Nancy N. Chen The inaccurate link between body ideals and health TED
Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier
Reviewer:
Hello and welcome.
As visual beings,
we rely on images
to perceive the world
and make meaning.
Imagine I ask you to draw a human body.
How would you depict this body?
Body ideals reflect social meanings
about how we dwell in spaces
both physical and cultural.
We often interpret bodies
with categories of gender,
race,
ethnicity,
class
and belonging –
or not –
through modifications such as hair,
skin,
clothing.
As a medical anthropologist,
I study cultural concepts about bodies
and how these shape
both being in the world and health.
Curvy bodies have been
around for millennia.
The limestone figurine,
known as the Venus of Willendorf,
is considered to reflect two values
that were ranked high in the past:
reproduction and abundance.
Fertility figures
with voluptuous curves suggest
that body ideals for females have focused
on full-figured, curvy bodies,
especially in agrarian societies.
Low waist-to-hip ratios,
or hourglass figures,
have long been considered
to be more attractive,
from an evolutionary perspective,
in terms of the ability for childbearing.
Then something changed.
In the past century,
body ideals shifted significantly
when Western societies increasingly
featured thin-bodied female models
in mainstream media.
The Western body ideal in the 1960s
was Marilyn Monroe.
By the 1970s, magazines featured Twiggy.
That’s a huge shift,
and such body ideals
continued shrinking.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s,
the gap between the average size
of regular women
and the size of models continue to grow.
This gap between actual
and ideal can impact self-image.
Over the past three decades,
thinness has come to be associated
with dominant portrayals of prestige,
in addition to well-being.
The systemic proliferation of thin
body ideals circulates on a global scale.
Body dysmorphia,
and often accompanying eating disorders,
can be found around the world.
Thinness has become a matter
of achievement through diet regimes,
food avoidances,
exercise –
even surgery.
In 1998, the category of orthorexia,
the obsessive focus on healthy eating,
was coined as a new category
of eating disorder.
During this pandemic,
social media followed the journeys
of celebrities documenting weight loss
and other transformations.
Idealized body types
aren’t just about thinness anymore.
New forms of thin –
lean, muscular bodies –
have come to be pursued across gender,
age,
income
and locations with accompanying
bias against fat.
It’s important to note, however,
that not all societies and cultures
fully embrace thin bodies as ideals.
Curves remain significant for many
cultures and ethnic groups even today,
including Black, Indigenous
and Latinx communities.
Moreover, standards of beauty differ
and are not solely based
on external features.
An earlier study of body ideals
in rural Jamaica found
that bodies there are reflections
of one’s social relations.
Whether by shared fluids or food,
plump bodies in this rural context
are considered to be desirable,
healthy
and loveable
in this measure of well-being.
Thin bodies there
were interpreted to be antisocial
or neglected without social capital
or relations to feed or care for them.
Similar positive views
about ample or thick bodies
have been found in ethnographic
studies across Africa,
the Pacific Islands
and the U.S.
With increased globalization
and market reach,
body ideals change over time,
even in rural and remote areas.
Weight stigma,
or fat phobia and bias,
are increasingly found
not only in the Global North,
but also the Global South.
With increasing obesity around the world,
public health campaigns to address
overweight and obesity may backfire
by reinforcing weight stigma.
How is it possible to move
beyond these body ideals
that may be harmful
for esteem or self-care?
The problem is that no matter
the preference for thick or thin,
these universally imposed
body ideals miss a key point.
There are many different
kinds of body shapes, weight and looks.
Yet the conflation of appearance
with health often facilitates
unhealthy shaming of oneself or others
based on outdated ideals.
The good news is that body diversity
is being recognized
as a critical component and reflection
of social diversity, equity and inclusion.
In calling out standard media portrayals,
which feature size-two models
while the average American woman
may be a size 16,
body diverse activists,
along with earlier queer
and Black activists,
have pointed out the harm of body-shaming
and they advocate instead for retraining
social lenses on systemic ideals.
With increasing body positive advocacy,
there’s been a shift in national
and global ad campaigns
that feature more diversity of bodies,
skin color,
hairstyles
and even age.
Another way to enhance
body diversity entails expanding
where we look for diverse bodies.
For instance,
sports events are major stages
where bodies are on display
Rather than uniformly thin or lean,
different proportions, sizes
and abilities can be seen
in the bodies of Olympians,
Paralympians
and other athletes.
Beyond athletes,
ad campaigns for clothing
or cosmetics
may also feature a range
of ordinary consumers
to represent their brand
as accessible and inclusive.
These approaches are helpful correctives
to address the divergence between ideals
and actual lived bodies in everyday life.
These are important directions
addressing narrow body ideals
by expanding diversity
and inclusion of bodies
that become the focus of media,
social media
and advertising.
Nonetheless, these images keep our views,
often subjective,
on outer body features
as opposed to objectively
thinking about health.
If we are concerned
about health and well-being,
then we need to go beyond
body standards or ideals.
We need to consider how healthy bodies
are based on what’s going on inside,
rather than focusing on externalities.
Medical anthropology,
the history of medicine
and comparative knowledge,
offers insights on how to examine
bodies in different ways.
All the classical systems of medicine –
Ayurveda,
Chinese,
Greco-Islamic,
as well as Indigenous healing knowledge,
understood bodies through one’s life force
and the energy in connection
to natural and social environment.
Energetic qualities of bodies
such as dosha,
chi
or vital essences such as blood,
are much more significant
than external features.
The outside body was a reflection
of one’s interior
to understand what was happening
inside for health and balance.
Well-being meant being able
to harmonize one’s body
in relation to dynamic relations
between vital substances,
human organs
and one’s environment
to live as long as possible.
The immune system and microbiome
are contemporary examples.
They help to understand human bodies
in relation to entities such as bacteria,
microbes or pathogens.
These offer key opportunities
to reframe body ideals
that engage vitality from within,
such as metabolic health,
rather than focus solely on externalities
or ideal representations.
We are in dire need of healthy bodies,
societies and environments.
We come in all shapes and features
that are desirable and beautiful.
By caring for healthy bodies,
placing more value on internal vitality,
which takes into account living
in relation to our environment
and each other,
we might be able
to experience better health
and collective well-being in this century.
We can begin to heal
by looking within ourselves.
We can thrive by seeing vitality together.
Thank you.