On Weight Equality

Today I'd like to talk about weight equality.

There's that commercial for the "Special K Challenge," the one where women "weigh" themselves in Times Square and the scale shows what someone can "gain" from losing weight. You know the one.

When the participating women step on the scale, in the bar where the numbers would usually be appear instead words such as "Confidence," "Style," "Satisfaction," "Joy," "Courage," and other positive incentives for weight loss. The enormous problem staring America in this face right now is this: the assumption that people who don't weigh a certain amount can't have those things. Instead of telling our sisters and daughters that they're not good enough - that they are inherently deficient - because they're "overweight," we should be teaching them to say, "The hell with all of you who think there's something wrong with me! I'm fabulous the way I am."*

The only people who are "wrong" in this "conversation" about weight are those who look down on and put down others over whom they unjustly feel superior. I put "conversation" in quotes because it is less a conversation about and more a war on those of us who do not, for whatever reason, conform to society's idea of what a person should look like.

But this is about even more than body image; it's also a manifestation of a disease plaguing human society for centuries: the notion that a certain, elite group of people has the right to tell another group of people what to do with their bodies. This applies to women especially, but also to men. Women "should" be svelte and graceful and maybe a little muscular; men "should" be muscular and trim. There is, however, more pressure on women than on men to conform and perform because women have been taught for generations that the main thing in life is to be thought attractive by men.

While the ideal body image of women and men has changed over time, the false authority of the "acceptable" to tell the "unacceptable" that they are "unacceptable" has remained the same. And throughout history, it has been the economically elite who get to dictate what is "acceptable:" during medieval and Renaissance times, when the ideal of womanhood was what we would now call "slightly overweight," it was the economically elite who had access to the most food. Now, when the womanly ideal is just the opposite, it is the economically elite who have access to fitness equipment and, more importantly, to the foods most conducive to thinness. 

It is time for a radical shift in weight ideology. It is time for women to stop feeling less than "what they should be" - less than human - and to stop hating themselves for who they are not and begin loving themselves for who they are. This "dialogue" must not be allowed to endure. And that shift starts with each of us.

*Note: I do not intend this statement to apply to mental or behavioral health; but that's a whole different discussion.

These are the two links I used for the Special K words, plus my own memory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOhtZF9E1Og
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uY7tE60PZc