Beyond a Lifetime of Comparison: A Sociological Self-Exploration of Body Image Obsession

I. INTRODUCTION I am the youngest of five beautiful women. We are extremely close to one another and are indeed each others' best friends. Unbeknownst to most, we share a common obsession with our weight and size. Unbelievably, almost every one of us has battled with an eating disorder at some point in our lives. While watching my sisters focus on the societal and familial demands to be thin, some of my earliest memories include a recollection of feeling too big. We lived in a home that was, while full of love, also full of turmoil. With a father with anger management problems and a mother with control issues, food was what I had power over. By fifth grade I felt guilty when eating and restrained from eating for the first time. By freshman year in high school I was unable to keep down water, let alone food, and was hospitalized for an extended period of time. After my discharge from the hospital and the beginning of my regulated consumption of food, I gained a lot of weight quickly due to my body's state of starvation and my lack of metabolism. Over the years, I have worked hard to find a healthy place in body. While my "recovery" was extensive and life-saving, my mindset from the disorder seems permanent. I have an internal fight all day, every day. When walking around in public, there is an incessant need in my head to gauge my size compared to every other person around me. This comparison and self-judgment has become an every moment part of my life. Its permanence is terrifying. While explaining the process of writing about traumas, James Pennebaker, author of Writing to Heal, writes, "People who benefit most from writing about their traumas change the ways in which they focus on the trauma from day to day" (Pennebaker 2004:101). This essay is a project toward acceptance and change. I will look at this seemingly life-long struggle with body image from different angles. I will explore how societal demand and familial modeling play a role in body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Using micro-and macro-sociological theories and concepts, insightful journal articles, books and movies, I will dissect my obsession and investigate its origin. II. FIGHTING FOR CONTROL C. G., a former student at UMass Boston, began her article, "Why do I Not Like Me? Sociological Self-Reflections on Weight Issues and the American Culture," with a perfect opening statement that fits well also with this sociologically self-reflective essay. "Phenomenologists believe that we take things for granted in our everyday lives and that we are not aware that these things were socially constructed and thus can be changed" (2007:02). I must also begin by problematizing what I have been taking for granted in order to discover how my life also has been socially constructed and how I can change it. Since I was very young, my parents have both worked and my sisters played integral parts as role models and supporters. My parents were supportive yet held high standards for achievement. We were blessed to be given lasting guidance when it came to our manners and moral code but lived in a very controlled environment. There were measures of control and restriction throughout our everyday lives. The most prominent control in our home was food. My father, who married my mother as a Green Beret and was an athletic man, became overweight as he owned his own business and grew older. In congruence with the PBS documentary, Running out of Time, conveying the societal demands of working longer hours and gaining more money, his lifestyle became that of an office person. His weight was often a stressor in our home as my mother constantly ridiculed him for his food choices and weight. That war of food was propelled onto us and internalized (Berger and Luckmann 2008). We took in what we saw and made it part of ourselves. We adapted a habit of asking permission to eat something. I remember, at a young age, my mother telling me to drink water after one glass of juice due to the juice's caloric content. …