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grar.
I clicked through ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
viggorlijah's link to The Big Fat Con Story from the Guardian, and discovered such fun facts as these:
According to the public health establishment's current BMI [Body Mass Index] definitions, Brad Pitt, Michael Jordan and Mel Gibson are all "overweight", while Russell Crowe, George Clooney and baseball star Sammy Sosa are all "obese". According to America's fat police, if your BMI is over 25, then you are "overweight",full stop. Note also the radical difference between how our culture defines "fashionable" thinness for men and women. If Jennifer Aniston had the same BMI as her husband Brad Pitt, she would weigh approximately 55lb (nearly four stone) more than she does.
Leading up to this conclusion:
Thinness has a metaphorical significance in America today. Americans - and especially American elites - value thinness for precisely the same reason someone suffering from anorexia nervosa does: because not eating means not giving in to desire. Strangely, what the American elites consider most desirable is a body whose appearance signals a triumph of the will over desire itself. Thus, bodily virtue is not so much indicated by thinness per se, but rather by an achieved thinness. Ultimately the war on fat is both a cause and a consequence of the transformation of the Protestant work ethic into the American diet ethic.
Which, just, yes, yes, yes.
I'm going to go eat some cookies, now.
viggorlijah's link to The Big Fat Con Story from the Guardian, and discovered such fun facts as these:According to the public health establishment's current BMI [Body Mass Index] definitions, Brad Pitt, Michael Jordan and Mel Gibson are all "overweight", while Russell Crowe, George Clooney and baseball star Sammy Sosa are all "obese". According to America's fat police, if your BMI is over 25, then you are "overweight",full stop. Note also the radical difference between how our culture defines "fashionable" thinness for men and women. If Jennifer Aniston had the same BMI as her husband Brad Pitt, she would weigh approximately 55lb (nearly four stone) more than she does.
Leading up to this conclusion:
Thinness has a metaphorical significance in America today. Americans - and especially American elites - value thinness for precisely the same reason someone suffering from anorexia nervosa does: because not eating means not giving in to desire. Strangely, what the American elites consider most desirable is a body whose appearance signals a triumph of the will over desire itself. Thus, bodily virtue is not so much indicated by thinness per se, but rather by an achieved thinness. Ultimately the war on fat is both a cause and a consequence of the transformation of the Protestant work ethic into the American diet ethic.
Which, just, yes, yes, yes.
I'm going to go eat some cookies, now.