“Women’s dislike of their fatness can also reflect a male preference for shapely women. The majority of men, while sometimes admiring such women, feel much less concerned about obesity in their own sex. The male with a hearty appetite is often admired; moreover, the female does not often condemn male fatness.”___________________________________
by Dr. R. A. R. Perera
(March 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Many factors, both social and genetic have an influence on obesity. In the past, obesity was seen as a sign of wealth and health, the opposite of wasting and disease; today, some cultures still prefer their women obese.
In Sri Lanka obesity is more common among women than men and in the working classes than the professional and the managerial class. It is sometimes seen in children, mainly in the youngest child in a family.
Doctors convey the official medical view that obesity is associated with major illnesses, while ignoring the problems of thin people, forgetting that they too carry a high risk, in relation to some conditions (e.g. Peptic ulcer and neurosis). Some psychologists claim that obesity in the general population of middle age and older is associated with less reported experience of anxiety and depression than average.
Obese people fear an endless cycle of impulsive overeating and weight gain with progressive obesity, increasing humiliation and diminishing self-esteem. Research conducted by psychologist has centred on the question of whether the psychological effects of obesity or the psychological factors leading to it are more important.
Overall, it must be emphasized that eating behaviour cannot be studied in isolation. It is associated with many other aspects of behaviour such as sleep patterns and physical and sexual activity.
Overeating or hyperphagia commonly occurs between both adolescents and in massive obese people and in others with a history of weight disorder. Overeating in childhood often seems to have been accentuated by the challenge of adolescence, when rapid growth (sometimes as a result of childhood over-nutrition), pubertal plumpness and initial low self-esteem have set the scene.
Many more females than males are seen in the medical clinic for obesity. Obesity is more common among females than males in most present-day western societies. For the female, fatness seems to be complexly bound up with her sexuality, both biological and social. Reaching puberty earlier than the male, she finds her shape beginning to change under the influence of hormones governing new fat deposition which confer upon her and those around her a sense of her biological ripeness and readiness for reproduction. At the same time it commands the attention of the male. By the age of, 17, the majority of young women are striving to reduce their fatness, when clearly not all of them are obese in a statistical or medical sense. Fashion is not a sufficient explanation; the need to loose weight is often seemingly rooted in such need as conformity, the search for increased self-esteem, and the need to self-control. The vast majority continue to struggle on, changing little in shape and remaining sensitive about it, until the mid-20s, after which they consider things in terms of marriage, motherhood, and other life roles, when many feel they can cease to be concerned about their weight. However, weight consciousness may remain a concerned to be rekindled at times of crisis. Perhaps it survives more strongly in those middle-aged obese women who still hope to become thinner, these women often seem mainly concerned with their over-eating.
Women’s dislike of their fatness can also reflect a male preference for shapely women. The majority of men, while sometimes admiring such women, feel much less concerned about obesity in their own sex. The male with a hearty appetite is often admired; moreover, the female does not often condemn male fatness. The adolescent male will often have been more preoccupied with increasing his bulk than with reducing it.
Massive weight gain might occur in adolescence, in relation to such experience as loss (provoking over-eating) or sexual conflict (for which the immobility of massive obesity became protective). Treatment combining diet and psychotherapy is used to treat them.
It is likely that personality is merely one integrated aspect of our constitution that we deploy particularly in our search for optimal personal adjustment in life. It involves our relationships with others and it involves others. Our shape, eating patterns, energy balance and physical activity levels are a major aspect of such adaptation, and it is likely that these factors both contribute to and stem from other aspects of our personalities. It is very difficult to change our personalities and we cannot expect more or less than this of our obesity. However, those who wish to change their degree of obesity and its accompaniments can take heart from the knowledge that personality itself is not immutable.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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