Toward a Healthier Body Image for Ourselves and our Children: What We Can Do

Swimming with Sharks, Dancing with Dolphins
Canadian Bar Association Annual Conference 2000

Heather Fiske

Have you ever thought that you might like to lose five or ten pounds? The most common response to this question is a disbelieving laugh: "Of course! Hasn't everyone?" Ask a roomful of intelligent, successful people in this culture how satisfied they are with their bodies, and most answers range from irony to the bitterest self-denigration. Most of us have been on diets, and many are trapped in a cycle of "yo-yo" dieting that disrupts our metabolic regulation enough that those jokes about gaining pounds with a single chocolate bar begin to resemble simple truth.

As a society, we are beginning to diet younger and younger. Most of our daughters have joined the diet culture by the time they are nine years old, which isn't surprising: they want to be like us. Many of our daughters, and sons, will also be like us in becoming compulsive exercisers who have no sense of joy or satisfaction in strength, speed, or movement, only a desperate need to see the "right" numbers on a scale of weight or body-fat ratio. Only those numbers can tell us if we are ok, if we are "fit", thin, healthy, desirable, worthy, loveable. The single most terrible insult we can think of is to call someone "fat".

We rail against the stick-like ideals of beauty with which popular media bombard us, and do everything possible to be like them. Cosmetic surgeries are more and more a matter of course; another coming of age ritual.. The most extreme examples of self-abuse in the interest of distorted ideals of beauty, the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia, kill thousands each year, as many as one in five of the people who succumb to these illnesses. Dancers and gymnasts and jockeys and wrestlers and kids in college dorms teach each other how to induce vomiting; to abuse laxatives, diuretics, amphetamines, and insulin; and to hide the telltale signs of starvation.

This is not to say that eating disorders are caused by social pressures, any more than depression or alcoholism are "caused" by a loss, a stressful job, or a bad relationship. As with these other illnesses, one of these experiences may act as a trigger, but the causes of eating disorders are much more complex, and more pervasive in an afflicted person's life. Other similarities to depression or addiction exist: eating disorders are often hidden, sometimes for years; there is probably a biological vulnerability, just beginning to be researched and understood, which makes some people more susceptible; and we routinely underestimate both the severity and the terrible human cost, especially among people who manage to continue functioning, or to look as if they are functioning, in their jobs and relationships. In addition, the information we have about the effects of starvation suggests that the physiological impact of starvation on the body leads to effects on thinking and self-perception that "look" very much like the symptoms of anorexia.

Social pressures to be thin may not cause eating disorders; but they contribute to their development, and once the pathological pattern is established, they may do a great deal to maintain it, and to complicate recovery even among individuals with sincere motivation. The "joke" that "I wish anorexia was catching" is an all-too-common attitude, and not just among the lay public. I have more than once heard health professionals comment on a severely anorexic patient: "I wish I had her will power." In one case I can remember, the patient was an adult woman whose personal life and career had been blighted by an eating disorder for years, and who at the time weighed 78 pounds. It is not just for individuals living with eating disorders that food has become sinful, dangerous, problem; and fat a sign of weakness, sloth, and lack of control. Let us consider, however, how individuals with eating disorders are affected by this cultural context.

Consider a young lawyer, "Amy", freshly admitted to the bar, in the top 10% of her law school class, bright, beautiful, hardworking, determined to be the very best of her profession....and secretly filled with self-loathing that has trapped her in a relentless cycle of bulimia. She binges on enormous amounts of food, and then tries to purge what she has eaten by self-induced vomiting. She feels ugly, fat, inadequate. Not good enough. Not thin enough.

Consider a middle-aged lawyer, "George", a partner in a mid-sized firm, intelligent, successful, active in his community,...and secretly desperate to remain young and physically "fit". For George, "fit" means thin; "fit" means a body-fat ratio lower than a 20-year-old Olympic athlete's; "fit' means an exercise regimen that would be demanding even for that 20-year-old athlete. More and more often now George runs or plays squash or lifts weights despite excruciating pain from unhealed injuries. He feels he can't stop. He feels ugly, fat, inadequate. Not good enough. Not thin enough.

Consider an older lawyer, "Gillian", about to be named to the bench after a prominent career in family law, well-respected, hardworking, often described as "elegant"... and secretly terrified of fat. Gillian has been struggling for years with an overwhelming fear of losing control of her appetite and becoming obese. She is an accomplished amateur chef who rarely eats any of what she prepares and has eaten a nutritionally unbalanced and calorically inadequate diet since she was a teenager. Her concerns have increased in recent years and at this point she is trying to survive and work on a diet of 600 calories a day, hiding her increasing emaciation under loose clothing. She feels ugly, fat, inadequate. Not good enough. Not thin enough.

Consider that Amy, George, and Gillian may all be attending this conference. Consider the impact on each of them of hearing what we say to one another about our bodies, our decision to have or not have dessert, our appreciation for the way clothes look on this person, our sneering at that one, our "jokes" about our own physiques or others', our efforts to compliment by telling people they have lost weight, our unthinking prejudices against large people or old people. Consider how rarely we communicate pride in our own physicality, in the joy of movement, in the pleasures of feeling and looking well. And if our vulnerable colleagues are affected by all this, if all of us are affected, what about our children?

So, what can we do? In British Columbia there is a wonderful group, established by a wonderful therapist named Steven Madigan and a wonderful group of people who are living in recovery from eating disorders. They call themselves "The Anti-Anorexia League", and they teach about how to identify and resist the "pro-anorexia" messages that are all around us. This is something all of us can do. We can be "anti-anorexic". We can choose what we admire, and the words we use to show our admiration. We can buy from advertisers who offer us healthier images of human beings. We can find ways to delight openly in the multiplicity of healthy human forms. We can abstain from jokes that make body shape and size something to be laughed at. We can show our respect for the changes in human forms brought about by years of life. And most difficult, and most important of all: we can model for our children, and for the vulnerable among us, how we love and enjoy our bodies.

There are many ways to do this. We can begin by finding answers to some of the following questions:

 

• What is my best physical feature?
• What is another good feature?
• What is great about being the size and shape that I am?
• How can I remind myself more frequently about these positive physical qualities?
• How can I let others know what I value about my physical self?
• How does the way that I look express who I am inside?
• How does the way that I look express what I am proud of about myself?
• How do I provide for my own physical comfort?
• How can I do a better job?
• What is special about my body?
• What is one physical activity that I truly enjoy?
• How can I do more of it?
• What is one physical activity in which I feel most completely myself?
• How can I do more of it ?
• What are some of the things I can do that give me energy?
• How can I do more of them?
• When I feel energetic, what is different in my life?
• When was the most recent time I sang/danced/painted?
  • …played with a puppy, a ball, a team?
  • …rode a horse, bicycle, big wave?
  • …went for a walk?
  • …sat quietly and enjoyed looking at the ocean?
  • …breathed deeply?

What am I waiting for?