Category Archives: Bodies

Healthy Choice™ and healthy changes

I’ve recently taken note of a new ad campaign by Healthy Choice stating, “Don’t diet. Live healthy.” Turns out the campaign isn’t actually that new since the New York Times covered it in September, 2012, but since I didn’t have television until recently, it’s new for me.

I liked this ad as a wellness educator and body image researcher, and as a former dieter and purchaser of SmartOnes Weight-Watchers-friendly frozen dinners, it made me laugh.

Yes, you heard right. I am a former dieter. At the end of 2012, after yet another frustrating year of failed attempts at dieting and weight loss, I made a serious decision. I decided to stop dieting, forever. I cancelled my Weight Watchers Online subscription for what will be the last and final time. It all started last year when I started researching body image and “fat talk” for my dissertation-equivalent Health Communication project. Conducting that research often and unintentionally became “mesearch,” forcing me to examine my own feelings and behaviors with the intensity of a laser beam. It was painful and I did not like what I found.

I learned that I was one of the 90% of students with body image concerns. I learned that body image disturbance, an umbrella term for body image dissatisfaction and distortion (believing you are bigger than you really are), is associated with depression and low self-esteem. I learned that I was one of the majority of women who engaged in “fat talk” — a term coined in 1994 to describe the specific way girls and women talk to each other about the size and shape of their bodies or diet and exercise regimens, typically in a negative or self-disparaging manner. “I’m so fat.” “You’re not fat! If you’re fat, what does that make me?”

After leaning that fat talk is associated with greater body image disturbance and thin-ideal internalization (the idea that skinny=pretty) and coming to understand the way it normalizes and reinforces body image concerns at the societal level, I started paying attention. It was staggering to realize how many of my conversations with other women were about dieting, exercise routines, the clothes we “could” or “couldn’t” wear, how much weight we wanted to lose, the reasons why we hadn’t been able to “commit” to our weight loss plans. I never realized how often I apologized for eating (“I’m sorry but I’m getting a big burrito tonight”) or made excuses for eating (“I ate like nothing all day today so I’m going to get fries”).

I started to learn more about dieting. I began to realize that all dieting is bad. Yes, ALL dieting is bad. Even if you really need to lose weight for medical reasons like heart disease or diabetes, dieting only helps in the short term. Dieting offers nothing that might help you stick to your diet. Dieting doesn’t help once you’ve reached your goal weight. Cleanses and fasts are even more stupid than diets. They’re like douching–completely unnecessary when you’re healthy, and potentially harmful when you’re not.

I have come to believe that dieting is unhealthy. Slowly but surely, I came round to the philosophy behind Health At Every Size. Believe me, it took a while.

I am overweight but not horribly so. I have been this way for most of my life. I have wanted to lose weight ever since I was 10 years old. That’s a long time to want something. So, making the decision to stop dieting and pursue health rather than weight loss is nothing short of worldview-shattering. A complete about face. A completely new paradigm positioned 180 degrees from my former belief system.

This kind of conversion doesn’t happen easily or quickly. I’ve sat and mulled and struggled with these feelings and developing beliefs for a year or two now. Even today I’m still often shocked by how radical they sound to my own ears. Deciding to stop dieting has been one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done, and I’ve just barely gotten started.

I created a plan for myself. Instead of dieting, I would:

  1. Get active for the right reasons. Find and embrace the pleasure in physical activity. Exercise because it feels good or to meet goals other than weight loss (do 30 push ups, hike that mountain, etc.).
  2. Learn to cook and eat take-out and prepared food less often
  3. Practice mindful eating, listen to my hunger signals, etc
  4. Practice good sleep hygiene (lack of sleep affects the hormones that regulate your appetite and feelings of satisfaction after eating, not to mention the myriad other physical and mental effects)
  5. Cut out “fat talk” entirely; if others around me are doing it I will not participate or change the subject

Truthfully, I started on number five about a year before I made the rest of my plan to stop dieting. Cutting out fat talk turned out be easier than I thought. At first it felt awkward and I didn’t know how how to act or react when friends and coworkers launched into the usual self-put downs and mutual reassurance tango. It turns out that simply not participating or changing the subject works pretty darn well. In a couple of instances, I talked with some close friends about it and my decision to stop. They were receptive and overtime less and less fat talk creeped into our conversations. Overall, I think I am happier for it. Now when I hear fat talk I’m struck by how annoying and insipid it is, and grateful that it’s no longer a part of my social repertoire  It’s been harder, of course, to silence the fat talk that goes on inside my own head, but hey. One step at a time.

This January, I  started the rest of the plan. The first week of diet-free living felt amazing. It was FREEDOM. I felt great to eat something “normal” (non-diet food) and even better to allow myself to NOT feel guilty afterwards. The elation didn’t last long, though, as my insecurities and doubts bounced back with a vengeance. They’re still with me today, louder than ever:

I doubt that I will be able to make any real measurable changes in my weight or my health without dieting. I doubt I will be able to stick to my 5 point plan. I doubt I will be able to be happy if I stay at my current weight, even if I’m super healthy and fit.

I doubt everything regularly, but I’m so committed to building sustainable, healthy habits that will last for the rest of my life that I can’t give up.

It turns out that quitting dieting is the easiest part of making this lifestyle change. A harder part is actually developing and maintaining my new, healthier, lifestyle and the hardest part of all is silencing the doubts and insecurities that make me want to give up or give in to the seeming futility of it all.

I appreciate the message behind Healthy Choice’s latest ad campaign: “Don’t diet. Live Healthy.” I believe it to be a healing message for both individuals and our sick culture. Of course, if it were easy to “live healthy” in America today we wouldn’t have turned to dieting in the first place. And as great as Healthy Choice products are (that is, marginally better than SmartOnes and other diet food), frozen dinners are not the answer.

One big reason I don’t miss the DELi*As catalog

Today I spotted a Buzzfeed article called 19 Reasons Why You Miss Getting the DELiA*s Catalog, and was instantly reminded of the one BIG reason I definitely DO NOT miss the DELiA*s catalog. The DELiA*s catalog was how I learned to hate my body.

Sure, DELiA*S wasn’t the only publication out there with images of thin teenage girl models. But I never had Seventeen or Cosmo magazines, so largely and for the most part, the DELiA*s catalog was the only collection of images of skinny girls I could take up to my room and stare at for hours, alone, wishing I was thin. That was my DELiA*s ritual — a deep, dark secret known only to me, my teenage self, and I. Until now, anyway.

Once a month or so, I’d spot the DELiA*s catalog in the pile of mail on the counter, grab it, and go up to my bedroom. I’d pour over each page, looking not at the clothes but the girls. I took in every detail, every airbrushed line. (Of course, at the time I didn’t realize they were airbrushed.) I even cut out a few of my favorites — girls with hair, outfits, and bodies I wanted — and pasted them into my journal.

I would strip to my underwear and look at myself in a full length mirror, strategically covering the parts of my body that weren’t “right” — the love handles, the belly, etc., and imagine myself without them. I used to fantasize about a magic knife that could simply slice off the extra that didn’t belong. I would visualize slicing, slicing, slicing, in long, fluid motions — literally carving my body into the shape I thought it should have been — the shape of the girls in the DELiA*s catalog.

Sick, right? Describing this behavior is weird and when I write it down, it sounds completely pathological. It’s horrifying to remember this part of my past. But if I were a betting woman, I’d bet that a lot of my peers were doing similar things.

I’ve come a long way since then, of course. Despite my perpetual and (unfortunately) NORMAL struggle with body image, I managed to develop a healthy self-confidence about the way I look. There are a lot of things I’ve always loved, and some that I’ve learned to love, about my body. And my feminist awakening, graduate research on body image, and introduction to Health At Every Size certainly made a huge difference in how I feel about my own body image journey.

So yes. I didn’t share this embarrassing secret so that people would pity me, nor did I share it to brag about how far I’ve come since then. I share this embarrassing secret because the Buzzfeed article about the DELiA*s catalog made me realize how glaringly absent my experience was from this ever-so-nostalgic account of what the DELiA*s catalog meant to girls who came of age in the 90s.

I can’t help but imagine how different my experience would have been if DELiA*s models exhibited the varied and beautiful range of body diversity in our world. What if some of those teen models looked like me? (What if the clothes they were selling actually fit me?)

I just read an amazing piece on XOJane about Lena Dunham’s audacity in showing her own, “imperfect,” body on screen — and how much people seem to really hate the fact that she’s doing it. It says:

For all our talk about wanting to see more so-called “real women” in the media we consume — a problematic category itself, as all women are “real,” no matter how near or far they might be to the female beauty ideal — we are awfully quick to condemn a woman who is showing us reality in a very plainspoken, unvarnished way.

The aghast controversy evoked by Dunham’s nudity shows us just how much of this “real women” talk is lip service, and how very far we have to go before we can socially deal with the fact that different bodies exist. Truth is, we’d all probably be a lot less neurotic about our own bodies if we could get used to seeing and accepting the natural variety in other people’s — without shame, and giving no fucks.

So maybe I, too, would look back with loving nostalgia on the DELiA*s catalog if it showcased a cohort of teen models who reflected the wide and diverse reality of what girls look like, and if those girls modeled not only quirky 90s fashion, but also how to not give any fucks about what other people think about their bodies.

Now, that would be a catalog to reminisce about.

Positive body image won’t make you fat: The case for body positive health promotion

I’m currently designing a social marketing campaign to improve body image among undergraduate women at a major university. On three different occasions, my classmates—a cohort of public health, nutrition, and health communication students in leading graduate programs—expressed concerns about my project, asking “Aren’t you worried that you’re promoting obesity?”

There seems to be a dangerous misconception in the public health community that the goals of positive body image promotion and obesity prevention are at odds. That somehow, by helping people feel better about their bodies, we will inadvertently “encourage” obesity.

But body image promotion isn’t about glorifying fatness, just like obesity prevention isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about the glorification of thinness. More accurately, body image and weight management are interconnected elements of holistic mind-body approach to health and ultimately, the public health community has more to gain by thinking of them as complementary rather than competing interests.

Obesity prevention efforts may appear to benefit from a status quo that stigmatizes fatness and worships thinness, but the evidence just doesn’t support it. We live in a culture that idolizes underweight supermodels and relegates fat actors to fart and food jokes, and yet none of it has done anything to make people healthier.

A lot of people worry—myself included—that without body dissatisfaction, we would lose our motivation to slim down. It’s an easy trap to fall into because, for many of us, negative thoughts are the only motivation to lose weight we’ve ever known. It’s scary to imagine life without our internal “fat talk”; it takes work to imagine using positive feelings as a source of motivation.

But contrary to popular belief, shame is not a good motivator. In addition to reinforcing an impossible, demoralizing standard of beauty, using fat shame as motivation will always backfire. Fear, shame, and self-disgust may prompt people to change their habits temporarily, but once they start to feel better and the bad feelings dissipate, they are bound return to old habits. Motivation-by-fat-shame doesn’t create a culture of health; it creates a culture of yo-yo dieting and January gym memberships abandoned by March.

Not only does fat shaming fail to help people get healthy, it actively hurts people, leaving maelstrom of negative body image, low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders, and other pathological eating and exercise behaviors in its wake. This is no small matter, as these conditions cause pain and suffering for millions of men and women, of all ages, all over the country and the world.

Obesity prevention efforts that reinforce the thin-ideal status quo are doomed to perpetuate a broken system where body image dissatisfaction is normative, obesity rates keep rising, and the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry capitalizes on both. But obesity prevention efforts that embrace positive body image promotion, on the other hand, have a chance to break the cycle.

Meaningful body image promotion encourages women to reject the tyrannical and reductive thin-ideal portrayed in the media, and to understand that pursuing a healthy lifestyle for its own sake is much more rewarding than obsessing about dieting and weight loss. After all, “thin” doesn’t translate to “healthy.”

For example, the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement is based on the understanding that weight does not determine health, and that exercise and good nutrition are beneficial, whether or not they result in weight loss. Instead of using BMI, HAES advocates using more specific measures, like blood pressure and cholesterol, to determine one’s health status.

Instead of relying on body dissatisfaction, HAES teaches us to draw motivation from positive sources, like the desire to explore new hobbies (yoga, archery, kickball), to achieve new goals (run a 5k, learn to surf), or to enjoy the flavor and feeling you get from nourishing your body with healthy foods. This is the kind of lifestyle change that keeps people engaged and motivated for the long haul, and it will keep us healthier, whether or not we’re overweight. Also, it’s fair to say that by letting go of the “impossible dream” of one day looking like the (photoshopped) people on the cover of magazines and by learning to accept and love our bodies as they are, we’ll be happier too.

This type of holistic approach—incorporating positive body image, mental health, physical activity, and good nutrition—is actually sustainable because it promotes an understanding of “health” as a lifelong process rather than a set of restrictions or punishments to be lifted once you reach that magic number on the scale.

We know that there are no health benefits to negative body image. So why would we limit the scope of obesity prevention to exclude the potential benefits of positive body image?

Encouraging positive body image does not “promote” obesity. Rather, it helps people let go of the shame, fear, and unsustainable weight loss behaviors that are keeping them trapped in a state of bad health.

4chan “Would Not Bang” meme is a body-snarking satire fail

We all have things about our bodies we don’t like. They’re just little things like non-symetrical eyebrows, a tiny gap in our teeth, a slightly-too-wide nose, etc. On our better days, we can remember that these little quirks are what make us special and unique and beautiful. And besides, we tell ourselves, no one else is paying enough attention to notice them anyway. Right? Wrong, according to an unfortunate new 4chan meme that confirms all your worst suspicions about just how harshly people are judging your appearance.

From Slacktory:

There’s this running joke on the internet about an acne-scarred C.H.U.D. (or Butthurt Dweller) finding fault with any and all images of women in order to alleviate the self-hatred and loneliness that goes along with being a neckbearded netizen — “I can’t find a decent woman, not because I’m just awful in every way, but because all the women in my town have such big foreheads and stubby toes. Disgusting!”

This mindset has borne a new meme, “2/10 Would Not Bang,” in which 4chan users post images of flawless women and compete against each other to find fault in increasingly creative ways, and then dismiss them with the Comic Book Guy-channeling verdict: 2/10, Would Not Bang.

Image

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According to Slacktory and the 4chan-ers themselves, this is not men judging women harshly — it’s satire of men judging women harshly. GET IT? Good.

I can see hints of that satire in some of these images. For example, criticism’s like “half of face too bright,” “forehead cut off,” and “being outside on a cloudy day,” are kindof funny because they mock  the judging by judging things that are actually more about the photo composition or staging of the image than the woman herself. Unfortunately, the majority of the criticisms miss the satire mark by a longshot.

“big Jew nose”***
“man shoulders”
“lips too large”
“tan lines”
“too thin”
“big ears”
“jaw too angular”

These are all real things that women (and others) actually fret about. These are things that women are judged by in the harshest and most misogynistic of circles. “Would Not Bang” is the meme version of real-life sorority hazing where female pledges strip to their underwear and let frat boys highlight their flaws in red Sharpie.

I just don’t see any humor in that at all.

***Oh, and did I mention this meme is an excuse for racial bigotry?

(h/t to Tali for the link)

“Shame and Blame: Facing the Unintended Consequences of Health Messaging” on Huffpost

Today my op-ed on shame and blame in health campaigns was published on the Huffington Post. Check it out!

Shame and Blame: Facing the Unintended Consequences of Health Messaging

A solemn black and white poster shows a picture of an obese girl with copy that reads: “Warning: It’s hard to be a little girl if you’re not.” Another poster displays a woman’s naked legs with her panties around her ankles and the word: “She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t say no.” The first is part of the Georgia “Strong 4 Life” campaign to prevent childhood obesity; the other is part of the Pennsylvania “Control Tonight” campaign to reduce excessive alcohol consumption. Though the campaigns are unrelated, they have one thing in common: disregard for the effects of shame and blame — the frequent unintended consequences of health campaigns.

The promotion of health and social welfare is one of those noble causes that attracts people who want to “do good.” Physicians are taught to “First, do no harm,” but health communication professionals take for granted that their work is “doing good” without considering that it might cause unintentional harm. For example, stigmatizing sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention messages may make people with STIs too embarrassed to seek treatment or too ashamed to tell their sexual partners. Not only can health promotion messages lead to such negative health outcomes, they can also promote destructive social values, like fat stigma and rape culture.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

Women have a right to dress slutty on Halloween, and to feel safe doing It

Would that there were more occasions to wear catsuits!!!

This is a post I wish I didn’t have to write. But the LA Times found this op-ed by Charlotte Allen somehow credible enough to publish, and so I have to. This is a post in defense of dressing slutty on Halloween. It is a post arguing that dressing slutty, for Halloween or any other occasion, is not an invitation for rape. This is an argument that really shouldn’t have to be made in 2011, but sadly, here we are.

Charlotte Allen juxtaposed dressing slutty with Halloween and the Slutwalk movement. She argues that feminists (all feminists – ’cause we’re all the same, apparently) are hypocrites because we rally against slutty Halloween costumes, yet bare all at our Slutwalks. Then she goes on to say that feminists are in denial of the “reality” that visual stimuli somehow makes men’s brains tell them to rape, and that rape is linked to hotness, or youngess, or something. Basically she’s saying that dressing slutty invites rape and women should know better and if it happens, it’s probably your fault for being an idiot feminist in denial.

(Did I just put words in Allen’s mouth? Sorry, I couldn’t help it. As my friend Simone said, “I want to punch this op-ed in the face!” Read it for yourself if you want to check the accuracy of my interpretation, but fair warning, it may make you feel stabby.)

Here are some points that Allen missed about feminists, Slutwalks, and sexy Halloween costumes:

1. Not all feminists feel the same way about dressing slutty on Halloween or Slutwalks. Not all feminists support Slutwalks.

2. Feminism is – in the most basic terms – about being free to make choices. Feminists write angrily about sexy or offensive Halloween costumes for women not because they don’t believe women should ever dress sexy or slutty on Halloween, but because the proliferation of sexy costumes is so great and so overwhelming that it’s difficult to find something that isn’t a sexy version of a regular costume. There are very few CHOICES for women outside the sexy/slutty genre. Being angry that 99% of costumes offered for women (and even young girls!) are “sexy-something” costumes is not only rational, but not the same thing at all as telling women they shouldn’t dress slutty on Halloween.

3. When feminists share ideas for non-sexy Halloween costumes, they aren’t (or shouldn’t be) trying to encourage women to “cover up” or shame women who choose to dress slutty; they are simply helping women who choose not to dress slutty come up with some ideas because non-sexy ladies costumes are few and far between.

Here are some points that Allen really doesn’t understand about feminism, rape culture, and a woman’s right to dress slutty on Halloween:

1. Allen wrote, of Slutwalks, “Women get another chance besides Halloween to dress up like prostitutes!” Well, yeah! I would argue that women don’t have enough opportunities to dress up as prostitutes, or anything else. For those of us who aren’t actors or burlesque dancers or LARPers, socially acceptable opportunities to dress up – in ANY costume – are rare. I don’t think I need to hash this out, but for many, dressing up like a slut is FUN. People who enjoy dressing slutty do it because it makes them feel sexy. For most, Halloween is a once-a-year chance to channel our inner sex kitten. Dressing slutty is a choice that women should be empowered to make for themselves. It would be anti-feminist to suggest otherwise, or shame a woman for dressing in a way that makes her feel good.

2. Dressing slutty is not an invitation to rape. Ever. Seriously. Period. Rapists will rape no matter whatever the fuck their victims are wearing. Dressing conservatively will not protect anybody from rape. Suggesting that men are susceptible to “visual stimuli” and therefore unable to control themselves around sexy-dressed ladies is supremely offensive to men.

3. In a perfect world, women should be able to feel safe wearing a sexy costume. They also have the right to feel safe walking down the street bundled up in a winter coat but the reality is that often, they aren’t safe. Not because they’re wearing the wrong thing or “sending mixed signals” or whatever the fuck, but because of op-eds like Allen’s, that continue to place the blame, the shame, and the responsibility on women instead of working to prosecute rapists and educate would-be-rapists.

What Allen truly misses about feminist responses to dressing slutty is this:

We are about breaking down rape culture, not breaking down women who want to wear catsuits on Halloween.

Well intentioned Facebook meme misses the point

A ‎15 year old girl holds hands with her 1 year old son. People call her a slut. No-one knows she was raped at 13. People call a girl fat. No-one knows she has a serious disease which causes her to be over weight. People call an old man ugly. No-one knows he had a serious injury to his face while fighting for our country in the war. Re post this if you are against bullying and stereotyping. 95% of you won’t

I keep seeing this Facebook status meme pop up from time to time, and every time, it makes me angry. Sure, I’m against bullying and stereotyping (is anyone really pro bullying and stereotyping?) but I don’t at all agree with the message here.

Sure, it’s important not to assume that all teen mothers became mothers by choice. It’s important not to assume that every teen mother became pregnant through consensual sex or irresponsible behavior. Yes, it’s important to understand and recognize that some pregnancies are the result of rapes, and that some young women are forced to carry their babies to term because of shitty barriers to contraception, Plan B, and abortion access. Maybe she was forced to carry the baby to term because of parental notification laws, or the crowds of anti-Choice protesters outside her local Planned Parenthood, or even simply because abortion is too stigmatizing or incompatible with her family’s beliefs or culture to consider.

But even if a teenage girl did become pregnant through consensual sex – even if she was irresponsible – even if she had consensual, unprotected sex with multiple partners – she still doesn’t deserve to be called a slut. Nobody deserves to be called a slut, ever, for any reason. Because there’s nothing wrong with having sex. Even when you’re young. Even when you’re not married. Even if it’s with multiple partners.

Sure, it’s important to realize that there are a myriad of different reasons why a person might become overweight. It could be the result of an illness, or a medication, or a genetic condition and no fault of her own. But it could also be a result of an eating disorder, or stress eating, or poverty, or a lack of education about nutrition. It could be because she’s too busy working 14 hours a day to shop at a grocery store and prepare healthy meals. It could also be because she loves food and doesn’t really care if she conforms to the unrealistic American beauty ideal of the size 2 supermodel. She might be happy with her body exactly how it is.

But no one deserves to be discriminated against or bullied for being fat, ever, for any reason. Even if their weight appears unhealthy, even if they just fucking love to eat hamburgers. Because fat people deserve respect, even if they’re fat because they’re lazy, even if they’re unhealthy. Because people come in all different shapes and sizes, for all sorts of reasons. Because there’s no wrong way to have a body. And because someone else’s weight is really none of your business.

Yes, it’s important to realize that sometimes people look different and sometimes they were injured while serving our country. But sometimes people look different because they were injured for some other reason. Maybe it was a car accident. Maybe it was a drunken hang-gliding accident. Maybe there was an accident at work because of lax safety standards. Maybe it wasn’t an injury, but an illness, or a condition that developed over time, or maybe they were just born that way. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with a person’s face other than the fact that it doesn’t look like the faces we see in magazines. Maybe it’s not a person’s face, but their body. Maybe they use a wheelchair or a cane. Maybe they sound different when they speak. Maybe they cannot speak, or cannot hear, or cannot see. No one deserves to be called ugly, no matter what they look like or sound like or how they came to be that way.

Though I can recognize that the meme is well-intentioned, it suggests that while some people don’t deserve to be bullied or stereotyped, other people do. Because they “brought it on themselves” by acting irresponsibly or just because they don’t have a “good excuse” for being the way they are. But nobody deserves to be stereotyped or bullied, for any reason.

When someone falls outside the norm, they become a target for bullying and stereotyping just because they’re different. And everyone is different at least some of the time. There’s no point to trying to determine who “deserves it” and who doesn’t. Because bullying and stereotyping is cruelty, and no one ever deserves that.

So if 95% of people aren’t reposting this status meme, let’s hope it’s because they agree that EVERY 15 year old mother, EVERY overweight person, and EVERY person who’s body is in some way “different,” deserves our respect and compassion.

Too big for a stroller?

Today I discovered Walk, a new Tumblr site sharing photos of kids in strollers who are too old to be using strollers. The sentiment behind the site seems to be that kids who are old enough to walk should walk. The friend who posted it on Facebook wrote “Seriously, if your kid can walk without falling, your kid should walk without falling.” I can see how some might be annoyed by the sight of 7-11 year old squeezed into a stroller, but Walk is perhaps saying more than was intended.

As I looked through the photos, I couldn’t help but notice that a fair few of the kids in strollers were overweight. Considering that childhood obesity is a growing problem in the U.S., this may not be coincidence.  According to the CDC, rates of childhood obesity have more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. Childhood obesity is a serious problem because it sets kids up for a lifetime of chronic illness and health issues. It also makes kids more susceptible to bullying and fat-shaming from their peers and society at large. While the causes of childhood obesity are multifaceted and complex, one is undoubtedly a lack of physical activity.

I strongly believe that when it comes to obesity, it is unfair to put all the blame on the individual. Our society promotes and condones unhealthy eating and sedentary lifestyles in a number of ways: the fast food industry, an economy based on office jobs, car-based societies, corn subsidies, food deserts, etc. For those who are low-income, a healthy lifestyle is almost impossible considering the lack of access to safe public recreation spaces, lack of leisure time, and high costs of fresh, healthy foods.

Perhaps another way that our culture unknowingly reinforces unhealthy behaviors is through “stroller culture.” Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything inherently bad about strollers (like Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s character in Away We Go), but that perhaps we use them too often and for too long. Looking at some of the images on Walk, it seems that might be the case. What are we teaching our school-aged children when we don’t expect them to walk alongside us? If anything, we’re reinforcing the idea that walking from the parking lot to the store is an imposition, or that physical activity is separate from the experience of living every day – something we only experience at the gym or playing sports.

My mother came out to Boston to visit on Mother’s Day. We were heading from my apartment in “Camberville” into the city, and I suggested that we could avoid the 18 minute walk to the T stop by taking a bus. She gave me a lecture on how walking was part of the urban experience and part of a healthy lifestyle.  At age 25, is my mom still pushing me out of the stroller?

I’m wary that Tumblr sites like this can often become places for fat-shaming (like People of Walmart) and I would hate for this to happen with Walk. Still, it is a reminder that walking is part of a healthy lifestyle for kids as well as adults.

Smile for Me

Yesterday I saw a tongue and cheek “handy questionnaire for street harassers” on Feministing (via The Riot) and posted it to Facebook. A conversation about the so-called ambiguity of cat-calling (or street harassment) ensued. While I generally don’t see the ambiguity about it being right or wrong (it’s wrong), I do recognize that there are different types of cat-calls.  Some are blatant disrespect and assertions of power (Hey baby, gimme summa that, etc.).  Others could actually be misapplied expressions of kindness or inappropriate attempts to give a compliment – but that still doesn’t make them okay.

Compliments can be tricky because there should, ideally, be a way to pay a stranger a compliment without it being harassment.  It’s tricky because it all depends on context and no matter how carefully you craft your compliment, you cannot predict how it will be interpreted. In the discussion happening on Facebook, someone suggested that it was up to the “complimentee” to discern how the compliment was intended, and that it’s not the complimenter’s fault if they misunderstand. I disagree. When you initiate an interaction with a stranger, you are responsible for making sure your intentions are as clear as possible. It’s not the stranger’s fault for misinterpreting a signal – after all, they were minding their own business until you bothered them.

Once I was riding the T in the evening. The car was mostly empty except for me, a man sitting across from me, and maybe one or two other people further away. I was fixing my hair using my reflection in the opposite car window, and the man across from me said, “Don’t worry, you look great.” I was caught off guard and my instinctual reaction was to give the man a dirty, “don’t come near me” look. Afterwards, I wondered if I had overreacted. Maybe he had just been trying to pay me a compliment and I felt guilty.  But then I thought some more and realized that I was trapped in an almost-empty train car with this man and I did not really feel safe. So was I wrong?

I still don’t know what the man’s intentions really were, or if my reaction was entirely necessary, but when I think about it now – months later – I just get frustrated. Why should I be agonizing over this interaction? I never asked for it to happen. It’s not my fault that I was caught off guard and reacted instinctively. I didn’t – and still don’t – owe that man anything. It’s too bad we live in a world where compliments sometimes come with ulterior motives, but we do, and it’s never your fault for taking measures to feel safe.

The other classic example of an extremely misconstrued act of kindness is when a cat-caller/street harasser says “smile for me.” I really hate this one, in part because my own reactions to it confuse me.

“Smile for me” is a actually a terrible thing to say to someone when you think about it. Imagine that a woman is walking down the street. For whatever reason, she doesn’t look happy. Maybe she’s anxious about something, or upset, or just tired.  A man on the street smiles at her and says, “Hey give me a smile.”  What is implicit in that statement is the idea that women are objects meant to look pretty and happy for men.  ”Smile for me.” What he might be trying to say is “cheer up,” but the words he’s using actually mean, “You should look a certain way to please me,” or “The idea of an unhappy woman displeases me. Please correct this imbalance in my world perception.”  Also implicit in the command (it is a command) is the idea that that men have authority over women’s bodies, and also that women have no legitimate reason to ever stop smiling, maybe because they are meant to be purely ornamental in a man’s world, or better yet, emotionless automatons.

After all, forcing a smile when you’re not in the mood doesn’t actually make anything better for you. It just makes you look better for them. It reminds me of an adorable scene in Six Feet Under where 3 year-old Maya is dancing in her parents’ bedroom. Her father asks, “Are you dancing for me?” and she replies, “NO! I’m dancing for ME!”

You don’t smile for someone else. You smile for you.

How does it feel to be on the receiving end of “smile for me?” Complicated.  Most of the time, it makes me angry.

Smile for you? Fuck you. You have no idea why I’m upset right now. My situation is absolutely none of your business. Also, why the fuck should I be smiling? Things are SHIT right now, thank you very much. I don’t owe you a fucking smile.  Aren’t I allowed to be pissed off?  Aren’t I allowed to feel what I’m feeling? I’m sorry, did I give you permission to even speak to me in the first place?

(Guy from the gym, I’m talking to you.)

But I don’t always react this way.

In the Facebook thread someone joked that a cat-call is only harassment if the person giving it is unattractive. If they’re hot, it’s a compliment. Unfortunately, there is a teensy element of truth to this. If someone I find attractive says, “smile for me,” I probably would smile. I would feel as though I had received a compliment, or a kindness. But it’s not just about attraction. It’s also about whether or not the person or the situation (physical environment, etc) feels threatening. When all the other elements feel safe and I am predisposed to like this person because I find them attractive, it can be easy to take “smile for me” as a compliment.  But deep down, I know I shouldn’t encourage or support that behavior.  Just because I feel safe and desirable when this person said “smile for me” doesn’t mean that the next woman will, and this person needs to learn that it’s really not okay to say it to anyone.

The reality is that the majority of street harassment cases are not ambiguous like the ones I discussed here. Most of them are vulgar, horrible, and threatening. They are about asserting power over someone else’s body, usually a woman, or woman of color.  They do not usually come from a place of kindness.  When we talk about street harassment, it’s important to remember that the majority of street harassment is like this. While “smile for me” and other types of so-called compliments may feel a little bit ambiguous, those cases should not be used to try to confuse or challenge the validity of the majority of street harassment cases, which are, unambiguously, harassment.

This means that when someone brings up street harassment, don’t bring up the two examples where it might be okay. You’re missing the point, and in doing so, you’re actually making it harder for women to fight against real, glaring, no-bones-about-it, street harassment. And that is nothing to smile about.

Crying is not sexy. In related news, bad health journalism makes me cry.

A new study out of Israel suggests that women’s tears serve a “chemosignaling function” that result in reduced sexual arousal and testosterone levels in males.

Here is the abstract of the study:

Emotional tearing is a poorly understood behavior that is considered uniquely human. In mice, tears serve as a chemosignal. We therefore hypothesized that human tears may similarly serve a chemosignaling function. We found that merely sniffing negative-emotion–related odorless tears obtained from women donors, induced reductions in sexual appeal attributed by men to pictures of women’s faces. Moreover, after sniffing such tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual arousal, reduced physiological measures of arousal, and reduced levels of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that sniffing women’s tears selectively reduced activity in brain-substrates of sexual arousal in men.

Here is the headline on MSNBC.com:

Stop the waterworks, ladies. Crying chicks aren’t sexy.

I’m sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little.

The basic finding in the study – that emotional human tears are a turn off – should not actually be that shocking. (Perhaps a better headline should have been: Science supports common sense.) What is shocking is the ridiculously sexist and sensationalist coverage of the study by MSNBC and a number of other news sources.  The Ms. blog has a great roundup of this coverage, and while I don’t want to repeat all their points here, I am going to take a few choice sentences and read between the lines.

Here’s the ending of the MSNBC article:

Other researchers also have detected proteins associated with emotions: They’ve found dopamine and serotonin in tears, as well as prolactin, the desire-squelching hormone that spikes right after a man ejaculates and sends him running to watch SportsCenter rather than sticking around to cuddle.

Bottom line, ladies? If you’re looking for arousal, don’t turn on the waterworks.

Assumptions made/stereotypes reinforced: Men watch sports; men don’t like to cuddle after sex; everyone is heterosexual; women cry all the time for no reason.

Here is one from “Women’s tears kill men’s sex drive” in the Times of India:

They say tears are woman’s best arsenal–and they probably are–for they are powerful enough to dampen a man’s sexual arousal, according to a new study.

Assumptions made/stereotypes reinforced: There is a “war” between the sexes; women are constantly fighting men’s sexual advances; women do not want sex; man’s sexual arousal is a powerful force.

Here’s one from “The crying game: a woman’s tears aren’t sexy” in Ars Technica:

Finally, scientists have confirmed what men have known for ages: crying women are a turnoff….

While this study should make guys feel better about being turned off when their lady cries, the women out there should remember that you—and your tears—are actually the ones in charge here.

Assumptions made/stereotypes reinforced: Again, there is a “war” between the sexes; the status quo for women is that they should be a turn-on for men; the status quo for men is that they should be turned-on by women; women can only gain control via manipulating men with their emotions.

When I first got wind of this, the big question on my mind was this: why were they only studying the effect of women’s tears on men? What about woman to woman, man to woman, or man to man crying? This is the sort of thing a health reporter should do: ask questions. Be critical. The only one who asked that question – or any question, for that matter – was the New York Times:

The researchers are currently studying men’s emotional tears, so the scientific implications of, say, the weeping of the new House speaker, John A. Boehner, remain an open question. But Dr. Sobel said he believed that men’s tears would also turn out to transmit chemical signals, perhaps serving to reduce aggression in other men.

Dr. Sobel said the researchers started with women because when they advertised for “volunteers who can cry with ease,” they could not find men who were “good criers,” readily able to fill collection vials. Fortunately, he said, “we have a male crier now.”

But not even the New York Times could resist the tantalizing allure of a witty, sexist headline:

In Women’s Tears, a Chemical That Says, ‘Not Tonight, Dear’

The more I study health communication, the more I realize just how pathetic, lazy, sensationalist, and socially abhorrent most health reporting really is.  I’d cry about it, but that wouldn’t be sexy.