Sharanya Vairam

THE OBSESSION CALLED WEIGHT LOSS Weight loss has become the buzz word of late with almost everyone trying to ‘watch their weight’ all the time. The roots of this obsession I believe go back to the perfect body ideals and the nexus between Science, market and media that create and promote these ideals. The perfect body ideals range from Barbie dolls to celebrities and are mostly fair, able bodied, tall, size zero and so on. These ideals could vary from region to region. How does nexus work in promoting the ideal weight or body type? Well, the practitioners of Science take up studies to prove that one needs to lose weight in order to avert a health crisis and have also developed ‘scientific methods’ like pills, surgeries and so on to aid this process. Everyone has a different body structure which depending upon one’s genetic makeup, region, ethnicity and race, and scientific studies lead us to believe that we can alter all of this. Scientists perform such studies on a particular set of people and results cannot be universally applied but these studies get interpreted very differently in the media. Everyday we find numerous articles in newspapers and magazines that publish these theories and studies without the basis and scope of these studies which leads a layperson to believe in the universality of such studies. The other way in which media works, is to constantly publicise these ideals and talk about them so that it gets indoctrinated into our psyche that Aishwarya Rai or Barbie or Kareena Kapoor have perfect bodies and that we should strive to become like them. We are also socialised to believe that our looks and body weight make either beautiful or ugly depending upon whether we fit the ideals. By market, I refer to the various industries that are involved like beauty, cosmetics, clothing, fashion and so on that thrive on these ideals and play a crucial role in creating these. For example, the kinds of clothes that available in the stores tend to define fashion and these clothes are generally available in four or five sizes and those who do not fit these cannot be fashionable. So, body dissatisfaction is created among women and now even men and even those who fit these sizes are required to achieve a smallest size. This is how weight loss has become an obsession. Family, friends, media, neighbours and everyone you know becomes a weight loss expert and keeps giving advice on how one could lose weight. This whole weight loss thing is disguised in terms of health so that one cannot just brush away the argument. We are led to believe that if we are fat then we not only look less beautiful but we would die soon out of the many ailments that strike ‘fat’ people. If we are looking at the health aspect, then, we should look at how fit, physically and cardiovascularly, one is and not at fatness. In other words, if a tiger is chasing me, can I run to save my life or if the elevator does not work, then can I climb ten floors to reach my destination or is my heart healthy? If the answer is yes, then I need not worry even if I am ‘overweight’ or do not fit in an M or S, and people who are thin may not have better stamina or metabolism or be more fit than others. Then I fail to understand why being ‘fat’ has to be a bad thing. Neither do I understand the obsession with losing weight.