Women's Fat and the Supposed Dangers of Dieting

"'The results of recent studies have suggested that women may in fact live longer and be generally healthier,'" Naomi Wolf recites from Radiance in her book The Beauty Myth, "'if they weigh ten to fifteen percent above the life-insurance figures and they refrain from dieting'" (187). Though I agree with much of what Wolf has to say regarding women's obsession with being thin and so achieving "'the look of sickness, the look of poverty,'" as she cites "fashion historian Ann Hollander in Seeing Through Clothes" as saying, I take issue with a few specific beliefs she has on dieting (184).

Wolf's tragic personal narrative of her battle with anorexia at the age of thirteen, which she calls "adolescent starvation," is heartbreaking, and it brings new light to her reasons for writing the novel (203). It makes the reader even more sympathetic to her cause, even more on her side. The reader, who may have previously been in denial of the beauty myth's affect, sees Wolf as a living example of everything the beauty myth has done to women. However, her personal narrative also gives the reader a new understanding of what side she is coming from and of the extreme degree to which she is on that side. If this book, and the criticisms of diet within it, had been written by a heavier women who shared Wolf's grasp of the beauty myth, I would be more inclined to believe her accusations of diet. In the same way, when the health teacher at my school dismissed the question asked in class, how to lose weight, with "you just eat healthier," I knew she had never dealt with being above a healthy weight before, and therefore her weight suggestions were much less relevant to me. I feel that women who deal with the other side of the problem - being too skinny - do not have an understanding of the position I am coming from, which is, even if not by much, the heavier side. To be fair, I do not understand the too-skinny perspective, but at least, unlike my old health teacher or Wolf, I do recognize that not every women has the problem of weighing too little.

Grandma Interview & Mad Men

While I was watching the TV show Mad Men, I wrote down something Betty said about her mother: "She wanted me to be beautiful so that I could find a man. There's nothing wrong with that." She was referring to her mother's concern with her weight when she was a child. I couldn't help but relate this to my own grandmother and her daughter. While interviewing my grandma, I asked her about my aunt's nose-job. I knew that my grandma had paid for it, and I wanted to hear what my aunt had said to convince her to allow this. As it turns out, the story behind the nose-job, which I have only heard spoken of twice in the family, was different than I imagined. "I encouraged it," my grandma said right away. She explained, "Her nose was like Uncle Barry's was... it was, um, big and crooked, so I encouraged her to do it."I was surprised by this. The same woman who, earlier in the conversation, told me how she would meet with girls in "woman's rights groups" and write letters to "political officials" about woman's issues that were important to her: "about abortion and birth control and jobs". "Woman didn't have very much rights" when she was a kid. She went on to say, "women got paid less than men and didn't have as high positions." I did not understand how she could care about women's rights issues as a teenager, but encourage her daughter's nose-job as a mother. Speaking about motherhood, she told me she "consciously made an effort to treat her [daughter] more equally [to boys]," because she wanted her daughter to have the opportunities woman of her time did not.

Gender equality clearly matters to my grandmother, so how is it that she promoted that my aunt fix her nose? I wonder if she had the same thought Betty and Betty's mother did, that her daughter should be made "beautiful so that... [she] could find a man." Who was the nose-job for? For herself, for other girls, or to impress boys? This links directly with a conversation I had with my mother yesterday during breakfast. She was asking me when I would "grow up" and start wearing makeup. (I can currently count on my hand the number of times I have worn makeup and I am happy to keep it that way; I told her prom and my wedding are the only two times she will likely see me in makeup again.) I identified those three as being the only reasons a heterosexual woman would wear makeup: herself, to impress women in competition, to "find a man." I see makeup and a nose-job both very similarly. Some woman view both as optimizing a woman's beauty. I see them as falsifying a woman's beauty, creating a fake version of herself to fit into society's version of "beauty." The plastic surgery and makeup perpetuate a one sided idea of what is beautiful, so that a woman must be society's idea of "beautiful so that... [she can] find a man."

Jasmine and Karin: Female Competition and Togetherness

(Continued discussion of Jasmine's relationship with women in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine)

Karin explains to Jasmine, "'I feel hate for you'" but does not want to (202). "'Help me not to hate you, Jasmine,'" she begs her in an interesting turn of events (203). Karin and Jasmine's competition has been a reoccuring theme since Jasmine arrives in Iowa. When Karin cries, "'I have no way of competing with you!'" it becomes clear that the rivalry between them is mutual (205). This is something we, as readers, could not be sure of before, as we only have insight into Jasmine's thoughts. So, although there is still a clear hatred and tension between the two women, Karin asking Jasmine for help "not to hate" her shows themes of female togetherness and unity (203), like my favourite line in "Wild Geese": "Tell me your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." This unity, as explained in my previous blog, is common between Jasmine and other women she encounters, such as the village woman in Hasnapur and Wylie in New York City, but it is not expected between Karin and Jasmine. When Karin asks Jasmine this, admitting that she hates her, we see Karin telling Jasmine "her despairs" in the hope that Jasmine will relate to them, so that they can work together to fight this hardship. Karin admits to Jasmine, "'I don't know if I could have nursed him,'" referring to Bud (228). They finally achieve this togetherness Karin hopes for when they gain an understanding of each other's difficulties. This also shows that Jasmine is not the only one comparing herself to the other. There is both competition and female camaraderie between them. When Jasmine is unhappy in this scene, Karin offers to stay with her to comfort her. Karin later comforts Jasmine again, saying "'Don't blame yourself, Jane'" (240). She empathizes with the struggle Jasmine has gone through taking care of Bud and then deciding to put herself first, and they ultimately show themes of togetherness and unity.

This is all to similar to the relationship between the speaker and the giggling "girls with lacy dresses" that she slaps in Andrea Lee's short story "Brothers and Sister Around the World" (Lee 5). She shows the reader that she feels as though she is in competition with the girls throughout the story up until this point, because she is older and made to feel that she is less beautiful than the girls who show more skin than her and receive her husband's attention. She points out that they are "probably about eighteen years old, both good-looking," and when they "burst out laughing," she is sure it is at her (Lee 3). When she slaps "the one with straight hair" she "feel[s] the strange smoothness of her cheek and an instantaneous awareness that my hand is just as smooth" (Lee 4). In other words, she realizes she is just the same as them. She reiterates this: "it is clear we are breathing the same air, now" (Lee 6). Later, "[b]oth girls look straight at me," showing they now respect the speaker (Lee 6). She responds to the girls in "my politest voice," showing she respects the girls as well (Lee 7). The three people realize they have gone through the same thing as women, and so they must unite, just like Jasmine and Karin.