Weighty Words / Light Considerations

"Oh, I've been making my way all summer through Moby Dick. I'm thinking of including it in my next novel class."

"Oh? Well at least if you do, you can use yourself as a visual aid by playing the whale (Ha Ha Ha)."

"True, but I may need some help (ha ha ha): how would you like to come in and play the entire crew of The Pequod?"

Get it? Moby Dick? Pequod? Um, for those still confused, Moby Dick--the big, old, [fat] white whale--sinks The Pequod at the end of the novel with all hands.

OK, it was a lame response; I admit it. But at the moment I couldn't come up with much else. Anyway I didn't really even say the last line. Instead, I weakly smiled and inwardly shrugged my shoulders. What could I do? Direct fury would have done little good. The person who said those things, in truth, meant me no harm even if she is preoccupied with weight concerns. Responding in anger would probably not change her inwardly, just make her outwardly uncomfortable to be around me, and I don't want that.

I don't want that because she is a family member, usually a good friend, and because I love her. Yet one of the ironies of my life is that people in my culture who are close to me, who in most ways strive to be decent, good and even righteous Christians, exhibit attitudes towards weight that are none of the above. My American culture's attitude towards weight blocks the work of God's kingdom because it wounds the sense of value in individuals, it encourages insensitive behavior in many, it seduces me to judge others, and, most importantly, it is false.

The examples I could give for how my culture's attitude on weight has wounded me are legion. Why do gym teachers think that if a child carries a lot of weight, he or she is morally obligated to swing round, toss over, and jump about with it just the same as a light child? It’s like expecting everyone to run the same number of laps even if every fifth child were issued lead sneakers instead those of standard cloth and rubber. There is an unsaid message that we, the weighted ones, CHOOSE to put on those lead sneakers; it’s OUR fault, and now we just have to deal with it and making us deal with it is the obligation of everyone else.

How clearly I recall hanging like a sack of potatoes from the ropes while my gym teacher attempted to verbally propel me up those "hemps of agony."

"Come on Rearick! Move your flabby butt! Lets go, lets go!” (giggles from around the mat) “Let's see you put some muscle in it!" After hanging there a few moments longer, doing my imitation of a hooked piece of meat, I am finally released in disgrace. Gym was not my favorite time. Little that occurred in that class throughout grade and high school did my self-worth much good, and I was never encouraged to seek constructive ways towards an active life style. One either could dodge a ball or one was “a sitting duck,” an “easy out,” a total and utter reject. What a hideous lesson to learn in school. Yet I am sure my gym instructors originally became teachers because they wanted to help children. But they became tainted by the assumptions of our culture.

A more subtle attack on my self-worth comes even today in my culture's word choice to describe weight reduction.

"Why yes, I have. But my wife’s not too happy about the dents on our bedroom’s wooden floor."

My problem here is with the word "dropped." "Dropped" is an inadequate verb for the description of reducing body weight. I drop my pens all the time. My wife complains that I drop my books anywhere when I come through the door in the afternoon. Because it goes along with the force of gravity, dropping things is easy to do (personally I find picking them up is usually a lot harder). So why does my culture use the word "drop" for weight removal? The subtle suggestion is clear. Getting rid of those pounds is a snap if the “Shamues”[1] of the world would just put their minds to it. Similarly members of my culture often use the words "loss," "lose," or "lost" to describe the agonizing process of weight removal.

"Actually no, I lost my glasses this morning. I lose my keys all the time, but I did not get on the scale today and go 'Oh my goodness where did I lay down that weight? I'd lose my head if it weren't attached to me!' No, I know exactly where I worked off the pounds to which you are referring."

I don't mean to be strident, but once again the suggestion is that weight reduction is as effortless as forgetting where one placed one's wallet the night before. Thus, the common message my culture promulgates is that the reason people are heavy is because they lack the moral fiber to do the easiest of tasks. This assumption leads to an air of superiority which often expresses itself in the most thoughtless criticism by strangers, friends and even loved ones.

I began the essay with an actual quote--except for The Pequod line--from a conversation I had not long ago. It was hardly unique. Even strangers in my culture, who would be aghast if someone were to make comments in their presence about another's physical challenges (such as blindness or speech difficulties), feel no hindrance in reaching out and patting my middle, suggesting that I need to do “a few more push ups from the table.” What is especially troubling is when this judgmental spirit appears within the Christian community.

Teaching at a small, private, Christian grade school in Long Island, I worked with a number of full figured women. There was one, however, who had the figure of a gymnast. She took being physically fit very seriously. All well and good, but I was amazed when she told me she had been leaving tracts on the lunch table about the stewardship of the body for her female co-workers to read in the teacher’s lounge.

“Don’t you think that’s a good idea?” She must have seen something in my face. “Have you seen some of them?”

“Well, then it seems to me that you have no idea what struggles and difficulties Alice and Mary[2] are facing. Maybe you’re right. Maybe for their own well being it might be good for them to reduce. But are you the one to do it? Advice like this might be an act of love from someone who knows the experience, but from you it sounds. . .”

To her credit she stopped putting out the tracts. But this young lady, a devout Christian, was blind to her own “Pharisaical” pride. Christians are too often swept along with the general opinion of the dominant culture. While at Eastern Nazarene College, I had a classmate who was on good terms with me most of the time but who constantly made public comments about my girth. There was in his observations a sense of self-righteousness, of superiority, and yet I remember realizing one day that his frame, although slender, was that of what would classically be called "a ninety eight pound weakling."

Certainly I can not recall ever seeing him in the weight workout room where I had made puddles on the floor pushing metal about; nor had he ever passed me as I jogged along beside blue, Quincy Bay. Thus, he was in no way morally superior to me. In fact, if anything, I was more physically fit and therefore a truer “Christian” steward of my body than he. But I doubt many looked upon him as morally lax. And I suspect that there are some who judge me without knowing me. In truth among Christians, because they assume what is actually an inaccurate knowledge of the sin of gluttony, judging overweight individuals as somehow less disciplined than the rest of the race is far too common.

C.S. Lewis in his book The Screwtape Letters has the veteran demon, Screwtape, explain the nature of gluttony as not so determined by the size of the patient’s stomach but on the amount of attention “the patient,” Screwtape’s euphemism for his nephew’s victim, gives it. Thus, the individual who constantly judges what is good or not good to eat, who makes hosts miserable with “connoisseuric” demands, and self-righteously looks at what others consume is more in danger of Hell’s flames than the individual who faces and maybe fails the challenge of monitoring his or her body’s calorie intake. Lewis has Screwtape illustrate this point by describing the mother of his nephew’s patient:

She would be astonished - one day, I hope, will be - to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness and self-concern?. . . [The mother] is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. . .If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want. (Lewis, Letter XVII, 77)

Thus, Lewis recognizes that the true nature of gluttony is not girth but self-centeredness. And if pressed to it, most Christians would admit that measuring a person’s middle is not an accurate gauge of that person’s carnal nature. Problematically, however, they are not pressed to it; instead they thoughtlessly assume their cultures preconceived ideas are true. If I sound harsh, it is because the consequences are so great. Yet I know personally how easy it is to follow the cultural tide.

Probably the saddest aspect of this judgmental quality of my culture is that it has, at times, seduced me as well. As often as I have been the victim, I must confess I, a Christian, have, at times, looked with critical eyes on individuals whose body weight seems to say to me they have just "let themselves go," are not interested in organizing their lives, and are probably greedily eating more food than “normal people.” I know that I have done this, or I would not have been surprised to see Mrs. Shriefield propelling herself vigorously around the New York Nazarene Camp Ground on a bike. Nor would I have been amazed to see Joe McDaniel hit a high fly during a church softball game and then propel himself and his “beer-gut” around the bases so quickly that he caught up with a slimmer runner heading for home who had been on second when he hit the ball. Bad enough that I and others in my culture should judge individuals without knowing their experiences or abilities, but in point of fact, science has shown that the assumptions we make about fat people are, in fact, false.

Recently on NOVA (PBS) the question of weight was examined. Various aspects of what causes the wide variation of weight among humans were considered. Food choices, how active one's life is and patterns of behavior were all examined. However, the dominate finding was that for most of us the way our bodies deal with calories has more to do with genes than the other aspects so often pointed to by food gurus and aerobic pedagogues. Thus, those who are slender are so more often because of their ancestors than by any moral superiority in their choices.

There are good reasons to try and keep one's weight under control, and this essay is not meant as an excuse for people like me to blithely go along as the arrows on their scales go round and round like broken compasses. High blood pressure, strokes and heart disease, are all health risks which are complicated by carrying a lot of pounds (although on women this is true far less if they carry their weight on their hips--again a genetic factor). Exercise and good eating habits are good patterns of behavior for anyone. When watching my intake I note that my snoring decreases and I stop suffering from heart burn—two completely hidden symptoms which improve my overall health. What concerns me is my culture's tendency (and I must include myself here) to devalue individuals.

I have been learning anew recently about God's absolute and total love. That he, above all else, wants us to live with a sense of value found in Him. However, in the society in which I live, there is a terrible tendency for individuals to act toward those of us who go to the husky or full figured part of the store in a way which publicly questions our self-discipline, athletic abilities and even moral fiber. So pervasive are these presuppositions that many of us “full figured” individuals judge others like ourselves even while carrying huge amounts of self-loathing. The destructive quality of this is not hard to find. Bulimia and Anorexia are extremes; cycles of bingeing and dieting are far more common. However, even more general is the endless, perpetual sense of worthlessness with which so many struggle. When we cause this--when I cause this--the Kingdom of Love is not served. Instead the Light that is the Love of God is somehow lost in the shadows of human perspectives. Let us all, therefore, strive to be light—that is as a people full of radiance and not as a people evaluated by a bathroom scale

[1] Shamues: plural of fat people based on the famous Sea World killer whale Shamu.

[2] All the people described in this essay are real family, friends, and aquatints of mine and therefore to keep them so, no one’s name has been actually used.