Obsession With Weight Unproductive

The morning brainstorming session was intense. About 30 women of all ages discussed plans for a non profit group that helps young women. Lunch was served early, to my relief. I’d sipped too much coffee and was experiencing caffeine shakes and the accompanying bottomless hunger.

The wrapped sandwiches were piled in a basket. I chose a turkey sandwich, slightly larger than half a sandwich, but I was still hungry after I finished. I said to the five women sitting around my table, “I’m getting another sandwich.”

As I unwrapped and ate the second sandwich, an old tape played in my head. It said: “You pig. A second sandwich? You don’t know these women very well. They will think you eat too much, and it’s not like you are super skinny. You should explain to them that you are really hungry today because you drank too much coffee.”

I listened to the tape, this tape of body hate and guilt for the simple and necessary act of nourishing myself. I listened to it, but said nothing to the other women, because now in these situations, a new tape plays. It says: “I have a right to eat when I am hungry, without apology, without explanation.”

Another woman at my table suddenly said, “I need another sandwich, too.” The afternoon session then began. I felt alive, alert, fueled. We brainstormed in smaller groups about programs the organization might pursue. One group suggested a workshop on body image. “Girls get so much pressure from the media to be thin,” the women said.

I volunteered to help plan the workshop, but I warned the woman sitting next to me, the only other woman who had eaten a second sandwich, that my message might be too radical. I told her I don’t believe that the media is to blame for our thinness obsession. Trying to please boys and men isn’t the problem, either. It’s women, I said. We sabotage ourselves and each other. We apologize for nourishing ourselves. We approach food as if it’s a sin. We say “I’m being bad” when we order dessert. Women still place themselves on ridiculous diets and take dangerous drugs.

We compliment other women when they’ve lost weight. We perpetuate “fat-thin” family dynamics where weight losses and weight gains are noted and judged at family gatherings.

We women have lost the ability to eat when hungry and eat for fuel. We have accepted all this obsessive talk about body and weight and food as normal, and yet that very talk might be causing the ambivalence we have about food and weight in our culture.

I told the woman we all need to shut up about weight gains and weight losses. We need to eat for pleasure when we feel like it. And we need to nourish ourselves without calling attention to the fact. I explained that was why I ate the second sandwich.

The woman looked at me with a startled expression. She said she was still hungry, too, but never would have gotten another sandwich except that I did.

This woman is a vibrant community leader, a woman who has received honors for her work and yet her voice grew very small as she told me her story.

“I was a chubby child,” she whispered, “and my mom and I stopped for lunch after school shopping one day. Mom said, ‘You can have dessert or you can have lunch, but you can’t have both.’ I wanted both.”

The two of us then lamented the lost energy we spent worrying about weight and food all our lives. My journals, which I have kept since age 13, are filled with body and diet references. In junior high, many of my friends and I were on a diet consisting of eggs, meat, cottage cheese and water. None of us even needed to lose weight.

A friend of mine remembers her exact weight on significant days of her life. Wedding day, 122. First child, 150. Second child, 200. I know she is not alone.

My solution seems radical, impossible. And I know women will argue that being overweight is unhealthy. I will argue that this obsession is a different issue. And our society’s craziness about weight will only end when we women discontinue the dialogue.

We have great things to do in the world, women. Let’s write poetry and novels, compose musical scores, run for public office, nurture our children, volunteer in the community.

Eat healthy, yes. Exercise, yes. But beyond that, get over it. If you are hungry, eat the second sandwich. Perhaps it’s that simple. It’s worth a try.

, DataTimes MEMO: Rebecca Nappi is an interactive editor at The Spokesman-Review. Contact her at 459-5496 or rebeccan@spokesman.com

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rebecca Nappi The Spokesman-Review