# "The Abject Body-Myths of Fatness"



## MissToodles (Feb 27, 2006)

Very interesting read, take time to check it out. It's part of a dissertation:

http://www.mythandculture.com/weblog/2005/11/abject-body-myths-of-fatness.html


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## kropotkin_fan (Feb 28, 2006)

Interesting, though it strikes me as mostly postmodernist nonsense over all. The stuff on myth, in particular, seems full of wishful thinking.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi,



kropotkin_fan said:


> Interesting, though it strikes me as mostly postmodernist nonsense over all. The stuff on myth, in particular, seems full of wishful thinking.



Actually, since you haven't read the work, it seems terribly nonsensical to dismiss it as "postmodernist nonsense" or "wishful thinking." After working on this for over three years (and suffering terribly through its discoveries), having passed academic reviews by a very rigid committee, I don't consider my work either nonsensical or wishful. My PHD oral defense was in November and so I am still a bit raw - which may account for my response here today. 

The study I embarked on included a very close reading of the myths upon which Western culture rests, including an analysis of the change toward male body as warfare tactics change, an indepth reading of Plato and Aristotle whose antagonism toward bodies (and especially fat bodies) is truly frightening, and a conclusion that the western hatred of fat is really a fear and hatred of feminine *softness*. 

BTW, did you know that Plato insists that fat people do not deserve medical attention or that the condition of one's soul can be discerned by looking at the condition of their body? Or that in the Republic in which moderation is everything, those who can't control their bodily indulgences are considered lower class people who must be ruled? Aristotlian Ethics describes those who are overweight as evidence of their animal nature (theriotes). 

What is terrible is that those ideas exist subliminally in the culture - so much so that Rudd Institute at Yale has done a number of devastating studies that show that bias against fatness is almost unshakeable in its implicit or unconscious form.

Listen, I am being encouraged to bring this work to a larger audience so that people can understand what they are truly up against - not merely in things like social acceptance, but also in basic existence issues such as employment and health care. 

This whole thing started for me when I had to ask the question - why is being fat such a bad thing? Numerous research studies are showing that being fat is not necessarily a moral choice. So why then are fat people so hated by the culture in general and why do we insist on making dieting the equalivent of moral salvation? These were some of the questions I attempted to answer.

If anyone is interested in this discussion, I will make myself available to share my research. If not, then I'll go back to my rather strenous work of walking against a tremendous tide of cultural antagonism. But I would hope that in a place that is supposedly dedicated to supporting larger size people, that there would be at least an interest and open attitude about discussing my findings. Of course, the findings may rattle some cages about things like "postmodernism" and "relativism." But I can hold my own if you can.

Take care,

Maggie Macary, PhD
http://mythandculture.com


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## saucywench (Mar 1, 2006)

Welcome to Dimensions forums, Dr. Macary (liking the sound of that yet?  )

Please don't assume that kropotkin fan speaks for the majority of us here. He arrived on our scene many months ago (before the advent of this new format) and seems to fancy playing the role of devil's advocate with regard to the spectrum of fat issues.

I for one did read (and bookmarked) a couple of the topics related to your studies that MissToodles mentioned in her post, and found them fascinating. I applaud your efforts to get at the heart of what drives people in their blanket disdain and dismissal of fat people; it is a subject that I spend an inordinate amount of time pondering--perhaps because it is so mystifying to me.

Add me to those others who support you (in spirit, at least) in your efforts to get your work published. I hope you get the rest and rejuvenation that should be awarded you after such an exhaustive endeavor, especially to the extent that you will be encouraged to participate actively in our discussions here. I feel it would be of tremendous mutual benefit to all parties concerned.

Cindy aka saucywench


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi Cindy,

Thank you so much for your kind welcome. I don't object to criticism of the work, but I do really object to a blanket dismissal of ideas without any indepth thought. I am raw on this subject right now. The dissertation process did indeed help me lose weight by giving me IBS, making me throw up and generally devastating all my preconceived notions about my weight. Of course, I never became thin through it. 

I was actually looking for a way to lose weight through personal mythology when I realized that there is indeed an *obesity myth,* meaning that fatness itself has a story in Western culture that binds us to so many inherent biases. 

I wrote about this most recently in a blog entitled What We Will Not See, in which I discuss an recent article from the NYTimes. The article quotes studies that prove that giving children skim milk instead of whole milk (as well as providing nutritional education) does nothing to *thin the child.* Yet, those conclusions are being repressed and ignored. Why? What is it that we refuse to acknowledge when we confront fatness?

I don't know much about this forum or this group. I saw the increase in traffic to my site via stats and I hoped that the ideas were generating some discussion. Truthfully, I was disappointed to see that dismissal as the only reaction. So, I came in. 

I am really over my head these days trying to figure out how I support myself, pay back a mountain of depth, and yet move this all forward. But, this has become an angry passion of mine right now and I am perfectly willing to answer questions or participate in a discussion of ideas with interested parties. 

This is not about my being right or wrong - it is about waking up to the bedrock of bias that hasn't been shaken when it comes to body size. It is there as strong as ever, and it is not going away.

Take care,

Maggie

Maggie Macary, PhD
http://mythandculture.com


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## Webmaster (Mar 1, 2006)

maggiemacary said:


> ....If anyone is interested in this discussion, I will make myself available to share my research.



Maggie, from one Ph.D. to another, a hearty welcome. It seems like only yesterday that I defended my own doctoral dissertation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, even though it's been decades since. I vividly recall the preparation, agonizing over how to present the points, stage fright, the intense grilling, and a good degree of frustration over what was a doctoral committee that really didn't seem to get it. I never used my degree in the traditional academic sense, but it sure came in handy in adding gravitas at times and opening doors at others. A sense of frustration remains with me after all these years, frustration that my relatively groundbreaking work was not used in ways that very well might have made a difference by now.

Anyway, apart from my professional endeavors, I have been engaged at various levels in size acceptance over the past quarter century (including chairman of the board of NAAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, for many years) and would, if it is available, love to read your dissertation.

Conrad


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi Conrad,

Thank you for your kind welcome and interest in my work. I am really an overwhelmed person at this moment and somedays feel as if I am dancing as fast as I can in quicksand. 

I think this work is really important because it reveals a 3000 + year of hatred toward softness that cannot be easily dismissed through rationalization and study. Other studies I've read make bias against fatness a recent occurrence. It is not; it is ancient. I think we are afraid to see how pervasive it really is. I looked at both male and female bodies, btw in this study and I concluded that men are naturally feminized by excess weight and that even though I no longer believe that "fat is a feminine issue," I do believe that "fat is a "feminizing issue." 

One of the more devastating parts of doing a dissertation that has such a personal impact is that I had to confront my own hatred of fat bodies, and my own biases. Of course, I also became aware of my own daily shutting down because of the experience of both the overt and covert biases of others. There can be no freedom in body when you are taught from the start that the body you are in is defective and malformed and you believe in that system. I am just starting to recover from this devastating experinence and beginning to find ways to forgive myself for all my years of hatred toward my own body. 

I think that fat people are so used to experiencing the violence that culture projects against their own unruly bodies, that they cannot even see the devastation that such unconscious myths can cause. 

I don't know if I can change all this, but I'm angry enough to try. 

Right now, the dissertation is still going through its final copy-editing before it gets published by UMI. But I'd be happy to send you the first chapter privately, if you're interested in it. Please feel free to email me privately.

Thank you again. 

Maggie

Maggie Macary, PhD
http://mythandculture.com


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## saucywench (Mar 1, 2006)

maggiemacary said:


> ....I think this work is really important because it reveals a 3000 + year of hatred toward softness that cannot be easily dismissed through rationalization and study. Other studies I've read make bias against fatness a recent occurrence. It is not; it is ancient. I think we are afraid to see how pervasive it really is.


 
I think that your work is important, too, in ways that--just as Conrad's own contributions to size acceptance--may not perhaps be realized adequately in our own lifetimes. That is disheartening, but I believe it to be the truth.

I think part of the reason I welcome you here so enthusiastically, Maggie, is that I, as many of us here, as I hope you will find, have had that same awareness as you, albeit to different degrees and through different routes. Most of us who have lived in a fat body for a sufficient degree of time (all of my life, speaking personally) or those who advocate for us would tell you that we fully realize how pervasive fat bias is--we live with it on a daily basis, whether our eyes are open to it or not. We all find different ways of adapting to what we cannot control, however.

I find your work encouraging, as I have considered many times exploring this same field. I could write tomes myself on this subject, only I've lacked the discipline and drive to see such a project through. I don't wish to victimize myself in this regard, but I feel that those biases that you have uncovered have contributed largely to my perception of myself (in my development over the years) as being unfit to achieve such a task.



maggiemacary said:


> ... I had to confront my own hatred of fat bodies, and my own biases. Of course, I also became aware of my own daily shutting down because of the experience of both the overt and covert biases of others. There can be no freedom in body when you are taught from the start that the body you are in is defective and malformed and you believe in that system. I am just starting to recover from this devastating experinence and beginning to find ways to forgive myself for all my years of hatred toward my own body.


 
I think it's amazing what we can uncover about ourselves once we stop going through the motions of living (not saying that was your circumstance, necessarily) and open the doors of perception to the ways in which we function in the world and what factors influence our perception of ourselves. You might likely be suffering some sort of PTSD in the sense that the paradigms by which you have lived your life previously have been altered in a dramatic way. I feel certain that nature will take its course and lead you, not just back to your former self, but will propel you gently but assuredly into the next stages of your life. I feel that perhaps you can gain additional insight by participating in discussions here.

I am hopeful that you will find many doors of opportunity opening to you as a result of your studies. I'm sure that you have found, through your research, precious little work done in this regard. It truly boggles my mind, much in the same way that it does to ponder the concept of infinity, that fat bias is so heavily woven into virtually every aspect of our culture.



maggiemacary said:


> I think that fat people are so used to experiencing the violence that culture projects against their own unruly bodies, that they cannot even see the devastation that such unconscious myths can cause.


 
Indeed, many of us can't--nor would we want to; it's that insidious, and that hideous. But it is necessary if we are to make steps toward evolving as a species. It must start somewhere.

You've given me much to ponder; I'm glad you're here.


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## Carol W. (Mar 1, 2006)

Maggie, a hearty welcome to you! It is my opinion, and I stress only my opinion, that KF's post, like so many of his posts on the Dim site, come from the very core of the biases you delved into in your work. I am thrilled to have you here among us; I think the honor and good fortune are all ours.


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## Tina (Mar 1, 2006)

Maggie, welcome. 

Honestly, I've got a time pinch here, but quickly, I wanted to say that one thing you should know: kropotkin_fan argues with anything even mildly pro-fat here and always has. This, I believe, weakens his position, as there is little discernment over what is argued and shot down.

However, if his comments on your blog are what brought you here, I'm all for it.  (not the comments, but you being here, of course)


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## Theatrmuse/Kara (Mar 1, 2006)

Welcome, Maggie! I also had to defend my Thesis for my MFA in Theatre. My thesis was "North American Tongues: Dialects of America and Canada". I can sympatize on the arduous process of preparing the Thesis and coming to the committee for the Defense.

Congratulations and I am really excited about this and future work! I, also, would like to read your first chapter!
Welcome again,
Kara Allen
(Another Past Co-Chairperson of NAAFA)


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## kropotkin_fan (Mar 1, 2006)

> The study I embarked on included a very close reading of the myths upon which Western culture rests, including an analysis of the change toward male body as warfare tactics change, an indepth reading of Plato and Aristotle whose antagonism toward bodies (and especially fat bodies) is truly frightening, and a conclusion that the western hatred of fat is really a fear and hatred of feminine *softness*.



If you ask me, the connection between women and softness (which can mean many things metaphorical, many of which would not be very complimenting to women) is itself part of the very mindset you claim to be against. You are simply replacing masculine hardness with feminine softness as the privileged quality without questioning the connection between men and women and their assigned rôles of hardness and softness.



> This whole thing started for me when I had to ask the question - why is being fat such a bad thing? Numerous research studies are showing that being fat is not necessarily a moral choice. So why then are fat people so hated by the culture in general and why do we insist on making dieting the equalivent of moral salvation? These were some of the questions I attempted to answer.



Health. Science (and even basic reasoning when you get down to it) shows that it is unhealthy to be overweight.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi,

It is always easy to discuss something when you don't know what you're talking about. If you would like to debate this topic with me, I'm willing to do so - but only if you provide some sense of scholarly research. Otherwise, I don't care to converse with you. 

But I will point you at a few things.



kropotkin_fan said:


> If you ask me, the connection between women and softness (which can mean many things metaphorical, many of which would not be very complimenting to women) is itself part of the very mindset you claim to be against. You are simply replacing masculine hardness with feminine softness as the privileged quality without questioning the connection between men and women and their assigned rôles of hardness and softness.



To evaluate a bias, you have to examine it in its context. As a cultural mythologist, I don't change the myths. I use them as my lens to view the way culture operates. 

You can't change a myth's parameters and decide that softness means this and hardness means that. That is an opinion that wouldn't get you beyond the first quarter of a grad school program (I spent 3 years in grad school and another 3 years writing). 

The ideas of softness and hardness and their relationship to masculine and feminine qualities are based on the Pythagorean table of opposites that sets up the idea of a cosmic duality in western culture. This is well cemented in western culture and documented in Aristotle's Metaphysics. The table goes like this:

limit - unlimited
odd - even
one - plurality
right - left
male - female
at rest - moving
straight - crooked
light - darkness
good - bad
square - oblong 

Thus what is male is what is at rest, straight, light, good, square, limited, one. Plato connects this idea with softness. Here is an excerpt I did on a blog on the topic which references Plato'is philosophy (a pillar of western thought):

It is in Platos work, Timaeus that this cosmic duality takes on an implicit hierarchical binarism which forever relates body to darkness, inferiority, femininity and disorderly irrationality. Body, regardless of its gender, is always placed on the dark, feminine, disorderly side of the equation. In Timaeus 62c, Plato clearly defines philosophical notions of hard and soft, again creating a dualism which sets up moral judgment. Hardness (sklêros) and softness (malakos), he writes, are relative terms based on a notion of movement. That which gives away to motion is soft, as in a soft-ploughed field, the origin of the word malakos. That which resists motion is hard and firm, not moving and thus not evil or female. Plato comments further:

When even a minor disturbance affects that which is easily moved by nature [the soft], the disturbance is passed on in a chain reaction with some parts affecting others in the same way as they were affected, until it reaches the center of consciousness and reports the property that produced the reaction something that is hard to move remains fixed and merely experiences the disturbance without passing it on in any chain reaction. It does not disturb any of its neighboring parts, so that in the absence of some parts passing on the disturbance to others, the initial disturbance affecting them fails to move into the living thing as a whole and renders the disturbance unperceived (64c).​In Platos view hardness then protects against disturbance while softness allows for a chain reaction of disturbance affecting the whole. But there is more here. The word malakos is a derogatory word in the classical Greek, for it also has the implication of effeminate  and to refer to a man as malakos is to imply that he takes a passive role in homosexual sex. He is soft-ploughed, like a field, ready to be planted.​
You can read the whole thing at http://www.mythandculture.com/weblog/2005/05/hard-and-soft-of-it.html. 



kropotkin_fan said:


> Health. Science (and even basic reasoning when you get down to it) shows that it is unhealthy to be overweight.


What studies are you referencing? Here is the opening paragraph of a section of my dissertation entitled: Is fatness a disease? (I don't use the word obesity - it is a cultural construct, not a valid measurement):

A disease is defined as an impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning according to the OED. Is fatness a disease? The medical community is not in agreement on this topic as arguments, research projects and philosophical debates continue to attempt to categorize fatness and its impact on health. One such controversy has to do with the notion that not all body fat is equal in terms of its health risk. Excessive abdominal fat is related to an increased risk of Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes (commonly referred to as Type II Diabetes or Insulin Resistance), hypertension and kidney and heart disease. Some research studies rely more on waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) to determine obesity and to relate the abdominal fat to a higher risk of disease of metabolic diseases such as Non Insulin Dependent Diabetes or heart disease.

An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine in January 1998, Losing Weight  An Ill-Fated New Year's Resolution, began a major controversy when the authors, Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D. Marcia Angell, M.D. proclaimed:

Unfortunately, the data linking overweight and death, as well as the data showing the beneficial effects of weight loss, are limited, fragmentary, and often ambiguous. Most of the evidence is either indirect or derived from observational epidemiological studies, many of which have serious methodological flaws. Many studies fail to consider confounding variables, which are extremely difficult to assess and control for in this type of study. For example, mortality among obese people may be misleadingly high because overweight people are more likely to be sedentary and of low socioeconomic status.[note the occurrence of this prevailing bias] Thus, although some claim that every year 300,000 deaths in the United States are caused by obesity, that figure is by no means well established. Not only is it derived from weak or incomplete data, but it is also called into question by the methodological difficulties of determining which of many factors contribute to premature death. (54)​Kassirer and Angell contend that the move to classify fatness as a disease and therefore a serious cause of mortality is inspired by political correctness which tends to medicalize behavior we do not approve of. Since 1998, the editorial is continually cited in debates and articles regarding the notion of fatness as a disease or as a cause of death, with little resolution.​
As you can see, I've done a considerable amount of research on this topic, so unless you have something to engage my discussion, I probably will for the most part, ignore you. Though it would seem that to spout an opinion on a topic like this, you should have something to back it up with other than your own intuitive "feel." 

take care,

Maggie


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi Kara, Tina, and Carol W.

Thank you so much for the warm welcome. I probably shouldn't be hanging out in here right now because this could get distracting and I have my own site that I am building and continually working. Or perhaps this is just a point of healing that I need.

I've never been very big on community, and I am rather iconoclastic, so I would imagine at some point I'll probably piss you all off and have to leave to let things cool down. But for now, it is really nice to find a place of welcome and perhaps rest.

Thanks again!

Maggie


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## MissToodles (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi Maggie, I enjoyed reading bits and pieces of your disserntation. My boyfriend actually found your webpage jumping from link to link.

Kroptokin_fan never explained how your work was pomo. It's typical, a hit and run response of dissent!


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## kropotkin_fan (Mar 1, 2006)

> You can't change a myth's parameters and decide that softness means this and hardness means that. That is an opinion that wouldn't get you beyond the first quarter of a grad school program (I spent 3 years in grad school and another 3 years writing).
> 
> The ideas of softness and hardness and their relationship to masculine and feminine qualities are based on the Pythagorean table of opposites that sets up the idea of a cosmic duality in western culture. This is well cemented in western culture and documented in Aristotle's Metaphysics. The table goes like this....



I see, but what does this have to do with modern culture? How many people actually read Plato and Aristotle? How many people base their ideas of reality on them? Do you really think the average person considers excess weight bad because they read about it in the works of Plato?



> What studies are you referencing? Here is the opening paragraph of a section of my dissertation entitled: Is fatness a disease? (I don't use the word obesity - it is a cultural construct, not a valid measurement)...



I'm talking about the well-documented connection between excess weight and various health issues such as diabetes and heart disease.



> Kroptokin_fan never explained how your work was pomo. It's typical, a hit and run response of dissent!



At first glance, it sounded Pomo. On further reading, I realized I judged too quickly.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi Ms. Toodles..

Thank you for posting the original link. Word of mouth really is helping the growth of my site which gets about 15-1800 visitors a day currently!

The truth is, my work is post modern if you look at some of the philosophers I'm referencing, including Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigigary. But I don't believe that post-modernism or relativism is a dirty word. It is a way of seeing through conventional thought.

I also reference a LOT of classicists in my dissertation as well as reputable people like Arthur Lovejoy who wrote a book based on his lectures at Yale, published by Harvard University Press in 1950, called the Great Chain of Being, the History of an Idea. Lovejoy writes:

It is the beliefs which are so much a matter of course that they are rather tacitly presupposed than formally expressed and argued for, the ways of thinking which seem so natural and inevitable that they are not scrutinized with the eye of logical self-consciousness, that often are the most decisive of the character of a philosophers doctrine, and still oftener of the dominant intellectual tendencies of an age (7).​
I love that book! 

Anyway, labels don't bother me much. 

Maggie


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## Theatrmuse/Kara (Mar 1, 2006)

"I see, but what does this have to do with modern culture? How many people actually read Plato and Aristotle? How many people base their ideas of reality on them? Do you really think the average person considers excess weight bad because they read about it in the works of Plato?"

Uhhhh, I DO and in fact teach from Aristotle's THE POETICS in my undergraduate classes.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi,

I just want to respond quickly to this one point


kropotkin_fan said:


> I'm talking about the well-documented connection between excess weight and various health issues such as diabetes and heart disease.
> .



The fact is, there is an interrelationship between excess abdominal fat, type 2 diabetes or insulin resistence and heart disease. However, it is really unclear that the fat causes the disease. In fact, most serious research recognizes the existence of a metabolic disorder that links the 3 things together and there is increasing evidence that fatness, rather than being the cause is actually one of the symptoms of the metabolic disorder which may in fact have an interuterine origin. If you don't believe, read the studies about the Pima indians. Or even, look at the growing predominance of PCOS among women which the U.S. Surgeon General now recognizes as a metabolic disorder related to insulin resistence. Sufferers of PCOS often suffer from excess body fat, but that is not related to diet as much as it is related to a metabolic disorder. Fat is a symptom of the complex, not necessarily a cause. Losing weight lessens symptoms if you can do it. Many cannot. 

Maggie


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## kropotkin_fan (Mar 1, 2006)

I'm going to take the advice of some friends and just quit and prove I'm big enough not to let things get to me. Truth isn't determined by who has the better arguments but by what is real. It isn't worth my time here at all. I've got the laws of physics on my side, anyway.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

Really..truth is what is "real." Do you know that the word "truth" comes from the same Old English root as "tree." It represents what is durable, but it also represents the idea of what is both seen and unseen. The tree is never entirely seen - neither is the truth. 

But how do you know what is "real" or what real in the world really even means? The idea of what is "real" differs from culture to culture. It not necessarily what is only concrete in the world - it includes abstract thought. 

It seems to me, that if you can't hold your own in a discussion, then your opinions are worthless. The laws of physics are based on philosophical thought. New physics has changed a great deal of philosophical thought in the last 50 years as has philosophical thought changed ideas in physics. 

If you can't think and argue rationally, then maybe you should stop harassing these nice people with your hit and run ideas. I haven't seen any evidence that what you are writing contributes to anything.

I'm assuming you're a young person. This is no way to waste your time when you can actually work on developing your thought. 

Maggie


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## TraciJo67 (Mar 1, 2006)

maggiemacary said:


> Hi,
> 
> I just want to respond quickly to this one point
> 
> ...



Maggie, 

Welcome  I have enjoyed reading your blog & a bit of your dissertation overview. You have a fascinating theory. I'm not sure that I completely agree with it, but you defend it well. I'm thinking about how fat people are revered in some cultures, especially impoverished areas where a fat wife is considered a sign of wealth. And it seems to me (generalizing here) that African-American men are far more accepting & admiring of the fat body. Cultural norms vary so much. It seems that the more affluent we become, the more we value thinness. 

In a court of law, a preponderance of circumstantial evidence will often convict a person. I feel the same way about the link between diabetes and excess weight. Not every overweight person will develop the disease. But many will; statistically, thin people are far less likely to become diabetic. And we are seeing an epidemic of Type II diabetes developing in children, who, coincidentally, are heavier than they've ever been. I do believe that some of us have metabolic disorders that cause obesity and/or diabetes. But I wouldn't be comfortable saying that fatness is _generally_ a symptom of a metabolic disorder. That seems a stretch to me. 

I haven't read the study about Pima indians, but it does strike me that they share a genetic link that mainstream society does not - so I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable applying any specific research findings to the population at large.


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## Tragdor (Mar 1, 2006)

kropotkin_fan said:


> I've got the laws of physics on my side, anyway.



So if I create a perpetual motion device, will you arrest me?

Sorry its just fun to be light hearted when people are in a serious debate. Its always fun to see old school Marxists go up againist postmodernists. The Marxists are tharshed with a nastier form of their own historicism.


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## Tina (Mar 1, 2006)

Hi Maggie. I understand the time and busy-ness factor, as I've been here a bit less often myself because of lots of homework. One thing, though: if you decide to stay and any stray gnats bother you, there is a fabulous "Ignore" function here. You click on the annoying person's name, go to "view public profile" and to the right, around the middle or so, it gives you the option to ignore the person. I've got two on mine; it just makes life simpler.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 1, 2006)

HI TraciJo,

Thanks for your intelligent thoughts. Believe it or not, I challenged myself on your points. The first thing to note is that I'm not talking about all cultures, but rather Western culture. 



TraciJo67 said:


> Welcome  I have enjoyed reading your blog & a bit of your dissertation overview. You have a fascinating theory. I'm not sure that I completely agree with it, but you defend it well. I'm thinking about how fat people are revered in some cultures, especially impoverished areas where a fat wife is considered a sign of wealth. And it seems to me (generalizing here) that African-American men are far more accepting & admiring of the fat body. Cultural norms vary so much. It seems that the more affluent we become, the more we value thinness.


The problem is that with globalization, there is less and less cultural variances as Western culture takes over as the *pop* culture. I call western culture by the way, the "borg" - you will be assimilated. If you don't mind, I have a couple paragraphs on the influence of this on African American women and culture that I'd just like to reprint here:

Fat bias also appears to have a racial and/or ethnic component to it. In an essay entitled The Soul of America, Tracy Fessenden traces the idea of racism to white Americas notion of embodiment, excess fertility, too much and too many bodies and ideas regarding racial instincts. An increasing pressure towards disembodiment defines the civilizing process in Western cultures through the 19th century, writes Fessenden (30). This civilizing process creates a spiritualization of citizenship, subtly reinforcing racial understandings of citizenship that excluded African-Americans and many of the growing number of darker-colored immigrants (33). Fessenden concludes that darkness of skin color is related in white minds to the lack of bodily self-mastery and the excessive fertility of immigrant races, and thus to their inferiority (28). ....

African American culture also observes a connection between dark skin and fatness. Writes Ruth Johnson in an article about fatness and black women, traditional African cultures promoted larger body sizes among women as symbols of wealth and fertility (69). Johnson explains that in white America, large African-American female bodies became associated with a Mammy stereotype, in which the women were perceived as nonsexual and thus less accessible to sexual advances from owners on southern plantations. She concludes that becoming fatter was a form of self-protection for African American women (70). 

It is unclear from Johnsons article whether fatter African-American female slaves historically experienced less sexual overtures in the plantation setting or if this is merely a contemporary perception that fat female bodies are undesirable and therefore would not have the attention of slave-owners. Certainly her argument is an old feminist argument about women and fatness as reflected in Susie Orbachs book Fat is a Feminist Issue in which fatness is linked to compulsive eating and seen as a protection from an antagonistic, patriarchal culture (xii). 

Regardless, African American women are increasingly targeted for their non-white, cultural acceptance of larger bodies. Essence Magazine, the premier African-American womans magazine, recently published the following proclamation on its website: What is it about being Black and female in America in 2003 that is causing an increasing number of us to carry more weight than we can handle? Look to us to provide you with inspiration, insight and success stories that will support you in your quest to be as healthy as you can be. (Weathers)​What was once viewed as a cultural preference in African American culture is now viewed as pathological, psychological, or socio-economical, a relic of racism and slavery. The solution is to appropriate thinner, more Euro-centric bodies.

The result of these campaigns for thinner black bodies is that eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, once uncommon in African American women are beginning to grow exponentially. In a piece written for the PBS program, Nova, and available on their website, authors Marian Fitzgibbon and Melinda Stolley write of a seeming relationship between African-American womens assimilation into white culture and the rise of eating disorders. They comment: Not surprisingly, African-American women who are the most assimilated equate thinness with beauty and place great importance on physical attractiveness. It is these typically younger, more educated, and perfection-seeking women who are most at risk of succumbing to eating disorders.​For Fitzgibbon and Stolley, assimilation into white culture means the rejection of large, fatter bodies that do not meet Euro-centric standards on body type.​
The essay by Tracy Fessenden is exceptionally well done. You can find it in a book entitled _Perspectives on Embodiment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture. _Ed. Gail Weiss & Honi Fern Haber. New York: Routledge, 1999.

As you can probabaly imagine, I have over 250 books and articles cited in the dissertation - which I'm told was a record at my grad school. 



TraciJo67 said:


> In a court of law, a preponderance of circumstantial evidence will often convict a person. I feel the same way about the link between diabetes and excess weight. Not every overweight person will develop the disease. But many will; statistically, thin people are far less likely to become diabetic. And we are seeing an epidemic of Type II diabetes developing in children, who, coincidentally, are heavier than they've ever been. I do believe that some of us have metabolic disorders that cause obesity and/or diabetes. But I wouldn't be comfortable saying that fatness is _generally_ a symptom of a metabolic disorder. That seems a stretch to me.
> 
> I haven't read the study about Pima indians, but it does strike me that they share a genetic link that mainstream society does not - so I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable applying any specific research findings to the population at large.



The idea of fatness as a symptom at least in serious metabolic disorders, is probably *my* stretch and is not necessarily a conclusion of the diss. But that is based on my readings about not only the Pimas (and they're doing multi-generational studies on the res these days), but also other studies that show the impact of fetal malnutrition on the later body size of a child. It is called the "thrifty phenotype" study and I buy it because I know that my mother had problems in her pregnancy with me related to blood pressure and blood sugar and I can see how the metabolic problems I developed related to that. The problem is that research understand very little about the complex metbolic systems of the human being. This theory comforts me because it allows me to understand that I was in fact, "fated to be fat." And despite all the diets and exercise (I've always exercised), that I couldn't ever achieve what was considered a normal weight. 

So, I won't really conclude that fatness is a symptom of an underlyng metabolic disorder in all people...though I think that the recent studies about cortisol and the impact of stress also point in that direction, but I do believe it is the primary cause of my body size. 

Thanks again for the conversation. 

Maggie


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## Lynne Murray (Mar 1, 2006)

Thanks to Miss T (I know I'll spell it wrong and I had enough trouble logging in to risk backing up to check!) for this link,and congratulations to Maggie Macary on your dissertation, doctorhood and very interesting work!

I feel moved to comment on the slippery nature of myths and dreams (in the daydreaming goal sense of "dreams") and how they work in the real world. As a novelist and an older fat woman who works on building a positive relationship with my body every day, I had a smile of recognition when you bravely stated that you hoped the study of myths around fat might bring weight loss. 

Let me share my own tale of overwhelming naivete. When I started to write a series of mystery novels about a self-accepting fat woman I was a 42-year-old widow who weighed 100 pounds more than I had when I first married. I had many reasons for writing Larger Than Death, but the most irrational (or hubristic--is that a word?) was that if I couldn't find a man who already liked fat women, I might help to effect some change in the cultural climate that might educate the some of the appropriate Y-bearing chromosome critters to look my way. I didn't ask for much did I? Did you know that novelists are egomaniacs living in their own dream worlds? Well, now you do.

There are so many things wrong with this goal that I'd have to write a book on why it wasn't workable (perhaps I will). The main and overwhelming problem being that even if deep-seated body-type sexual preferences COULD be changed by light fiction (and I now kinda doubt it), the kind of novel I write has a 90% female readership. Hmmm. This would work so much better if I were lesbian or at least bisexual.

I look forward to reading your book, and with your permission will link to your website. My own book experience has been very different than I could have imagined, and I'm sure yours will be too. But whether we set up ripples in a pond or pull one line of a net--choice of metaphors, I didn't have time to narrow it down to one--every questioning of a damaging myth, and voicing of an empowering one is worth the effort!

Write on!
Lynne


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## Carol W. (Mar 1, 2006)

I am absolutely and completely loving this thread! So many wonderful thoughts and ideas presented here-it's a delight and an honor to read them. 

KF, perhaps you do well to take that advice from your friends re: this site. After all, if you have THE LAW OF PHYSICS on your side, who could ask for anything more???


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## Arkveveen (Mar 1, 2006)

Well, I have to admit... ignorance is truly a contagious thing. Even to people back then, even to Aristotle and Plato who thought they knew everything. It is never good to try to force your will onto others, so you can feel more powerful! May it be through law, or moral standards. People are just so afraid and scared. They don't know what to believe anymore, you know? If you look at my signature, and at my quote, you will see how it ties in with all these personal rights versus collective good. If you ask me, the "collective good" is more of a consenus of millions of people who think they know what's right. It's about numbers these days for truth and belief, it is sad. But, nothing can compare to the emotional and mental pain which I uselessly inflicted upon myself at the mercy of worrying too much about what others say.

I do have to agree with what all you speak of, mabye all this stigma originated at Plato and Aristotle though? Mabye that's where gluttony as a "deadly sin" came from? Who knows? All I know is that alot of suffering and despair is being thrown upon FA's, and fat as well as happy people, it makes me want to cry.  But, as I always say... some people are stupid, let them be stupid. It will only be their downfall. To nature, all of this quarrel about fat and fatness means NOTHING. Do you think a whale hates being fat? Do you think a slender girrafe will make fun of a fat hippo? This already proves some humans are inferior to animals even. First of all, we are all just highly evolved animals in body! Second, some humans want to feel the comfort of ruling over others. And finally, there are good, bad, nuetral instincts on humans, read my qoute as it ties into it. It's all perspective ultimately, right? I don't even know what I say is right... all I know is... that I have people that support me here. 

I found such research soothing to my depressed soul, and it eases my mind. Thank you all for posting about this, I enjoy big discussions or debates. I also thank you all for the enlightenment, I really needed it to help expand my mind a bit further. I have a naturalist view on things, and nature is saying alot of humankind is inferior to basic animals due to this foolish hatred of softness. Now I know how ancient this hatred is! What truly enlightening wisdom.

In the end, those who think they know everything... do not, they have their problems too. They are not high authority figures like most of society is thinking! All these health problems stated, they do not matter to me at all! Death, to me, is a new frontier, I have no fear of it. I believe.. that fat, will damage you, if you hate it... a mental thing caused by stress and perhaps the hatred of one's body. I believe cancer caused by fat IF it's true somehow, is the fat wanting to destroy the body that hates it. All I know is, that I am also fated to be fat.


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## Vince (Mar 2, 2006)

Hi, Maggie. Congratulations of getting your PhD. That is always a achievement because you have to present some new understanding about some important area. Welcome to the board. 

Apparently Plato went around Athens encouraging people to burn books of Democritus. To this day we have only the passages of Democritus as quoted by others. I believe Plato is responsible for the foundations of Christianity and the subsequent dark ages that followed. It is true that Socretes and Plato argued that the body contaminates and damages the mind/soul of individuals. Poor Democritus would have argued that we did not have a mind but merely an assembly of atoms. In those days that was seen as absurd but the materialists today talk about brain processes and not minds as separate faculties. 

I am curious about how you can study phenomena that are "myths and metaphors of belief-patterns held unconsciously in a culture". While we all accept that myths exist how do we know what people hold unconsciously?


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## maggiemacary (Mar 2, 2006)

Hi Everyone,

I'm so excited to see the excitement in here about my research. I'm not sure how to respond, but I'll do my best. 

Lynne - of course, you're welcome to link to my site. It is wonderful to have another writer (I do consider writing my primary focus - now if I can just learn how to make a living off of it) appreciate one's work.

Ark - I did find Greek myths about gluttony - actually 2. The 2nd chapter of the dissertation focused on the goddess Aphrodite (Two Venuses). Aphrodite is the goddess of pleasure and in Athens, she was split into 2 - a higher and a lower form (Plato formulized this, but there was a divide even before Plato). I probably should have mentioned, that I focused ONLY on the myths as they developed in Athens because Athens left the best record and because it created what has become the *idealized* culture of Greece in their democratic form. Even in early myths like the Iliad and Odyssey (put down around 800 bce), Aphrodite is an untamed beast who has to be controlled by the gods of civilization. Pleasure is only acceptable when it is *useful*. 

The other very important myth has to do with femininity itself - and that is the myth of Pandora and her relationship to the goddess Athene in Athens. Athene is the ultimate *virile woman*, meaning to have her power, she must be sexless and hard. This is the focus of the 4th chapter. All women come from Pandora and Hesiod (the other old cosmology myth of Greeks along with Homeric material) is terribly demonized for her insatiable appetites. In classical Athens, the great statue of Athene which stood in the Parthenon, had the myth of Pandora as the base, with the civilized, virile female, Athene standing guard on top. I call this an inherent gynophobia in the culture. Since fatness always feminized regardless of gender, hatred of fatness is a hatred of what is considered feminine. The insistence on thin, hard, women has to do with women trying to find a place outside the home and in the culture by appropriating what is male. The virile woman starts with Athene but became an important theme in early and medieval christianity when women starved themselves in order to obtain masculine perfection. 

Vince - I am employing a methodology that I call "the mythos in the logos," something I admittedly developed for the dissertation. I wrote a section in the diss on how it goes. Basically,

People think in images and narrative forms. There is no set of logics that does not have a story to it. Story is myth (myth comes from muthos meaning mouth, meaning to narrate). My trick as a cultural mythologist is to discover what I call the "hidden story" beneath the logics by tracing the details of a myth as it moves to adapt to culture's anxieties and needs (mythopoesis). Greece left a huge record (as did Athens). One can see the stories not only left behind in the written records, but also in vase painting. I used a great deal of ancient texts and although I don't read Greek, Perseus over at Tufts is a great website that allows you to go back and forth between english and greek translations and then look up the greek words in liddel & scott. When it came to Plato and Aristotle - I read and read and then read other's thoughts on it. I did reference reknown classicists (you'd be surprised at the pile of research in ancient texts). Lovejoy calls this philosophical semantics and I followed his methodological rather closely. 
The ambiguity in words influenced the development of doctrines, as Lovejoy contends:
A term, a phrase, a formula, which gains currency or acceptance because one of its meanings, or of the thoughts which it suggests, is congenial to the prevalent beliefs, the standards of value, the tastes of a certain age, may help to alter beliefs, standards of values, and tastes, because other meanings or suggested implications, not clearly distinguished by those who employ it, gradually become the dominant elements of its signification. (14)​Examining the words in their context really reveals a great deal of what is implicit being suggested. 

BTW - Plato was an outcast in Athens - his ideas had little acceptance. Worse yet, he was somekind of fundamentalist coming from a pythagorean cult that hated the body and believed it had to be tamed. I found out that a lot of his writings came from his moral outrage about the loosening of morals in Athens. Making Plato the center of Western civilization is kind of like making the worst and most literal fundamentalist the center of American culture. The majority of Americans may not agree with those ideas, but a thousand years from now, perhaps people will think we all did.

And finally, about the unconscious. My degree is in mythology with an emphasis in post-jungian psychology (my primary influence is James Hillman). I define the unconscious not as what is unseen and unknowable, but what has not been illuminated. I teach an online course called the Musing Life in which I work with people to illuminate unconscious ideas through active imagination. It really is amazing what people find out about themselves. 

Thanks again, everyone - maybe this will help me face these final, piddling edits I have to do to on the diss - so I can then think about how I could bring this work to a larger audience.

Maggie


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## JoyJoy (Mar 2, 2006)

Maggie, 

I want to join in on the excitement of everyone else in welcoming you here. While I don't have anything productive to add to the discussion at this point, your writings and the comments by others have succeeded in pulling by brain out of it's cobwebs. Perhaps at some point I'll find a need to post some thoughts here, or perhaps not...either way, know that you can add me to the list of people who are very happy and thankful that you are posting here, and that you are a ripple in my pond.


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## Vince (Mar 2, 2006)

Maggie, let me say I am pleased to be able to discuss various things with someone who has such a depth in her reading and background. Your writing is compelling and well-illustrated with historical references. I find myself marvelling at your grasp of concepts and issues. Your willingness to debate issues is most welcome and I hope you continue to contribute to this board.

I am disappointed that many try to dismiss what a person says by attacking that person. Thus, Kropolkin Fan has a viewpoint and that has to be considered with arguments and not personal dismissal. I am pleased that you require that he debate with some substance and not merely reject your work out of hand. 

I have several issues I would like to discuss with you about your work. You call yourself a cultural mythologist and I have read some of your writings about what you do. I come from a background in philosophy and I, too, was interested in the ancient Greeks. It is amazing that philosophy was so active in a very short period of time when many of the giants of philosophy lived. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Democitus, Pythagoras, Diogenes and many others were almost contemporaries. We have seen nothing to equal the brilliance of that age since. My journey was enriched with the work of David Hume who I consider an exceptional philosopher. In recent years the philosophers of science like Karl Popper have influenced me. Patricia Churchland who wrote "Neurophilosophy" is another who is interesting. One of the ideas of those philosophers is that there is some progress in science and philosophy. They also suggest that there is a web of knowledge and that at best most thinkers merely improve a tiny portion of the overall picture. Occasionally someone might propose ideas that cause deep changes to the web. However, the majority of the knowledge remains unchanged and continues to be passed from generation to generation. The two giants in modern times were Darwin and Einstein. I think Freud is a close third but his ideas and not as popular as they were in the early and mid 20th Century.

I agree that the origins of our beliefs, values, ideas and even meanings are very important. There is a tradition in Western Philosophy that is concerned about the meaning of words. The tradition was centerred in Great Britain and spread to places like Harvard and Yale in America. Philosophy became analysing concepts. Wittgenstein influenced many last century. If you wanted to discuss the meaning of life you would first discuss the concept of 'meaning'. I never found this idea of philosophy of much value. It seemed to me that if we were trying to find out about goodness and ethics that it surely was important to try to know what is actually good and what is worth doing. We do get informed if we realise that when most people talk prescriptively that they are trying to get us to approve or disapprove of various things. It never hurts to know about the origins and meanings of words and concepts. However, no amount of dissection is going to give us complete knowledge about matters of fact and values.

The French existentialists did discuss philosophy in a very different way and I tend to align myself more with that way of doing philosophy. Ah, the so-called human condition! They were concerned about living the moral life and embracing ideas and beliefs that would enhance living. 

To get back to your work I do have some questions to ask you that would help me see what you are trying to say and where you are trying to go. First of all, what do you use as a test for truth in your work? I know you use a mythological lens to examine various ideas and words. Let us concentrate on your discussion about the abject nature of fatness in Western culture. By 'abject' I take it you mean wretched and not dejected? Of course the wretched might be dejected! You delight is examining the roots of words and even require that this be done to get an understanding of the stories behind myths. Even if we accept that Plato and Aristotle declared that fatness was evil for the perfection of the mind how is this related to what we notice today in our culture? How do you determine that in fact fatness is abjected in our culture? What is the test to prove that this is so? Surely it cannot be established by mere analysis? I would insist that there be independent scientific studies to determine if attitudes supported that conclusion. 

The test of the truth of a theory has to be more than just arguing about it. There surely has to be a correspondence with the facts. If this is so then the truth of a theory resides in the support obtainable through scientific research. If that research is not possible in theory then the theory is not a scientific one because there is no way it could be refuted or falsified. That is why I have trouble accepting the ideas of Freud and Jung. The philosophy of science just about swept psycholanalysis out of universities. I notice that your alma mater is deep in Jungian belief systems and this is quite unusual in modern university practices. I keep coming back to that saying, 'Believing something doesn't make it true'. Could you explain what requirements you impose on yourself before you accept something as being true?


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## maggiemacary (Mar 2, 2006)

Wow Vince,

Great post! I'll try to answer as best I can. I think a healthy debate on these topics will allow me to find the weaknesses in my own arguments. 

The truth is, when I started the project, I had some ridiculous idea of tracing the idea (not unlike Lovejoy) through history. I have done a great deal of research on the early church fathers and some of their writings (especially their homilies) are filled with angry and disgust at those they felt were overindulgent. Medieval history is even worse. What I actually try to do in the diss is show the gynophobia of western thought and the evolution of the "virile woman" as the only recourse for women to take if they wish to be part of the culture. The diss is soooo filled with scholarly references and ideas, that I know this can't be a regular book - that I will have to take it down a notch or two for a nonscholarly audience. In any case...



Vince said:


> I have several issues I would like to discuss with you about your work. You call yourself a cultural mythologist and I have read some of your writings about what you do. I come from a background in philosophy and I, too, was interested in the ancient Greeks. It is amazing that philosophy was so active in a very short period of time when many of the giants of philosophy lived. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Democitus, Pythagoras, Diogenes and many others were almost contemporaries. We have seen nothing to equal the brilliance of that age since. My journey was enriched with the work of David Hume who I consider an exceptional philosopher. In recent years the philosophers of science like Karl Popper have influenced me. Patricia Churchland who wrote "Neurophilosophy" is another who is interesting. One of the ideas of those philosophers is that there is some progress in science and philosophy. They also suggest that there is a web of knowledge and that at best most thinkers merely improve a tiny portion of the overall picture. Occasionally someone might propose ideas that cause deep changes to the web. However, the majority of the knowledge remains unchanged and continues to be passed from generation to generation. The two giants in modern times were Darwin and Einstein. I think Freud is a close third but his ideas and not as popular as they were in the early and mid 20th Century.




My background is a bit different. For the dissertation, I immersed myself in Foucault and even did a foray into Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology and also Deleuze. But my biggest influence is Julia Kristeva's The Power of Horror - from where I take the idea of abject from. I then really delved into Plato and Aristotle - both of whom I've come to hate (which is why I love Deleuze's essay on *undoing Plato*) I also am a student of James Hillman (a renegade Jungian) whose work I've really absorbed. I've been accused of making the diss a bit too *philosophical,* but I believe I've tried to strike the right balance. What I'm trying to do with cultural mythology is set up a standard for a critical way of seeing. I'm still developing the ideas - and gawd knows if anyone will really accept the heuristic approach I took. My committee loved it and one was a professor of philosophy. 



Vince said:


> I agree that the origins of our beliefs, values, ideas and even meanings are very important. There is a tradition in Western Philosophy that is concerned about the meaning of words. The tradition was centerred in Great Britain and spread to places like Harvard and Yale in America. Philosophy became analysing concepts. Wittgenstein influenced many last century. If you wanted to discuss the meaning of life you would first discuss the concept of 'meaning'. I never found this idea of philosophy of much value. It seemed to me that if we were trying to find out about goodness and ethics that it surely was important to try to know what is actually good and what is worth doing. We do get informed if we realise that when most people talk prescriptively that they are trying to get us to approve or disapprove of various things. It never hurts to know about the origins and meanings of words and concepts. However, no amount of dissection is going to give us complete knowledge about matters of fact and values.




I agree that you can't get complete knowledge this way. However, the nuances and the possibilities behind the meaning of words is truly fascinating and opens up imaginal possibilities, which allows for new creative thought. I like to muse on such ideas. I don't know that one ever gets the *meaning* of anything - because being a relative relativist, I think that meaning is a shifty and shifting word - not unlike myth. What I would rather do is open up possibilities and ask really, really tough questions - like who says it is so bad to be fat? No one asks that question - they just make the assumption? What is behind that assumption that it becomes an almost impossible idea to change? I believe it is a myth, as in a narrative or a dominant fiction. A dominant fiction is what Kaja Silverman calls the images and stories through which a society figures consensus. These dominant fictions, writes Silverman, allow a society to theorize hegemony and reflect a societys ideological reality. 



Vince said:


> To get back to your work I do have some questions to ask you that would help me see what you are trying to say and where you are trying to go. First of all, what do you use as a test for truth in your work? I know you use a mythological lens to examine various ideas and words.




The ultimate test is the proliferation of images that show up in the culture and how those images with their corresponding narratives change over time. What actually started me on the 2 Venuses *kick* is a cover photo (I think it was Vogue) of Nicole Kidman dressed as an aphrodite-type figure and yet, so thin she had no body. It was comparable in some ways to statues of the virgin mary - who also has no body. I began to think about what I was seeing and then looked at the mythic background from which an image like that might arise. I saw that in the myth of Aphrodite Ourania - who Plato insists is heavenly, but who actually was a goddess of commerce in the Athenian agora (where contracts were signed as a symbol of *faith* between strangers). But you can see how Aphrodite moved from a venus of willendorf-type figure to a virgin mary elevated beyond the earth, to a nicole kidnman. 

I'm not sure I just explained that well because I wrote about 50 pages on that topic, but this might give you a hint. What do we imagine and how does it reflect the movement of mythic materials over a period of time?



Vince said:


> Let us concentrate on your discussion about the abject nature of fatness in Western culture. By 'abject' I take it you mean wretched and not dejected? Of course the wretched might be dejected!




I'm afraid I'll have to quote the diss at this point because it will be clearer then if I try to rephrase. The word "abject" comes directly from Julia Kristeva:

To be fat in contemporary culture is no minor character flaw. It jettisons the fat person passed the boundaries of civilization where the abject closes in. 

The abject is a psychological, philosophical and mythological term. Philosopher Julia Kristeva identifies the abject as that which breaks and erases the borders of civilization, disturbing identity, systems of control, and moral order. The abject moves beyond any sense of morality, into the immoral, the sinister, the scheming. It is death infecting life, Kristeva explains: It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object (4). Experiencing the abject beseeches and pulverizes the subject, writes Kristeva, breaking apart the psychological realms of subject and object. It is the fearsome discovery of the impossible within (5). 

Fatness invokes this terrible fear of the abject, invoking an immorality which breaks apart the borders of the civilized. A fat body instigates deep fear and loathing; its sinister ripples trigger loathing and disgust. In contemporary American culture, fatness is no mere moral or physical fault; it is a mortal threat; a weapon of mass destruction aimed at the center of ones being and the center of the culture. Fatness is unpatriotic. It is a terrorism that destroys from within.​
The metaphor of fatness as terrorism comes from the Surgeon General of the United States, Richard Carmona who said in 2003:

I call it the terror within, a threat that is every bit as real to America as weapons of mass destruction. Obesity is destroying us from the inside. Thats why I call it "the terror within." (Carmona)​
The U.S. government actually thinks that *obesity* is potentially more destructive than a terrorist attack! Where does that comparison come from? It comes from this idea that one's body belongs not to oneself, but to the polis. It also comes from the idea that the bodies that belong to the polis must be hard and strong in order to twart the abject, which Kristeva defines as something that disrupts the moral order of a culture. 



Vince said:


> You delight is examining the roots of words and even require that this be done to get an understanding of the stories behind myths. Even if we accept that Plato and Aristotle declared that fatness was evil for the perfection of the mind how is this related to what we notice today in our culture? How do you determine that in fact fatness is abjected in our culture? What is the test to prove that this is so? Surely it cannot be established by mere analysis? I would insist that there be independent scientific studies to determine if attitudes supported that conclusion.




The studies I provide mostly came from the Rudd Institute at Yale which studies (or used to, not sure if they changed their mission) implicit and explicit biases against fatness, but I have some from other organizations as well. I'm to summarize and not get into detail about any of these, because this is really what made me first begin to throw up in doing this research. 

But one thing that is important to realize was that Rudd found that explict (that is, the conscious bias) can be changed by changing the story of the fatness (metabolic vs just laziness, etc). But the implicit bias does not change. This shows up all over the place - in employment, health care, schools, etc, etc. It was really horrifying. I have about 8 - 10 pages of just bias studies in the diss. Rice University did a study not that long ago that showed that the bias was contagious - that is, that if a thin man is seen with a fat woman, he was 22% more likely to be described as miserable, self-indulgent, passive, shapeless, depressed, weak, insignificant and insecure. What truly frightens me is that I can't imagine that a FA doesn't have something wrong with him!!! That is evidence of an unshakeable bias that having now recognized, I have to live with. 

Vince, it starts in childhood and never ends. I think fat people (myself included) suffer from what is called a "spoilt identity," that is they are disadvantaged emotionally and psychologically from a lifetime of enduring such biases and shutting down. (but the truth is, I didn't really go into that, and that is just my opinion based on my own life). 



Vince said:


> test of the truth of a theory has to be more than just arguing about it. There surely has to be a correspondence with the facts. If this is so then the truth of a theory resides in the support obtainable through scientific research. If that research is not possible in theory then the theory is not a scientific one because there is no way it could be refuted or falsified. That is why I have trouble accepting the ideas of Freud and Jung. The philosophy of science just about swept psycholanalysis out of universities. I notice that your alma mater is deep in Jungian belief systems and this is quite unusual in modern university practices. I keep coming back to that saying, 'Believing something doesn't make it true'. Could you explain what requirements you impose on yourself before you accept something as being true?



But the philosophy of science is also a story, a myth, a narrative. It is one of my problems that we hold science to be above its own story. But you are talking about belief and fact as if they are the same thing..they are not and one of our problems is that we have lost the distinction of multple ways of thinking - that there is only one way to the *truth* and that is the scientific method. I've got a great blog on the devolution of belief into fact that came about as a result of the Enlightenment based on the work of religious scholar, Wilfred Cantwell Smith. 

I do believe that science has its place and its time - but that there has to be also a revival of imaginal thinking that moves outside the box of mere fact. I have a blog on the death of psychoanalysis - that you might want to take a look at, because I do think that Jungians and new age *mythers* , etc have killed the idea of a *narrative* healing in life. And, I am most definitely not Jungian or Freudian. And, I'm highly critical of Joseph Campbell and I've even begun to dissect James Hillman. I always have to kill the guru - otherwise how do you honor his/her work? You can imagine how popular I am at Pacifica. 

Listen, I don't have all the answers - but I keep working on it so that what I'm trying to establish is a credible way of seeing the world. I have a fundamental *belief* in the truth of the work I'm trying to do - and a real passion for the need to return a more imaginal way of seeing the world - to move beyond fundamentalisms and literalisms. 

Ok, I'm officially tired now. Thanks for the conversation,

Maggie


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## TheSadeianLinguist (Mar 2, 2006)

Maggie, not a whole lot to say other than you're like a hotter Gayetri Spivak. You go! Great stuff!


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## maggiemacary (Mar 3, 2006)

Hey TSL..

You should see me when I'm not so totally exhausted. I've been told that what saves me is my intellect and my anger.  I write from anger, there is no doubt about it. 

I dieted for 40 YEARS of my life - that is the truth and never got thin. And, I assumed that I was at fault, psychologically, morally, physically. I'm angry at that waste of time and the tapes that still play in my head that seem almost impossible to erase. I think my only salvation is my writing and the fact that I'm really not a "good little girl." 

This dissertation ate me up. It took all my financial resources to finish it, leaving me with nothing but my thoughts. I now have to rebuild my life, my financial security and my health and I have to do it going forward with what I know. I'm still trying to figure that all out. 

My committee praised the *courage* of what I had done and what I had to face. They knew I was throwing up and not sleeping through this process But I wonder about that word courage - that maybe it elevates some and therefore separates us from each other. There are so many acts of courage in just living a true life and illuminating that which sits in the shadows of our minds. I see it all the time. 

Having this discussion in here is actually releasing me from some of the pain I faced. It's the first time I've looked at any of this since the defense in November. So thanks all for listening and for responding.

Maggie


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## Vince (Mar 3, 2006)

There are three things that can be aimed for in discourse and study. We can try to understand phenomena, explain them and perhaps acquire knowledge. I have no doubt that mythology enquiries can assist us to understand many cultural things. I wonder if they explain them? Once things have become facts then we can claim to have some knowledge of what we are studying. 

Suppose we have a dream where A happens to person B. Mythology and psychoanalysis can offer suggestions that might help us interpret and understand those dreams. I imagine many claim that they can explain dreams. Well, what is the test to establish if what is interpreted is in fact correct? I doubt this can ever be done. There is no known way to confirm what dreams mean because we cannot set up a test to refute those theories. Scientists would conclude that the study of dreams will have to remain incomplete. If we cannot test a theory then that theory usually lies outside the realm of science. It then becomes a matter of personal evaluation and worth whether one accepts the interpretations of dreams as having power and validity. 

Let us go back and talk about this business of the abject nature of fatness in Western culture. There can be no doubt that fatness has a long history of being held to be a negative quality if the quantity is extreme. The ancient Greeks speculated upon ideals and many Athenians were in a leisure class because of the use of slaves. The freedom not to have to toil too hard would have resulted in some individuals gaining weight and becoming fat. Everyone would be able to look at these individuals and make conclusions about them by watching them and interacting with them. Let us suppose that the biases against fat individuals originated in this ancient society. Those who were less fit to fight to defend their country or serve their country as citizens would have been seen as inferior to those more fit and able. 

If we jump 2300 or so years to the 21st century we then find ourselves in America where approximately one third of the population is fat. I won't count those described as being overweight. I will equate fat with obesity for the purpose of this discussion. If we could transport those ancient philosophers into suburban shopping centers in various cities in America they would be horrified to see what had happened to mankind. We would resemble a nation of giants compared to those ancient people. 

Do we blame the Ancients for the attitudes that many have towards fat people? Do people have these strong negative feelings because of some stories that have been passed on through culture and language? I wonder. It seems to me that each generation must start from scratch and learn things again. Language does contribute to the way we make sense of the world and ourselves. I take it the Mythologists will claim that we cannot grow up in any culture and be free of the myths that are there. Why? Well, the very language is permeated with myths and stories and philosophies. 

Imagine individuals growing up in say Philadelphia. What would their experiences be regarding fat people? There would be plenty of them just about everywhere. If it is true that fatness is more frequent with certain social classes and races then those who belong to those groups will be surrounded by fat people. Everyone will be able to see those people and interact with them. If mum is fat then all the trials and tribulations that occur because of that physical fact will impact on everyone in the family. Thus, our personal experiences will start to accumulate as we grow up. If in grade school fat Johnny is the slowest kid in the class most will conclude that fatness impacts on endurance and mobility. If most fat kids perform poorer than average and thin kids then that also goes into our brains to be stored under fat facts. When myriad instances of contacts with fat people accumulate then soon enough theories form and attitudes follow about those beliefs. It isn't as if those attitudes popped up from some past unconscious memories or stories. We see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears and so on. We might miss the contribution of social class to fatness. We might not be aware that certain races are more likely to be fat than others. There are lots of factors and complexity guarantees that explanations will be difficult if not impossible to determine. 

I will pause here a moment to mention the Australian Aboriginees. From what I have heard they have a proud tradition of stories and myths going back millennia. I doubt that those myths play an important role today in the lives of Aboriginees who dwell in cities like the other Australians. Those stories are interesting but they have little relevance to modern Aboriginees. I am talking about the stories associated with the Dreamtime. There are many other things passed down in those cultures and those still play a role in many communities. They have various native laws and ideas of community that are still operating in some remote areas. I mention this culture because it might be a way to study the role of myths in culture in a living culture that still exists in some parts of Australia and perhaps in Papua New Guinea. 

Maggie, please allow that this discussion is not a scholarly one but just an attempt to point out a few ideas I have regarding this business of myths. 

By the way, I notice you even criticize Joseph Campbell. I, too, was impressed by some of his work when a friend suggested he had important things to say. Your position is that even gurus have to be challenged if their work is to remain current and important. It is unlikely that even the best of thinkers can survive for long in academia without being criticized in important ways by some scholar or other. 

I wrote an essay where I put a modern philosopher of science back in Ancient Greece to interact and debate with Socrates, Democritus and others. In the end young Plato won the day because the modern theories could not convince anyone in those days. What we take for granted because of going to school was hardly that in ancient times. I don't dislike any of those ancient philosophers and have a lot of respect for them. Had we lived as contemporaries I am sure they would have impressed us, too! If you would like a copy of that paper I would be pleased to forward it to you. My email address is on my Profile. 

I wrote about the very thing you were discussing in this thread. That business of the body vs the mind/soul where the former is inferior. The mind can imagine perfection that we cannot find in reality. We can imagine a perfect circle and other perfections. Thus the mind can transcend the body and participate in that perfection. The body merely perceives and reacts and then deteriorates and dies. The good people of Athens regarded physical culture important and viewed physical attraction as something to aim for and be proud of. Those who had no self-respect would not make an effort to gain the beautiful body. There is no doubt that fatness soon became associated with laziness and moral laxness. No where in my reading did I see women's bodies discussed at length. It is as if they were not important. So any association of female fatness must originate in recent centuries. There could also be a correlation with the rise of cities and fatness. Surely when humans had to toil long and hard just to survive fatness hardly presented itself. 

The Pima Indians are used to support this notion of genes plus plentitude equals fatness. Similar tribes in Mexico have to work long hours and have no modern resources like cars and TV and electricity. Those people are not fat and diabetes and heart disease are uncommon. Across the border in America the Pima Indians have casinos on their reserves than generate sufficient wealth for the Indians to drive cars, work short days, and eat plenty of tasty food. These Indians suffer one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. Diabetes and heart disease are also very common and present a huge medical problem to the community. They are trying to solve these problems by doing research and throwing money at more hospitals and so on. So far it seems to be doing little to reverse the diseases. I wonder if those Indians have myths about fat people? If not, then fatness is something new in their culture and they are now trying to come to terms with it. 

Anyway, I know you have so much information in your brain that you must just about be ready to explode! Where oh where does all that information get stored? I must do more reading so that I can contribute properly to a fair discourse with you. I sense that you have many insights that you have come to know and I would like to find out more about what you have discovered. It sounds like a facinating intellectual journey but goodness me the scope is so vast that I wonder how you manage to get a handle on any of it.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 3, 2006)

Hi Vince...

I'm not sure that mythology *explains* anything. I think it rather helps us with a deeper kind of understanding. It really isn't a science as much as a lens to see through.

Like Dreamwork (and I have been given classes in dreams for a few years now), one never should try to *interpret*. The point of dreamwork is to experience the images of a dream in new ways and to illuminate our areas of unconsciousness. To give a dream an interpretation is a terrible abuse of the dream image. And yes, the study of dreams and myths will always remain incomplete, because you can never (nor do you want to) give it only one definitive meaning. The psyche is more complex than that. 

As for *blaming* the greeks for fat bias, I'm sorry if that is how my argument came across. I'm not in a scholarly setting right now and I do have a lot of unresolved anger. But I don't blame anyone for contemporary bias. The point is to illuminate, not to blame. Perhaps if we acknowledge that these biases are strongly rooted in culture, we can better see them when they crop up. It won't be a mystery anymore why fat bodies are targeted. Will this help us in the long run - I believe so. At least we will make what was unconscious, conscious. 

Here is a good for instance. We're all so used to the notion that fat people are called by various animal names - pig, cow, bear, bull. But how did people get to be associated with animals to begin with? Well, Athenian culture was a clear inside/outside culture and an understanding that a citizen was male, Athenian (not foreign) and human. The human part becomes important because of a word used called _thêroitês_, meaning brutish or bestial. A proper citizen would never be _thêroitês_. In Aristotle's ethics, he discuss that what is brutish or bestial is in fact people (meaning men) who are savage, living outside the confines of culture and the polis. I traced a correlation between men who are thêroitês and the satyr, who are drunken, indulgent half man/half beast times. 

Women on the other hand, are more closely tied to the bestial world than are men, not being considered totally human - and so they are more liable to be indulgent, drunk and insatiable. 

Here is another good one - the term _gastrimargos_, which translates to "mad belly." These are men who excessive in food and drink. Now, the word gaster, meaning stomach is a word that is always used in reference to women. Women have bellies, men are not supposed to. So when the word gaster in any form is used to describe a man, it is used in a derogatory way, to call him effeminate or woman-like in his appetites. 

In any case, I think that fat men have it much harder than we want to acknowledge because fatness means a loss of sexual identity for them. There is almost no literature about fat men out there - it is as if they don't even exist. I've known a few - and when I got them to open up - ohhh the horror of growing up fat and male!

There are many reasons I don't like Plato that have nothing to do with bias against fatness per se. You mention transcendence and it is one of my terrible pet peeves that transcendence is given so much preference over immanence. Part of my recovery is to be immanent, to be in my body and live in my body and not to try to transcend anything.  

As for how I keep this all in my head...beats me. I never used to think I was particularly smart - but people keep telling me otherwise. I trip and fall a lot. I've gone out with mismatched shoes. Let me just say that there are a LOAD of things I can't remember. I've had my phone number for over a year, and I still can't tell you what it is. I forget all kinds of silly things all the time. I don't DO numbers at all. I've gotten to such a point in my life that I may not even get out of my pj's until 2 in the afternoon because I'm caught up in something. I sleep with the tv on to drown out my thoughts. Luckily, I brush my teeth and wash my face and insist on showering once a day whether I need it or not. I forget to eat sometimes until I think I'm going to fall over. I can be a real hermit. I'm not sure I could ever be in a *relationship* again (except for my puppy). Get the picture? 

In any case, thanks for the conversation and I hope I'm not being *too much* which is another one of my problems.

Maggie


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## Vince (Mar 3, 2006)

Okay, Maggie, we agree that cultural mythology can help us understand many thing about ourselves and society. If we go back to the notion of abject fatness then what can fat people do to reverse this myth? If in fact every single person knows fat people and has all sorts of stories accumulated then how can we undo what is so established in our brains? 

If we look back over the last 60 years then three amazing things have happened regarding the way we see humanity. The first is the acceptance that women are intellectually the equal of men. This has led to more equality and opportunity regarding wages and so on. The second thing is the abolition of the segregation that was so firmly in place in many parts of America. That battle has been long and hard and perhaps there is a way to go, yet. The third change was the depathologizing of homosexuality. Today those old myths have little support and gay bashing is no longer tolerated or accepted.

Do you think that fatness and fat people will succeed in changing how they are perceived? If it is possible to change attitudes then how do you envisage that this will occur? As you might be aware there is no widespread unity among fat people and the future looks dim regarding any changes to the current myths and attitudes. 

Do you think that we are influenced by language and myths in our perceptions and reinforcement of attitudes? If some attitudes are passed on by parents, relatives, neighbours and friends then our own experiences will no doubt reinforce those mental sets. When we see fat kids coming in last we will reinforce the notion that they are the slowest. Oh, the odd kid who does well in spite of his/her size might be considered an exception and thus our categories remain. It just seems to me that most people will have daily experiences with fat people and reinforce already existing attitudes and beliefs. 

If it is true that obesity is related to social class then surely characteristics of those classes will be stamped on those fat people. There will be two factors now instead of just one. Are you implying that working class people are more likely to be obese? Is there also a negative correlation with education and also intelligence? We can see that stereotypes can be formed from all sorts of information that colour these beliefs. 

An example of what I am talking about was demonstrated in New Orleans about 6 months ago. We vividly saw on TV those who suffered there. Was it safe to say that these were the poor people? Were not most black? Were not a lot of those people also fat? So, is fatness caused by poverty or the race of a person or the lack of opportunity or perhaps all three? What remains is that there are countless occasions when we all receive information and reinforce our attitudes and beliefs. I doubt that the tragedy in New Orleans helped change the stereotypes of what many believe constitute fat people. 

I do not want to suggest that just because someone is poor, black and undereducated that they will be fat. That just does not follow. We can predict, as sociologists do, that given characteristics of groups and populations that individuals will be likely to have certain features and so on. 

I hope I am not impacting on your time with these questions and discussions. It is a joy to be able to interact in depth with someone so informed.


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## thislittlepiggy (Mar 4, 2006)

Maggie & Vince, I've really enjoyed reading your exchange here. Thank you in particular, Maggie, for initiating such a rich discussion in this forum. Your contributions have been an exercise in humility for me. I have a PhD in 20th century English literature, and I teach at a small private university. At such a school, one often wears a variety of hats, and when our department decided we needed to add a course in world mythology, I designed the course and have now taught it a couple of times. But reading what you've written here, I realize how ignorant I am about mythology!

Maggie, I have a question for you: do you feel that your weight has had an impact on your academic career? I know that weight-related job discrimination is a reality. But I don't feel that my weight has affected my career significantly. (I am, by the way, 5'10" and nearly 500 pounds, so it's not as though no one has noticed that I'm fat!) In general, I believe that size discrimination occurs less frequently in academia than in other environments. I'm not idealizing the academic world: for example, I think that sexism is still a problem. I just wondered what you thought about this issue.

Again, thank you for sharing your thought-provoking work with us.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 4, 2006)

Hi Vince,



Vince said:


> Okay, Maggie, we agree that cultural mythology can help us understand many thing about ourselves and society.



Eureka!!! 



Vince said:


> If we go back to the notion of abject fatness then what can fat people do to reverse this myth? If in fact every single person knows fat people and has all sorts of stories accumulated then how can we undo what is so established in our brains?



Unfortunately, you can't *reverse* the myth. A myth is a myth is a myth and you have to stay within its fundamental premises. What you can do is recognize conciously that the myth is in play. If for 4000 years, femininity has been portrayed as insatiable, bestial, soft, and in need of control, and fatness is what I call a *hieroglyph* of femininity, then you can't suddenly change all those years and the nuances of language that subtly reinforce those ideas. What you can do is recognize it - continually, make it an upfront issue. Unfortunately, we are always swimming against the tide in this. 

That being said, I sound very pessimistic about fat acceptance. Perhaps there is not as much pessimism as I think because in psychological terms, when a complex starts breaking apart, it shows up even stronger in the images of a culture...so perhaps with so much focus on weight issues, this complex is starting to fall apart. For over 2000 years, the west's primary myth of salvation was based on the mystery of mother/daughter at Eleusis. With the advent of Christianity, this changed to father/son. I'm beginning to see a revival of interest in mother/daughter which itself returns us to images of Willendorf - what I think was the last true expression of femininity in the West. 




Vince said:


> If we look back over the last 60 years then three amazing things have happened regarding the way we see humanity. The first is the acceptance that women are intellectually the equal of men. This has led to more equality and opportunity regarding wages and so on. The second thing is the abolition of the segregation that was so firmly in place in many parts of America. That battle has been long and hard and perhaps there is a way to go, yet. The third change was the depathologizing of homosexuality. Today those old myths have little support and gay bashing is no longer tolerated or accepted.



You haven't been in the U.S. lately, have you? A lot of these issues are up for grabs, still. But let me briefly (if I can possibly do that) say something about female equality. It also has its myth - and that myth shows up literally in Plato's Republic in which the way women become equal to men is by eliminating femininity from the polis. Women achieve *so called* equality by trying to appropriate *sameness*. That has been one of the problems of our modern women's movement. Newer thinking feminists are re-thinking this, and are declaring that women need to have an eqality of *difference*. That is, we are different, our bodies are different, our ways of thinkign are different, and some believe that psychologically, women are very different from men. Equality of difference is essential, as far as I am concerned for both women's right and fat acceptance. As long as "we're a small world after all," we refuse to acknowledge diversity and there is what I've called a tyranny of the majority. 



Vince said:


> Do you think that we are influenced by language and myths in our perceptions and reinforcement of attitudes? If some attitudes are passed on by parents, relatives, neighbours and friends then our own experiences will no doubt reinforce those mental sets. When we see fat kids coming in last we will reinforce the notion that they are the slowest. Oh, the odd kid who does well in spite of his/her size might be considered an exception and thus our categories remain. It just seems to me that most people will have daily experiences with fat people and reinforce already existing attitudes and beliefs.



Yes, most definitively we are influenced *unconsciously* by language and myths and it reinforces sterotypes and biases. There is a constriction in thought going on. What may wind up turning the tide a bit is the fact that for whatever reasons, people are continuing to get fatter as a group and that may start changing some of these implicit biases. But on the other side, Western culture in the form of globalism, is continuing to wipe out diversity of thought and diversity of cultures...so cultures in which fatness was deemed desireable are rapidly disappearing to be replaced by a white ideal. 



Vince}If it is true that obesity is related to social class then surely characteristics of those classes will be stamped on those fat people. There will be two factors now instead of just one. Are you implying that working class people are more likely to be obese? Is there also a negative correlation with education and also intelligence? We can see that stereotypes can be formed from all sorts of information that colour these beliefs. [/quote said:


> I think that fatness (and please note I wll NEVER use the word obesity or even overweight except to refer to an artifical definition of a standard that no one can agree on) has always had a class consciousness about it, though that class has reversed through time. But in America specifically with its puritanical origin, as always associated fatness with the over-fertility of a lower class of people - specifically an immigrant culture.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## maggiemacary (Mar 4, 2006)

thislittlepiggy said:


> Maggie & Vince, I've really enjoyed reading your exchange here. Thank you in particular, Maggie, for initiating such a rich discussion in this forum. Your contributions have been an exercise in humility for me. I have a PhD in 20th century English literature, and I teach at a small private university. At such a school, one often wears a variety of hats, and when our department decided we needed to add a course in world mythology, I designed the course and have now taught it a couple of times. But reading what you've written here, I realize how ignorant I am about mythology!



I'm actually hopeful that your department added a course in mythology. I think this whole debate over intelligent design versus evolution could be easily resolve by a course in the mythologies of cosmologies.  

The truth is, I don't have an academic career - my degree is interdisciplinary and it isn't easy to find a place to fit in. I am trying to find teaching positions online for schools that might want a course in mythology - and want to bring in an adjunct who is degreed in it, just for that course. I spent 25+ years fighting in corporate America and I really don't want to go back into a career where I'll have to fight for tenure...I'm too old for all that now. 



thislittlepiggy said:


> Maggie, I have a question for you: do you feel that your weight has had an impact on your academic career? I know that weight-related job discrimination is a reality. But I don't feel that my weight has affected my career significantly. (I am, by the way, 5'10" and nearly 500 pounds, so it's not as though no one has noticed that I'm fat!) In general, I believe that size discrimination occurs less frequently in academia than in other environments. I'm not idealizing the academic world: for example, I think that sexism is still a problem. I just wondered what you thought about this issue.



I think we are all kidding ourselves if we think there is not some weight-related job discrimination going on. The strength of this implicit bias seems really unshakeable and although more educated people might be more conscious of and therefore cautious about explicit biases, especially in the workplace, that implicit bias still lurks somewhere beneath the surface. As part of this diss, I delved into Rene Girard's Scapegoat Complex, and that gave me some real insight into the notion of how victimization is sanctioned by a culture. 

Take care,

Maggie


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## thislittlepiggy (Mar 4, 2006)

maggiemacary said:


> I'm actually hopeful that your department added a course in mythology. I think this whole debate over intelligent design versus evolution could be easily resolve by a course in the mythologies of cosmologies.
> 
> The truth is, I don't have an academic career - my degree is interdisciplinary and it isn't easy to find a place to fit in. I am trying to find teaching positions online for schools that might want a course in mythology - and want to bring in an adjunct who is degreed in it, just for that course. I spent 25+ years fighting in corporate America and I really don't want to go back into a career where I'll have to fight for tenure...I'm too old for all that now.
> 
> ...



Maggie, here is more reason for hope: I teach at a university affliated with the Southern Baptist convention--a conservative environment, as you can imagine. The first several weeks of the course the focus is on the mythologies of cosmologies, and my students have been open to the ideas we discuss there. They even get comfortable with referring to the Genesis myth! Thus far, I've been very fortunate in that I can close my classroom door and teach without interference or complaints about the subject matter, which had been a concern of mine when I began the course. I do rattle my students a bit, but I think that's what I'm supposed to do.

I don't blame you for avoiding the academic rat-race. I'm paraphrasing here, but Kissinger once said something like this: academic politics is so petty because the stakes are so low. Too true, unfortunately!

Thank you again for your insights!


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## Vince (Mar 5, 2006)

First off all let me welcome TLP to the discussion. Always room here for people with fat neurons!

Well, Maggie, I do appreciate that the term 'obese' and moreso 'overweight' are controversial. In the past the insurance companies helped make up those charts. They needed to know who to accept and who not to accept as customers re health and life insurance. The medical profession seems to have gone along with those classifications. I recall many times being over the acceptable weight limit for my height but was accepted when they took into account lean body mass. If the medical profession and scientists use terms then we are really going against the trend by sticking to 'fat' instead of 'obese'. I will grant that the expression 'morbid obesity' is offensive. I doubt if either word is defining of the population described as being fat. You are right in that the very words already carry the myths and stereotypes with them. It is not possible to use language without having most of those hidden meanings as well. 

I would be interested to learn more about how myths, stereotypes and biases are related. You indicate that no one can change a myth but we can do something about what we believe about those myths. I wonder if myths evolve and change over a long period of time. This surely must occur to take into account new information and experiences. How exactly these myths form and then are disseminated must be interesting to discover. I suppose various writers and storytellers influence others and good stories are the ones that get passed on. Is there a survival of the fittest regarding beliefs and myths? It might be that those myths that have some ability to benefit us would be the ones that endure. Evolutionary mythology might be an interesting field to explore! I know that evolutionary psychology was not taught when I was an undergraduate not so long ago.

I am very interested in the real psychological differences between men and women. John Gray wrote best sellers about his ideas of Mars and Venus. You suggest there are differences but reject what Gray claims. Can you give us a brief idea about your ideas on the differences? I honestly believe that men and women process information differently. I don't think the neuroscientists have been able to discover any physiological evidence for the differences that you suggest. There are plenty of things that remain unknown about the brain so it is definitely early days there.

I agree that the feminists antagonized plenty of people including other women about what they wanted for women. If what you say is true about the myths behind the way women are portrayed then women still have a long way to go to reach true equality. I wonder if regarding women as being different is going to help equality or hinder it? Egality is quite a different thing. We surely have to do more research to know how to proceed in this thorny business. The implications are enormous and will affect so many things that today are taken for granted. I await the Brave New World when women no longer need to have babies. I imagine those will be very interesting times but unfortunately, those of us now will probably be long gone before those days arrive. Can we imagine what might occur re genetic re-engineering? 

The scientists have to establish the causes of obesity and perhaps this might even be something that they can control. At the moment there is a lot of research into fatness but nothing really definite has appeared that will explain all obesity. It is interesting that you suggest most might be related to hormonal disorders. Could it be that those fat kids were right all along and it was their glands?! From my brief reading in the area I would say that we cannot make that claim yet. Once bodies get beyond a threshold amount of fat it appears that bodysystems are affected. I know it makes a big difference exactly what causes fatness because the stereotype is that fat people eat too much and don't do enough activity. Those of you who do keep active and have watched your diets for upteen years know that it isn't as simple as most people think. What is irrefutable is that those fat people who present for weight loss surgery all make weight losses at a fairly rapid rate. Also, we have seen those Biggest Loser shows where everyone lost heaps of weight through severe regimens of exercise and dieting. If it were easy not to regain those losses how different things would be.

Does TLP have a first name? I would prefer to use that and not her profile name. Do you ladies perceive that others do stare and look at you? It is one thing to accept oneself and quite another to detect that you are accepted by others. I really don't see much evidence of size acceptance. As a guy who fancies larger women I can tell you that men smile and laugh at me when I disclose what I like. They shake their heads and wonder what on earth I see that is attractive in them. Well, I stopped long ago trying to explain, convince or educate anyone else. Those attitudes were set in concrete and were beyond my resources to modify. The real pity is that so many fat women also hate their bodies and this is a real challenge to those who are attracted to them. I wonder if Maggie has read of any myths regarding men who like fat women? If not, then this is truly a peculiar attraction. Could I ask what you ladies make of the guys who are attracted to women who are as fat as yourselves?


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## EtobicokeFA (Mar 5, 2006)

I am not sure why we are using the word *reverse* when I would think that we want to dispell the myth. 

I might not have the education maggiemacary might have. But, in my mind the word reverse implies that we want to replace the current myth with another one, that just happens to be the opposite. 

Sorry, for nickpicking about the english!

Another thing is that, when a willing mind is presented with overwhelming evidence, it will do most of the work of dispelling the myth for you. The rub is that you have to get to a point where people will accept that evidence. Of course, that's where some emotion might help a little.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 5, 2006)

HI there,



Vince said:


> Well, Maggie, I do appreciate that the term 'obese' and moreso 'overweight' are controversial. In the past the insurance companies helped make up those charts. They needed to know who to accept and who not to accept as customers re health and life insurance. The medical profession seems to have gone along with those classifications. I recall many times being over the acceptable weight limit for my height but was accepted when they took into account lean body mass. If the medical profession and scientists use terms then we are really going against the trend by sticking to 'fat' instead of 'obese'. I will grant that the expression 'morbid obesity' is offensive. I doubt if either word is defining of the population described as being fat. You are right in that the very words already carry the myths and stereotypes with them. It is not possible to use language without having most of those hidden meanings as well.



Oh dear, I once again face the challenge of reducing a tremendous amount of research into a few paragraphs.  Basically, how *overweight* and *obesity* are determined are by what is known as *surrogate methods* the BMI, being the most widely used and the most controversial. , the BMI is an anthropometrical measurement that calculates a ratio between height and weight and gives a corresponding value of weight adjusted for height. The use of anthropometrics such as the BMI is controversial because it misleads about body fat content and misrepresents the body fat in athletes, children, pregnant and lactating women, and non-Caucasians (142). Although the medical community is well aware of its limitations, the BMI and other surrogate methods of measuring excess body fat remains widely recommended as the most *cost-effective *means of identifying individuals with an excess of body fat. In 2000, an editorial in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Van S. Hubbard comments:
Ideally, health-oriented definitions of overweight and obesity should be used that are based on the amount of excess body fat at which health risks to individuals increase. In this manner, obesity would be identified such that individuals would have a weight-responsive comorbidity. Unfortunately, no such definition currently exists. (1067)​So, as you can see, the medical profession itself does not agree on a definition of *obesity* or overweight. I refuse to use those terms because they are controversial.

Furthermore, they are subject to change as was seen in 1998 when the Department of Health and Human Services redefined the BMI so that literally 39 million Americans went to sleep one night and woke up to find they were now "overweight," without gaining an ounce. I'm pretty suspicious of such efforts and believe that they are motivated by the drug companies. 

There is no doubt that Americans are getting fatter. But I really think that if we looked at the problems, we will find that it is our culture making us fatter and that culture is based on economics. Something no one will want to admit. 



Vince said:


> I would be interested to learn more about how myths, stereotypes and biases are related. You indicate that no one can change a myth but we can do something about what we believe about those myths. I wonder if myths evolve and change over a long period of time. This surely must occur to take into account new information and experiences. How exactly these myths form and then are disseminated must be interesting to discover. I suppose various writers and storytellers influence others and good stories are the ones that get passed on. Is there a survival of the fittest regarding beliefs and myths? It might be that those myths that have some ability to benefit us would be the ones that endure. Evolutionary mythology might be an interesting field to explore! I know that evolutionary psychology was not taught when I was an undergraduate not so long ago.



Ok..here we go. Myths, while they still are alive in a culture, i.e. still provide *psychic* material to people, continue to change to meet the needs of culture. This is a process called mythopoesis, something that I study. Steroetypes are the literal, fixations of myths. They show up all the time pretending to have some sense of *energy*, but the truth is, they are dead ideas. Here is how I defined bias in the diss:
A bias is, according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, an inclination or a prejudice. It comes from the French word, biais, meaning an oblique line, that is something that slants, is never explicit or direct. 
The slantedness and indirectness of a bias is telling. It refers to a movement away from the straightforward center of ego ideas, allowing one to cast a glance askance, noting what appears at the edges of a discussion. On the edges of the discussion of fatness the abject resides, beseeching and pulverizing the subject with its repulsion, writes Kristeva (5-6).​


Vince said:


> I am very interested in the real psychological differences between men and women. John Gray wrote best sellers about his ideas of Mars and Venus. You suggest there are differences but reject what Gray claims. Can you give us a brief idea about your ideas on the differences? I honestly believe that men and women process information differently. I don't think the neuroscientists have been able to discover any physiological evidence for the differences that you suggest. There are plenty of things that remain unknown about the brain so it is definitely early days there.



I am also interested in the differences, but from a feminist point of view. But this is a big topic in of itself, and I'm not sure I can commit to that discussion here. But here is one of my blogs from last year in which I worked it a bit. It is called the X Factor. 

As for John Gray's work...pleassssssssse....Not all men are warriors and not all women are venuses..to sterotype sexual difference by drawing an archetypal line saying women are *only* this and men are *only* that is pretty offensive. I recently had a private conversation with an author of a new book about how men should behave to have an happy marriage and he refused to give me a review copy because he was afraid of what I might do with it in regards to archetypal theory and myth.  Actually, it made me laugh. I don't go easy on people who misuse myth to serve their points. 



Vince said:


> I agree that the feminists antagonized plenty of people including other women about what they wanted for women. If what you say is true about the myths behind the way women are portrayed then women still have a long way to go to reach true equality. I wonder if regarding women as being different is going to help equality or hinder it? Egality is quite a different thing. We surely have to do more research to know how to proceed in this thorny business. The implications are enormous and will affect so many things that today are taken for granted. I await the Brave New World when women no longer need to have babies. I imagine those will be very interesting times but unfortunately, those of us now will probably be long gone before those days arrive. Can we imagine what might occur re genetic re-engineering?



Women no longer need to have babies now. Women have babies because they want to. But this again, is a very long, very difficult argument that I don't want to go into here. There are a lot of feminist writers out there pondering these ideas. I got into this because Plato gave women so-called equality in the Republic in order to wipe out femininity. I really think that part of our problem today is that ideal is active. Women seeking equality in the workplace have to erase all sense of softness and femininity in order to achieve a equal status with men. The measure of competence and success is masculine. 



Vince said:


> The scientists have to establish the causes of obesity and perhaps this might even be something that they can control. At the moment there is a lot of research into fatness but nothing really definite has appeared that will explain all obesity. It is interesting that you suggest most might be related to hormonal disorders. Could it be that those fat kids were right all along and it was their glands?! From my brief reading in the area I would say that we cannot make that claim yet. Once bodies get beyond a threshold amount of fat it appears that bodysystems are affected. I know it makes a big difference exactly what causes fatness because the stereotype is that fat people eat too much and don't do enough activity. Those of you who do keep active and have watched your diets for upteen years know that it isn't as simple as most people think. What is irrefutable is that those fat people who present for weight loss surgery all make weight losses at a fairly rapid rate. Also, we have seen those Biggest Loser shows where everyone lost heaps of weight through severe regimens of exercise and dieting. If it were easy not to regain those losses how different things would be.



About WLS - sure you lose weight - you always lose weight when you put your body into a severe illness. I've known people with WLS and for the most part, it is a butchery that makes people chronically ill. Now, I'm not an claiming to be an expert in the area of weight and metabolics, but what I think should be the focus of research is the impact of stress and nutrition on a pregnant woman on her offspring and her offspring's offspring (what they did with the Pimas) and the health and nutrition in early childhood. 

The other stuff about fat acceptance and fat admireres is not something I've really studied, so I can't comment on it per se. 

Take care,

Maggie


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## TraciJo67 (Mar 5, 2006)

Vince, I have really enjoyed seeing your contribution here. Much of what I believe would be redundantly expressed here, because you're already summarized it so well. A few points that I found especially interesting: 



> If the medical profession and scientists use terms then we are really going against the trend by sticking to 'fat' instead of 'obese'. I will grant that the expression 'morbid obesity' is offensive. I doubt if either word is defining of the population described as being fat. You are right in that the very words already carry the myths and stereotypes with them. It is not possible to use language without having most of those hidden meanings as well.



I wonder if any term is going to be free of a negative connotation. Earlier, you stated that there is no widespread unity among fat people. This is just one area in which that is evident. I prefer the term 'obese' to 'fat'. I find the former to be descriptive, the latter to be charged with negative connotations. I know that I'm in the minority -- but among other fat people, it's nearly impossible to find a consensus on the least offensive descriptive term. Some love BBW; some hate it. A friend of mine likes to be called 'plush', which I find too cutesy (it brings to mind people who call their pets 'pookie' and dress them in fashionable sweaters). 

I do think that the failure to unify (far less organize) is one reason why fat discrimination is still so rampant today. I'm not sure that it will ever happen. Too many fat people loathe themselves, not to mention others who are fat. If I had a nickel for every time I heard a fat woman make a snide remark about another fat woman ("Thank God I'm not as big as HER"), I'd be lounging on a white, sandy beach somewhere, being served cocktails by young Julio the gorgeous half-naked [half my age] cabana boy. Sometimes I was that fat woman that others used as a measure to make themselves feel better. I could see it in their eyes, and feel it in the conversations that abruptly stopped when I'd arrive on the scene. 




> The scientists have to establish the causes of obesity and perhaps this might even be something that they can control. At the moment there is a lot of research into fatness but nothing really definite has appeared that will explain all obesity. It is interesting that you suggest most might be related to hormonal disorders. Could it be that those fat kids were right all along and it was their glands?! From my brief reading in the area I would say that we cannot make that claim yet. Once bodies get beyond a threshold amount of fat it appears that bodysystems are affected. I know it makes a big difference exactly what causes fatness because the stereotype is that fat people eat too much and don't do enough activity. Those of you who do keep active and have watched your diets for upteen years know that it isn't as simple as most people think. What is irrefutable is that those fat people who present for weight loss surgery all make weight losses at a fairly rapid rate. Also, we have seen those Biggest Loser shows where everyone lost heaps of weight through severe regimens of exercise and dieting.



I agree. If it were a metabolic disorder, I don't think we'd be talking about how people were so much thinner 20 years ago (and as a society, they definitely were). I think that the advent of television, video games, the internet & other highly addictive yet passive forms of entertainment -- coupled with the ready availability of fast, delicious, high fat meals -- plays a major part in why we're getting fatter as a society. It seems that in more recent years, we've grown more accepting of "super sized" meals. For example, I've always been amused by the marketing of "Hungry Man" frozen dinners, which proudly boasts: "OVER ONE POUND OF FOOD!" I believe that this is true mostly of western culture. European friends tell me that they are shocked by our portion sizes and by the constant visual bombardment of fast & easy foods. 

Vince, earlier you mentioned that Katrina's victims were mostly black, and statistically speaking, fatter than the norm. I know that this isn't the forum to discuss racism, so I'll refrain from that particular topic. But I do find it interesting that a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged people are fat. I really believe that this is due in part to how readily available & inexpensive fast food is. Fresh fruits, vegetables & lean cuts of meat are actually far more expensive than a $3 'value' meal comprised of a delicious burger, salty fries & syrupy-sweet cola. When I visit homeless shelters (as part of my job), I see that the food shelves are packed with high-carb, inexpensive 'per serving' items like mac 'n cheese, hamburger helper, etc. In fact, you'd be surprised at what homeless shelters serve. The typical daily offering consists of doughnuts & other pastries in the morning ... fried offerings in the afternoon ... soft mounds of carbs in the evenings. I imagine that this is the same type of diet that lower income people feed themselves & their children.





> As a guy who fancies larger women I can tell you that men smile and laugh at me when I disclose what I like. They shake their heads and wonder what on earth I see that is attractive in them. Well, I stopped long ago trying to explain, convince or educate anyone else. Those attitudes were set in concrete and were beyond my resources to modify. The real pity is that so many fat women also hate their bodies and this is a real challenge to those who are attracted to them. I wonder if Maggie has read of any myths regarding men who like fat women? If not, then this is truly a peculiar attraction. Could I ask what you ladies make of the guys who are attracted to women who are as fat as yourselves?



Obviously, it's not your job to explain yourself or try to convine anyone else that your preferences are OK. You know, from a purely detached standpoint (that is to say, not using myself as a litmus test), I can understand why many men would find soft, fat curves so attractive. They feel good! Many times, my husband would tell me how soft my skin was, how great I felt. Not so much anymore  Then again, we both appreciate how much healthier I am in other ways. I see the half-naked (and, well, a bit more than half in some places) photos of the women here, and I see soft, mysterious folds, and I think ... lovely. I wish I could have felt that way about myself -- especially since my husband so obviously preferred it. But then again, his preference stops where many FA's truly begins; his eyes are usually drawn to women who are heavier than, say, a size 12 but smaller than a 20. Vince, do you find that many men actually prefer women who are *not* twig thin? When I ask my male friends, they all agree that they like their women with some (varying degrees) of "meat" on their bones ... but I have to wonder, if that is true, why is every male eye in a room (and some female) immediately glued to the frame of a size 2 blonde - with the only fat on her emaciated body attached to her chest wall? I am equally curious about preferences. I wonder sometimes if what men say in front of women is what they will say in a private setting, when it's just the guys --- and, if it is different, which is truer to their actual preferences.


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## Vince (Mar 5, 2006)

Hi Traci, nice to see you wading into this discussion again. To answer the question about what most men like in women I would say that two considerations are involved. Men want to be seen with a certain size and shaped woman but they might have sex with some outside those limits. Many men will want trim women to date and marry but will find somewhat larger women sexy. So we have two forces here, one social and one driven by libido. Most men won't dare date anyone who stands out too much for any reason. 

I want to get right down to basics here about fatness. I suppose semantics makes a difference when discussing women's shape and size. Let us stick to fatness for this discussion. I take it all fat or obese women are overweight. That is the irremovable value judgement when describing large women. Or large men for that matter. We describe them as being fat because they are much bigger than average. This is a curious phenomenon. Why do we call large people fat? Why is the fat content of their body used to define those people?

I suppose it all gets down to impressions, confidence, self-awareness, embarrassment and so on. Everyone knows how it is not that much fun trying on a swimsuit in early summer. If we have to go to the shops to buy a bathing suit we know it is not always flattering to view ourselves in the mirror to see how we look. Our skin is usually pale and we might be a bit bigger than last summer so our cosies are snugger. We are very aware of how we look and this is true of all people. Now, what about those who are really large? How do they look at themselves in the mirror when trying on a bathing suit? Are they pleased by what they see or do they recoil and not even think about going to the beach because they are too self-conscious about their size and shape? 

What does each of us do when they see really fat people in public? These people are noticed and I hear all the time that fat people are aware that everyone stares at them. If this is true then it might explain why we seldom see very large people at the beach. They are too embarrassed to go. Is there another explanation? 

I know that I notice large people and especially large women. If I am stopped at traffic lights and a fat woman walks across the street in front of me I know that other people are staring at her, too. If she is really big then everyone will notice her and how she is negotiating the crossing. I know that these women feel self-conscious because they seldom look up or make eye contact. 

It seems to me that it matters not what the ancient Greeks felt about fatness because each and every day fat people are aware of what most people think about them. They know or sense this because so many stare at them. Because fat people stand out, other people are always going to notice them and because it is not for anything positive, the result is shame and embarrassment. Is this what happens or am I totally mistaken? 

If fat people constantly and continually receive negative reinforcement for their size then is it any wonder they feel like they do? The rare support from admirers would be lost among all the negative stares. The fat people then carry the mental and emotional weight of those centuries of oppression and ridicule. They know that society has judged them to be morally inferior and therefore not as good as average and thin people. 

It is surely the exception that we have a site dedicated to admiring fat and really fat women. However, even the women here have to go out among the non-admirers and cope with stares and looks. I have personally seen that "thank god I am not that big look" that smaller fat women give to really large ladies. 

To reply to Etobicoke FA I would say that it is unlikely in the extreme that any change will ever be effected regarding how society views really fat people. Myths persist because there is some utility there.


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## EtobicokeFA (Mar 6, 2006)

The world see fat people, is mostly a taught reaction, and myths can be undone, if you do it right! 

For example, we had the myth the women didn't have the ability do anything except housework, child rearing and giving birth. Is that myth still a widely held belief today? 

Yes, if you spent most of your life with people saying that you are no good, then you will start to believe it. And, someone random gives you some postive feedback, it will sink into the negativity. But that does not mean that you can't undo the negativity with enough postive reinforcement. 

With the same logic, someone who spent most of their life receiving mostly postive feedback, will have a great chance of living with a great outlook about themselves. And, negative feedback would be loss in the postive. For example, if someone give me negative feedback about my weight, I would be thinking more about appropriate reaction, that feel bad about myself.

The myth presists because, of the lack information, or they got bad information or more importantly it help keep their views of the world from scattering. And, the only utility that the myth has is to keep the current view of fat people going.


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## maggiemacary (Mar 6, 2006)

EtobicokeFA said:


> The world see fat people, is mostly a taught reaction, and myths can be undone, if you do it right!



I don't believe that we have the same definition of *myth*. It appears that you are equating *myth* with lie which is a very superficial use of the word. 

Myths cannot be simply *undone*. They are engrained in the logic and language of a culture. Nor do they simply have one purpose. 

While it is nice to believe that a good attitude can change 3000+ years of implicit biases, it is also rather naive.


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## EtobicokeFA (Mar 6, 2006)

maggiemacary said:


> I don't believe that we have the same definition of *myth*. It appears that you are equating *myth* with lie which is a very superficial use of the word.
> 
> Myths cannot be simply *undone*. They are engrained in the logic and language of a culture. Nor do they simply have one purpose.
> 
> While it is nice to believe that a good attitude can change 3000+ years of implicit biases, it is also rather naive.



Okay, I will admit that I might have been thinking about the wrong definition of the word myth.

However, I do know that culture is a social construct, and that mean that there is no question that it can be changed, the question is how long and how much effort it would take! Even the fact, that we have different cultures on this place, proves that culture is not written in stone.

I apologize if you believed I was offering a good attitude a quick fix solution for the society as a whole. It was meant as an example, on how people views themselves can be great influenced by the amount of postive or negative or hurtful comments.

If we talking about a larger solution for the society, I believe the teaching of tolrence and maybe even acceptance will eventually change the world view of fat people.


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## Vince (Mar 7, 2006)

When we learn a language we also learn the prescriptive uses of words as well as the descriptive uses. Some words just carry a value loading and this isn't anything that anyone teaches you, it just comes along with the language. Words and concepts usually stand for something and we use them because there is some utility there. We usually have words for things that are important to us or that are in our environments and we have some need to name them. Words like 'fat' do not just stand for adipose tissue. All the values and attitudes for generations can be in those words. Most of the time the origins are lost but the values persist. That is what Maggie is saying when she refers to various philosophies in Ancient Greece impacting on how those words have meaning today. Fatness was seen as something that could destroy a community. It was a sign of decadence and indulgence. Philosophers wrote about the negativity of fatness and those values have persisted for literally thousands of years. How on earth can the meanings of those words be changed? That is what they mean.

There is also the concept of the web of knowledge which includes all knowledge, theories, concepts, words and so on. About 150 years ago word of mouth and books were the main ways information was disseminated. It was estimated that it took about 50 years for important ideas to significantly be accepted into the new web of knowledge. Groundbreaking theories like Darwin's theory of evolution took a long time to actually change the way man saw himself. To this day some groups resist that knowledge and refuse to accept the implications of his theory. The word 'evolution' is also charged with various loadings according to prevailing discussions and so on. If some groups are powerful and oppose a new idea then that new idea can have negative loadings and the word will contain that ever afterwards. 

Prescriptive language is what morals is all about. A user can say that something is bad or evil. They are telling us they disapprove of whatever they are referring to and urge us to do so as well. We do the opposite when we approve of things or people and call them good or other words suggesting approval. Where this gets tricky is when we find that various belief systems are behind the various loadings of certain words. A good example is the word 'holy'. For an atheist there is nothing that is holy because he denies that a god exists. However, he still uses language and what does he do when he comes across areas or monuments that are classified as being holy? If a person shows no respect he could get himself into heaps of serious trouble depending on what we are referring to. 

The word 'fat' is heavily loaded with all those past myths. Even recent research can reinforce those myths. If fatness is seen as threatening then this is what everyone will feel when they think of that word or use the word. I suppose it would account for most fat people feeling ashamed or guilty of their size and weight. It also contributes to why fatness is not a component of beauty in women or men. A curious thing is that muscles are not so positive in Western culture, either. If humans are composed of muscle, fat and bones then what is good in humans if both fat and muscle are not positive attributes? Having been a bodybuilder for over 45 years I can confirm that the vast majority of people look down on large muscles. The myth of the brawny man without equal intelligence must be commonplace in the stories for millennia. It would seem that muscles are also an abject feature and very threatening. The threat is quite different from fatness but it is still a negative trait and few people today would be motivated to build up a muscular body. 

To change attitudes in a society is difficult indeed. Some would say it is almost impossible. Even if some fat people succeed the myths and stereotypes remain because those people can be seen as exceptions. Arnold became governor of California and was a former many times champion bodybuilder. Do we change how we regard musclemen? Nope, they are still muscle-bound, conceited, stupid and maybe gay to boot! Arnold's success has changed nothing at all. 

How does anyone propose that attitudes towards fatness is going to change? I think as things stand now the admirers have a huge job for themselves because they fancy abjected persons. The admirers know this and that is why so few come out of the closet or remain with one foot still there.


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## EtobicokeFA (Mar 7, 2006)

First Vince, thank you for acknowledging, that our views of fat people are taught by the social, and not engrained in DNA. 

Secondly, I would remind you that it only a shrinking major of research supports the current view of fat as threatening.

What I am curious about is the fact that while North America didnt invent fat-bashing or anti-fat views, until a few years ago, we seem to be only ones that brought it the level we have now. It was as if we taught it to the rest of the world. And, if memory serves me right, were not here in the early eighties, and as my family remembers it we were far from here before the sixties. 

Yes, there are still people who dont believe in Darwins theory, but then again they are people who still believe (I kid you not) that the earth is flat. 

How does anyone propose that attitudes towards fatness is going to change? Well, you said it yourself, that while you cant change everyones attitudes you can change the majority in a timely major, and that is all we need. All we need to do is get a major of people to be accept their size, or support people of size and get them to act as single voting force, in stuff ranging from shopping habits to elections, and the rest with take care of itself. 

Again, we can do this by encouraging tolerance and acceptance.


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