This story “The Fat Girl” by author Andre Dubus, is a heart wrenching story about the all too familiar subjects of obesity, eating disorders, self-consciousness, and the negative impact in which society and even family and friends can have on people suffering from these issues. It seems the young girl at the center of the story, Louise, was doomed to live a tortured existence from nine years old and forward. Her own mother fortified this fate by stating “In five years you’ll be in high school and if you’re fat the boys won’t like you; they won’t ask you out.”(pg. 158.) This is one of several times when her mother, while she thought she was trying to help, was actually slowly submerging Louise into a horrifying existence. …show more content…
In my opinion, it would damage the relationship of any parent and their child. A more loving stance could have been applied here. Louise’s mom could have said something much more positive like, “Louise, I love you very much, you are my daughter and I want you to be healthy and happy in the future, so I will do everything in my power to help you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight, and whatever the outcome I will always love you.” This is what I would say to my child. Instead, degradation was the method her mom used. Her father took a different approach on Louise’s situation, but none the less did not help the matter. When he said to Louise’s mom “She’s a growing girl”, and that she should have both a potato and dessert. (Pg. 159) This was in reference to the way her mom dictated how she should eat. Her father also had good intentions, with less harmful words used, but of course his method would be completely ineffective in helping his …show more content…
America is fatter now more than ever before. In an article written by Olga Khazan dated September 30, 2015, titled “Why it was easier to be skinny in the 80’s”, she speaks of how Americans of the same age and lifestyle of exercise and eating habits are 10% fatter now than they were in the 80’s.This information was published by the journal, “Obesity Research and Clinical Practice”. If this is true, millions of Americans are suffering the same or very similar battles, as Louise did in this story. I also believe technology of today has made the situation even worse in some ways, since anyone with a smart phone can see hundreds if not thousands of photos of themselves and friends as they’ve changed over the years. Having your life’s journey in the palm of your hands can be awesome, but it can also be psychologically destructive for people with eating disorders and weight problems as they can quickly see the sometimes frightening changes to their body over the decades, years, and even months. The good news is that technology can also be very beneficial to people with these problems as there is a vast amount of information available literally at our fingertips to get help and treatment for these disorders. People do not have to battle their demons alone, as Louise seemed to do in this story. Family and friends are not
23 July 2018. Print. The. Brody, Jane E. “Attacking the Obesity Epidemic by First Figuring Out Its Cause.” New York Times.
In Andre Dubus’ The Fat Girl, Louise is a young adolescent with detrimental eating habits and broken self-esteem. Her lack of self-confidence stems from her atrocious emotional habitat. Louise receives constant criticism from her mother regarding her weight. Her mother states “If you are fat the boys won’t like you.” That kind of ridicule being said by a mother to her 9 year old daughter creates an atmosphere of self-hatred and self-loathing. It is not only her familial environment that contributes so greatly to Louise’s destructive behavior. She has few friends and the one’s she does have agree she needs to change. The society in which she lives also is a contributing factor; the society is laden with stigmas positioned on appearance. That manner of daily ridicule only introverts Louise even more, causing her secretive, binge eating to deteriorate. In research conducted by Ursula Polli-Potts PhD, Links between Psychological Symptoms and Disordered Eating behaviors in Obese Youths, she explains the correlation between psychological, emotional factors and eating disorders in overweight adolescents. Potts states, “The association between binge eating symptoms and eating in response to feelings of distress and sadness with depression/anxiety symptoms corresponds with the results of other studies.” Potts and her colleagues took overweight adolescents and placed them into control and variable groups to ensure correct data. The outcome of their research was that there is a direct correlation with emotional binge eating and psychological factors. Although more extensive research needs to be implemented, Potts and associates were pleased with the results of the case studies.
In the article, “Too ‘Close to the Bone’: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness,” Roberta Seid goes in depth on the emotionally straining and life altering trials women take on to try to portray society’s “ideal” body over time. She delves far into the past, exposing our culture’s ideal body image and the changes it has gone through over time. The article brings to light the struggles of striving to be the perfect woman with the model body. On the other hand, in the article “Rethinking Weight”, author Amanda Spake, details the many differing views of obesity. Spake voices her opinion on the idea that being overweight, and not losing weight, is caused by laziness. “Too Close to the Bone” and “Rethinking Weight” both deliberate about weight issues that are
“I wish to be the thinnest girl at school, or maybe the thinnest 11 year old on the entire planet.” (Lori Gottlieb) Lori is a fun, loving, and intelligent straight A student. In fact, she is so intelligent that even adults consider her to be an outcast. She grows up in Beverly Hills, California with her self-centered mother, distant father, careless brother, and best friend, Chrissy, whom is a parakeet. Through her self-conscious mother, maturing friends, and her friend’s mother’s obsession with dieting, she becomes more aware of her body and physical appearance. Something that once meant nothing to Lori now is her entire world. She started off by just skipping breakfast on her family vacation to Washington, D.C., soon to escalate to one meal a day, and eventually hardly anything other than a few glasses of water. Lori’s friends at school begin to compliment her weight loss and beg for her advice on how she did so. But as Lori once read in one of her many dieting books, her dieting skills are her “little secret”, and she intends on keeping it that way. It is said, “Women continue to follow the standards of the ideal thi...
Described within the vignette is a nineteen year old teenager named Brandy. Similar to girls her age, Brandy has difficulties dealing with her body image and self-esteem. For instance, she experiences hopelessness, isolation, sadness, and anxiety that all contribute to Brandy’s acknowledgement of her physical appearance. She completely overestimates her body size to the point of taking dieting pills then defaulting to purging. During the typical day, the meals are scarce but healthy compared to a bad day full of unhealthy snacking. Lastly, her family predicament is not a supportive one at that. Her mother was obese so she constantly dieted while Brandy’s father illustrated signs of sexual interest although he never physically touched her.
However, these views don’t take social process into consideration. Therefore, they organized a self-help group for bulimics and anorexics known as BANISH in order to determine what societal aspects cause these disorders. The author’s group consisted mostly of college age females which is significant because this is group primarily affected by these disorders. Interestingly, the backgrounds of the women in the BANISH group are strikingly similar in that they are excellent students, good children who have very close parental relationships, from “functional” families - all having been brought up with an emphasis on thin physical appearance. The authors also allude to the fact that in today’s society, slimness is considered attractive and most worthy, while being overweight is viewed as both morally and physically wrong. Society labels heavy people as “lazy, obscene, and unhealthy”. (244) It is noted that when members of the group lost weight, they reported feeling more accepted and
Did you know that 35% of the United States population is considered obese? Also, 66% of the population is considered overweight or more? (Saint Onge 2014) Even more frightening, in 2012 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than one third of children and adolescents in America were overweight or obese (CDC 2014). The media sources used investigates the political, scientific, historical, and cultural reasons behind the childhood obesity epidemic in America. Obesity is a rapid growing epidemic in America and these sources present the facts causing this epidemic. As well as how the children of the American society are being wrongly influenced by the media, especially advertisments. (Greenstreet 2008).
In this Golden age of humanity with technology at the fingertips of mankind and world wide global awareness, it's hard to imagine from the comfort of well lit homes, a large population of the human race lives without fresh water and a nourishing daily meal. In the United States of America it has been said of an over abundance of food, though many of the citizens are forced to consume highly processed ready made meals in order to survive due to poverty. These meals are high in fat, sodium and of course, calorie, leaving the consumer with extra weight. This leads to the image of "'merica" with over weight men and women on scooters. While some of this is actually a result of poor self control or a medical issue, many can attribute it to having a very low income and the substance affordable is akin to garage. "Big" a book by some author, chronicles a young women who is very overweight by the design of her home environment. Her mother is disabled, obese and living off the government. She gets a job, goes to fat camp and learns why she can never loose weight. With all of this in mind, not to mention the idolization of stick thin models and actors, its not hard to figure out what the mind of an adolescent will conclude. Weight equals prosperity; being heavy is unsuccessful and ugly, whist-while bones and tight skin stretched over cranium is attractive and desirable. This of course calls Eating disorders to mind; Anorexia nervosa, Blumina, and EDNOS (eating disorder not diagnosed).
“Fat Land”, a book by Greg Cristler, a health journalist who was formerly considered overweight, explains how America became the fattest people in the world. Before writing this book, Cristler was told that he needed to lose forty pounds and so to do so he enlisted a competent doctor, the prescription weight-loss medication Meridia, jogs in a congenial neighborhood park, a wife who cooked him healthy food, and access to plenty of information. Cristler is quick to add that those weren’t the only factors that led to his weight loss, but money and time were a big part of it. Cristler lost the weight, but he states “the more I contemplated my success, the more I came to see it not as a triumph of the will, but as a triumph of my economic and social
In order to take a sociological viewpoint into account when one examines obesity, first it is important to understand how obesity is recognized in current society. According to today’s news articles and magazines and advertisements and other mass media about health and healthy life, one can easily realize that a great number of people have an eagerness to be healthy. Also, one can assume through these mass media about health that everyone wants to be attractive, and they are even prone to transform their own behaviors to gain attractiveness. This is because most people live a life where social interaction is frequently required and must engage themselves into social interaction every day of their life. Therefore, based on these ideas and proofs throughout this mass media, obesity is regarded as one of the characteristics that is disgraceful and undesirable in society.
In “The Fat Girl” Louise struggled with her weight for all her life even after she became slender. Even when she was a girl her mother
Today obesity is talked about as a major physical health problem. It can cause diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, immobilization, and many other problems. However many articles fail to mention what is one of the most important and most destructive problems. This is the effect of obesity on one’s mental health and wellbeing. Being excessively overweight usually instills in it’s victims a sense of self worthlessness and gives them a very negative self-image. This can lead to an array of problems that affect the person in a way that is much more direct and difficult to deal with than physical problems. While the problem is known to affect men, it strikes women much more often.
While in a lecture hall of about one hundred students – realize that three out of those one hundred students are struggling with either Bulimia or Anorexia-Nervosa, the most dangerous eating disorder in the world. The documentary, “Dying To Be Thin,” first airing in 2000 and created by NOVA, dig deeper into the world of what the concept “having an eating disorder” is truly about. With the ages fifteen to twenty-four being the most vulnerable ages to form an eating disorder, the documentary explores women like “Heidi,” who died at the age of twenty-two, and a woman named “Katy,” who overcame her Anorexia and found new passions in life.
The invasion of technology has long been assumed to contribute to the large number of Americans who are considered overweight and do not get an adequate amount of daily physical activity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who can be classified as obese. More than one-third of adults in the United States and approximately 17% of children and adolescents aged 2-19 years are considered obese ("Obesity and Overweight," 2012). However, the number of unhealthy Americans is not the only thing rising.
Not many young girls have the opportunity to dress up in fancy clothes and flaunt what they can do, but there are other pains that come with such moments that can be uncomfortable and confusing to these children, yet to look good they are compelled to grin and bear it. “Four-year-old Karley stands in her family’s kitchen, dressed in a bikini. Unrealistic expectations of being thin, physically beautiful, and perfect are at the heart of some disordered eating behaviors and body dissatisfaction. Scant research has been conducted to see if former pint-sized beauty pageant participants are more likely to suffer from eating disorders, but a small study published in 2005 showed that former childhood beauty pageant contestants had higher rates of body dissatisfaction.” (Cartwright, Martina)