theshamedynamic

There is no place like Florida for dealing with body image.

(Prompted by this recent comparison of unphotoshopped Victoria’s Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio and photoshopped version.)

I used to lecture on sexual objectification and body image to female clients working to overcome addiction and criminal history.  We would talk about photoshop and media savvy; I would show them the pictures of the famous Redbook modifications of Faith Hill and we would discuss the body beautiful in every form.  It’s easy to forget that the real world still exists when you rip out magazine pages all day.

On my recent jaunt to Florida I was wearing a bikini, no small feat for me, but something I’ve been working up to for years.  It was a surprising pleasure walking along the beach.

As a self-conscious and miserably overweight teenager I usually spent trips to Florida huddled in a towel or under the water, dreading my mother’s enthusiastic trips to the swimsuit store where I would have to walk past the racks of string tied tops to the old lady one pieces in the back.  I would sit on the beach miserable, watching other girls and women walk by, thinking about how I would know I had finally made it when I could do the same.

Somehow, as a teen, I missed the lack of uniformity among these women.

On this trip, as I (mostly) confidently walked around with my stomach showing, I noticed the wonderful and totally real assortment of women on this beach.  We stayed in Siesta Key, south of Tampa, and despite this being a spring break trip, there was little fodder for a frat movie to be found.  Tanned and taut teenagers were there in force, but they were far from the only people.  Older women.  Extremely thin women.  Large women.  Women with C-section scars.  Women with bellybutton piercings and faded tattoos, women in pink and in oddly cut suits, wrinkled women, white women, tanned women.

Although it was clear to me that this experience was geared towards the middle class white suburban family (especially evidenced by the fact I saw only 2 black women my whole week), this experience was enormously corrective for me, and for that awkward 14 year old girl still huddled in my head somewhere.  To see all these bodies on display, with little self doubt.

Just for a second, let’s take a second and give it up for Florida.  Putting women and men in bathing suits with each other, FOR REAL.

now i’m not sure how many feminists are in the house, but for those who aren’t familiar, let me give you a 5 second summation of the movement: the personal is political.

when it came about this was revolutionary and it continues to shape the way we move, fight, conceptualize, write, think.  recently there were two articles that brought the importance of personal issues into the public sphere.

the first is from chloe at feministing.com, discussing having an eating disorder and being a feminist writer.  the second is a response to the piece, and puts forward the idea of gaining weight as political.  they are best read sequentially.

its hard to write about these issues and have a concurrent eating disorder.  i started my eating disorder therapy last week, for the first time in years, and i found myself struck dumb when i was asked if i was “restricting.”   wait a second, i found myself thinking. i’m not thin, that’s a question for anorexics.  and yet, the question remains.  am i restricting?

this is a better but a more loaded question than using words that are accepted in our culture, works like “dieting” or “cutting back” or “trying to avoid [eating this].”  yes, i am restricting.  i don’t know anyone who doesn’t, in the back of her head, think at least a little bit about what is going into her mouth.  but maybe that’s part of the problem.

and i, like the woman who was brave enough to write the second piece, don’t want to admit that my eating is still disordered, because i’m now getting more compliments and attention than ever.  my mother told me i have “such a cute little body now.”  my self-esteem is apparently still tied to my body, even though i know i’m not “supposed” to do that.  and to stop restricting – is that to give up on the idea of being thin forever?

it’s a terrifying concept, and one that speaks to addictions of all kinds.  picture the alcoholic thinking about giving up going to the bar forever.  this is why 12-step groups focus on “just for today”, a concept less terrifying than forever.  but can just for today turn into political protest?  is being fat, or voluptuous, or thin, or very thin, political?  is being fat in a magazine political?  is eating how you want without worry political?

i think it is.  but getting there personally is a struggle we all fight alone.

It was while I was sitting on an airplane flying home from Texas that I had another moment of truth.  I was traveling with a friend and she nudged me and pointed to the woman sitting in the row next to us.  She looked to be somewhere in her forties, blond hair, next to a significant other of some kind.  We had seen them share pizza earlier in the flight, and my friend had noticed this woman was reading a prevention magazine while eating potato chips.

We both had a hard time figuring out why exactly this hit us as being funny.  It was funny like a person sitting on the couch watching Tae Bo DVDs.  Or Liz Lemon walking on a treadmill while eating an ice cream sundae.  Why?

Personally I try to avoid health and fitness themed magazines about as vehemently as I avoid celebrity gossip; critiquing bodies of famous people next to chocolate recipes next to diet tips tend to make me a bit irate.  The beautiful juxtaposition of the magazine and the chips worked to underscore how absurd these magazines are.

Growing up I was told by either my mother or another significant relative that no diet or pill or exercise is actually magically effective.  If such a thing existed, we would know about it, because the creator would be millionaires and we would all be taking it.  Every month when I read about the flat belly diet or the next big exercise to make your abs appear or your butt tighten or whatever, whatever’s going to fix the newest and most hated parts of our body, it’s absurd to think anything will actually be that effective.  Sometimes you just have the body you have.

A while back I read this article talking about how people get frustrated because they don’t understand that weight loss and fitness are hard work and don’t come within three months or weeks.  It’s unfair to blame this on people.  Magazines and shows and diet books make money by promising the quick fix.  For some people these tips and tricks really do work (although as someone whose whole family is big in the middle, I have doubts about the effectiveness of the flat belly diet etc).  but I go back to the woman eating chips and reading about fitness.

Is part of this like The Secret effect where we visualize change and it happens?  No doubt a large portion of the issue is our refusal to acknowledge the existence of differing body types and how effective dietary and exercise changes will be.  Sometimes you have the body you have.

Why is this phenomenon so funny and so jarring?

as i was in my kitchen this morning, slowly losing control of my eating, i was thinking about the idea of willpower.

i’ve worked in addictions my whole career and alcohol and drug addictions are frustrating.  there is so much relapse, so much lack of control.  at the heart of it i was always fairly jalous.  alcohol and drugs are ridiculously addictive.  but at the end of the day, there is no cocaine in your corn flakes.  you don’t have to drink alcohol to sustain yourself.  i was jealous of their ability to just give up their addiction, to avoid it.

this morning i was reading this article by david katz about food being addictive, and it makes instinctive sense to me.

if we have an addiction to something you need to live, is there ever recovery?

As I was reading one of my favorite blogs this morning, The Pervocracy, I was pleased to find she had written her monthly article mocking Cosmopolitan magazine.  There was a terrific line in the article that crystallized some of my thoughts on the idea that girls have to call themselves fat:

Your guy knows you’re not fat.  He can see you’re not fat.  But the more you say you’re fat, the more he’ll start to question the evidence.

But I am fat.  I’m not being self-deprecating or whatever, I’m just being… roundish.  And I don’t think any combination of words would cause a person who sees me naked to question the “evidence” that my body is the size and shape that it appears to be.

Of course, this sentence makes perfect sense if you understand “fat” to be a word with absolutely no relation to a person’s weight or size, but simply an insult of their worth and sexual appeal. [emphasis mine]  Which seems to be the thing these days.  Kind of painful if you also happen to be roundish, but I don’t think “not being painful” was a priority in this process.

In a nutshell, calling someone fat does not mean that objectively they have a fat body.  It means they are stupid, worthless, less than.  No longer attractive.  No longer worth our respect or consideration.

The reason that it’s so hard to argue with the insult of being fat is because it’s not an objective fact you’re arguing against – it’s the idea that you are less than now.  You can’t argue with facts because this argument isn’t rational.  Just like you can’t argue with a racial slur.  Or being called a bitch.   It’s the reason that in middle schools and dressing rooms around the nation you hear frantic protests of “no you’re not!” when women complain about their weight – because being fat isn’t about your body.  It’s about being awful.  And  we have to frantically fight against the idea and provide reassurance, not about your body, but that you’re still worth something.

It’s the way we treat people based on their weight that’s the problem.

(Please enjoy this woman laughing alone eating lettuce while you continue reading)

At the heart of it, we women are always supposed to be either working to be smaller or working to maintain.  There is never a break.  The pressure never lets up.  It exists, subtle but powerful, in the back of our minds.

In the supermarket aisles, women’s magazines proclaim chocolate recipes for “cheat days” next to ways to lose 10 lbs in a month just by walking!  A cheat day, for those who may be uninitiated, is a day when you are able to eat whatever you want all day.  A diet break, if you will.  A good friend of mine who lost over 100 pounds said she could only have cheat meals, not days, because she’d eat too much over the course of a day.

Lent is another one, and always an interesting time of year…I’m the only nonreligious person I know who still gives things up for Lent.  It’s been a tradition in my family my whole life and I still do it – a good reason to give up beer or sweets or whatever you’ve chosen.

The problem is, it makes NO SENSE to be on a lifelong diet.  The way we use that word is totally skewed anyway; a diet is the things that you eat, period.  It’s not a plan you go on, it’s just things you eat.  So technically we’re all dieting because we’re all eating.  The problem is, people reward you in a multitude of ways when you lose weight.

I had experience with this through the past few years, but most recently at a wake I attended for a family friend.  My uncle and aunt have been focused mostly on a low carb diet (full disclosure: so have I mostly, protein is delicious) for the past few years, and every time I see my aunt she comments on my weight.  It’s always in a way that’s meant to be complimentary, and I’m sure she sees it as a self-esteem boost, but when you get these kind of compliments the negative thought that inevitably follows is “what happens when/if it comes back?”

Weight loss is a long, drawn out process.  If you read articles about set point, they posit your body gets used to being a certain weight and will make you hungry and crave food for between 1-7 YEARS until it gets used to the new one.  Let that sink in for a second.

That means eventually most people put weight back on, and what does that do to their self-esteem when they are no longer getting compliments at family functions?  Or, perhaps, start overhearing negative things said about them at functions?

Shame is a natural outgrowth of this process.  We start to feel badly not only about breaking a “diet” but about losing all the social pleasure we had previously from our weight loss.  Even maintaining becomes difficult – if part of the motivation was to gain social rewards, then we are no longer getting compliments because people are now used to the way we look, we can lose sight of the reasons we changed our lifestyle to begin with.

The problem, as it so often is, is the hyperfocus on our bodies at the expense of our health.  I’ll talk more about the health at any size movement in a while, but our mental health suffers too as a result of the unpredictability and fickle support we receive socially.

Every woman I’ve ever pitched this concept to has known what I’m talking about without effort.  Some struggle to have good food days, cutting up celery and carrot sticks, sharing tips to avoid the ice cream section in the freezer or chewing gum instead of eating candy at night.  These same women will lament to their friends about what a “bad” food day they’ve had, out having fun with friends or family or partner, at a restaurant or at home, eating dessert and “paying for it today.”

There is something fundamentally wrong with putting a moral value on the food that we eat.  There is also an inherent problem when we attach global labels to ourselves based on our ability to resist food we enjoy.

I will make this clear at the outset – I am not advocating eating potato chips and chocolate for every meal.  I have no issue with healthy eating.  The problem emerges when we judge ourselves or other people for choosing to eat potato chips and chocolate for every meal.  Those are food choices which have possible consequences.  They say nothing about that person’s character.  Eating food with high fat and sugar content does not make someone bad. 

In my humble opinion, the reason this concept makes almost inherent sense to us is because we are bombarded constantly with these messages, in our advertisements, our media, our schools, our society.  Chocolate is billed as guilty pleasures, an indulgence, but also an escape.  It’s equated with female sensual pleasure almost on the level of sexual arousal; is it any coincidence both are forbidden?  In both instances we are “supposed” to be good (either eating only vegetables or not wanting sex) and in both instances that is clearly an unrealistic and ridiculous expectation.  Food tastes good, and we are built to eat what tastes good to us.

Animism is a concept I first encountered in anthropology, discussing traditional African practices.  It attaches human qualities to inanimate objects.  We see this often in young children who have difficulty separating fantasy from reality; when a child cries because his stuffed animal is sad he’s leaving, this is animism in action.

We’re supposed to grow out of this phase.  A food is inanimate, it is not inherently bad or good.  The most revolutionary thing I’ve ever read or thought was actually small, but it changed my whole concept of eating.  Instead of calories, energy.  Just take a moment to soak that in.  Scientifically the amount of calories is in something is energy so it makes sense to view it this way.  How much energy do you need?  Are you planning on running after work?  Might need extra energy (read: snack) before you go.  Sitting in an office for 8 hours today?  Might need less energy to make that job happen, although around 3pm our energy level may get low and you might need to refuel.  This can even change the way we view fat.  It’s not a shameful thing, and we are built to be fat.  Evolution LOVES us to be fat!  It means we can survive if we have to.  It means we’ve been able to feed ourselves with food!  And it’s extra energy for us to use in times of crisis.

At the end of the day we are obsessed with judgment.  We judge ourselves and others, usually with our own ideas about which yardsticks matter and should be used.  And it makes us feel better to judge.

A brief explanation of the concept.

The first thing to understand is that change and the reasons we have to change is not just an issue that interests therapists, but everyone who has tried to change a habit or a behavior they’re not so crazy about.  The way we understand motivation changed radically in 1981, when Carlo C. DiClemente and J.O. Prochaska introduced a five step model to understand the process of change.  A brief lesson:

Precontemplation is our beginning, when you don’t see your behavior as a problem and assume everything is cool. 

At contemplation, you may start to think a little bit about changing your behavior – you’ve maybe suffered some consequences, people may be annoyed with you.

Preparation is when you start trying small changes, and start making a plan for the bigger change.

Action is when you’re actually putting changes into practice.

Maintenance is the stage where…well, where you maintain the changes you’ve made.

Relapse is in there as well, which was and remains controversial – the idea that change is like pushing over a vending machine.  You have to try a few times to get that sucker to tip over.  After relapse, we’re usually back at precontemplation or contemplation, sometimes with an extra large dose of “guilt” over your “failure.”.   You can read more in depth here (http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/stages-of-change/all/1/).

As anyone who has been around someone who is working to change behavior knows, we are always at action.  We can see what needs to be done, we can see the behavior is causing problems, and we want to push for change RIGHT NOW!  You keep saying you want to stop drinking – so stop!  You say you don’t like being fat – go on a diet!  It seems so simple, so clear to us.  We think, you’ve been talking about this for a long time, so frickin’ do it already!  Difficult to stop wishing someone else is as ready for change as you.

Now for practical application.  If someone is not ready to change, is shaming them an appropriate way to encourage change?  Education is the key first, but it has to be gentle application, to avoid the shame dynamic of “bad self.”  Personal control is a part of bad habits, but there are scores of other factors influencing bad behavior, and to ignore the environment to focus on a person makes no sense, except to prevent widespread knowledge and anger about these environmental conditions.  That may be a post for another day.

At the end of the day, some people may simply not be ready to change, at least not yet.  And that’s normal.  The sooner we acknowledge this, the lower our frustration levels will be, and the more likely it is we will see real, positive change.

Let me start with a revelation.

In my family we don’t really talk politics, in part because a few members are so divided from the whole fights are inevitable, and in a small family, maintaining connections is more important that maintaining your position.  This allows everyone to turn a blind eye when something comes up they don’t agree with; a fine idea for preventing bitter arguments but a troublesome one in voicing opinions. 

Last night it came to me I have generalized this pattern of behavior to the rest of my life, not all the time, but enough that it caused some soul searching in the twilight hours.

It’s hard to determine a starting point, because I am so angry.  So I’ll start with the story.  I was sitting with my three roommates last night, shooting the breeze, talking about nothing.  All three of my roommates smoke and somehow the discussion turned to how best to buy cigarettes around our area.  There is one store down the street known for never carding those coming in to get smokes, as evidenced by frequent sightings of children being sent in by their parents.  At some point my (white) friend started doing impressions of an obese African American woman sending her child to buy her cigarettes.  His girlfriend then told a story about getting ice cream and seeing a minivan leaning to the side, with a woman “who had already had her share of ice cream, a lifetime supply.”  It was at this point she stopped, like a professional comedian giving space for a laugh.  It was at this point I removed myself from the conversation.

The last time I had an argument with this particular roommate about race, he ended up screaming at me that he could “let his hair down” with his friends and use racial slurs.  He also ended up screaming n****r in the middle of a crowded bar, at which point I was so angry I again removed myself.

Full disclosure – I’m a white female, but I’m still angry when I think about the things being said, and it’s hard to pin down exactly why.  At the heart of things, I think it’s because at some point, arguments become moot.  I do believe there are some people whose minds cannot be changed.  But at what point do you stop arguing?  At what point do you wash your hands of someone and say you’re finished trying?

In my head, I was screaming.  Screaming about class and how some people use food to cope.  Screaming about how family structure differs and how none of my roommates would have blinked at a white child buying whiskey for his father in the 1930s.  Screaming about how fat is not the issue.  Why does it matter that the mother is fat?  It should only matter that she’s using her child in an emotionally abusive way. 

You see, calling someone fat is the clincher to almost any argument.  I learned this lesson as a child in elementary school, and it’s still true today, probably one of the worst verbal insults to a woman in our culture.  And if you add it onto any other argument it seems to reinforce what is said.  And dehumanizes who you’re talking about.  You’re no longer talking about a woman, you’re talking about a fattie.  And that makes this okay.  We see the same training and process in war and the military – it’s much easier to kill a gook or a towel head than a man, a husband, a father, a son.  It’s much easier to mock and humiliate someone when you stop seeing them as a person and merely as an aspect of themselves.

Is this me not having fun?  Me not allowing others to let their hair down?  Me being “too politically correct”?  I don’t think it is.  This is our life, and we live with these people.  Practice makes permanent, and the more we practice the language of hate, the easier it will come to our lips.  We reduce our own humanity by shaming others.  Maybe it’s time to stop leaving the room and start voicing our thoughts.

So the last time we spoke, it was to discuss the difference and purpose between the feelings of guilt and shame.  To reprise, guilt serves a societal function, working to allow all of us to get along with each other.  Shame works to humiliate, to ruin, and attacks the very essence of a person.

Our bodies are often framed in terms which evoke shame.  We speak of personal responsibility and hold up shining examples of those who are able to change their bodies as heroes.  Jillian Michaels is the first to come to mind, as she has built an empire on her history of weight loss.  I am also reminded of Legally Blonde.  Yes, that junky movie with Reese Witherspoon. 

Bear with me here, and see if you can relate.  In that movie, there is a woman on trial for murdering her husband.  She has a fitness empire and has build this on the lack of fat on her butt.  Yes, her butt.  It turns out (spoiler alert! 10 years too late!) the woman was out getting liposuction and couldn’t have killed her husband, but would not allow this to be used in a court defense to keep her out of prison.  She was more concerned with hiding the lengths she’d go to for the perfect body than staying out of prison.

I have a vivid memory of reading a novel when I was in my teens, and there was a character in that novel who was fat.  I remember reading about this character, who would fantasize about cutting off parts of her body with a knife because she hated her fat so much.  As a teenager, I could relate to this, as I often had the same fantasies.   These are not things I shared with anyone, so to see it on the page was remarkable – someone had the same feelings I did.  Just like group therapy, it was a moment of clarity produced by universality.  I am not alone.

There has been a movement in the past ten years or so (probably longer, but that’s when I became aware of this) for fat acceptance.  To move away from the toxicity that is preached by our media and our parents and our peers.  Agree with this movement or not, the purpose is to reduce the amount of shame we have in our bodies.

The way we think about addictions has shift the same way within the past 25 years.  In the olden days, when an alcoholic would go to treatment, he or she would be shamed beyond belief.  Often in treatment centers they would practice “encounters” where a client would be forced to stand in the middle of the room and explain something “bad” they had done.  Then, other clients and therapist would (often harshly) confront this person.  The idea was to associate shame with the drinking or even with an antisocial behavior (such as stealing).  However, encounters are now rarely used in therapy.  Because they don’t work.  Putting someone in front of a group of people where they are publicly humiliated did not make them feel bad about their behavior.  It made them feel bad about themselves.

Those therapists and counselors and self-help aficianados will know the term “coping skills” and often therapy is geared toward assisting clients to build healthy, productive coping skills.  Once a person can cope with life, they no longer need therapy.   The problem with encounters is they evinced intense feelings of shame. 

You see where I’m going with this now.  My father told me when I first started being a counselor that I was dealing with people at the bottom of the barrel.  When I protested, he explained “these are people who don’t know how to deal with life.”  While I still object to the characterization, I can now understand his point.  As we grow up (and even as children) we are put into situations in which we encounter adversity.  Most times, we learn to handle this adversity and develop coping skills.  This can be affected a great deal by our childhood environment (to be discussed in depth later) but as a general rule, we learn to deal with our emotions during stress.

Alcoholics and addicts often don’t learn this. 

While someone without these issues may use deep breathing to calm down when anxious, an addict will smoke marijuana.  Someone may cope with anger by running; an alcoholic will have a beer.  You see the difference?  The substance becomes the coping skill.

Now ,what do you think would happen if we produce intense feelings of shame in someone who deals with adversity by using a substance?  Excellent, now you understand why encounters are so rarely used today.

Despite our increased understanding of better, more effective techniques to treat drug and alcohol addiction, we insist on treating other problems the same way.  If someone uses food to deal with life’s issues, eats when stressed or sad or bored, what will they turn to when feeling ashamed of their body?

I don’t know about you, but I always end up eating healthier and exercising more when I am happy and feeling powerful and good in my body.  When I am embarrassed I have trouble looking in the mirror, trouble getting motivated, and often become so depressed I have difficulty even leaving the house.  Is making people ashamed producing any change?  I don’t think it is.  But it makes us feel better about ourselves.  Just like your mother told you about the high school bully, who put others down to make themselves feel better, we shame and ridicule others to make ourselves feel better.  And it’s not working.