bodies: diet/exercise industry

According to a 2008 market research study, 72% of yoga practitioners in the U.S. are women; 71% are college educated and 27% have postgraduate degrees; and 44% have annual incomes of $75,000 or more.  Yoga practitioners, then, do not reflect the general population.

So how inclusive is yoga?  A collection of covers from the magazine Yoga Journal, spanning the years 1975 to 2010, sent in by Janet T., gives us a clue.

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Christie Barcelos is a doctoral student in Public Health at the University of Massachusetts who rarely sees anyone who looks like her in yoga class.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

A couple of years ago we posted a series of weight gain ads from the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.  Yes, weight gain ads.  Say it a few times, see how it rolls unfamiliarly around your tongue.  If you consume popular culture, it’s rare to come across anyone suggesting that there’s such a thing as women who are too skinny. Quite the opposite. Yet, during the middle decades of the 1900s, being too skinny was a problem that women worried about.  And Wate-On was there to help them achieve the “glamorous curves” of “popular” girls.

Jeremiah gave us a great excuse to re-post this already-posted material.  He sent in an ad for Wate-On featuring Raquel Welch:

There are interesting conversations to be had here.  Is pressure to be full-figured any different than pressure to be thin? It’s just another kind of pressure to conform to a particular kind of body.  Is the mid-century ideal different than the contemporary ideal of “curvy” women? In other words, are these women any less thin, or any less hourglass-figured, than the supposedly curvy icons of today: Beyonce, JLo, etc?  Are there any products for women who think they are too skinny today?  Can we make an interesting comparison between the capitalist and the medical solution to “too skinny”?  Other thoughts?

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Julie C. found this ad in a newspaper from the 1960s:

The text:

“If skinny, thin and underweight take improved WATE-ON to help put on pounds and inches of firm, healthy looking flesh. WATE-ON supplies weight gaining calories plus vitamins, minerals, protein and other beneficial nutrients. Clinically tested. Fast weight gains 4, 6, 10… as much as 20 and 30 pounds have been reported. No over-eating. Helps make bustline, cheeks, arms, legs fill out, helps put firm solid flesh on skinny figures all over body. Helps fight fatigue, low resistance, sleeplessness and nervousness that so often accompany underweight. Underweight children and convalescents can take WATE-ON. It’s a clinically tested, pleasant formula sold around the world. Buy some today and start putting on weight FAST. Satisfaction from 1st bottle or price refunded. At drug stores everywhere.”

Another (year unknown, found here):

Taylor D. sent in this add for Wate-On (found here), which targets African American women:

Here’s another brand for a similar product from 1943:

Text:

Girls with “Naturally Skinny” Figures …AMAZED AT THIS ENTIRELY NEW WAY TO ADD 5 LBS. OF SOLID FLESH IN 1 WEEK…OR NO COST!

New Natural Mineral Concentrate From the Sea, Rich in FOOD IODINE, Building Up Weak, Rundown Men and Women Everywhere.

THOUSANDS of thin, pale, rundown folks–and even “Naturally Skinny” men and women–are amazed at this new, easy way to put on healthy needed pounds quickly. Gains of 15 to 20 lbs. in one month–5 lbs. in one week–are reported regularly.

Kelp-a-Malt, the new mineral concentrate from the sea–gets right down to the cause of thin, underweight conditions and adds weight through a “3 ways in one” natural process.

First, its rich supply of easily assimilable minerals nourish the digestive glands, which produce the juices that alone enable you to digest the fats and starches, the weight-making elements in your daily diet. Second, Kelp-a-Malt provides an amazingly effective digestive substance which actually digests 4 times its own weight of the flesh-building foods you eat. Third, Kelp-a-Malt’s natural FOOD IODINE stimulates and nourishes the internal glands which control assimilation–the process of converting digested food into firm flesh, new strength and energy. Three Kelp-a-Malt tablets contain more iron and copper than a pound of spinach or 7-1/2 lbs. of fresh tomatoes; more calcium than 6 eggs; more phosphorous than 1-1/2 lbs. carrots; more FOOD IODINE than 1600 lbs. of beef.

Try Kelp-a-Malt for a single week and notice the difference–how much better you sleep, how firm flesh appears in place of scrawny hollows” and the new energy and strength it brings you! Prescribed and used by physicians, Kelp-a-Malt is fine for children, too–improves their appetities. Remember the name, Kelp-a-Malt, the original and genuine kelp and malt tablets. There is nothing else like them, so don’t accept imitations and substitutes. Try Kelp-a-Malt today, and if you don’t gain at least 5 lbs. of good, firm flesh in 1 week, the trial is free. 100 jumbo size tablets, 4 to 5 times the size of ordinary tablets, cost but little. Sold at all good drug, stores. If your dealer has not yet received his supply, send $1.00 for special introductory size bottle of 65 tablets to address below.

Vintage Ads posted another example:

Text:

If you are a normal healthy, underweight person and are ashamed of your skinny, scrawny figure, NUMAL may help you add pounds and pounds of firm, attractive flesh to your figure.

For NUMAL, a doctor-approved formula, contains essential minerals and vitamins that may aid your appetite. Then you eat more and enjoy what you eat. But that isn’t all. NUMAL contains a food element which is also a great help in putting on weight. So don’t let them snicker at your skinny, scrawny figure. A skinny, scarecrow figure is neither fashionable nor glamorous. Remember, the girls with the glamorous curves get the dates.
So start NUMAL today…

Lauren McGuire spotted this ad (at Vintage Ads, via Jezebel):

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The “Let’s Move” campaign is Michelle Obama’s initiative to curb the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States.  According to the campaign website, its goals include “creating a healthy start for children” by empowering their parents and caregivers, providing healthy food in schools, improving access to healthy, affordable foods, and increasing physical activity.  Here is an example of the kind of “social marketing” that the campaign is releasing:

This campaign video is particularly notable for 1) its raced, classed, and gendered assumptions about the responsibility for promoting physical activity among young people; 2) the way it emphasizes personal responsibility while ignoring structural determinants of health; and 3) its Foucauldian implications (for the real social science nerds out there).

First, the video portrays a middle-aged white mother (in the kitchen, no less) who encourages her daughter to get exercise by having her running around their (apparently large, middle-class suburban) home in order to find the $1 she asked for.  It ends by stating: “Moms everywhere are finding ways to keep kids healthy.”  Not only does this assume that “moms” (not “parents”) have responsibility for keeping their kids healthy through intensive mothering practices, it fails to account for the fact that the childhood obesity epidemic (itself a social construct in many ways) is greatly stratified by race and socio-economic status.  It is not clear to the viewer how they might encourage their children to exercise if they live, say, in a small apartment or a neighborhood without safe places for kids to play outside.

Second, a growing body of research points to the fact that structural-level inequalities, not individual-level health behaviors, account for the majority of poor health outcomes.  This research illuminates a disconnect in most health promotion initiatives — people have personal responsibility (engage in physical activity) for structural problems (poverty; the high price of nutritious food; safe, well-lit, violence-free places for kids to play).

Finally, the video illustrates what some social scientists have noted about new forms of power in modern public health practice — for example, health promotion campaigns such as this one can be thought of as the exercise of “biopower,” or Foucault’s term for the control of populations through the body: health professionals and/or the government are entitled by scientific knowledge/power to examine, intervene, and prescribe “healthy lifestyles.”  In this example, the campaign uses marketing strategies to remind the (very narrowly defined) audience of their duty to engage with dominant health messages and concerns (i.e., childhood obesity) through the control of bodies (that is, their children’s).

In the “Let’s move” campaign video, then, we see that (white, middle-class) moms have a responsibility for encouraging their children to get physical activity without an acknowledgement of the gendered expectations of caregiving, structural determinants of health that effect childhood obesity, and the implications of top-down control of the body.

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Christie Barcelos is a doctoral student in Public Health/Community Health Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she studies social justice and health, critical pedagogy, and epistemology in health promotion.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

The title question haunts me.  I’m a feminist, a recovered anorexic and, yes, I’m on a diet.

Because of my experience with anorexia, I know how horrible things can get when one starts obsessing about “bad foods” and setting (and re-setting) weight-loss goals.  My eating disorder made me miserable, and I have lasting health issues that could eventually shorten or lessen the quality of my life.

That said, recovering from anorexia made me a feminist.  While battling for my sanity and health, I became increasingly pissed off at the THIN=BEAUTIFUL*GOOD environment we live in.  Our culture’s valorization of thinness caused well-meaning friends to compliment me on my rapid weight-loss, literally up until the weeks that I entered treatment. Even after entering treatment, some people didn’t think I was skinny enough to be “really” anorexic.  Worse, my awful then-boyfriend hinted that it would be great if I could recover without gaining any weight, “since you’re not, like, scary-thin.”

In the end, I got better, got angrier, and ultimately re-arranged my life so that I could stay healthy and continue fighting-the-good-fight as my career.

We feminists typically view dieting — and, particularly, the diet industry — as an expression of patriarchy that is bad for women.  As a scholar who studies the harmful effects of our culture’s beauty standards, I agree with this.  Diets (which FAIL 95% of the time) drain women’s energy, happiness, and wallets – often while risking our health.  Hence, “RIOTS, NOT DIETS!” has become a well-known rallying cheer for many feminists.

Dieting can also be understood as a type of “patriarchal bargain” (an individual woman’s decision to accept gender rules that disadvantage women-as-a-group, in exchange for whatever power she can wrest from the system).  By strategically losing weight, we accept the THIN=BEAUTIFUL*GOOD equation (which implies FAT=UGLY*BAD), and propel ourselves into positions of greater social advantage.  On an individual level, having “thin privilege” feels empowering.  (Recall, Oprah Winfrey — arguably the MOST powerful woman in the world — has described “going to the gym when I really prefer wine and chips” as her greatest accomplishment!)  Yet, these THIN powered feelings depend upon a system of inequality in which power/privilege/respect are denied to others on the basis of these standards.

Frustratingly, given the patriarchal bargain of weight-loss, being radically anti-diet as a political stance doesn’t always fit comfortably as a personal stance. Because we live in a society that punishes women for being “fat,” even the most dedicated feminists report struggles with body image.  The threat of becoming a martyr for this cause (i.e., by voluntarily giving up ”thin-privilege,” if we’ve got it) can be terrifying.   Add to this the personal fact that I’ve gained an (subjectively) uncomfortable amount of weight in the past year by neglecting to care for my body, and suddenly I’m facing a conundrum.

So what’s a good feminist to do?  Here’s how I’ve proceeded.

Step 1: Shun Mirrors for 1 Year

I was saying mean things to my reflection in the mirror and wanted to lose weight, urgently.  My body insecurities were reaching a dangerous peak, and it scared me.  Was I on the verge of a relapse? 10 years ago, I’d probably have gone on an extreme diet, but this time something blissfully self-protective kicked in.  I still did something extreme, but in a vastly more body-positive direction: I decided to shun mirrors for a year.  Yep, you read that correctly.  I’ve embarked on a quest to go without mirrors for 365 days.

Thus far it’s been enlightening (and challenging), but hasn’t completely resolved my body image issues.

Step 2: Revamp Eating and Exercise Habits to be Healthfully Moderate

So, in addition to shunning mirrors, I’ve decided to monitor my food and exercise until I’m back on track. As an advocate of the “Health at Every Size” movement (which stresses the importance of healthful behaviors but rejects the idea that there is a universal “healthy weight”), I’m going to try to judge my “success” based on my behaviors, instead of my weight.  My goal is to consciously re-engage in healthful eating habits and joyful activity, and then accept my body size and shape wherever it settles.  As much as I’m still tempted to “get skinny,” I know I can live with this, and (more importantly) I know my body can live through it.

But I still hope I lose some weight.

So, what do you think? If “fat is a feminist issue,” can a feminist diet?

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Kjerstin Gruys is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Sociology Department at UCLA where she’s writing her dissertation on clothing size standards in the fashion industry. At her blog, A Year Without Mirrors, she’s chronicling her commitment to avoid her reflection for 365 days.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

In the contemporary Western world, naked and near-naked bodies are revealed everywhere.  But most of the bodies we see are those of models and actors, carefully cultivated, chosen, and digitally altered to look a particular way.  Except, artist Clarity Haynes notes, the “before” pictures in advertisements for diet plans and cosmetic surgeries.  She writes:

“Before” pictures pop up constantly on our computers and in magazines, as part of the daily landscape of imagery. These “before” pictures, meant to shock and scare, show bodies that are presented as needing urgent correction and control, through weight loss or plastic surgery.

In an effort to reclaim these “before” bodies, Haynes has lovingly painted a range of female bodies.  The Breast Portrait Project, she continues:

…is about finding dignity and beauty in the physical characteristics of the body that our popular culture often ridicules and heaps with shame, and in the process allowing the models who participate to feel pride in their particular selves — and by extension, the viewers of the work as well, regardless of their gender.

Visit Hayne’s gallery.  And, for more normalizing of normal bodies, see these selections of breasts,  bellies, and vulvas.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Kristie V. let us know about a new item in Skechers’ Shape-Ups line of shoes. If you aren’t familiar with Shape-Ups, they’re the sneakers with the specially-shaped soles that supposedly firm your butt as you walk. Now Skechers has introduced a line of Shape-Ups targeted at tween girls (via Shine):

I was particularly struck by the scene at 23 seconds in, where the girl confidently bounces along in her Shape-Up, trailed by exhausted-looking boys dressed up as food:

Apparently Shape-Ups not only firm your butt, they give you the ability to reject food as well.

Though Skechers apparently claims to be targeting childhood obesity, at least two independent studies found that these types of shoes have no benefit in terms of fitness, whether measured by calories burned or level of muscle toning. But as Morning Gloria at Jezebel points out, girls are never too young to be socialized into buying products of questionable effectiveness — and avoiding food — in the hopes of “looking good and having fun,” as the ad put it.

Meems, who blogs at The Inbetweenie, recently received an email from Barnes & Noble with suggested books for Mother’s Day gifts. She was distressed to notice that the most prominently-placed book, listed under the “top reads for every mom” category, was a diet book:

Yes, a diet book is an appropriate gift for every mother.

Meems says she can’t imagine giving her mother a dieting book for Mother’s Day. I have had the misfortune to witness this type of gift-giving, since my mom gained a significant amount of weight when she was pregnant with my two sisters and never lost it. She didn’t like the way she looked and was often trying out various diets or exercise routines. And every so often someone would give her a weight-loss-related gift for her birthday or Christmas. I presume they thought they were being nice — she’s always on diets and wants to lose weight, why not give her something to help? But she found it incredibly embarrassing, since it reinforced that other people agreed that her weight was unacceptable and meant her weight often became the subject of open discussion among everyone there. It also meant if she tried whatever it was and didn’t lose a lot of weight, she had the normal feelings of failure plus the fear that the person who gave her the gift would be disappointed in her.

Weight-loss related items are, generally, problematic gift ideas. They put the recipient into the position of having to acknowledge in front of anyone watching them open the gift that their weight is considered unacceptable, and that the person giving the gift agrees with that. Even if a person wants to lose weight and is actively trying to do so, they may not wish to have their weight brought up unexpectedly and opened up for public discussion.

If you are stumped on what to get your mother for Mother’s Day (assuming you get anything at all), if my own upbringing is any guide I can tell you with absolute certainty that moms love receiving a pet goat for Mother’s Day.*

* Soc Images does not actually advocate giving live animals as surprise gifts.

Lee D.T. sent in an Australian ad for Fernwood Fitness. It’s a great example of the sexualization of women of color, specifically (compared to white women). Notice that the white women in the ad simply exercise, but the ambiguously-raced woman with darker hair and skin gyrates, pumps, and poses.

See also a history of the hypersexualization and exploitation of black women by white people, the hot Latina, the fetishization of black women’s butts as symbolic of their (supposed) hypersexuality, the only thing important about black people is their butts, and the frequent exposure of black women’s bodies.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.