Susan Kano on body image and conformity

Today I pulled out Making Peace with Food: Freeing Yourself from the Diet/Weight Obsession by Susan Kano, because a lot of the emails I’ve been getting from women reminded me of it. I haven’t read it in about 15 years and I had forgotten how gently radical it is:

Some women say that their restrictive clothing and high-heeled shoes are not uncomfortable. Many women become accustomed to the discomfort, or build certain muscles (or develop an “adaptive” curve to their spines) and thereby decrease the pain. But the pressure to expect and accept suffering teaches us deeply harmful lessons and priorities. Furthermore, physical damage is usually occurring even though we’ve become accustomed to the harmful clothing or shoes. High heels strain and damage the spine. They also make it very hard to run (which can be dangerous in certain situations) and increase the probability of ankle sprains.

If you wear uncomfortable clothing, you implicitly accept an ornamental body view, which in turn supports your preoccupation with diet and weight. Furthermore, physical discomfort alienates you from your body, which further supports your preoccupation. How can you be satisfied and at peace with your body if you are forever feeling physically uncomfortable? Is it strange that when you wear tight clothing you tend to feel “too fat”? In a sense you are, at that moment, too fat: too fat for the clothes you’re wearing. But who or what is more important: the clothing or the person who wears it? If the clothing is more important and you exist for the clothing, then you are too fat; but if you are more important and the clothing exists to serve you, then the clothing is too small.

The following is the best explanation I have ever read for something that’s been puzzling me lately–how is it that I am more content than I have ever been while also being the fattest I have ever been? How can I be so solidly convinced of my worth and rightness, in spite of being featured on kooksites.com and cruel.com, subject to a kind of ridicule which in the past would have made me want to curl up and die?

I cannot deny that our society rewards slenderness–it does. However, the rewards for making peace with your body are far greater:

1. It is relatively easy to live well and be happy while enjoying physical comfort and good health; it is virtually impossible to live well and be happy while struggling against your body’s basic physical needs.

2. When we learn to fill our physical needs, we learn to respect and take care of ourselves. We may have to stand up to social pressure to conform, but we can struggle against externally imposed problems and be at peace with ourselves. We cannot struggle against ourselves and be at peace.

3. If we direct our energy toward creating an environment that encourages sane, life-supportive values, then we direct our energy toward something constructive. Progress is a likely result. If we channel our energy toward conforming to destructive values, then we support the values that are destroying us. Progress is simply impossible.

And that goes for more than just fat, folks. I just love it. “If we channel our energy toward conforming to destructive values, then we support the values that are destroying us.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Making Peace With Food: Freeing Yourself from the Diet/Weight Obsession by Susan Kano (1989, Harper & Row) pages 44-45 & 51.

Filed under: fat politics, words from women by Amy's Brain Today