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.

Jasmine's Relationships with Women

Jasmine does not seem to interact much with women. Back when she was Jyoti, she listened to the village women as "[t]hey squatted in a row and gossiped" (54) during "'Ladie's Hour'"(55). "The women's strategy was to stick together," Jasmine tells us (55). Oddly enough, this is comparable Jasmine's relationship with Wylie. Wylie explains to Jasmine that they are "family; in a family don't sisters sometimes fight?" she adds (178). There is a feeling of togetherness between these women that can be related to my favourite line in Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese": "Tell me your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." The idea of female togetherness and unity among women through difficulty is found in both parts of Jasmine's life. In Hasnapur, Jasmine and the other women "stick together" in order to avoid the "perverts from the village across the stream [who] sat on their bank and ogled at" them (55). In New York City with Wylie, they are united by the difficulty that Wylie faces: first, in that her daughter Duff considers Jasmine her "mummy" (instead of just a "day mummy") and secondly, when Wylie decides to leave Taylor (178). Jasmine's relationship with these women are rooted in a feeling of togetherness in that they are all women. Wylie can confide in Jasmine, because she is a women, a "sister" in the fight against problems, and the women from Hasnapur are bonded by fighting against problems as well; they want protection against men, safety from the "wild geese."

Jasmine has only had positive experiences with other women; she has close relationships with them, as we see from these two examples. However, when it comes to Bud's ex-wife Karin, a side of Jasmine comes out that we, as readers, have not seen before. When Jasmine and Karin encountered each other in the supermarket, Karin catches Jasmine "reaching for an apple pie," (195-196) and thinks, "She must have baked them from scratch for Bud" when they were married (196). This is the first moment we glimpse competition between these two women. It shows Jasmine's criticism of herself. Whenever she competes with Karin, comparing herself to Bud's ex-wife, she puts herself down. This is shown again when Jasmine says, "Karin would have read the signals" when Harlan was going to shoot Bud, pointing to the fact that Jasmine did not (198). This behaviour is something we haven't seen among women yet in the book, but is very common in The Handmaid's Tale where competition among Handmaid is based largely on fertility, pregnancy, and then providing a healthy child. Instead, in Jasmine, women - except, clearly, for Karin and Jasmine's relationship - seem to bond with one another and be close-knit, just like the women in Hasnapur during "'Ladie's Hour'"(55) and the "sisters" Wylie and Jasmine (178). 

Downton Abbey, The Handmaid's Tale, and Jasmine

(Continued discussion of Violet Crawley's statement from Downton Abbey related to Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine; continued discussion of connections between Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, a sequence)

Jane and Prakash work together to fix a VCR, causing Prakash to joke they should "'open our own store someday'" and call it "'Vijh & wife,'" a play on the store "'Jagtiani and Son'" that Prakash works at (89). "'Maybe even Vijh & Vijh,'" he adds, showing that he is willing to treat his wife equally, giving her freedom and independence (89). He does not own her; their store would not be run by Prakash Vijh and his wife but by Prakash Vijh and Jasmine Vijh, two separate individuals. This is Prakash's belief: that women should have an identity separate from that of their husband, that women should have independence.

Jane does not appear to agree with this, however. She says that she and Prakash "lived for our fantasy. Vijh & Wife," showing that she does not mind being owned (89). While her husband strongly believes in women's independence, she is content being grouped with him, not an individual person.

She goes on to call their hypothetical shop "Vijh & Sons," which shows her desire to have children (89). This craving for children is not shared with Prakash. When Jane expresses she wants "to get pregnant," Prakash always responds, "'We aren't going to spawn'" (77). He explains that "[i]t was up to the women to resist" the desire for pregnancy, with a tone very much resembling the idea of women empowerment that both Moira and Offred's mother share (77 - 78).

Pitaji, Jane's father, does not share this belief in women empowerment. He suggests all women are good for is bearing children when he says the only reason his daughter should continue her education "'is that bright ladies are bearing bright sons,'" explaining, "'that is nature's design'" (51). Jane retorts that she wants to be a doctor, causing her father to scream, "'The girl is mad,'" which suggests women do not deserve independence and individual identities - the opposite of what Prakash believes (51).  Dida suggests Pitaji "'[b]lame it on the mother. Insanity has to come from somewhere. It's the mother who is mad'" (51). This suggests just what those of The Handmaid's Tale's Gilead believe: that motherhood is a women's only role.

An additional parallel to Jasmine's illustration of India to The Handmaid's Tale's Gilead is that female fertility and pregnancy are very valued. Offred and Jane both buy into this idea. However, Prakash does not. This is another example in which, despite their recent marriage, Jane and Prakash do not agree despite Downton Abbey's Violet Crawley suggestion that they should.

Downton Abbey and Jasmine

I was watching the show Downton Abbey which takes place in 1914, where Lady Mary Crawley expressed that her sister, Sybil, who the family has just learned attended a suffragette canvasing, "is entitled to her opinions." In response, her grandmother, Violet Crawley, said something I found rather striking and quite relevant to Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine: "No, she isn't until she is married, then her husband will tell her what her opinions are." Pitaji's cousin seems to agree with Violet Crawley, saying "that big-city men prefer us village girls because we... have no minds of our own. Village girls are like cattle; whichever way you lead them, that is the way they will go" (46).

At first glance, Jane's opinions seem to be based purely on her husband's. Prakash expresses to Jane that he "wants for us to go away and have a real life" (81). Jane responds: "'All right,' I said, 'if you want me to have a real life I want it too'" (81). This shows Jane conforming to her husband's views very quickly. Like Violet Crawley said, Prakash "tell[s] her what her opinions are" and she accepts it.

Earlier on, Jane shows that she can form her own opinions. However, this is before her marriage to Prakash. She says, "I couldn't marry a man who didn't speak English, or at least who didn't want to speak English," an opinion that her mother, father, brothers, and sisters certainly did not force on her, as they do not share it (68). This statement disproves Violet Crawley's belief that a girl should not have her own opinion until "her husband... tell[s] her what her opinions are." It shows that Jane did have her own thoughts prior to her marriage to Prakash. It also shows women do not necessarily go "whichever way you lead them," but instead, they sometimes lead in their opinions (46).

Prakash's aunt shows that she does not agree with Violet Crawley's statement. When Jane and her husband do not live with his family, "his aunt wept, 'Your wife is so fancy that our place isn't good enough for her?'" (76). This shows that Prakash's aunt believes that Jane can form her own opinion about whether or not she would like to live with Prakash's family. She is, in fact, under the impression that the decision to live in an apartment instead of in Prakash's family home is not her nephew's but is, instead, Jane's.

The Handmaid's Tale and Jasmine

The first connection I saw between The Handmaid's Tale and Jasmine was when Jane relates her current life to her past life, just as Offred often does in her narration. Jane comments on Scott's "perfect teeth," saying, "I envy him his teeth... [because w]e had no dentist in Hasnapur" (19). This novel, like The Handmaid's Tale, is told non-linearly, and so both narrators dip in and out of past and present.

It becomes clear that Bud is living his life, although now divorced and handicapped, close to how he lived it before, whereas Jane and Du's lives change drastically as they have to escape. This is similar to Commanders' lives and the lives of all other roles, but namely the Handmaids. This fact about Jane's family made me think of the moment the Commander gives Offred a magazine, even though she "thought such magazines had all been destroyed" (152). For Offred, these magazines are destroyed, because she is forced to change her life drastically, like Jane and Du. Even though the Handmaids remained in the same place, with Offred still in the same town that she lived in with her husband and daughter, their lives still are undeniably altered as Gilead society begins to take over. For the Commander, however, just like Bud, life is much closer to being the same as it had been.

Du and Jane conform to their new society in Iowa, just as Offred begrudgingly conforms to Gilead. Even though they all keep aspects of their past with them in their thoughts, they keep those thoughts silent. The difference between these characters' conformation is that Du and Jane comply with society's demands by choice, because they want to fit in, while Offred goes along with Gilead due to the powerlessness of her position.

Jane's father and Offred both live in the past. (43)