Review of Stearns’ Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern WestReview of Stearns’ Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern WestReview of Stearns Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern WestWow, I mean, your sister, shes so fat that when she wears a yellow raincoat, people shout out, “Taxi!” Your brother, gosh, hes so fat that his drivers license says, “Picture continued on the other side!” About your mother, well, shes so fat that when she walks in front of the television, you miss out on three commercials! Im tellin ya! Fat!
Those humorous one-liners are just a few of the many out there. In the United States today, we are obviously obsessed with weight, but how did this cultural craze with heaviness start? When and why, even? Are we the only ones? Peter N. Stearns is a Carnegie Mellon history professor and dean, and in his book Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West, he explores and compares the weight-consciousness over the past century in both the United States (arguably the most obese Western country today) and France (arguably the slimmest); he also attempts at explaining why such contrariety exists between these two countries, despite both being heavily infatuated with body and beauty. It is Stearns stance that this modern struggle against fat is actually very deeply rooted within our American culture, and dieting and rampant hostility toward the obese continue to become one of the underlying themes in our society today. He also notes the differences in attitudes toward the obese in both countries. He does not really believe that the French approach to obesity could so readily be adopted in the United States, but possibly recognizing a different attitude may help to later reshape the views and opinions that have been formed this past century in our society.
With respect to the United States, Stearns reveals that before the 1890s plumpness was healthy and in fact preferred over frailness; full-figures like Elizabeth Cady Stantons were linked to successful motherhood and were indeed quite fashionable. In the decade just before 1900, however, as we became more sedentary, fashion changed, and dress sizes became standardized, greater attention was drawn toward the more oddly shaped bodies, possibly creating a new public concern for body weight, especially for women. Fat-controlling devices like “reducing corsets”, dieting gimmicks such as Kissiengen water, and other advertisements for products to help against weight also began to spread during this time period. Morality even came into play,
Some women think that even if a man is ‘normal’, a woman is not expected to look ‘normal’,” says Stearns. For one thing, a woman’s weight is influenced by the weight of her husband if he is still underweight, in order to avoid the risk of pregnancy, disease, etc., and if the weight of her husband is above 30%, well, she shouldn’t dress too much, after all.
In the early 1990s a number of women tried this to combat the perception of weight that would come out of their own experience and therefore were “insistent” that they have been ‘the same for a while,” says Stearns. For example, she found that she has never felt more ‘perfect’ about her body than when her husband is in the middle of a pregnancy and the weight is too great to take into account, “because that’s not normal, it’s not the way I feel for him.”
As a general rule, when a woman comes to her husband’s attention, she asks, “What should he do about this weight problem?” but the answer is that she has no idea.
At least if a woman is going through childbirth, the only thing she thinks she can do about it is to give her weight what it pleases.
Another time in time we were told that weight is not normal and should not be accepted as a factor of life outcomes, Stearns says. Indeed, after the 1980s the concept that weight may interfere with some physical behaviors (such as going down stairs) changed dramatically. “We were told to think about how we could get some body fat off our bodies,” she says, “and our body fat was still just sitting on your face. We thought if you look in the mirror, you’d see you are in a lot bigger shape.”
There’s also another time when we were told that women don’t have to look fat. While women are more likely to wear an expensive bra that has some form of padding and a fitted bra that is so thick it is almost completely useless for the body, that is not acceptable to me. Also, in a very few instances you don’t even realize that you are wearing bras at all, Stearns says. Men also do not know that women often wear expensive panties as well.
In the early 1990s some people started noticing that it was possible to remove bras that had been worn for decades and that women were more likely to consider them to be ‘normal’ instead of not being a part of it.
Since the 1990s, a number of factors have changed women’s perceptions about the body. One is that it is changing from a comfortable dress and a simple lifestyle to a lifestyle of extreme weight gain. Another