body image

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Social Problems and Individual Solutions

The readings the past week have made me think about how our society has convinced itself that the way we operate now is functionable, and we punish those who don’t or refuse to conform, that they are the ones who need fixing. The first narrative in class that first made me think about this was the Maintenance Phase podcast episode, Fat Camp. Essentially, these camps are for children to lose weight. Many of these kids report bullying in school, lack of friends, and isolation. These kids, as observed from the documentary they played, also received verbal harassment from their parents to lose weight. The agreed solution for these issues is to send them to a camp, away from family and friends to put them on strict diets and intense exercise. The solution is to “fix” the kids. These children don’t learn important lessons about their body. Their peers don’t learn important lessons about bullying or people who are different from you and their parents don’t learn important lessons about their children. None of these people unpack the actions they’ve endured, or the actions they have taken. We undertake individual solutions to social problems.

These kids’ problems are not individual. These kids don’t speak into the camera about how it’s harder for themselves to walk or play, in fact much of the footage of them at home is exactly that, them playing in the skate park, or running around with friends. These kids lament about how they’ve been ostracized for their weight, at school and at home. They don’t end up hating their bodies in a vacuum. The problem that needs fixing is not the children, or anyone who is fat, but rather the society that alienates and otherizes fat people. A society that is obsessed with diets and weight loss and justifies the harassment of fat people. Why should the marginalized have to change themselves for a problem they did not create? A problem that they have are the victims of?

A similar concept is presented in “When Coercion In Care Makes Kilmeade’s “just kill ’em” Thinkable” a blog post by Shannon Pagdon on the Disability Visibility Project website. The post discusses how our society demonizes people with mental health and forces them into institutions, robbing them of their autonomy. Further along in the article, Pagdon mentions laws that seek to “fix” the growing homeless population by forcibly placing the homeless into psychiatric wards and forcing people with mental health issues into treatment, threatening legal sanction if they don’t. Harmful solutions are only undertaken to “fix” the individual. They strip them of autonomy, remove consent, forcibly place them in institutions and inject their bodies against their will. These resources are not used for community or housing support but rather control of the person. The problems that are caused by society are not treated as the social issues they are, the individual and only the individual needs to be “fixed.”

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THE BIG PUP

When I look back at photos of myself, I see a puppy whose paws are too big for his body, arms and legs too long, and hands and feet too big. In elementary school I was a pretty tall kid and that tallness came with pride, when transitioning to middle school however the pride was slowly stripped away. My height, although advantageous on the surface level, left me open to ridicule in other areas.

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GLP-1: Buy the ticket? Take the ride?

CW: weight loss, weight gain, weight loss medications, obesogenic medications, medication side effects

Wegovy. It could alleviate the cognitive dysfunction of the post-viral condition I have been dealing with for decades, the bonus amount I acquired free with Covid, or both (reports return the I could brain with some reduced level of difficulty, which is rather exciting). It could cause thyroid cancer (but maybe only if I were a mouse). I might lose the 35-odd extra pounds I gained thanks to a prescribed antidepressant (if I were among the small percentage who lose 20% of their bodyweight). I might lose a goodly deal of my hair. It may be a godsend. It may make me end up looking like a Simpsons alien, and give me some pretty severe pancreatitis as well. Thanks to insurance and a manufacturer’s discount card, it would cost me $25 a month to find out first hand.

As Hunter S. Thompson would say (about much more exciting things than this), “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Will I take on this body project? Apparently I am lacking in gonzo or this would be a field report from the GLP-1 agonist trenches rather than my ambivalence regarding entering them. The Maintenance Phase podcast episode on Ozempic has helped me get a better idea of the matter, but at the time of writing this paragraph, I still haven’t decided. Read on to find out if I do by the end of this post.

Read more: GLP-1: Buy the ticket? Take the ride?

Though I have started losing a little after discontinuing escitalopram, I recently massed 20 pounds more than the heaviest I have ever otherwise been: nine months pregnant with a soon-to-be entire independent person. That may not sound like a lot, but I’m only a little over 5’2″ and am not currently gestating anyone. Thanks to dysmorphia I hadn’t known I had plus a very forgiving wardrobe, I was able to mostly not notice the difference until the scale at the doctor’s office let me know that no, I wasn’t just retaining a little fluid in my ankles and that when I found not-sweatpants that fit, they would be my spouse’s old jeans.

Since then, I’ve been vacillating about GLP-1 agonists. Will I? Won’t I? I consider myself as vain as the next person, but am I “vain enough” to risk my thyroid (a pre-Maintenance Phase worry) on something that I ‘should be able to do on my own with enough willpower’, as the discourse goes? (These are things I would never consider saying to anyone else. But some of our minds are prisons of our own makings just as much as bodies can be.) And in my case, heavy exercise that would illustrate ‘willpower’ is not an option. Willpower would include willingness to power through to post-exertional malaise and system overwhelm the likes of which could send me to the hospital with a sprained brain. Which is how I ended up with a Lexapro scrip in the first place.

Luckily I was able to wean off of it, and if my luck holds, I might not have to make a permanent commitment to the choice of Sane vs Svelte. I’m aware it’s not a choice that many chronically ill and disabled people get to make. The vicious cycle of medications to mitigate the side effects of the medications you take because of the side effects of your medication is one that I know, and many others do as well. This is a part of the fat discussion that goes unsaid by the general population: medication-induced weight gain is overlooked in favor of the single story of obesity, that of self-discipline and the individuated Calvinist work ethic. A HHS report on “obesogenic medications” states, “Many prescription medications have weight gain as an adverse and unintentional effect… and the use of these medications has been recognized as a preventable cause of obesity” and that use of them lowers weight loss with programs and laprascopic surgery , but that the rate at which these drugs are used has not been determined(Obesity (Silver Spring). 2022 January ; 30(1): 229–239. doi:10.1002/oby.23299). It also states that my anti-POTS beta blockers are “obesogenic”. So there’s another thing to address. (I’m learning a lot from writing this post.)

When used vs. long Covid, it’s the anti-inflammatory effects that are the main attraction as they seem to be reducing neuroinflammation. I am not a doctor, nor a lawyer, nor your real dad, but I am intrigued about this above the reason I first looked into the medication. Maintenance Phase talked me down from the hyperbole regarding side effects. What remains is that the benefits of GLP-1 agonists are temporary. I’m Buddhist. (Ish.) What isn’t? Do I want to sign up for yet another maintenance medication? I already have a daily handful; what’s one more thing?

Do I want to line up for this ride? It seems, for me, the possibility of cognitive benefits is the headliner and possible weight loss a side attraction, and that being able to brain is worth the price of admission. Whether or not it’s the opposite of obesogenic, I think I am going to ride this ride for its auxiliary effects and see what it and I can make of this bodymind of mine with thanks to the non-hyped, non-discourse conversation and perhaps a smidge to Uncle Hunter.

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Why is a number from the 1800s still deciding how healthy I am?

Every doctor’s appointment I’ve ever had starts the same way: shoes off, step on the scale, wait for the number. Then comes the math, height and weight run through a formula, and out pops a category that somehow gets to speak for my whole body before I’ve said a word.

That “formula” is BMI, and what I didn’t know until I started digging into it is that it was never built for this. It came from a Belgian mathematician, not a doctor, who was trying to describe the “average” person across a population. It was never meant to size up one individual. It only really became a go-to health screening tool in the 1970s, which means we’ve been leaning on a very old idea for a very personal question.

What gets me is everything it can’t see. BMI can’t tell muscle from fat, where weight sits on the body, or how someones heart, blood sugar, or sleep are doing. Someone can land in the “overweight” category with perfect bloodwork while someone in the “normal” range struggles with nobody checking. In 1998, the cutoff for “overweight” was lowered, and millions of Americans were reclassified overnight without a single body changing. I started thinking about BMI as a photo taken from too far away. It’s fine for a crowd, but useless for a face. It gives you the outline but completely skips the person, and then we act like the outline is the whole story.

So why do we keep treating it like a verdict or something thats so final? I think its because a number is easier to read on paper than a person.

And until that changes, a lot of people will keep walking out of appointments feeling measured, but not heard.

Wrestling and Body Utilitarianism

What Wrestling Taught an Olympic Gold Medalist About God - Christianity Today

For a good chunk of my life, I have wrestled. It is a beautiful sport in a vacuum, but there is an ugly side when it comes to weight classes. In wrestling, there is a very common practice known as cutting, which is basically losing weight within a certain amount of time. Oftentimes, this is a short term cut within a few days in which one has to think about the physical weight of the foods and drinks as well as things like water retention and fiber. I had played other sports when I was younger, but when I got to high school I didn’t quite understand just how much wrestling would be omnipresent in my bodily life, specifically surrounding food. With something like tennis, my diet would simply be whatever my mom made, or what we ordered when we went out. Once I had to start watching my weight to make sure I was in the right weight class for the team, my diet started to shift. Especially when we would be close to matches, and I would stress the whole (fully dehydrated) 24 hours before weigh ins. Immediately after weigh ins, I would go rehydrate and fuel up with foods like Cheerios and honey to give me quick energy. Even with all of these things in mind, we still had to go out and wrestle right after this starvation. We were expected to perform at our best after depriving ourselves of nutrients to make an arbitrary weight. I think it is interesting that this extremely physical sport inadvertently turns the body into something that is purely focused on one thing.

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More Than This Body


Copyright: Matthew Horwood – Getty Images

TW: Eating Disorder

I grew up learning to hate the mirror,
to pinch the softness of my stomach
and wonder why my body refused to become something worth loving.

I starved myself.

I made hunger a punishment,
my reflection an enemy,
and every pound I couldn’t lose another reason to hate myself.

I was starving,
and still,
I was too much.

Then came diabetes…

A weekly dose,
A GLP-1,
A magical cure.

Four months in now,
forty pounds down.

And suddenly, the world was kinder.
You look beautiful.
You look so good.
Have you lost weight?

Words I had spent my whole life waiting for finally found their way to me.

I can move more easily now.
Breathe a little lighter.
Live a little freer.

And God,
I wish I could enjoy it without wondering why I had to change for people to see me.

Because I’m still me…
The same heart.
The same mind.

The same person who cried in dressing rooms,
who avoided photographs,
who begged the universe to make me someone people wanted to look at.

Where were these compliments then?
Where was this kindness when I was breaking myself trying to become smaller?

I hate that it feels so good to finally be noticed.
I hate that forty pounds seem to have made me more worthy in the eyes of people who never bothered to look deeper.

My body changed.
My soul didn’t.

I am more than this body.

But now that this body is smaller,
people are finally looking close enough to see that there is someone here.

And I don’t know what hurts more…
that they couldn’t see me before,
or that a part of me is grateful they finally do.

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Why do I have to lose weight?

Growing up my grandma always commented on my body saying oh you need to lose that stomach fat, your belly is getting big , and where did all this weight come from. When I was younger I always thought why is she saying this to me I’m only 7 and I like my body I’m just having fun. I grew irritable when she would pat my stomach and say you need to lose this. I started sucking in my stomach to make it skinnier and flat so my body looked “right”. Her saying this to me so young caused me to believe I shouldn’t have any stomach fat even if I wasn’t what people would consider a bigger girl. Now as I am older I still suck in my stomach with out realizing until someone says something or I reach a relaxed state showing the effect her words have add on me after years of hearing the same thing. A student in class said the same thing about her family member mentioning her body when they would see her and it made me think of my grandmother doing the same to me. Maybe one day I will ask her why she always comments on my stomach and why she is so obsessed with losing her own stomach fat when to me it looks like a healthy normal body.

Read more: Why do I have to lose weight?

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The Art of The Backup Dancer

Picture dancers behind a pop star at a concert, they are moving as one. They have matching outfits, hair styles, and builds. Different images of them may conjure given the minds of each individual, especially given their identity. From a more dominant Western perspective, one may think of people who are relatively skinny, muscular, and occasionally of different body types. There may be a semblance of diversity scattered through the row of dancers, but this can be infrequent depending on where you look. This is a pattern that shows up at concerts or more generally, stage performances. This isn’t a criticism on a singular performer or production but rather a reflection of the music industry and what dance as an art form and how it has taught people what to define as a “good” dancer. Dance fundamentally treats symmetry, synchronicity, and sometimes looking identical while dancing in tandem as the way to achieve “true” performance. This belief doesn’t appear from out of nowhere. Dance in classical forms awards a limited body ideal and the industry just keeps rebuilding it.

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Confessions of a Monstrous Girl

I was completely infatuated with the Monster High franchise growing up. Bed sheets, pajamas, shoes—whatever it was, I probably had it. My parents never quite understood the whys or hows, and neither did I until I reached young adulthood and still found myself rewatching the movies for comfort.

I think part of me has always been drawn to the idea of something different, such as monsters themselves. There was something surprisingly comforting about characters that were so incredibly different from each other. Whether they had fangs, stitches, or scales, they still were able to exist wholly as themselves without those differences diminishing their existence. They had friends, lovers, and full lives. They could exist without having to conform to someone else’s expectations. Looking back now, I realize my attachment to Monster High was more than just the fashion and interesting stories. I saw something in these characters I desperately wanted for myself: to accept and embrace every bit of myself, monster and all.

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The Gym
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The Gym

Freshman year of college all my friends were men. The majority of them went to the gym regularly and would always talk about their weight. Most of them were trying to gain weight. They would talk about how they are 150 lbs and this is the heaviest they have ever been. They would be taller than me but I would still weigh more. I started telling myself I needed to weigh less than this 6 ft man or I am going to be fat.

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