By Guest Writer: Caroline Brouillette
Today marks the last day of Quebec’s Anorexia and Bulimia’s (ANEB) awareness week named ‘Le poids, sans commentaire’. The goal? To not judge your own and others’ weight during that week. In other words, the challenge is to not say anything when you realize your friend has obviously put on the good old freshman fifteen or to congratulate your classmate on dropping five kilos in a week.
At first, the idea can sound insignificant or even useless. What could be negative in congratulating a peer on a recent weight-loss? Unlike the popular belief perpetuated by the weight-loss industry: slimming down is not necessarily a sign of getting healthier. In some cases, it is in fact the complete opposite of being healthy. Anorexia and bulimia are significant and non-negligible examples of this. However, to limit ourselves to these cases would be simplistic. The constant strive to be thin is a problem that concerns all women, even those not diagnosed with an eating disorder. Indeed, according to the ANEB, 70% of Canadians try to change their bodies through what they eat and 80% of women follow a potentially unhealthy diet before they turn 18. Everyone knows at least one person who did not eat pasta and bread for two months, who panicked after gaining a couple of pounds or who examines their bulges in the mirror from time to time. The idea is not to pretend that being overweight is not a health issue, but rather, that those anecdotes represent symptoms of a society obsessed with being thin.
From 1987 to 1999, hospitalizations of women aged 24 and under suffering from eating disorders increased by 36,5%. Coincidence? Not really : young women are constantly being exposed to the portrayal of a skinny body as perfect and the only kind of beautiful, which puts enormous pressure on them. The fashion and movie industries clearly played a huge role in this, as demonstrated in a study by Joan Costa-Font and Mireia Jofre-Bonet. Their study established a correlation between cultural and social environment and the incidence of anorexia on young women. Their research has demonstrated that the more a women’s peers’ average body mass index is high, the less chances a girl will suffer from anorexia. This explains the high proportion of anorexics in France, where the BMI is lower than the European average.
The perfect body has become an industry: we are offered diets, pills and training programs. Food companies have entered this vicious business and now we can even find clothes and shoes that will make you thinner. The health field is also to blame. Most women go to the gym not to improve their cardio-vasculary system, strengthen their core muscles or reduce stress; the first and foremost initiative is to burn calories. Slogans like «Get ready for summer with your bikini body!» or programs such as «Fit for Prom» are everywhere. Furthermore, according to a widespread narrative scheme in movies and litterature, being slim is directly linked with being happy. Katherine Pancol’s last trilogy, an international bestseller, is the perfect example of this twisted image of a women’s body now represented in our society : the main character of her book, in the process of finding herself, starts running regularly, is careful about what she eats and loses weight, as if it was a condition for self-fulfillment and happiness. Girls affected by eating disorders are now younger than ever. They now start at an age when they often do not possess the tools to confront these well established norms that saturate every sphere of our society and become driven and obsessed by this everlasting desire of weight-loss.
Some will say that every society has their own norms and beauty criterias : during Renaissance, having a long forehead was the quintessence of grace. Less than a century ago, women aspired to curvy bodies, like their icon, Marilyn Monroe. What we consider beautiful is inevitably a social construct, from where, fortunately, stems the possibility to deconstruct this paradigm by replacing it with another one. Rather and even better, by multiple ones. The idea that women should all look the same is not only surreal – less than 1% of the women’s mensurations actually correspond to the haute-couture standards – but this causes, as exposed above, harmful effects: anorexia and bulimia, but also, confidence problems, rejection, intimidation and much more. Many steps have been undertaken towards the propagation of a diverse and realistic image of women such as Dove’s advertising campaigns. However, this is far from being the norm and the road ahead is still long.
To conclude, there are skinny women, slim women, plump women, square women, obese women, women with curves… In other words, there are all kinds of women. The idea is not to determine what is good or what is bad, what is beautiful and ugly, but rather to express loudly and clearly that no women should be drawn – may it be consciously or inconsciously – in this constant aspiration to lose weight. It starts this week, by paying attention and raising awareness on the details in our lives that perpetuate this phenomenon.
Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/01/anorexia-research-government-intervention-justified
http://www.anebquebec.com/aneb-ados/pdf/fr/troubles_alimentaires.pdf
http://messynessychic.com/2011/11/24/im-in-one-of-those-vintage-moods-again/
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