1991, QUEST, 43, 135-147
One Size Does Not Fit All, Or How I Learned to Stop Dieting and Love the Body
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling
The oppressiveness of current ideals concerning female body size and shape in Euro-American culture has been well documented. Prevalent ideals of thinness are physiologically difficult for many women to achieve, and available techniques for reducing are greater health risks than fatness. Yet the number of women who attempt to reduce their bodies continues to increase. This essay analyzes America's obsession with thinness and its meanings for women's bodies and body identity. A summary of research challenging conventional beliefs about fetness is presented, followed by an exploration of the special meanings of fatness and slendemess for women in a culture that evaluates women on the basis of their appearance. The mind-body dualism experienced by women, especially fat women, in this environment is then discussed. An argument is made for rejecting the popular but unachievable and arbitrary standards of thinness and for abandoning the separation of mind and body inherent in the obsession with weight loss.
/ know no woman--virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate--whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a scanner of brain waves--for whom her body is not a fundamental problem: its clouded meanings, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody speech, its si- . lences, its changes and mutilations, its rapes and ripenings. There is for the first time today a possibility of converting our physicality into both knowledge and power. (Rich, 1976, p. 284) Whether or not I permitted myself to think of my self as a body at some earlier time, I cannot deny that identity today. That identity offers my only means of entering and literally making sense of my past. (Mairs, 1989, pp. 8-9)
Like most American women of my generation, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about my body and trying to make it smaller at various times in my life. Like many American women, I developed this concern at an early age. I learned to weigh myself, to count calories, to feel guilty when I ate "bad"
About the Author: Elizabeth Arveda Kissling is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois, 244 Lincoln Hall, 702 S. Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801.
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foods, and to compare my body to other bodies, both those around me and those in the mass media. I considered myself to be fat regardless of my weight and believed that my body was something I had to get control over. This control usually took the form of food restrictions and diets. I no longer remember the age at which I went on my first diet; it was before my first menstrual period. This obsession with the body and its size is so well learned by American women and girls that it begins to seem natural. Icons of thinness are everywhere, increasing the cultural pressure to be thin. Gamer, Garfinkel, Schwartz, and Thompson (1980) recently documented the increasing slenderness of two popular ideals of American beauty over the last 20 years. Their survey of the measurements of Playboy centerfold models revealed that although their average height has increased, there has been a continual decrease in proportionate weight and in bust and hip measurements. Data from Miss America contestants showed a yearly decline in the average weight of contestants and, since 1970, a winner with weight significantly lower than that of the other contestants. Over the same period, there has been a marked increase in the number of diet articles appearing in popular magazines (Gamer et al., 1980). A recent survey of 500 Americans found that 38% named "getting fat" as their greatest fear--above crime, unemployment, and nuclear war (Chemin, 1981). American women quell this fear by going on diets; the Harvard Medical School News Letter reported that 20 million American women are estimated to be on a diet at any given time (Willmuth, 1987). Out of every 10 participants in diet programs, 9 are women (Freedman, 1986). Dieting is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States: Weight-Watchers had revenues of 39 million dollars in 1977 (up from 8 million just 7 years earlier), the profits of Nutri-System Weight Loss Centers climbed to 48 million dollars by 1981, and sales of diet foods and beverages continue to increase at triple the rate of other foods (Schwartz, 1986). Images of thin female characters prevail in television programs (Wooley & Wooley, 1985), in fiction (Dickenson, 1983), and in advertising (Caputi, 1983). The woman who fails to conform is told implicitly (and often directiy) that she is somehow defective and that her body size is under her control: She must diet. Even women whose bodies do conform intemalize the belief that their bodies are defective. Of 33,000 women surveyed for Glamour magazine by Susan Wooley, director of the Eating Disorders Clinic at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, 75% said they were "too fat" and wished to diet. Of those women, 45% were in fact underweight by the conservative standards of the 1959 Metropolitan Life Insurance actuarial tables (by the revised 1983 tables, these women would be even more underweight) (Freedman, 1986; Stemhell, 1985). A review of national opinion surveys suggested that those who are least obese are frequently most concemed with losing weight (Willmuth, 1987). Slendemess is not seen as the arbitrary genetic trait it is (Atrens, 1988; Beller, 1977; Wooley & Wooley, 1985) but as a defining feature of beauty. Thinness has come to signify not only beauty but health, class status, sexuality, grace, discipline, and goodness; fat signifies stupidity, illness, neurosis, sloth, selfindulgence, and moral weakness (Caputi, 1983). This essay explores America's obsession with thinness and its meanings for women's bodies and body identity. Though increasingly difficult in a culture that judges and values women on the basis of their appearance--and jJjf and ugly are often one word--women's greatest
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hope for sanity and body satisfaction is in rejecting those unachievable ideals of thinness and leaming to be at home in their bodies, whatever their size.
Little-Known Truths About Fat
One of the most common grounds of objection to fatness in the United States is that fat is alleged to be unhealthy. It is reportedly linked with high cholesterol levels, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and with a general lack of health and physical fitness. Susan and Orland Wooley's survey of medical research revealed that it is unlikely that there are any health risks associated with "mild obesity" and called into question the accepted attribution of certain diseases to obesity (Wooley & Wooley, 1985). They reported that the New England Journal of Medicine has published challenges to the correlations of fatness with high blood pressure, heart disease, and cholesterol levels as early as 1975, adding that even if correlations are found, correlation does not demonstrate causality. There may be some unknown third factor, such as genetic metabolic traits, the long-term effects of frequently losing and regaining weight, or the psychic stresses of life as a member of a stigmatized minority that causes these illnesses. They ftirther point out that losing weight to remedy these illnesses may not be valid advice, because available, effective weight-loss treatments, such as gastric and intestinal bypass operations, can be greater threats to health and longevity than obesity (Wooley & Wooley, 1985). Some doubt also exists about the relationship between fatness and decreased longevity; the famous Framingham study suggested that moderately obese people are actually more healthy and live longer than thin people. Among the women studied, those in the middle 60% of the weight range lived longer than the thinnest 20% and the fattest 20%. The mortality rates of the thin and fat were equally elevated, and both lived longer than the most favorable male category, also in the middle range (Atrens, 1988; Bennett & Gurin, 1982; Stemhell, 1985; Wooley & Wooley, 1985). About 30 controlled studies correlating mortality and weight have reported similar findings (Stemhell, 1985). Researchers' improved understanding of physical fitness rejects the commonly accepted equation of thinness with physical fitness. A recent study examined fat women who ate less fat, emphasized complex carbohydrates in their eating plans (though the women were not on specific diets) and incorporated nonstrenuous exercise into their lives; after 9 months, only a few of the women lost weight, but nearly all improved their health. Blood cholesterol levels dropped, as did blood pressure, and aerobic capacity increased ("Study Shows," 1988). The nutritionists who conducted the study hoped their results would "challenge the idea that you have to be thin to be healthy" ("Study Shows," 1988, p. E-5). Mary Sams and Henny Santo founded an exercise studio based on challenging that idea. Their program offered nutrition counseling, exercise classes tailored for large women, and stress-reduction classes. They emphasized that the goal of The Greater Woman was not to help clients lose weight but to improve their health and fitness (Lee, 1986). Sadly, their studio has gone out of business (Bain, Wilson, & Chaikind, 1989). Unfortunately, it is very difficult for large women to find satisfactory exercise programs: Few instructors take into consideration the special movement concerns of large women, and many programs emphasize
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thinness more than fitness, which is likely to inspire negative judgments of large women by instructors and other participants (Bain et al., 1989). Another objection to fatness considers it to be an issue of discipline, selfcontrol, or moral strength, seemingly based on the belief that fatness is the result of gluttony or sloth. The success of the diet industry and the popularity of fitness programs encourage the belief that people are fat because they eat too much, that if they could just control their appetites they would be thin. Body size and shape are increasingly viewed by Americans as matters of conscious choice (Seid, 1989) and control instead of inherited genetic traits--a view that bolsters the perception of fat people as weak willed. But surveys of eating patterns have shown that, on the average, the eating habits of fat people do not differ significantly from those of thin people (Bennett & Gurin, 1982; Willmuth, 1987; Wooley & Wooley, 1985). It is also well established that diets do not result in thinness: 95% of all diets fail, and 90% of those dieters gain back more weight than they had lost (Atrens, 1988; Bennett & Gurin, 1982; Chemin, 1981; Spitzack, 1987; Willmuth, 1987). Dieting may in fact be a major cause of obesity. Periods of starvation result in decreases in metabolism and increased stores of fat, making each successive diet more difficult. Starvation also causes hormonal and neurochemical effects that produce changes in mood and cognition (Atrens, 1988; Willmuth, 1987; Wooley & Wooley, 1985). Additionally, deprivation gives food an exaggerated importance, encouraging an obsessive preoccupation with food and eating (Wooley & Wooley, 1985). There are an approximately equal number of studies that find fat people to be less active than thin people as there are studies that find no difference in activity level. Wooley & Wooley (1985) have suggested caution in interpreting such studies, noting that a heavy person expends more energy in the same movements because of the greater weight they must move and that measurements that are both precise and unobtrusive are impossible to obtain. Given that neither overeating nor underexercising are sources of obesity, and given their frequent and valiant efforts at diets that are doomed from the start, it is inexcusable to fault fat people for lack of discipline. Contrary to popular belief, body size is seldom a trait individuals can control and alter. Though health and physical fitness may be more easily controlled, Kreuter, Parsons, and McMurty remind us that "unhealthy lifestyles may be unwise--but they are not necessarily immoral" (cited in Bain et al., 1989, p. 141). Marcia Millman (1980) and Linda Sanford and Mary Ellen Donovan (1984) have pointed out how often fatness is presumed to be the result of lack of discipline and thinness equated with moral goodness and superiority. Sanford and Donovan pointed out the irony of this position as espoused by, among others, Jane Fonda: In her best selling exercise book . . . Fonda complains at great length about "male-defined" standards of beauty, but she is as firm as any male fashion designer in her insistence that a lean, well-muscled body is something every woman should strive for--even if it means spending several hours a day working at it. What is worse, Fonda equates physical fitness with moral soundness and political purity, suggesting that a person who is in good shape will
ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL be more receptive to progressive and humane social ideas than someone who is not in shape. (1984, pp. 378-379)
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Sanford and Donovan also noted that the proscription against fatness and its equation with moral weakness is not applied equally to both sexes; fat can be construed as a symbol of power in men but always symbolizes weakness and inferiority in women. A woman who is fat is often judged to have "let herself go" while a man who is fat may be judged as successful and satisfied. Fat is not a question of self-control or a sign of moral inferiority and it IS seldom a medical problem. Americans' dislike of fat is primarily an aesthetic issue--and an arbitrary one at that. Though there have nearly always been externally imposed standards of beauty for American women, thinness has not always been one. Only since the turn of the century has thinness been the standard of beauty and desirability (Banner, 1983; Bennett & Gurin, 1982; Freedman 1986Schwartz, 1986; Seid, 1989). And though slender has remained in style, the definition of slender has changed over time, becoming increasingly slimmer (Seid, 1989). The most dramatic decrease in body-size goals for women has occurred m the last 20-30 years. Though the average American woman has become heavier during this time, the images of ideal American beauty have become thinner (Gamer et al., 1980). As thinness becomes synonymous with beauty, fatness is equated with unattractiveness, as the poet Sapphire (1987) has succinctly stated: fat and ugly become synonymous you can be ugly without being fat but you can't be fat without being ugly (p. 72)
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Even if a fat woman regards herself as attractive and is encouraged in this belief by friends and lovers, others will tell her she is unattractive or that she could be pretty if only she were smaller. A glamorous woman interviewed in an article on fashionable clothing for fat women made the following comments:
I have to work hard at this attitude because people make you feel very bad about being fat. They look at you fiinny, they laugh at you. You work so hard on yourself and then people make comments. I used to be a cocktail waitress and I'd hear guys say, "Boy, she's so pretty to be fat." And I'd say, "What does one thing have to do with the other?" That was the statement I always hated the most, (cited in Manfred, 1984, p. 102)
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Such statements are so common in the lives of fat women that Marcia MiUman (1980) titled her book on the experience of fat women in America Such a Pretty Face.
A Woman's Problem
There is presently no known cause of obesity, and except for cures more dangerous than fatness, such as gastric and intestinal bypasses, no known cure (Wooley & Wooley, 1985). The research cited previously points to Susan and Orland Wooley's conclusion that fatness is not a health problem, a behavioral problem, or a psychiatric problem but a political and ethical problem. It is also clear that fat is a woman's problem. i
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Though certainly there are men who are genetically predisposed to fatness and men who become fat later in life, fat is predominantly a problem for women. Marcia Millman's (1980) study of the experience of fat women in America included an appendix on the experiences of fat men; the differences in attitudes and self-evaluations are striking. One immediately apparent difference is the relative importance of fat in the men's lives: Many significantly overweight men (in excess of 300 pounds) claimed not to think of themselves as fat and expressed surprise when others did. By contrast, women frequently have considered themselves fat if they were as little as 15 pounds over conventional standards; even many women who were underweight have perceived themselves as fat (Brown, 1985; Chemin, 1981; Freedman, 1986; Heyn, 1989; Wooley & Wooley, 1985). Further aggravating women's self-perceptions of fatness is their cultural and genetic tendencies to put on fat more easily than men (Beller, 1977; Schwarz, 1986). The fat men Millman (1980) interviewed not only seemed less self-conscious than fat women but also were less likely to theorize about their weight or to see it as part of psychological or emotional problems. Wooley & Wooley (1985) cited numerous surveys of women of various ages that seem to confirm some of Millman's conclusions: Women surveyed are more self-conscious about their bodies and less satisfied with their appearance. Wooley and Wooley claimed fat is more a woman's problem than a man's because women are permitted less deviation from the ideal, which in tum produces a higher degree of dissatisfaction with one's own body. Women are also evaluated on their appearance to a much greater degree than men. Others have argued that women's dissatisfaction with their bodies, with broad hips or large breasts, is not a distortion of body image but an antifemale ethic about body image: "We all know we look like women; we just wish . . . that it weren't so" (Heyn, 1989, p. 36). . , In addition to social pressures, fat women experience greater occupational discrimination (Millman, 1980). Studies have shown that fat women are denied admission to college much more frequently than nonobese women and both obese and nonobese men with equivalent grade-point averages and entrance-exam scores (Caputi, 1983; Wooley & Wooley, 1985). Fat women are also discriminated against in employment; employers would rather hire ex-cons than fat people (Schwarz, 1986). Judy Freespirit noted "the tighter the job market the less possible it is to get work if you don't look like a fashion model" (1983, p. 119). Laura Brown, a therapist who frequently works with clients who face fat oppression, argued that the American obsession with female body size produces self-hatred in women; this self-hatred becomes "a patriarchal psychic tapeworm, eating away at energy and self-love and reducing women's abilities to act powerfully" (Brown, 1985, p. 63). Brown contended that the near-universal negative impact of this obsession is a manifestation of misogyny in a culture that devalues and disempowers women. Kim Chemin's (1981) analysis of the obsession--"the tyranny of slendemess"--reached a similar conclusion. Chemin pointed out women's genetic propensity for a higher proportion of body fat than men and that this fat is embodied in female secondary sexual characteristics (e.g., breasts, the subcutaneous fat layer that makes women appear curvaceous, hips, and rounded belly).
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By dieting and starving and exercising maniacally, women work to eliminate these markers of feminine identity, leaving them with bodies that more closely approximate a male form. These defeminized bodies are less visible and take up less space (Chemin, 1981).' Chemin developed the argument that the drive for slendemess coincides with the rise of second-wave feminism, resulting in two women's movements: one a movement toward feminine power, the other a retreat from it. The latter movement is supported by patriarchy's diet and fashion industries and the fear of women's power they represent. The fear of women's power is partially realized in fear and hatred of women's bodies, which is then internalized by Women and acted on with diets and obsessive exercising, sometimes resulting in illnesses like anorexia and bulimia (Chemin, 1981). Roberta Seid (1989) presented an alternative view of the relationship between the women's movement and the thinness obsession, claiming that the goals of liberal feminism converged with the drive for slendemess. Much discourse of the women's movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it as was popularized in mass media sources, was about control, especially control over one's own body. The diet and fitness trend presented an opportunity to display control over one's body through weight loss and exercise. Other goals of liberal feminism also seem to converge with the obsession with slenderness: As liberated women strove to de-emphasize differences between male and female bodies and roles, diet and exercise gave them more androgynous-appearing bodies. Exercise could be viewed as a tool of empowerment for women, representing their control over their own bodies (Seid, 1989).
Bodies, Social Control, and Social Status
Viewing the body as a locus of social control (following Bordieu and Foucault), Susan Bordo (1989) considered slendemess and the diet and exercise regimes required to achieve it as the inscription of the female body with the predominant ideological construction of femininity; the body thus becomes a text of femininity. "We no longer are told what 'a lady' is or of what femininity consists. Rather, we leam the rules directly through bodily discourse: through images which tell us what clothes, body shape, facial expression, movements, and behavior is required" (Bordo, 1989, p. 17). Bordo saw this bodily inscription of femininity as especially problematic given the confiicting contemporary cultural norms of femininity being inscribed. On the one hand, our culture encourages a domestic ideal of femininity and a rigid sexual division of labor, with physical and emotional nuturance of others strictly women's work. Women are taught to feed and nurture others while their own hungers must be denied and controlled. On the other hand, to the extent that the professional, male sphere is available to them, women must leam and embody traditionally masculine language and values, such as self-control, determination, mastery, and emotional discipline. "The ideal of slendemess, then, and the diet and exercise regimens that have become inseparable from it, offer the illusion of meeting, through the body, the contradictory demands of the contemporary ideology of femininity" (Bordo, 1989, p. 19). Thus as women struggle to lose weight and tone muscles they embody both
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the conventionally masculine ideals of control, discipline, and a strong, physically fit body and the contemporary feminine goal of the slender, petite female form. Women may experience exercise as empowering, as an equalizing force between women and men while it simultaneously helps them achieve cultural ideals of femininity. This is not to disparage the health and pleasure benefits of exercise but to recognize that exercise is also a means of inscribing gender (for both women and men). Body size and physical fitness also provide an arena for the display of class position and status. The slender, aerobically toned body is a sign of social status, much as a suntan was in the not-so-distant past. Both represent the possession of leisure time and disposable income to spend working on one's appearance. The diet and exercise industries support maintenance of class positions and the dream of class mobility. It's all set up--set up one generation after another . . . "you can't be too rich or too thin." How well it works, will keep on working, because the vast majority of women will never be thin. Thin enough. How well the hope of class mobility keeps every mother dieting, and handing the diets down to her daughter, hoping the daughter may do even better. When you combine this with the fact that many non-white peoples tend to be heavier than white folks, dieting becomes a tool not only in enforcing class but in encouraging assimilation. The more successful in looking like the ruling class, the more your mother thinks you may succeed, even if you have to leave your mother behind to do it. (Dykewomon, 1983, p. 147) Conventional measurements of slendemess and obesity show a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and weight. Although almost 40% of women in the highest socioeconomic bracket are considered thin, fewer than 10% of women in the lowest bracket are thin (Wooley & Wooley, 1985). Correlation also exists between ethnicity and weight: Northern Europeans tend to be taller and slimmer than southern and eastern Europeans, and AfroAmerican women between the ages of 20 and 44 form the largest subgroup of overweight Americans (Seid, 1989), suggesting that fat is not only a women's problem, but both a class problem and a racial issue. The unrealistic standards of slendemess that middle-class white women struggle to adhere to are even harder to achieve for women of color and for women who are poor. Slenderness is an effective tool of class oppression precisely because it so hard to achieve, especially for poor women, while it appears so democratic. The culturally endorsed view of body size as a matter of individual choice and control presents the thin body as achievable by anyone who wants it enough to work for it, a sort of great American dream for women, while it obscures the realities of class, racial, and ethnic differences in body shape and size. The proposed means of controlling and reducing the body, such as special diet foods, health-club memberships, and aerobics classes, remain out of reach to poor and working-class women. Though women who refuse to diet and to conform to ideals of slenderness are conventionally viewed as undisciplined or weak, this refusal is sometimes interpreted as an assertion of power. Being fet is an ultimate form of female covert power. . . . Being fat allows a woman to tum down the expectations that others might have of her to be
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their perfect fantasy woman, wife, daughter, or mother without having to open up to the risk of physical abuse orfinancialdisaster. It allows her to occupy space without having to forcibly take it. (Brown, 1985, pp. 66-67) Ironically, this assertion of power and individual rights leaves women in a double bind because women in patriarchal culture are not seen as nor permitted to see themselves as good women when asserting their own needs (Brown, 1985). The obsession with slendemess, dieting, and fat induces another double bind for women: The weight-conscious woman is divided within herself--mind versus body--and, if she follows the guidelines of weight-loss discourse, must become and remain body conscious to alleviate body consciousness (Spitzack 1987). ^^ . '
My Body, My Self
A frequent response to the obsession with body shape and size is a sort of disembodiment; women, especially fat women, learn to dissociate their selves from their bodies (Millman, 1980). The degree of disembodiment varies; many women do not deny the existence of their bodies as much as they try to distract attention from them (for example, with meticulous makeup and hairstyles). Other women live their lives exclusively from the neck up, as this respondent in Millman's investigation described: I feel so terrible about the way I look that I cut off connection with my body. I operate from the neck up. I do not look in mirrors. I do not want to spend ' time buying clothes. I do not want to spend time with make-up because it is painful for me to look at myself. I do look at my face when I have to, to comb my hair, and use only a mirror that will reveal just my face. I have receded from the physical world. I've receded from exercise. I feel bodily uncomfortable. I block out sexuality. I block out food. I block out the feeling of my body being used, looked at, put to work, employed, any of those things--adorned, dressed. I eat as a way of communicating between my mind and my body. It's as though food says, "Hello down there!" (Millman 1980 p. 195) Though this feeling of disembodiment seems to occur more frequently and in more exaggerated forms in weight-conscious women (Millman, 1980), it is not exclusive to this group. ' In her study of women's experiences of childbirth, menstruation, and menopause, Emily Martin (1987) spoke with women of various age, racial, and socioeconomic groups about their bodies. Her analysis of the language these women used to discuss their bodies revealed that, across age, class, and race, the central image women use is "your self is separate from your body" (Martin^ 1987, pp. 71, 76-77). Corollaries of this theme include "your body is something your self has to adjust to or cope with" and "your body needs to be controlled by your s e l f (Martin, 1987, p. 77). Sanford and Donovan (1984) also reported that many women they interviewed felt alienated or estranged from their bodies to some extent. Women are likely to develop this disembodied view, whether weight |conscious or not, because women are so frequently judged on appearance and en-
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couraged to see their bodies as objects to cultivate for the admiration of others (Millman, 1980; Sanford & Donovan, 1984). Women's bodies exist for the pleasure of others, not for their own. As H\hne Cixous (1980) has argued, "We've been turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty" (p. 256). This schism of mind and body affects not only women's sexuality but all aspects of women's identity, including their relationship to food and nurturance. The disembodied self is paradoxically proposed as both a cause and a cure for obesity in the rhetoric of reduction (Spitzack, 1987). To lose weight, one must first recognize oneself as fat, viewing the body as separate and, more importantly, as deviant. Then one must keep one's body under constant surveillance, exercising self-control and willpower and displaying mind over matter, as the diet books proclaim. The body is not simply an object to be controlled but an enemy to be avoided for fear it might destroy the self (Spitzack, 1987). To escape the prejudice of the culture and its treatment of the fat body as an object of ridicule or pity, the dieter must further objectify her own body (Spitzack, 1987). A preferable escape from the cultural obsession with body size is to heal the dualism of mind and body. Some feminist theorists have argued that women are already doing this; their bodily processes force them to juxtapose a series of dualisms-- culture/nature, private/public, home/work (Martin, 1987). In Martin's words, women "embody the opposition" (p. 197). French feminists Luce Irigaray and Hdlfene Cixous, in ecriture feminine, have criticized and rejected all such dichotomies because they are based on repression of the feminine (Dallery, 1989). Writing (the) body "celebrates the radical otherness of women's erotic embodiment" (Dallery, 1989, p. 65). In the framework of ecriture feminine, Americans' culture obsession with the body and fear of fatness can be seen as a fear of otherness; thus, American women strive to create an androgynous body, neither one sex nor the other, where other is defined in terms of difference. Woman's body, with its stubborn difference, resists the project of androgyny and must be reformed and reconstituted through cultural practices and discourses (Dallery, 1989). Irigaray recognized the body as constructed through discourse but rejected the phallocentric code and its oppositions, proposing instead a multiple, plural sexuality and body identity for women: "She is neither one nor two" (Irigaray, 1980, p. 101). Laura Brown (1985), a feminist therapist who works with body-conscious women, also has rejected the oppositional construction of women's bodies, but in a less abstract fashion. Brown has offered specific guidelines for therapists who treat fat women, beginning with the recommendation to remove the words overeating and overweight from their lexicon: "No one is ever over her own weight" (p. 67). She considered the therapist's central task to be supporting women in feeling comfortable with the bodies they have, regardless of size, and ultimately teaching women to love themselves for being women, acknowledging "the inseparable relationship between body and nund" (p. 71). Chemin (1981) took a similar position, urging women to learn to love and value the roundness and fiillness of feminine bodies. It is also important to recognize and value the beauty in the great variety of shapes and sizes of women's bodies; all have a place "in the rainbow spectrum of women and humanity" (Steinem, cited in Sanford & Donovan, 1984, p. 384). Freedman (1986) concurred and added that women must continue to speak out about binges, diets, and com-
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pulsiveness about body image in order to transform it from a private, personal issue to a public, political one. Women should also stop encouraging one another to lose weight and complimenting others on weight loss; in other words, stop equating you look good with you look thin. Other steps to assist this transformation were proposed at a 1989 conference of the London Fat Women's Group; their suggestions included working to challenge negative media representations of fat women, asserting and celebrating their sexuality, establishing support groups, and challenging the fashion industry to provide more variety in large-size clothing (Smith, 1989). In this move to embrace womanly difference, or otherness (e.g.. Brown, 1985; Chemin, 1981), it is easy to misread an essentialist or "back to nature" argument; such a reading would be a tragic mistake. "When women derive their view of experience from their bodily processes, they are not saying 'back to nature' in any way. They are saying on to another kind of culture, one in which our current rigid separations and oppositions are not present" (Martin 1987 p. 200). Proponents of ecriture feminine are often criticized as essentialist; Dallery (1989) has suggested that it is fear of otherness that prompts such misreadings. Some American feminisms seem guided by such fears in their efforts to ensure that women and men are considered to be, and treated as, equal, not different. A more useful path to follow is the one suggested by the ethnomethodological work of Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978); that is, recognize genders as different but not as oppositional. Kessler and McKenna (1978) drew upon the well-documented variability in human genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, and psychological gender identity to argue that gender is polymorphic rather than dimorphic. Similarly, I would suggest that we regard body size in the same way, viewing/ar and thin not as opposites but as points on a continuum, without value judgments at either end. Ecriture feminine, with its inherent celebration of difference and rejection of dichotomies, encourages these views. Ecriture feminine does not promote some fixed ahistoHcal, universal concept of woman's body but promotes the concept that the body is a sign, a function of discourse (Dallery, 1989). Like Bordieu and Foucault (Bordo, 1989), Irigaray and Cixous and other French feminists view the body as a text of femininity, but they propose an alternative way of writing it. One vivid way of writing the body is in the guiding metaphor of Nancy Mairs' memoirs: the body as home. Mairs (1989) has written the body as a dwelling place, "and the homeliness of its nature is even livelier for a woman than for a man" (p. 7). Her autobiography chronicled her experience of life \yith a body and the gradual development of her experience of life as a body, assisted by the onset of multiple sclerosis at age 28. "Your body is a body. Not a holy place of worship but a person. Not a structure 'you' occupy like a maidservant in her master's house but you, yourself. Make yourself at home" (p. 173). Make yourself at home--regardless of the size of your house.
References
ATRENS, D. (1988). Don't diet. New York: Morrow. BAIN, L.L., Wilson, T., & Chaikind, E. (1989). Participant perceptions of exercise programs for overweight women. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 60, 134-143.
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Note
'The notion that patriarchy prefers women who take up less space is supported by work in kinesics; Nancy Henley's (1977) study of body politics documented how in public, at home, and in the workplace men have greater personal space than women. Even women's bodily demeanor is restrained spatially: Men expand to occupy available space; women conserve space (Henley, 1977). Fat women are often resented by thin people for taking up too much space in public places (Freespirit, 1983; Millman, 1980). '
Acknowledgment
My apologies to Jane Caputi (1983) who uses the line one size does notfit'all the title of her essay on thinness and beauty in America. in