The Culture Code (9 page)

When I was a young psychotherapist, a woman came to see me with her overweight teenage daughter. The woman wanted me to find out what was “wrong” with the girl and to get to the psychological root of her eating problems. I spoke with the mother and daughter together and then had several sessions with the girl alone. In these private sessions, the girl told me she had no problems with her weight until she reached puberty and began to develop breasts. It was at that point that her mother’s boyfriend began making unseemly advances to her. The boyfriend stopped hitting on her only when she got fat. As far as the girl was concerned, everything was now fine.

I met with the mother privately and told her what her daughter said about her weight gain and its relationship to the boyfriend. The woman was aghast, called me a dirty old man (even though I wasn’t old at the time), and canceled our future sessions. She took her daughter to a doctor, who put the girl on a strict diet. The daughter’s weight dropped dramatically. Unfortunately, the mother didn’t get rid of the boyfriend.

About a year later, I was surprised to see an appointment with the girl and her mother on my calendar. They came to see me again because, even though the girl’s weight was no longer an issue, the mother had new concerns and she grudgingly acknowledged that I might be able to help. Her daughter now had eczema all over her body. It turned out that after she lost weight, her mother’s boyfriend resumed his lecherous ways—until the skin disease turned him off again. My advice to the mother was the same: dump the guy. Sadly, her response to my advice was also the same. I never saw the mother or daughter again.

Fat is a significant issue in this country. More than 125 million Americans are overweight. More than 60 million Americans are obese. Nearly 10 million Americans have been clinically diagnosed as
morbidly
obese. This is excellent news for the diet industry, but alarming news for the rest of us. Regardless of how one feels about body image or definitions of beauty, there are significant health risks associated with being overweight. Contrary to the opinions of those esteemed panelists at Tufts University, most of us know this. The issue, however, persists.

Why are so many of us fat when we know fat is bad for us? Because fat is not a problem. Fat is a solution.

Psychologists have been aware for a long time that fat is an answer to a problem rather than a problem itself. Overeating is a common coping mechanism for the sexually abused. My adolescent patient became fat because her unconscious understood that doing so made her less attractive to her mother’s disgusting boyfriend. When her mother essentially forced her to lose weight, her unconscious came up with another answer.

If nearly 50 percent of this country is overweight, there must be a cultural reason for it. What are we coping with? After all, the percentage of overweight Italians is half the percentage of overweight Americans, and a recent
New York Times
best-seller proclaims that
French Women Don’t Get Fat
(not true: actually; nearly a third of French women are overweight, though that is still dramatically less than the 62 percent rate of overweight among adult women in America).

As always, the stories participants told during the third hour of our discovery sessions were revealing. Some spoke of triumph:

After battling with an extra twenty pounds or so for my height, I became very depressed, especially while shopping. It was a nightmare because the clothes never fit right and I wouldn’t even dare to check out myself from behind. I made a pact with myself to finally lose the weight before it “got too late.” I took off thirty or so pounds and felt very proud and successful.

—a twenty-two-year-old woman

When I was twelve, I decided that I must go on a diet because I was starting to be interested in boys and they weren’t interested in me. I went on a diet of cottage cheese and fruit and lost twenty pounds! I was so happy, and my cousin Nancy, who was quite slim and older than me, gave me some of the shorts she had outgrown and they fit me perfectly. I remember our next-door neighbor telling my mother I was too skinny. That was great!

—a woman in her late fifties

Some spoke of tragedy:

When I was about a second-grader, my paternal grandmother was diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes. She was born and raised on a farm and lived her adult life as a farmer’s wife. She cooked with lard, butter, and real cream. At the noon meal, she typically put three meats, four or five starches, four to five vegetables, and three desserts on the table…and she ate like a farmer. She was five feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds. She died of complications associated with her diabetes, in a way eating herself into the grave.

—a thirty-five-year-old woman

I was young; first grade, I think. I was shopping with my mom for my school uniform and the top was too tight around my arms. I remember feeling bad and “less than” in some regard. I felt like a bad person because I was bigger than my friends. Right around this time, my dad died and that just confirmed my bad feelings. I was fat. I was bad. My dad died. Therefore, I was not good enough and I was being punished in some respect by having my father taken away.

—a thirty-eight-year-old woman

Some spoke with sadness:

My cousin was a beautiful young girl. Slim, porcelain skin, blue eyes, and white-blond hair. She was very rebellious, though, and made some bad choices that messed up her life. I had not seen her for some time until this past spring. She is now extremely obese with barely distinguishable facial features. I was saddened to see this change and more distressed when I saw that her three children were obese as well.

—a forty-five-year-old woman

I remember a family bike ride when I was about four or five. My dad, brother, sister, and I were active. My mom rarely did things with us actively because of her size and discomfort. I recall that she looked silly upon the small seat of the bike. She seemed uncomfortable with the whole experience. I would have liked to have made her thinner and therefore more comfortable in clothes, going out, being more active.

—a woman in her fifties

When I was young, I moved to a new house. Before I moved, I was not overweight. When we moved, I kept myself inside away from the other children because I was upset that I had moved away from my friends. I stayed in the house that whole summer and because I stayed in, I gained weight. I wish I could change that summer because I might have changed the way I am today.

—a man in his late thirties

Others spoke with anger:

Recently I went dancing and there was a man I met who was fairly interesting to me. I looked at his stomach and he was fat, which is a real turn-off to me. I was not interested in him. I feel repulsed by a man that is fat. I could never be attracted to him. It’s one of the first things I notice about a prospective suitor.

—a sixty-one-year-old woman

I remember walking home from school with my little sister when I was in sixth grade. Some kids called her “fatty,” and the tears in her eyes made me mad enough to chase one of the boys and give him a bloody nose. She has had weight problems ever since.

—a forty-nine-year-old woman

Something connected all of these stories and the hundreds of others like them. It didn’t matter whether the participants told of clothes or farms, bicycles or bloody noses. What did matter was the way they spoke about these things. Losing weight and being thin made people “feel proud and successful” at how their clothes “fit perfectly.” Being overweight, on the other hand, related to “being punished,” “keeping inside,” and being “a real turn-off.”

The axis of tension emerged via these stories. Just as the other side of the axis from beauty for Americans is provocativeness, the opposite position on the axis from fat is connection. As a culture, we believe that thin people are active and involved. They are “proud and successful” and their clothes “fit great.” On the other hand, fat people, according to the stories, are disconnected from society. They turn people off, they stay inside, and they fail to interact with their families.

This axis is visible everywhere in this culture. A woman might stay thin through the early years of her marriage, but after her second or third pregnancy does not lose the weight. Why? Because she is unconsciously disconnecting from her husband in order to concentrate on being a mother. A man struggles uncomfortably with a life in middle management and, when he puts on an extra thirty or forty pounds, complains that he has been passed over for a promotion because of his weight. People balloon multiple sizes after a bad breakup, the loss of a job, their kids’ departure for college, or the death of a parent.

The tension is always there. We might use alibis, like “big bones” or a slow metabolism. We might talk about “love handles” or how true beauty resides “on the inside.” Quite often, though, those of us who struggle with our weight are also struggling with one of our connections—to loved ones, to the roles we play, to the “rat race.”

The Code for fat in America is
CHECKING
OUT
.

Al Gore never served as president of the United States, but he serves as a visual representation of the Code. When Gore lost the 2000 presidential election, he was understandably distraught and he dropped out of sight for a few months. When he finally agreed to give an interview, we saw him sporting a beard and a considerable amount of extra weight. The loss was so devastating to him that he checked out. Interestingly, when he recently held a press conference to announce the launch of his new cable television network, he looked trim and fit. Al Gore had a new purpose; he’d checked back in.

Given such a Code, is there any question why there are so many overweight people in this culture? As Americans, we are masters at putting undue pressure upon ourselves. We must be supermoms. We must climb the corporate ladder. We must have a relationship worthy of a Harlequin romance. That’s an awful lot to handle. In fact, for many of us, it’s much too much. Therefore, we unconsciously check out. Better to blame the fat than to acknowledge our desire to eschew expectations.

Getting fat is the most common available unconscious way to check out of the rat race, to adopt a strong identity (as an overweight person) without having to fight for it, to move from active to passive. Being fat allows us to know who we are (fat), why this has happened (the overabundance of food “forced” on us), who is responsible (McDonald’s or some other fast food restaurant that “makes us” eat their food), and what our identity is (a victim). Fat also allows us to use commonly accepted alibis to regress to childhood. Another tension we experience is that as babies and young children, we are fed with the intention of making us fat—no one wants a skinny baby—but as we get older, society pressures us to be thin. If we get fat enough, we unconsciously think, perhaps others will take care of us again, as they did when we were babies.

In other cultures, fat sends a very different message. In the Eskimo culture, fat is a sign of hardiness. If one is fat, one can make it through the terrible winters when food is scarce. In the English culture, fat is a sign of vulgarity. The English cultural trait of detachment extends to overeating. If you watch English men and women at a buffet table, you’ll see them approach the table with indifference and choose very little to put on their plates. From their perspective, to do anything else is vulgar, and anyone who overeats so often as to become fat is a vulgar person.

CHECKING
OUT
OF
CHECKING
OUT

Understanding the Code allows us to address our weight issues in much more profound ways than eating bacon cheeseburgers without bread, purchasing exercise equipment that rusts in our basements, or consuming huge quantities of “negative-calorie” foods before bedtime. Nor is the answer simply good nutrition and an active lifestyle, although both are vital to maintaining health. Before we can conquer the
solution
of fat, we need to answer one fundamental question: from what am I checking out?

Acknowledging that one eats when one is stressed, depressed, or otherwise overwhelmed by the world is definitely on Code. If one understands that stress leads to “checking out,” one can pay more attention to the underlying problem. Does eating make the problem go away? Does excess weight remove you from the circumstances that cause the problem (by, for example, making you unappealing to the opposite sex, or turning you into the wrong “type” for that big promotion)? Do you really want this solution?

While one might argue their nutritional wisdom, fad diets are on Code because they offer consumers something to check in to. Embarking on a diet like Atkins or South Beach is a bit like joining a club with a huge number of members. When these diets are at the apex of their popularity, they are the topic of conversation in kitchens, supermarket lines, coffee shops, and cocktail parties all over the country. Participants in these diets can “check in” to a large subculture of other people losing weight this way, giving them a sense of connection. Of course, these diets have little long-term value for most people because they don’t address the reasons people checked out in the first place. As the Code has shown us, loading up on carbs is a solution; too much pasta is rarely the real problem.

One company that does an especially good job of dealing with fat is Weight Watchers. Like the fad diets, they offer a sense of membership to their customers, including regular meetings. Like diet books, they also offer eating plans and nutritional advice. In addition, though, they offer counseling sessions to help members deal with their weight issues and (though Weight Watchers doesn’t put it this way) the reasons they are checking out.

This approach is totally on Code.