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Social and psychological reasons for obesity

 

The complete reason behind obesity is a complicated interaction between social, psychological and physiological elements. Here is a survay of the most important social and psychological components causing over-weight.

If a child lacks some essetial need in its early infancy, and this lack is never compensated in a real manner, the person as a child and later as a grown up will try to compensate the loss by some false means. Over-eating can be such a false compensation for something lacking in early infanthood.

The missing factors  can be of several kinds, but one factor may be of greatest importance: Many small children miss breastfeeding, and many children do not get enough physical contact skin against skin  with their parents or other people. A reason for this deficiency is he demand for disipline the modern society makes from the parents regarding working hours and regarding other kinds of duty.

Another reason for this lack by children of necessary body contact with other human beings, is a misinterpration that body contact is equal to sexual abuse. In the modern society misunderstanding health autorities and other authorities  systematically frighten adullts from having skin contact with children, and also frighten children from seking bodily contact with adults and other children.

Still another reason for lack of necessary body contact by children is a misunderstanding that body contact is unhygienic, or exaggerated standards of hygiene.

Of course, a mising need in adult life can also cause a person to over-eat. Any missing need that give this effect, for example the lack of a lover.

Obesity because of missing needs have a tendency to reinforce itself . The obesity often makes it more difficult to achieve the thing missed in the first place. Then to confort himself, the obese person over-eats still more, making the obesity steadily more severe.

Sexual abuse is nowadays invoked as a standard explanation for all kinds of problems in the western societies, including obesity. In most cases this explanation is probably false. Still, in some cases it may be right.

The psychological dynamics in those cases where this explanation holds, may be the following: The child recognizes that the attractiveness of its own body is the source fo the abuse. Then the child decides to make itself unattrctive by means of over-eating to prevent further abuse. This pattern will then persist into adulthood, often whithout being concious  anymore.

Sexual abuse is of course only one kind of abuse a child or adult person can be subjected to. Many people live in a situation of constant violence, or threats of being subjected to violence. In these cases a person may over-eat to confort himself, or he may over-eat to get a physical shield of fat as a protection against the violence. The pattern of over-eating caused by such a situation can persist also when the threatful situation has passed, either because of pure habit, or because the fear of violence still persists.

No society is totally safe, and every human being feel a need for more safty in its daily life. Over-eating makes the body greater, and the fat has the ability to work as a kind of shield against physical threats. Some people will therefore be tempted to over-eat to get a shield of fat against physical dangers. To a certain degree this thought is right. A thick layer of fat polstering the body will to some extend work as a physical shield.  However, this logic is not complete. The health dangers form the excessive fat are greater than the protection it gives.

In the earliest times of the human species, the supply of food was unsecure. Therefore every human being had a natural instinct to eat as much as possible and get fat when food was present. When the times then got leaner, he could use the accumulated fat as an energy source, and doing so get slim again. Even though the supply of food usually is abundant and constant in a modern western societies, this instincive measure against starvation is still present in a modern mans psychological workup. The result is a constant temptation to over-eat because of the fear of starvation.

The culture and history of obesity

(This information is mostly fetched form wikipedia.org, and is as such free for reuse)

Etymology of the words "obesity and obese"

Obesity is the nominal form of obese which comes from the Latin obēsus, which means "stout, fat, or plump." Ēsus is the past participle of edere (to eat), with ob added to it. In Classical Latin, this verb is seen only in past participial form. Its first attested usage in English was in 1651, in Noah Biggs's Matæotechnia Medicinæ Praxeos.


Obesity in history

In the early prehistory when the human beings were hunterers, the lean, dynamic  and muscularly profiled type of human shape seemed to have been the predominant ideal, both for men and women. Early paintings and other art from this period clearly point to this. And example of this, is the art from the Kreatean cultures and from the early Greek cultural periods.

When however, the societies began nourishing themselves from agriculture, and a complicated social hierarchy with rich and poor people developed, the general nutritional situation worsened. The poor got undernourished, the rich got obese and overnourished.

From this situation, obesity gradually developed as a perverted status symbol in European culture. The physical status of the unhealthy obese rich people come to be seen as something attractive to aim at for the equally unhealthy, undernourished poor people.  This situation did not develop equally early in all societies. Many societies managed to keep the original healthy attitude towards the human body for a long time.

From this time on, in several human cultures, obesity come to be associated with physical attractiveness, strength, and fertility. Some of the earliest records of this new ideal are Venus figurines, pocket-sized statuettes representing an obese female figure. Although their cultural significance is unrecorded, their widespread use throughout the earliest times of the complicated stratified Mediterranean and European cultures suggests that the obese female now had got a central role in culture and ritualism. This role was perhaps coupled with the observation that unhealthy obese females after all were more able to bear children than unhealthy undernourished females.

Obesity was considered a symbol of wealth and social status also in other in cultures prone to food shortages or famine. Well into the early modern period in European cultures, it often served this role. But as food security was realized, it came to serve more as a visible signifier of "lust for life", appetite, and immersion in the realm of the erotic.

This was especially the case in the visual arts, such as the paintings of Rubens (1577–1640), whose regular depiction of fat women gives us the description Rubenesque. Obesity can also be seen as a symbol within a system of prestige. "The kind of food, the quantity, and the manner in which it is served are among the important criteria of social class. In most tribal societies, even those with a highly stratified social system, everyone - royalty and the commoners - ate the same kind of food, and if there was famine everyone was hungry. With the ever increasing diversity of foods, food has become not only a matter of social status, but also a mark of one's personality and taste."


Contemporary culture and attitued towards obesity

In modern Western culture, the obese body shape is widely regarded as unattractive. Many negative stereotypes are commonly associated with obese people, such as the belief that they are lazy, stupid, or even evil, gluttony being the second of the seven deadly sins. Obese children, teenagers and adults face a heavy social stigma. Obese children are frequently the targets of bullies and are often shunned by their peers. Obesity in adulthood can lead to a slower rate of career advancement. Most obese people have experienced negative thoughts about their body image, and many take drastic steps to try to change their shape, including dieting, the use of diet pills, and even surgery.

Not all contemporary cultures disapprove of obesity. There are many cultures which are traditionally more approving (to varying degrees) of obesity, including some African, Arabic, Indian, and Pacific Island cultures. Especially in recent decades, obesity has come to be seen more as a medical condition in modern Western culture even being referred to as an epidemic.

Recently emerging is a small but vocal fat acceptance movement that seeks to challenge weight-based discrimination. Obesity acceptance and advocacy groups have initiated litigation to defend the rights of obese people and to prevent their social exclusion. Some notable figures within this movement, such as Paul Campos, argue that the social stigma surrounding obesity is founded in cultural anxiety, and that public concern over health risks associated with obesity are inappropriately used as a rationalization for this stigma.


Obesity in popular culture and enertainment

Obesity is often humorized in cartoons.Various stereotypes of obese people have found their way into expressions of popular culture. A common stereotype is the obese character who has a warm and dependable personality, but equally common is the obese vicious bully (such as Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter book series, Eric Cartman from South Park, Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons). Gluttony and obesity are commonly depicted together in works of fiction. In cartoons, obesity is often used to comedic effect, with fat cartoon characters (such as Piggy, Porky Pig, Tummi Gummi, and Podgy Pig )having to squeeze through narrow spaces, frequently getting stuck or even exploding.

A more unusual example of obesity-related humour is Bustopher Jones, the fat cat, from the musical Cats, whose claim to fame is that he is a regular visitor to many gentlemen's clubs including Drones, Blimp's and the Tomb. Due to his constant lunching at these clubs, he is remarkably fat, "a twenty-five pounder... And he's putting on weight everyday." Another popular character, Garfield, a cartoon cat, is also obese for humor. When his owner, Jon, puts him on diets, rather than losing weight, Garfield slows down his weight gain.

It can be argued that depiction in popular culture adds to and maintains commonly perceived stereotypes, in turn harming the self esteem of obese people. A charge of discrimination on the basis of appearance could be leveled against these depictions.[citation needed]

On the other hand, obesity is often associated with positive characteristics such as good humor (the stereotype of the jolly fat man like Santa Claus), and some people are more sexually attracted to obese people than to slender people (see chubby culture, fat admirer).