Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West [Hardcover]

Peter Stearns (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0814780695 | ISBN-13: 978-0814780695 | Publication Date: May 1, 1997

A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History

The modern struggle against fat cuts deeply and pervasively into American culture, as evidenced by the compulsion to stay thin, or at least to profess a desire to become thin. Dieting, weight consciousness and widespread hostility to obesity form one of the fundamental themes of modern life in countries around the world. Yet, for example, while the French are renowned for their delight in all things gustatory, they are significantly trimmer and less diet-obsessed than Americans.

Fat History explores the meaning of fat and anti-fat in modern Western society, focusing on the uniquely moral component of dieting in America. Tracing how standards of beauty and physical morality have been radically transformed over the past century in the United States and France, Peter N. Stearns illustrates how the contemporary obsession with fat arose in tandem with the dramatic growth in consumer culture, women's increasing equality, and changes in women's sexual and maternal roles. Contrary to popular belief, fashion and nutrition have played only a secondary role in spurring the American aversion to fat, while the French distaste for obesity can be traced to different origins altogether.

Filled with narrative anecdotes and rooted in Stearns' trademark use of engaging original sources--from Ebony and Gourmet to The Journal of the American Medical Association and popularized accounts of French doctors--Fat History explores fat's transformation from a symbol of health and well-being to a sign of moral, psychological, and physical disorder.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Stearns, a Carnegie Mellon history professor and dean, and founding editor of the Journal of Social History, has written a classic study that dissects "the meaning of fat and antifat in modern Western society," concentrating on the U.S. and France during the past century. In two sections Stearns focuses on the U.S., first analyzing nineteenth-century attitudes toward weight and the roles of faddists and physicians in making fat "A Turn-of-the-Century Target" and then exploring "Expiation and Its Limits," as antifat culture intensified between 1920 and the 1990s. A third section compares "The French Regime" of weight control, which celebrates food more wholeheartedly while critiquing corpulence more cruelly than in the U.S. Stearns recognizes fascinating contrasts, e.g., French "emphasis on aesthetic norms" vs. Americans' use of weight control as a new restraint to balance newly liberated consumer and other energies. He also explores the interaction of weight-control cultures with gender, class, and ethnicity issues. A meaty study of facts and fears about fat. Mary Carroll

From Kirkus Reviews

This leftist academic examination of our collective fascination with dieting depicts it as a manifestation of capitalist consumer culture duking it out with the secular remnants of puritanism. Stearns, founding editor of the Journal of Social History and a historian at Carnegie Mellon University (Millennium III, Century XXI, 1996, etc.) approaches our concern over personal poundage as a construct that, exceeding the demands of fashion or good health, can be understood only in larger cultural terms. We Americans relish the consumer goods with which we surround ourselves but feel a mite guilty about indulging in them. So we have contrived a way to--literally and figuratively--have our cake and eat it too: We diet. Focusing intensely on limiting caloric intake lets us feel virtuous and self-controlled even as we ignore our profligacy as consumers. We are not all equally affected; notably, from the 1920s to the 1960s ``weight morality bore disproportionately on women precisely because of their growing independence, or seeming independence, from other standards.'' In France, the other society considered, Stearns does not detect a view of weight loss as a moral crusade or fat as an outward sign of guilt. For Americans, rewards (a better job or social life) will come when they become thin and healthy; for the French, being thin and healthy is the reward. Interesting as the cross-cultural comparison is, one senses that its neat findings slight some untidy questions. For example, why does Stearns focus on the gender of the target of antifat comments but not on that of their source? To what extent are unattainable standards of slenderness invaluable in allowing people to devote a portion of each crowded day to self- absorption? Does that count as an expression of guilt? Those who agree with Stearns's premise from the first page will readily accept his illustrations as proof. Others may see this as an interesting study that suggests the complexity of a phenomenon more convincingly than it accounts for it. (15 illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814780695
• ISBN-13: 978-0814780695
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,467,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars U.S. Attitude Toward Fat Is Not the Only Game in Town, July 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (Paperback)

There are very few books on the history of our cultural obsession with weight and/or with "weight bigotry" in the U.S. When did it start? Why? How did it get so vehement? So an attempt at perspective is definitely welcome.

Stearns reports that before the 1890s, plumpness was preferred, and signals began to change only as fashions, fat-control devices, and increased public comment on fat began to emerge in the decade prior to 1900.

After that, the trend grew and intensified over an entire century. Stearns sees this growing obsession as a "compensation" for our indulgence in other pleasures about which we are ambivalent--consumerism, sex, women's freedom. As long as we demonstrate strict discipline about our body size as a kind of puritanical guilt-laden compensation, we can allow ourselves these other indulgent, consumerist pleasures.

Stearns likens the vehemence of fat hatred to Calvinism: only the elect (thin) are "saved," glorified through "salvation" stories of heroic weight loss, and rewarded with welcome entry to the cultural pleasures now available. Those who fail or refuse to measure up to the strict standards of slenderness are punished by being relegated to "fat hell" where open season--in the form of attacks and endless analyses of moral failings, character flaws, and psychological weaknesses--is allowed, imprisoning the recalcitrants in the consequences of their supposedly deplorable lack of self-discipline. Clothes, love, and the good life are not to be theirs.

By way of contrast, the French, who have equally strict standards of slenderness, are committed not to compensation for other pleasures but to high aesthetic standards of beauty. In France, fat is not an indication of moral or psychological weakness but is simply an offense against beauty--fat is just ugly. Divergence from the norm is not considered blameworthy but is assumed to be remedied fairly easily with a little restraint and maybe some reducing creams. With a little work, no one *need* be ugly. It is, therefore, the personal responsibility of each individual to make those moderate efforts and meet the beauty standards amidst an environment of reminders and encouragement.

The result? Both patterns are oppressive, unrelenting, and rigid, but the French are 14 pounds lighter on average and weight in France has been declining rather than increasing.

Stearns does not see that historical French patterns or approaches can be adopted in the U.S. However, he notes that merely recognizing another, different pattern opens the door for reconsideration of U.S. attitudes. Those attitudes were shaped over a century; they can also be reshaped.

Stearns believes that we place too much responsibility on individuals for what are, essentially, social issues. To require everyone to immerse themselves in personal battles against weight while indulgence and excess in all other areas remains unaddressed in the public arena seems not only unfair but unbalanced. Basically, Stearns hopes we will lighten up a little on individual weight issues and look more seriously at larger cultural indulgences.

Simply for the effort to bring historical perspective to the issue, the book gets four stars. But it is sometimes a frustrating read. It is fraught with equivocations and reminders that many factors are at play, all of which preclude crispness. It is not until the very end that clarity begins to emerge from the discussion.

And finally, it describes the scene without benefit of factors that could, conceivably, change all the rules and the analysis as it relates to new trends. If, as research is increasingly showing, fat and related major diseases are common in cultures based on animal-based diets and uncommon in cultures based on plant-based diets, the emphasis shifts from "how much" one is eating to "what" one is eating; from "restraint" to "plenty" without weight gain.

Such a major shift in our understanding of food, nutrition, disease, body weight, and nutrition medicine would shift blame from individuals to a diet that we thought served us but in fact did not. This would chart a very different course--and analysis--for the new century.

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slow start with interesting conclusion, September 24, 2000

By 

Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (Paperback)

It was difficult rating this book as it took much longer than normal for me to finish reading it (finishing many other books while working on this one) but I tremondousl enjoyed the last part of the book. It takes a slow approach. First, it looks at the United States during this century and then it examines France in the same time period. This is supposed to represent the modern West as France is the thinnest of the western countries and the United States the most obese and the book looks for a cultural explanation for this phenomemon. It was slow going. It could be because I was looking for a historical attack on body fascists (possibly to assuage guilt over my own body image) and that is certainly not with what the book is concerned. The last two chapters are the best and bring the points made previously forward very clearly and, even, add what seem even more relevant arguments. There are not very many hard statistics and the history of science is blended a litle too much with the history of culture but the book does make very interesting points.