The Cult of Thinness is a book by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. Her credentials are top notch; she is both a professor of sociology at Boston College and a woman who was asked to investigate why so many college-aged females were brought in to the college health center for eating disorders. Through intense research, personal interviews, and her own brilliant insights, Professor Hesse-Biber wound up writing a series of books on women's weight issues, books which delve into deeper topics such as women's rights and roles in American society.
As a Chicana (Chicana=Mexican female born in the US), one might think I would have some insulation to the peer pressures to be thin that plagues so many Caucasian females. However, I was raised in California with copies of Cosmo, Vogue, and 17 magazine just like everyone else and the effects were on par as my Caucasian counter-parts. No, I couldn't ever be pale-skinned and blonde, but being thin was the one thing I could be. Wanting to fit in with my classmates, who were predominately Caucasian, I picked at my food, dieted whenever I didn't fit into size 5 anymore in order to get back to size 5, and I never went over 115 until my mid-20's
I was thoughtlessly thin until around age 23 or 24 when Zyprexa, the anti-psychotic drug (I became schizo-affective in my 20's), cause me to gain upwards of 60-70 pounds. This isn't unheard of as one of my psychiatrists commented that he'd had a patient who'd rapidly gained 100 pounds as soon as he was put on Zyprexa. As soon as I was 25, when most people are graduating from college, getting real jobs, and maybe even getting married, my life dissolved into one of regimented pill-taking, intense psychological scrutiny, the inability to complete college due to psychiatric disability, and the part I dreaded most: living as a fat person. If society had treated me differently I wouldn't have minded the fat as much as I did, but I was publicly ridiculed for being 180 pounds on a 5' 1" -5'2" build.
At age 26 (or 25, I forget) I fasted myself back to 135 pounds. Nowhere near my skinniest weight, I was miserably. Shortly thereafter, the effects of an untreated metal illness kicked in and I was soon being poked, prodded, and scrutinized inside a psychiatric hospital where the familiar faces of the mental health staff were shocked to see how much weight I'd lost. I couldn't understand why they were so adamant that I eat 3 meals a day: couldn't they see that the weight gain was worse than the mental illness? No, they did not see that the weight gain was worse and instead they dutifully forced me to drink milk and eat at least half of all my meals. Combined with my new medications and the accompanying side effects, I gained all the weight back, plus about 10 pounds.
Then, I yo-yo'd from a size 14 to a size 16, back to a size 14, and back to a size 16 before I got my life together and was admitted to the University.
Happy ending, right? Ex-EDNOS female now a size 14 (162-164 pounds), getting exercise, going to University, taking proper medication for mental illness, all goes well, right?
If that were true I probably wouldn't gravitate towards books on self-image. For that matter, I wouldn't be writing graphic tales of my mental illness and personal life experiences on the internet for anybody to read!
Reading The Cult of Thinness made me realize how zany it was to believe that being fat was worse than being insane. The sad thing is, according to the book, this belief is perfectly normal in our society. Dieting is like a rite of passage. Mexicans have quinceneras, where 15 year olds dress up like brides and take Catholic vows, Americans have weigh-ins, not to see if you're healthy or not, but to determine just how much weight you must lose to be acceptable to society.
I say all this like I'm going to jump off the band-wagon, but shirking this sort of social media brainwashing isn't that easy. If anything, I have to re-take my vow of dieting. I feel like I got married to this idea of thinness at age 13, cheated on Thin by getting fat in my mid-twenties, and am only now making amends by eating a zucchini for lunch. Just like in the Catholic faith, there is no divorce once you join the Cult of Thinness.
To those of you who are ready to get a divorce, read this book! It has amazing insights into how women focus on their appearance to avoid focusing on glass ceilings, wage discrimination, war, and other horrors of modern life.
The Cult of Thinness Book for sale on amazon dot com
As a Chicana (Chicana=Mexican female born in the US), one might think I would have some insulation to the peer pressures to be thin that plagues so many Caucasian females. However, I was raised in California with copies of Cosmo, Vogue, and 17 magazine just like everyone else and the effects were on par as my Caucasian counter-parts. No, I couldn't ever be pale-skinned and blonde, but being thin was the one thing I could be. Wanting to fit in with my classmates, who were predominately Caucasian, I picked at my food, dieted whenever I didn't fit into size 5 anymore in order to get back to size 5, and I never went over 115 until my mid-20's
I was thoughtlessly thin until around age 23 or 24 when Zyprexa, the anti-psychotic drug (I became schizo-affective in my 20's), cause me to gain upwards of 60-70 pounds. This isn't unheard of as one of my psychiatrists commented that he'd had a patient who'd rapidly gained 100 pounds as soon as he was put on Zyprexa. As soon as I was 25, when most people are graduating from college, getting real jobs, and maybe even getting married, my life dissolved into one of regimented pill-taking, intense psychological scrutiny, the inability to complete college due to psychiatric disability, and the part I dreaded most: living as a fat person. If society had treated me differently I wouldn't have minded the fat as much as I did, but I was publicly ridiculed for being 180 pounds on a 5' 1" -5'2" build.
At age 26 (or 25, I forget) I fasted myself back to 135 pounds. Nowhere near my skinniest weight, I was miserably. Shortly thereafter, the effects of an untreated metal illness kicked in and I was soon being poked, prodded, and scrutinized inside a psychiatric hospital where the familiar faces of the mental health staff were shocked to see how much weight I'd lost. I couldn't understand why they were so adamant that I eat 3 meals a day: couldn't they see that the weight gain was worse than the mental illness? No, they did not see that the weight gain was worse and instead they dutifully forced me to drink milk and eat at least half of all my meals. Combined with my new medications and the accompanying side effects, I gained all the weight back, plus about 10 pounds.
Then, I yo-yo'd from a size 14 to a size 16, back to a size 14, and back to a size 16 before I got my life together and was admitted to the University.
Happy ending, right? Ex-EDNOS female now a size 14 (162-164 pounds), getting exercise, going to University, taking proper medication for mental illness, all goes well, right?
If that were true I probably wouldn't gravitate towards books on self-image. For that matter, I wouldn't be writing graphic tales of my mental illness and personal life experiences on the internet for anybody to read!
Reading The Cult of Thinness made me realize how zany it was to believe that being fat was worse than being insane. The sad thing is, according to the book, this belief is perfectly normal in our society. Dieting is like a rite of passage. Mexicans have quinceneras, where 15 year olds dress up like brides and take Catholic vows, Americans have weigh-ins, not to see if you're healthy or not, but to determine just how much weight you must lose to be acceptable to society.
I say all this like I'm going to jump off the band-wagon, but shirking this sort of social media brainwashing isn't that easy. If anything, I have to re-take my vow of dieting. I feel like I got married to this idea of thinness at age 13, cheated on Thin by getting fat in my mid-twenties, and am only now making amends by eating a zucchini for lunch. Just like in the Catholic faith, there is no divorce once you join the Cult of Thinness.
To those of you who are ready to get a divorce, read this book! It has amazing insights into how women focus on their appearance to avoid focusing on glass ceilings, wage discrimination, war, and other horrors of modern life.
The Cult of Thinness Book for sale on amazon dot com
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