Body Mess Index

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All my life I’ve been dieting. I’ve had times of being reeeely overweight, but most of the time, for years now, my weight has been pretty stable: it’s just to keep pounds from accumulating as they would do, as they do, if I just eat ‘n’ drink all I want. I am not thin, never have been, never will be, but (today) my BMI (body mass index) is within “normal weight” range.

I love food and drink! And I love being…let’s say “trim”, y’know, slender enough to look fairly neat at least not sloppy in my clothes, wear knit dresses, tuck in my shirts, etc.

I used to blame my lifelong struggle on upbringing: everybody in my family is …big, and loves to eat. And we lived in rural America, where everybody was fat. If only I had been born into a THIN family, this never woulda happened to me! But now, having watched another generation grow up, I don’t think that has much to do with it. I have seen chubby boys grow up to be beanpoles, I have (fairly ubiquitously, lately) seen stick-figure thin little girls turn into manatees!
A lotta young men are fat now,too. But it’s the women I want to talk about.

Here’s what’s bothering me:

Does trying to remain plausibly not-fat actually date me?

I mean, back in the ‘60s, to be fat was to be, or at least look, old. Twiggy was the most popular model. And back then, if you were a fat girl, you couldn’t buy the “youthquake” clothing. Betsey Johnson didn’t make no Plus sizes.
it’s different now, the girls can get miniskirts and tank tops and midriff-baring shirts in what I’d consider to be whale sizes.

So at this point in fashion history, have we gone full circle to where to be thin is to look old? Would I look more youthful with an extra chin or two? Would I look more hip if I were hippy-er?

Girls today seem to revel in avoirdupois! They like themselves fat! And I really don’t mean just well-fleshed, I mean big doughy arms ‘n’ legs, rolls of belly fat. I mean Roaman’s clientele sized

(okay let me say here, although we arent allowed to say so to any living young female, that being fat is uncomfortable, it makes you stink, and it will cause joint pain and diabetes in middle age and, last we heard, also cancer. IMHO encouraging obesity is criminal, just as cruel as the laces and stays used to create the wasp-waist.)

I mean, i know the parents of these young women were told NOT to mentionnit to their little girls that they were porking up. But as I recall, the theory was this would damage their self-esteem, getting fat was not seen as a worthy goal in itself. The hope was that they would, if not persecyputed about it, develop a healthy body size of their own accord.

Is this new vogue for obesity just a rejection of the fashion ideals of their mothers’ generation?

Readers, of both sexes: what do you think?

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Published by Hypatia

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26 thoughts on “Body Mess Index”

  1. I was thin as a rail as a kid, and could eat as much of anything that I wanted. When I hit puberty, I started packing on the pounds, and was very chubby for most of high school-meaning, I was about 40 or 50 pounds overweight. Somehow, I was still able to get attention from some guys, but it was awful-I hated being overweight, but could never stick to a diet. Finally, instead of trying to “eat right” I decided to try just eating what I wanted, when I wanted, and it worked! I would never tell my mother this, but really, all that weight melted away when I grew up and stopped eating her cooking, lol 🙂

    From then on, for a long time, I was thin-5’5, and 125 pounds, but I could only eat one meal a day. Didn’t matter what the meal was-it could be fattening as anything, but if I ate two meals a day, I would start gaining weight again. Then I met Robin. He ate two meals a day, and wanted me to eat with him. I gained weight-not nearly as much as I did in high school, but enough. I lost a great deal of weight after Robin died, and am now about 140 or 145, which is ok, I think, for a middle aged woman. Middle aged women don’t look so great when they are rail thin, Lol.

    This is the weird thing, though: I drink Coca Cola constantly. Like, I consume thousands of calories in soda on top of what I eat, but it causes me to gain very little or no weight. My weight is very sensitive to food, but soda has little or no effect. This goes against everything the medical establishment tells us.

    I think that there are many things that the doctors don’t understand. Different people are definitely different: I know women who consume far fewer calories than I do, but they are chubby. No one knows why, and it really isn’t their fault, but this is the thing: they are chubby. They are maybe 50 pounds overweight, if that.

    When it gets to the point where someone is 100 or 200 pounds overweight, there is more going on than just metabolism. They are eating way way way too much, and what they are doing should never be celebrated.

    Young women who celebrate being overweight are delusional. We should not be indulging their fantasies.

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  2. Body Mess Index puts it just right, Hyp. The thing is riddled with suppositions/inaccuracies. Shorter adults like me end up being read as morbidly obese kids – or don’t make it into the height chart at all. Not to mention the impact of this measure on people with disabilities, who couldn’t join in on the fitness craze: losing employment related health insurance, for instance. Talk about unexpected consequences.

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    1. I understand that men from 19-99 across all cultures prefer their babes slim to fat.
      I think that checks out from my experience.
      Women of the Patriarchy have “lost the bubble.”

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      6. History rhyming….yes I think that’s part of it. Women were chunky in my grandmother’s generation, even when young, to judge from pictures. At least the upper class ones. No I reckon I should say the bourgeois ones.
        As for the nudes of Reubens and Renoir, I don’t know what to make of those ample ladies. Welp—if that was an ideal of beauty, maybe it’s coming back. I was just born too soon!

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  5. Hard to understand women getting their hair and nails done weekly while paying no attention to their weight whatsoever.

    It seems that most American women these days would be prime candidates for our “go ugly early” nights back in my Fraternity outings.

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  6. Being from the countryside where everybody was…zaftig, I suffered a lot when I went away to school. Twiggy I was not. And I always had to be getting stern with me at various times, like Spring, after the holidays, etc. I’m glad I did. And your comments, ST, reassure me that it’s worth it. Additionally it is just so much more comfortable not to be fat.
    When I see 20something girls who are what we woulda considered very overweight but are obviously confident and happy with themselves, one thing I feel is envy. THEY get a pass—WE sure didn’t! Being a fat young woman used to make you miserable and lonely. But a girl’s figure just isn’t something anybody seems to care about any more. It is bad taste to even mention that you notice somebody else’s girth.
    Really, under those circumstances, who WOULDNT pork up? It’s like when I was pregnant: such a relief to have people actually approve of my increasing belly size! (With the unfortunate result that I gained about 12 pounds more than I woulda had to, which didn’t melt away like the rest of it once I started breastfeeding. I had to blast that off the old-fashioned way. )
    well, maybe that is the reason: until now, most people haven’t had to worry about accidentally eating too much, their prime concern woulda been getting in enough calories. Whereas we are always surrounded by ready to eat food.
    Still, I read that when JFK launched his fitness push, the concern wasn’t that American kids were too fat, if was that they were too puny. But then back in those days, kids as I recall weren’t allowed to just eat whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Niw that they are, they’re all fat.

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    1. Like lots of things, food can be an addiction-an especially difficult one, because nobody can just give up food cold turkey! As someone who smokes a lot and guzzles coca cola, I really am not in a position to lecture those who are addicted to food. But I won’t celebrate what they are doing.

      For a long time, there have always been people who stuggle with their weight, but this new thing of morbidly obese women being proud of their morbid obesity is very disturbing. They are very much taking an “eff you” attitude towards men, and it will come back to bite them.

      Women who stuggle with thier weight deserve our compassion and understanding, but women who tell us that being morbidly obese is beautiful are delusional, in a very obnoxious way.

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    2. Hyp, I recall being encouraged, growing up – along with my sibs – to be active. Eating was viewed as fuel, not just fun. Desserts at meals were treats for birthdays and holidays. Moderation, not deprivation, was the key. Health was a habit. Maybe that was the focus of the President’s Committee on Physical Fitness and Sports; to get kids moving? And getting guys and gals to energize, tone up, show off those curves for the bikini, or those washboard abs at the beach?

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  7. The current situation brings the idea of ‘comfort food’ to a whole new level. Oh, by the way, the word in Hebrew for “holy” also means “fat”…. Food for thought.

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  8. Well, judging from the commercials on Fox, about half of which seem to be devoted to weight loss programs and products, there are lots of Americans who have not jumped on the big is beautiful bandwagon. Thank God, because saying that being overweight is a good thing is not different from saying that it’s a good thing to be an alcoholic, or a drug addict. It’s one thing to be an addict, something else altogether to demand that others celebrate your addiction.

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    1. Those ads on FNC are increasingly directed at Boomers (elders) aren’t they, JaC? Those who have the “less is more” attitude – both men and women – rather than the younger, self-affirming, validation culture. (Back later.)

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      1. Yes. And, it has to be added, being overwieght leads to fertility problems in both men and women. Something that the leftists who want all Americans to be sterile will never tell you.

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  9. “I think a lot of young American men are, by now, completely feminized.”

    Perhaps, ST, this prepared the way for the explosion in “trans” self-identification we’re seeing now?

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