Beauty is an Attitude

“Healthy bodies are in!” proclaims the feature article of a recent issue of People magazine. As I was reading the title over the shoulder of the short, balding gentleman in a navy blue business suit standing next to me in the subway, two things struck me. One, many people don’t like you reading over their shoulder. And two, more importantly, health and fashion are interlinked!

Right.

Since when did a healthy body have to be ‘in’ to be sought after? Why are they even linked?

Regardless, this article (subtitled “Extra Curves Ahead”) profiled some of Hollywood’s celebrities like Sandra Bullock, Drew Barrymore, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jennifer Lopez, who were getting off their negative-weight inducing, “low fat, low calorie, low food” diet, and were starting to put on some curves. “Of course, no one is claiming that Hollywood’s obsession with thinness is over”, the article goes on to claim, but more and more the actresses they profiled weren’t afraid to admit that “Yes, they eat; yes, they enjoy it; and no, they are not finding that they have to be a size 0 to get work.”

Well, ahem, maybe the well established actresses are letting a little loose now that they’ve established a following. But how are the newbies doing? This article states, “Less established actresses in particular don’t always have the option of ignoring the scale.” Back to square one it seems.

Daily, health magazines and news stories in Life sections are bringing us the news of our society’s health. The word from the frontlines is not optimistic. Teen eating disorders are on the rise. A recent article by Bergen Record states that eating disorders are becoming more widespread among adolescents. The article also cites a national survey done in the US that says that 13% of girls and 7% of the boys they studied had eating disorders like anorexia.

What is anorexia? In an article titled “Introducing Anorexia Nervosa”, Dr. Peter Rowan says that it “is an illness that mainly affects adolescent girls although it can occur both in boys or girls younger or older than this. The most common features are loss of weight coupled with a change in behaviour. The personality changes that he/she may experience will be those of increasing seriousness and introversion. He/she will become less outgoing and less fun. He/she will usually begin to lose contact with his/her friends and may appear to lose interest in everything apart from food and academic work.”

The human body is a very versatile piece of machinery with the ability to cope with periods of semi starvation and weight loss, but the return to normal eating patterns and weight is imperative to a continued healthy lifestyle.

As the period of starvation increases symptoms like cessation of the menstrual cycle, reduced circulation to the hands and feet, loss of ability to have children and even the increased risk of heart failure become imminent. Prolonged weight loss through abnormal methods during adolescence can also retard growth.

Then why engage in it? Most young hormonally-charged teens are all after one thing in high school – acceptance. When you’re in a new country this need for acceptance multiplies. If the only way to make sure that you are popular and have lots of friends is to look thin, then teens (stubborn mites) will go all out to get it – engaging in acts of starvation and vomiting after meals. Other causes include the personality of the person in question, stresses (often outside the home) and aspects of the family and relationships of the individual.

In the Tamil community in particular, there is great pressure from the extended family to look a certain way. Although for the most part parents do not put any such pressure on their kids, there are many young girls who are often exposed to the blunt comments of grandparents, chittis, chittappas, mamas, mamis and everyone else regarding their bodies.

I’ve also heard it said that if it’s movie starts who are the trend setters, then why do Tamil youth need to be concerned over issues such as anorexia? In a very striking way, actors and actresses in Tamil films have been, by and large, more robust and full-bodied than their Hollywood counterparts. At the very least, none of them have the sort of waif-like thinness that is embodied by people like Calista Flockhart. Although the recent trends set by Aishwarya Rai seem to tend towards slim and lithe, no one can deny that one of Aishu’s most attractive physical traits are her luscious curves. She has the kind of natural roundness that can’t be artificially induced.

But the pull of Hollywood far outweighs that of Bollywood here on the Canadian scene. As noted by Rx Remedy Inc., eating disorders are becoming more and more prevalent among immigrant youth. Emily Wax of the Washington Post recounted one such immigrant’s story. “Dee Park’s long high school day began like this: accelerated math and English classes, then gymnastics practice, then a run-in with a boy teasing her about her muscular body – ‘You’re Asian, and you’re supposed to look smaller’”, he taunted. Then she was off to a family dinner, were her parents praised her as the ‘perfect daughter’. That’s when the frazzled 15-year old ran to the bathroom. She knelt on the cold tile floor and forced herself to throw up – entering the private, painful world of bulimia and anorexia.”

What’s needed is to change the stereotype. Youth haves to be urged to start feeling comfortable about themselves and their body image. Different body types are beautiful in different countries. We just need to put emphasis on the fact that girls and guys can be beautiful regardless of body type. I’ve seen women who aren’t anywhere near the thinness of fashion models look strikingly beautiful. Beauty isn’t weight – it’s an attitude. Regular exercise and healthy eating is the key to gaining a healthy body weight and feeling good about yourself.

So, keep healthy, exercise regularly and do NOT under any circumstance read over the shoulder of a balding gentleman. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be able to write this!

Here are some questions to ask yourself to judge whether you are at risk of having an eating disorder:

Do you make yourself sick because you feel uncomfortably full?
Do you worry you have lost control over how much you eat?
Have you recently lost more than one stone in a three month period?
Do you believe yourself to be fat when others say you are too thin?
Would you say that food dominates your life?

– Suki Mahalingam