I’ve lived in England 29 years. USA 9 years. These two countries are culturally very different in many ways. They are culturally similar in some ways. One cultural similarity that they share, is the belief that thinner is better. That belief effects everyone I ever met in some way or another. Not just women. Not just vain people. Not just fashion victims. The belief that thinner is better effects everyone: Men. Women. Children. Doctors. Dietitians. Therapists. Web developers. Scientists. Yogis. Teachers. Priests. The person who sold you your coffee this morning. Cowboys.
The belief that thinner is better is so ingrained that most people don’t even recognize it as a bias they hold. It’s an unconscious bias, which means you are not conscious of it. So if I were to ask you “do you think that thinner is better?” you might say “no,” but then you would still act and think and make decisions as if thinner were better.
It’s not your fault that you hold this bias/belief that thinner is better. It has been taught to you from an early age. You have been swimming in fatphobia all your life, so it is inevitable that you swallowed a lot of it. You probably started absorbing it in the womb, when you were a captive audience listening to your mother tell people about how she intended to lose the baby weight as soon as you were born. You’ve been hearing the words “lose weight” since your ears were developed enough to pick up sounds. You’ve been watching images of thinner people in books, on billboards, on screens, since you first opened your eyes.
Fun game, go sit in a newborn intensive care unit in a hospital and count the number of times weight loss is mentioned per hour by the mothers, fathers, doctors and nurses in there. Now imagine all those newborn ears listening to that crap. I bet you that weight loss is mentioned more times in a newborn ward than religion, politics, and Pepper Pig is. (Okay, maybe not Pepper Pig — but it would be a close contest.)
Now play that same game everywhere in life. Listen to the talk between shopper and cashier at checkouts. Listen to the talk between people sitting drinking a glass of wine after work. Listen to the talk on the bus. At the hairdressers. Sure, you will eavesdrop on a load of things you probably didn’t want to hear, but ignore all that and count the times you here a reference to weight loss as something to be aspired to. Your Lyft driver may even mention there diet as a form of small talk. That’s right, small talk. Diet talk is right up there with talking about the weather on the list of things to say when you don’t have anything to talk about.
Celebrities and Netflix series come and go. Political dramas hit the news then melt away in a matter of weeks. Even Trump and Brexit will stop coming up in conversations over the years. But weight loss will still be there. It is the theme that runs through our culture, it does this because we are all actively keeping the belief that thinner is better alive multiple times a day, every day.
Most people live the belief than thinner is better multiple times a day in the words that they use, the way that they treat others, the way they judge others, the prescriptions they write, the diet advice they give, the diet foods they buy, the gyms they join, the shops they feel drawn to, the adverts they pay attention to. The thoughts that they think.
And it’s making us all really fucking sick.
Here are three reasons off the top of my head why this is a problem (for everyone, not specifically people with eating disorders).
1. The belief/bias that thinner is better silently and ferociously puts us up against our own bodies by causing us to mistrust and question hunger and desire for certain foods. Moreover, this belief causes us to eat according to judgement rather than truth, and therefore causes us to eat in a dishonest fashion that, if we do it for long enough, can cause a mind/body communication breakdown.
2. The belief that thinner is better makes us give more respect to, and therefore pay more attention to, the words that come out of the mouths of thinner people for no reason other than because they are thinner so therefore we assume they are more right. Thinner people talk just as much bollocks as anyone else.
3. The belief/bias that thinner is better causes our doctors to attribute any and all health problems to their patient’s weight, which causes them to become blind to the symptoms that their patient is actually describing as their brains automatically catergorise the problem as a weight problem. This bias causes misdiagnosis which can lead to increased health issues due to the real cause of the symptoms being overlooked.
Such an important topic. Look forward to following along on your posts!
Hello Tabitha! In this blog, you detail a lot of the biases in society and in medicine that I have personally observed lately — and I have been more observant, because I am in recovery from anorexia. I am unsure whether the global, “thinner is better” belief system will ever be dismantled in my lifetime, but I am grateful that the community questioning this belief has begun to grow. Almost every situation in which I find myself nowadays involves some commentary on weight, as you mentioned. Just recently, I was on a long car trip, and my car radio finally found a station broadcasting a syndicated medical show. I listened out of curiosity for about 4 minutes, because I knew, even before I heard the topic of discussion, that somehow all the medical ills contemplated would point back to “bad” foods and obesity. Sure enough, in about 2 minutes, the overexcited, peppy doctors were proclaiming that most medical practitioners let people down by not helping to change “unhealthy” lifestyles. One of the doctors even said, “The food pyramid that has been around for ages needs to be turned upside down. We do not even need grains in our diets….” I listened to the other doctors agree with enthusiasm, and then I switched off the radio. I hate to rant and rage against anything, but, man, the medical community in the U.S. is as almost as bad as the fashion industry itself in terms of glorifying weight loss and “lean” living….I could go on and on about your topic here, because I agree so wholeheartedly with everything you say, but I’ll stop here and try not to crowd cyberspace too much!
Yes so it makes it very hard to recover in those countries. I moved from Europe to Kenya. I didn’t know that this was where I finally would get well. After being here for half a year I was strongly encouraged by my Kenyan boyfriend to eat freely. I had told him I wanted to, but just couldn’t kick myself in the ass to actually do it and that I was too afraid to do it alone without anyone supporting me. Here they don’t think thinner is better. The women here strive to gain weight even though they aren’t underweight or very lean. Everything is the opposite in Kenya. It is so liberating! I have tried to recover many times. I gain the weight, but I start restricting afterwards every time. I know I won’t do that again. I have snapped out of the destructive mindset. It feels safer to be in a larger body here where most women have a large or very large body. They have not heard about anorexia and can’t understand why anyone would willingly restrict their food intake when they are hungry. The men here don’t care if the woman has a little or a lot fat on her body. My boyfriend is happy when I eat more, eat fear foods and more variety of food. He says when I have bad image days he will make love to me and show that he desires me no matter how big my body is. He means it. He doesn’t care about looks even though to me he looks perfect. He told me that if he was the one who had to gain 20 kilos he wouldn’t feel bad about it because “it is my body”, he said. He respects his body. The culture in my home country made me sick. Here they dont care much about looks. I don’t want to live with people who care much about looks and never look for me behind the surface. I think my main trigger is to not be seen for more than my body, by both women, men + parents. Because how can I trust that I will be treated well and loved then? Change of environment was better than any treatment center or therapist. Healthy mindsets, respect and love is more helpful than someone telling me what to do to get well. In the western world we are not taught to trust our body by the therapists either. How are we gonna get well then? We have to think for ourselves and not do and think like most people. We are used to that so it shouldn’t be that difficult.