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all of this is too complex for a single thread.
i'll take a shot at some of the elements, but it's no more than that.
anorexia seems to me an anxiety disorder the consequences of which in the long run can be dire enough that it makes sense to see it as a medical disorder through and through, but it seems to have the structure of an anxiety problem---the problem of "getting fat" as a metaphor for loss of control or as a performance of anxiety over loss of control, control then exerted on the body. the danger of "getting fat" is probably associated with the danger of not being desired, which maps pretty directly on not being liked, not being normal, not being some image that you set up for yourself...
the anxiety is probably driven by bizarre-o cultural attitudes toward heavier people, many of which you see in this thread as seems usual when this topic comes up.
everybody's a fucking expert on obesity.
everybody's a fucking expert.
no matter, though--it doesn't matter whether the understandings of and reactions to obesity are rational, what matters is that whatever they are, they're pervasive. i suspect it's one of those adaptive things because we are basically nice adaptive kinda placid creatures who like to like what we are told to like in the way we are told to like it so that way we feel "normal"---and for some reason there is a premium placed on liking things in the way we are told that we should like to like them not only as a kind of collective conformity thing, but also as a grid within which we confuse performing the liking of things in the way we are told we should like to like them with expressions of our "individuality." and not everything we are told that we should like to like in a particular way is told us directly, and so it is in an advertising-saturated environment in the context of which we are continually told that we should like liking commodities in particular ways, it follows that we would also learn to like liking the bodies that are typically arranged near or in those commodities in order to indicate to us that the commodities are desirable and so we come to have pretty powerful associations between the officially sanctioned notions of "desire" and particular body types. there are probably other explanations too, but these boxes are little and one makes choices and that's the one i made.
i don't know what "causes" obesity. there are lots of causes. there are lots of people who are heavier than the norm. i've been quite heavy and am not sure if i entirely understand why it happened, what exactly i did or what my wiring was, but i am pretty sure that if i don't understand it you sure as hell do not understand it. but dont let that stop you, given the amount of fun it seems to be to be quite sure that you know why obesity happens, the amount of fun it seems to be finding reasons to assume that heavy people are less than you or deficient in some moral or self-control kinda way.
obesity has a lot of causes.
it is a medical condition in the way anorexia is in that the consequences of it can be and often are quite dire.
but it doesn't have that tragic air packaged around it for you, so you are not sure how you are supposed to feel about it and so you say whatever.
i find myself getting irritated as i write this, so i'll stop.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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