy and survive famines, resulting in different distributions of fat in male and female bodies. Female bodies which could store the most peripheral fat were able to raise their children to reproductive age even through famine and therefore pass on their genes. In the Global North, when a population no longer has to suffer food shortages – the storage of peripheral fat never gets to balance out. Instead, another form of malnutrition emerges, where even the largest bodies might suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. Obesity accompanies economic “progress” as diets change and mobility lessens. At the same time, countries in the Global South which still suffer mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases and malnutrition are also starting to suffer the problems of industrialized societies such as cardiovascular diseases and chronic conditions tied to the diets and mobility patterns of “progress”. Real women have curves We have been thinking over the last few weeks how health discourses get woven into the ways that people modify their bodies in order to meet societal expectations for normalcy, goodness, uprightness, creativity, ___________, (fill in the blank for the various reasons). Weight management to meet cultural ideals can also be seen as another form of body modification. The example of Monday’s Girls is women struggle to gain in order to become fully woman instead of losing weight in order to become the idealized thin and strong body in our own environment – and Jessica showed up the example of gavage in Mauritania. This film by Ngozi Onwurah (an Anglo-Nigerian) describes two points of view of the 5 week “fattening rooms” and ceremonies that are supposed to turn girls into marriageable women. We follow Azikiwe and Florence with their differing perspectives on what it means to go through this. The anthropological “turn” to examine behaviors from emic points of view (analyze everything from the perspective of the people that live it) and to balance our talking about “individual choice” against cultural imperatives is challenged by these topics. Reading Brown’s article was important for understanding the evolutionary processes which create the gendered differences in how women and men experience “fat”. The children of women who gained the most peripheral fat were the ones that were more likely to survive famine and starvation resulting from natural disasters, etc – passing on the “thrifty gene”. Brown’s article also helps us look back at the experience of the highest status women in the world – who invest much time and energy into the imperative to be thin in a world in which it is increasing difficult to acheive without ready access to the resources of discretionary time and income (what is left over after basic needs for food, housing, transportation, job, medical bills, household tasks, job hours, taxes (etc.) are taken care of). So the question really is – what does our society reward in women and why do you think that is? How do the physical, social and economic environment in the various corners of our biosphere shape the body ideals there? Tabassyn helped us address Eating Disorders as part of this phenomena – as some women struggle for ever higher control over the relationship between body/eating in a search for perfection which then can become a disease in itself. Anorexia is a sort of self-imposed starvation. I didn’t get to tell you about the physical effects of starvation through the Minnesota Starvation study by Ancel Keys. Read this BBC article if interested: Jan 14, 2014 report on “The Minnesota starvation experiment”.) Please note among the psychological effects so many of the symptoms recognizable in people who are on diets. Have we normalized the experience of dieting? Think of the following: nervous, anxious, apathetic, withdrawn, impatient, self-critical, distorted body images, feeling overweight, moody, emotional and depressed. Self mutilation. Lost ambition and feelings of adequacy. Cultural and academic interests narrowed. Neglected appearance, became loners, relationships suffered. Lost senses of humor, love and compassion. Obsessed with food – thinking, talking and reading about it obsessively. Wierd eating rituals. How did we explore the cultural depths in eating this week? We started with Emma addressing the twins of “hunger” and “eating” by exploring the role of food in our social world – Sociality of Food – Emma Gier. Then Jessica helped us think about the variety of ways that people have used their bodies as a canvas for becoming an ideal of beauty. We observe the “other” with sort of “shock” and find it hard to imagine a world in which we would subject our own bodies to such pain and inconvenience in order to acheive beauty – but then she brings us around to our own history and asks us where this kind of discipline of the ideas of beauty come from. Cultural Standards of Beauty – Jessica Adams. We ended with Tabussum teaching about the global experiece eating disorders and the variety of their manifestations. This is something close to home – we all have a relationship with food that is both rewarding and painful. I thank everyone for their generosity of spirit in sharing from both of those positions and the many in-between. Eating Disorders Tabassum Qurashi. We did not get to talk about it in class – but you can comment on the chapter from Fatema Mernissi’s book Scherazade Goes West, “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem”. Two sentences on the last page stay with me. “By confining women into the status of symbolical objects to be seen and perceived by the other, masculine domination . . . puts women in a state of constant physical insecurity… They have to strive ceaselessly to be engaging, attractive and available.” And the last paragraph, “How can you stage a credible political demonstration and shout in the streets that your human rights have been violated when you cannot find the right skirt?” MomSo, I’m trying to show, this week – the many ways women struggle with size/weight and health. Women who must be beautifully fat to be marriageable, women who must be thin to be successful, women who are overweight but don’t have the nutritients to have strength and health, women who have access to all the nutrients they need but are literally starving. Women, Bodies, Weight, Health and Culture have a “complicated” relationship. For a snapshot of this issue on March 1, 2014 see Kristof’s opinion piece. “The Compassion Gap”. The picture he refers to is at the right. He asked us to think about the ways that people focused on the woman’s body rather than the ways she is tenderly and sacrificially working with a son who has tremendous needs. INSTRUCTIONS FOR WRITE UP PART I: In the first part of your answer, make note of the resources we used and your own “gleanings” of learning. Here is the powerpoint of the Obesity and Evolution and the two primary readings: MCH Malnutrition and Maternal and Child Health, Brown’s article: Culture and the Evolution of Obesity. I hope you had time for Mernissi’s chapter, Size 6 & the Western Women’s Harem. Where Fat is a Mark of Beauty just helps us understand the film, Monday’s Girls, better. Which of these did you learn the most from? What are the take aways? Remember in this section to make sure you cite the sources you are using (the citations can be brief and informal, as in “Brown’s article” or “The MCH book”). PART II: Write two paragraphs. Write one paragraph about what you learned from the film, Monday’s Girls. While the personal stories in the film are compelling, as well as the parts of the rituals that stand out to us as most “different”
from ourselves come to the top of our consciousness. Everytime we watch this film, I’m impressed by how hard we want to believe that even if the girls state how pleased they are with the process, and how much they want to go through – we find a need to believe they are “duped”, or not being able to understand the conditions of their own oppression. Why do you think this is so important to us? Please go another level – what are the parts of the film that helped you understand what the girls and the community were trying to acheive? Write a second paragraph about Mernissi – Size 6 & the Western Women’s Harem. PART III: End with your own words about this – do you have an opinion, a story or something you think would really add to the discussion? Take one of the topics this week that you wish to add something to the discussion. You research it a bit more and bring in websites or videos or explore correlations between ideas that were in your mind as we talked about these.

…………………………….

• Write one paragraph about what you learned from the film, Monday’s Girls. While the personal stories in the film are compelling, as well as the parts of the rituals that stand out to us as most “different” from ourselves come to the top of our consciousness.  Everytime we watch this film, I’m impressed by how hard we want to believe that even if the girls state how pleased they are with the process, and how much they want to go through – we find a need to believe they are “duped”, or not being able to understand the conditions of their own oppression.  Why do you think this is so important to us?  Please go another level – what are the parts of the film that helped you understand what the girls and the community were trying to acheive?
• Write a second paragraph about Mernissi – Size 6 & the Western Women’s Harem.

Alex