Section 2 > Exercise 4 > Obesity: body image and culture
The following passage opens Irving Yalom's story, "Fat Lady." In this story, Yalom, a psychiatrist, tells how he treated his obese patient's depression, and how this process helped her lose nearly 100 pounds. Read the opening excerpt and answer the discussion questions.
From Irving Yalom, "Fat Lady"
The day Betty entered my office, the instant I saw her steering her ponderous two-hundred-fifty-pound, five-foot-two-inch frame toward my trim, high-tech office chair, I knew that a great trial of countertransference was in store for me.
I have always been repelled by fat women. I find them disgusting: their absurd sidewise waddle, their absence of body contour – breasts, laps, buttocks, shoulders, jawlines, cheekbones, everything, everything I like to see in a woman, obscured in an avalanche of flesh. And I hate their clothes – the shapeless, baggy dresses or, worse, the stiff elephantine blue jeans with the barrel thighs. How dare they impose that body on the rest of us?
The origins of these sorry feelings? I have never thought to inquire. So deep do they run that I never considered them prejudice. But were an explanation demanded of me, I suppose I could point to the family of fat, controlling women, including – featuring – my mother, who peopled my early life. Obesity, endemic in my family, was a part of what I had to leave behind when I, a driven, ambitious, first-generation American-born, decided to shake forever from my feet the dust of the Russian shtetl.
I can take other guesses. I have always admired, perhaps more than many men, the woman’s body. No, not just admired: I have elevated, idealized, ecstacized it to a level and a goal that exceeds all reason. Do I resent the fat woman for her desecration of my desire, for bloating and profaning each lovely feature that I cherish? For stripping away my sweet illusion and revealing its base of flesh – flesh on the rampage?
I grew up in racially segregated Washington, D.C., the only son of the only white family in the midst of a black neighborhood. In the streets, the black attacked me for my whiteness, and in school, the white attacked me for my Jewishness. But there was always fatness, the fat kids, the big asses, the butts of jokes, those last chosen for athletic teams, those unable to run the circle of the athletic track. I needed someone to hate, too. Maybe that was where I learned it.
Of course, I am not alone in my bias. Cultural reinforcement is everywhere. Who ever has a kind word for the fat lady? But my contempt surpasses all cultural norms. Early in my career, I worked in a maximum security prison where the least heinous offense committed by any of my patients was a simple, single murder. Yet I had little difficulty accepting those patients, attempting to understand them, and finding ways to be supportive.
But when I see a fat lady eat, I move down a couple of rungs on the ladder of human understanding. I want to tear the food away. To push her face into the ice cream. "Stop stuffing yourself! Haven’t you had enough, for Chrissakes?" I’d like to wire her jaws shut!
Poor Betty – thank God, thank God – knew none of this as she innocently continued her course toward my chair, slowly lowered her body, arranged her folds and, with her feet not quite reaching the floor, looked up at me expectantly.
From Ivin Yalom, Love's Executioner Basic Books, 1989 pp.94-95
Discussion Questions
1. In the vignette, is Faye's body attractive? To whom? To the author? To Faye? To Mark? To you?
2. How does Yalom's attitude differ from the author's in the vignette about Faye?
3. You might not like Yalom's attitude toward his patient, but at least he is frank. Examine your feelings about obesity or other bodily presentations that might cause you to have a negative reaction. Discuss how you would deal with them. |
