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WHO WE ARE
09.30.2008
BY KIM
 I've learned a lot from my family, and by family I don't mean my mom and dad, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, I mean the ones that go way back. I'm talking great-great-grandpa Shlomy (yeah, I said Shlomy--you wanna fight?). This past weekend I visited my 92-year-old great aunt Ethel...shouldn't all great aunts be named Ethel? Besides being the most amazing and lively 92-year-old ever to roam New Jersey, she is also the keeper of all pictures family related. As I sat on her couch eating vegetarian chopped liver, she showed me six generations of pictures that started in Kiev in the 1800s and followed my family through Ellis Island to where they would eventually set up shop in the Bronx. Let's just say from a genetic standpoint it's a good thing that we left the shtetl and diversified the gene pool a little. I do not come from beauteous stock--sorry Shlomy. But, what struck me, really struck me, was the ladies--and the men for that matter. Not everyone was skinny back then either. Seriously, we hear all this bull about how everyone today is fat and everyone back in the day was petite and perfectly proportioned, and I am here to tell you that is bunk. People have always come in all different shapes and sizes and perhaps it's society's way of looking at that fact that has changed. Breasts, hips, thighs, that fat that jiggles under the arm: that's nothing new to the world. You are not a freak of nature if you posses any of the aforementioned attributes. Being Rubenesque was (and still is, if you ask me) a totally desirable trait. I've always thought it was slightly perturbing that people could look at art and talk about female depictions and how beautiful and womanly they were, but if if Venus herself walked off the half shell and into the Uffizi Gallery's lobby and out the door into the real world? By today's standards she could lose a few. A little bit of meat on fictitious bodies is okay, but not on real-life people? Yes, the average American weighs more now than they did in 1950 (we're also taller on average -- just going to throw that in there). But when I look out the window of my office down to the street, the people walking below me in 2008 don't differ so much from the pictures of my ancestors in the Ukraine in 1850, and they don't differ so much from my grandparents on Brighton Beach in 1940, or my parents at Thanksgiving dinner in the 1970s. Our standards of eating have changed, the types of jobs that we do have changed, the world we live in and our means of transportation have changed, and that has perhaps had an effect on our bodies. But in the end we're still people, and people haven't changed all that much in the last 150 years. 10 CommentsLeave a comment |
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FEED ME
"and everyone back in the day was petite and perfectly proportioned"
... I've never heard anyone say that
of course there's always been fat people. our bodies were made to store fat. I'm sure there were fat cavemen too.
were people healthier back then? no. they smoked and ate tons of crap. but they didn't know better, we do.
and americans are getting fatter.
when I was little, I was the only fat kid I knew. I think I'd have a lot more company growing up today.
That may be true, but I think our standards as to how thin one (and I mostly mean women here) has to be in order to be considered beautiful. I agree with Kim that people even from as recently as the 1950s who would be considered fat today were seen as beautiful and thin in their day. I feel like the pressure to be thin wasn't as bad. In many cultures even today, having extra mass was a sign of fertility and good health; it shows you can afford to eat well. Studies have shown that men react more positively to a woman the greater the size of her hips; this is largely attributed to his subconscious desire to find a fertile mate. Even our own American history details the positive light in which we viewed fat and consumption of fat: It's the most energy-dense food source, and it used to be the more of it you ate, the more well-off you were considered.
Also, people barely knew what a calorie was in our parents' and grandparents' times, so there wasn't as much pressure to lose weight, diet or conform to a certain standard, for health or whatever other reason. Obesity wasn't yet a household term, nor were cholesterol or diabetes. (Of course, doctors and scientists knew about these things; I'm just saying they weren't terms thrown out by everyday individuals.)
People may have eaten "crap," but hearken back to Michael Pollan and his advice to eat things with ingredients your grandmother would recognize. These foods weren't laden with chemically altered or artificially produced ingredients, which I believe plays a fairly big role in Americans' ever-growing waistlines.
I don't think it's what we look like that is the problem, but how we eat. Cavemen didn't have McDonalds or microwave dinners.
Don't people say that Marilyn Monroe was a size 12? No way Playboy would hire her today.
Bad news on the Marilyn Monroe front: a 12 in her day is about a 6 today. (Even in smaller amounts of time, my mom was a 6 in college--her clothes still fit-- and she's a 2 today.)
On another note, I love that you have a great-aunt Ethel. I have two great-great aunts named Eleanor and Bessie-Lou, which I think are also wonderful great-great aunt names. :-)
When I read stories about the old days - Little House on the Prairie series comes to mind - I am astounded at the amount people would eat. 20-30 pancakes with butter and MOLASSES. Piles of crispy fried ham, and seconds, and thirds. Whole milk brimming with cream. A doughnut drawer in the kitchen regularly filled with crullers. Fresh apple cider and popcorn after the meal. Pies made with lard in the crusts. And they ate PLENTY of sugar.
Of course they worked very hard outdoors. But in the winters they spent the major portion of their days inside.
So whatever. I think we eat less and exercise less today.
We also have a far longer lifespan, so, I don't think we are doing so badly.
Some of the best photos I have ever seen are of my grandma Betty, great aunt Louise, great aunt Alice, and their mother and her sisters. They are all on the farm in Kansas, circa 1930, and they are big, Rubenesque farm ladies.
These are the women that fed people during the depression, worked the farm, and fed themselves, their families, and their neighbors primarily from the food they grew and raised themselves. My grandmother and her sisters all moved away and made lives for themselves. I have photos of my 50 year old grandmother circa 1970 in gogo boots, a short skirt, and her bowling shirt on the bowling team with my grandfather. Her thighs are fat and she doesn't give a damn. She never did. So, I don't worry so much about my thighs. I don't own a pair of gogo boots, but I just haven't found the right pair.
I love this post. Thanks, Kim!
Love the picture Kim!
When I look at my old family photos, most of them are tall and skinny, which is a trait that wasn't passed down to me. I wonder if I'm the milk man's kid??? :D Hmmmmm.....
What is sad that our worth is contingent on whether we're fat or thin. I don't think this blog is about whether we eat differently, less exercise, whatever.. this is about the culture now, and how being overweight makes you less of a person, less attractive and not as good as a "thin" or "regular" person. People look at you differently as an overweight person; anyone who has lived that life already knows this...
I want to know who decided I was less, because there's more of me?