As a twenty-something college student, image is a big deal. Specifically physical image. When I put my jeans on in the morning, I turn around and check in the mirror that I don’t have love handles spilling over the waistband. When I sit in a desk, or anywhere for that matter, I suck in and pull my jeans up so what fat I do have doesn’t bulge over the top of my pants. I buy clothes that give me a certain figure, as close to an hourglass shape as I can get, and it really sucks when I’m bloated, even a little bit, because then it throws the shape all out of whack.
Besides the fact that you actually need fat in your body to function, it’s absolutely imperative that you walk around as though fat doesn’t exist in your body, and if it does you deny it vehemently and avoid gaining it like the plague. The only place I want fat to fill my body is in my butt so I can achieve the Kim Kardashian booty. Fat is not a good thing, so magazines, television, movies, and the rest of society tells me, unless it gets you a big butt or a nice pair of double d breasts. Seems to me those two areas are the only places fat is acceptable.
So since fat is the most taboo subject in pop culture today, my eating habits are directly correlated with it. I really hate the assumption that skinny=healthy; as a person who is not overweight or underweight and a vegetarian to boot, I hate feeling bad when I want to eat a Kit Kat bar (my favorite) or a cinnamon roll or pasta smothered in cheese. There is the need to be hyper-vigilant about what I put in my mouth, especially when I’m eating around other people. So I have this whole regiment where I eat Subway—a lot (I think I should get some kind of faithful customer award)—and then sneak french fries from McDonalds or Sonic once in a while and don’t tell anyone about it. What kind of walking contradiction am I that I am such a proponent of healthy eating choices but I slip up so often with my french fries? So, friends of mine, I seriously doubt you know how many french fries I pack away in a week…
Although I am not a calorie-counter per se, seeing the numbers on the Subway napkin that compares Subway sandwiches with hamburgers from McDonalds and Burger King makes my heart race just a little bit. Especially the calorie count for french fries….
While I am not recovering from an eating disorder as the author of the blog ED Bites is, the author made an astute comment in relation to calorie counts on menus in the post “Mind F*ck”: good intentions can have very bad effects. The author writes of the panic felt at the little numbers listed beside every choice on the menu, a panic I understand although perhaps in a different way. I feel bad enough that I break down and swing by McDonalds for french fries once in a while without visualizing obsessively each calorie counted as a bubble of fat that might hang over the waist of my jeans. Perhaps it helps some people make better choices, but all I can imagine is the waiter saying, “dang, I can’t believe she saw that sandwich has 2345942370978 calories and she still ordered it…”
You write: "it’s absolutely imperative that you walk around as though fat doesn’t exist in your body" -- this is a particularly good point, and I see it as a way of life that even I am guilty of feeling. There's so much vilification of fat that individuals don't realize the importance that it can serve for a body (warmth, for instance). While talk of healthy fats is present in conversations about healthy living, too often fat in foods is situated in relation to fat on bodies. We conceive of french fries going straight to the hips, which of course, they don't. We talked a little about food shaming in last Monday's class. It's interesting to think about how the calorie counts on Subway napkins perpetuate not only turning food products into calorie counts but also provoking individuals to make each food choice comparative to something else that is "bad." What's I find troublesome about the calorie counts on the menu that I noticed at Panera the other day is that with all the focus on "health," the restaurants aren't necessarily doing much to lessen their posted calorie counts by offering other options. Instead, beleaguered consumers stand there looking at the menu getting more and more nervous about their food choices or worried that they'll be judged, as you note at the end of your post.
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