Call African-Americans lazy, and you are, of course, a racist. But call
a fat person lazy, and nobody will raise an eyebrowe, except maybe in laughter.
Gusa Vice-presidential candidate Andrew Geiger graduated to the Hoya News
(February 27th), delivering the following funny one-liner during the radio
broadcast of a presidential election forum: "Will the fat kid at the salad
bar please opt for low-fat salad dressing?"
I ask you not to take his remark too lightly. Comments like that have
a heavy impact. While others may crack up laughing, Geiger's joke cracks
the self-esteem of many Americans whose body-shape does not conform to
ordinary fashion standards and random health insurance charts. Fat-bashing
is the last safe sport for prejudiced Americans, and it is sanctioned by
the diet-industry that sends millions of people in the fitness treadmills,
generating more than 30 billion dollar per year on the vicious cycle of
diets that don't work. And a media that feeds off the advertisement for
more than 2000 diet products continues to tell you Kate Winslet looked
fat in Titanic, that Monica Seles is terribly out of shape, and that the
modern heroine ought to look like a heroin addict.
There is a gender difference. While your big football player 'eats
healthy', the slim cheerleader 'pigs out'. Women have a heavier lot to
bear than man when it comes to body image, because it is important for
them to look beautiful. And in a time where men feel threatened by the
new self-esteem that feminism has brought to American women as a group,
beauty means a transperent frailty, a disinterested pale appearance of
a hollow image. Check out these fashiioon mags: beautiful is a Kate Moss
who seems to subsist on cigarette-smoke alone, and inspires eating disorders
en masse among teenage girls and young women.
I have heard an Italian say that he believes the idea of slimness and
fitness naturally arises in a culture that has no resources to support
bigger people. That is partially true. In my native Germany, we traditionally
have a lot of heavy food, and of course, beer. Our kings and leaders have
often been large. Look at the 300 pounds of presence of our chancellor
Helmut Kohl. Or think of the embodiment of the German Wirtschaftswunder,
the economic wonder of the fifties, economic minister Ludwig Erhard. He
was a short fat man with a fat cigar. And my Italian friend was thinking
of the pasta-tradition in his country and the voluptousness of people that
we know from Fellini's movies.
But the US is a competitive society. Fitness counts, success, the first
impression, image, speed, agility, mobility. All these concepts exclude
the possibility of "beauty-fully figured" women, but ironically, they produce
fast-food restaurants, ever bigger burgers, and a lot of fad diets that
lead to yoyo-dieting. It's all a cruel game on our democratic idea of being
able to rise above reality, to obtain an ideal. In this case it is the
superficial ideal of a weight coming in one package with the happiness
with which diet-dolls dangle in your face on TV, dying for your diet-dollars.
The blond slim suburban Barbie has long and cruelly invaded children's
dreams and self-perception.
In America, there is no place for sizes 12 and up, though women come
in bigger sizes naturally. A fat-phobic society that knows no moderation
is literally, figuratively and emotionally killing a whole generation of
young women, sending 8th graders to Weigth Watchers instead of Girl Scouts,
and to a fat farm instead of the leadership camp. Along with temporary
weight loss young women loose self-confidence, a lot of time, energy, and
focus on the real challenges of life. Up to 81 percent of 10-year-old girls
have disordered eating through fear of fat, according to a California study.
And 90 percent of the women in the United States believe they should loose
weight.
I recommend a bit more German "Gemuetlichkeit", a bit more leisureliness,
composure, and tolerance. Take it easy with that fat fitness craze. Germans
are eating heartily, yet they are not as heavy as Americans. But it will
be a long way to go towards Gemuetlichkeit in a country where an organization
named "Shape up America" calls a guy named Michael Fumento "health policy
specialist". Listen to the de-humanizing insults Fumento made in the honorable
Washington Times (Oct. 15th, 97). According to his editorial, Body-Shop
posters depicted "a cross between a nude Barbie and a dirigible" - "flattery"
for "huge customers"; obesity is "a contagious social disease"; it is "no
coincidence" that Americans are fattening up while "dumbing down"; and
studies showed that "aversion to corpulence is built into our genes". Likening
people of substance to zeppelins, suggesting that they are dumb and "contagious"
company, and certainly not sexually attractive, Fumento takes his mouth
way too full. It should be food for thought for all of us.