Tag Archives: health at any size

The Unexpected Body

Debbie says:

When two different regular readers refer us to the same link (and a third to the source material), they’re probably on to something. It’s exciting enough that Prince Fielder (is that the best name ever for a baseball player?) was the cover model for ESPN Magazine’s “The Body” issue.

Fielder posed naked, in his tattooed glory, in a pose designed to showcase, rather than downplay, his pot belly. The issue features many other interesting (including some nonstandard) sports bodies.

Better still is Leigh Cowart’s analysis at The Concourse. First of all, she gave me the term “The Unexpected Body,” which I feel like I should have heard before, but is new to me. Cowart says,

The unexpected body is one that looks out of place in a sport, the grown-up version of the kid who always heard they had ‘a good heart, but the body’s just not there.’ They defy society’s narrow expectations; they make everyone eat their words. …

People expect certain kinds of bodies from certain kinds of athletes, with each little pocket of competition tending toward a preferred morphotype. Opposite Balanchine’s ideal ballerinas, with their small heads and sloped shoulders and long feet tacked onto their whisper-light frames, football likes men who are broad and tall and thickly draped in muscle, the largeness of the frame superseded only by the voracious nature of the appetite required to maintain—never mind bulk-up—such a massive organism. Basketball, on the other hand, has a known affinity for an ultra-tall, ultra-lean body. …

But baseball is somewhat more relaxed in the body department, thanks in part to the diversity of positions. There are durable, muscular catchers; shortstops with those fast-twitch, spring-loaded legs; third baseman who are sturdily built yet lean enough to snap and twist at the waist. Who would look at Babe Ruth, Ichiro Suzuki, Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds, Yu Darvish, and Yasiel Puig, and assume they were all professional athletes at the highest level of the same sport?

As a small-time, not especially knowledgeable, baseball fan, I find this fascinating. I have seen vast differences in height, leg length, stockiness, etc. on the baseball field, in a very different way than one sees it in soccer or basketball, and never given it a second thought.

Cowart goes on to talk about Fielder:

There’s an audacity to Fielder’s athleticism. That he could be so unusually large for the game and yet still play it well, combined with the fact that he appears to give not a single fuck about the former, make him an easy favorite. He’s an 162-day-a-year reminder that cultural body norms are almost always short-sighted and lacking, at the very least. With his exceptional mass, his sloppy but enthusiastic running, his swing that spans wide and arching, and his frantic mid-run dives, Prince Fielder embodies so much of what’s great about the game. He’s our ultimate fat baseball player.

I’ll stop quoting now, but the third part of Cowart’s article talks about the social media reaction to the picture. Unsurprisingly (if you’re a body-image activist), at least some people in social media lost their shit when they saw Fielder’s belly. Despite the man’s remarkable track record, many people can’t see him as an athlete and see his pot belly at the same time. One of my “favorite” tweets is:

How am I going to explain Prince Fielder’s Body Issue cover to my children

— Matt Collins (@RedSox_Thoughts) July 8, 2014

Well, Mr. Collins, I would suggest, “Doesn’t he look wonderful?” Someone at the link suggested, “Children this is what confidence and normalcy look like. May you always feel comfortable in the skin you’re in,” which works for me too.

The unexpected body, it seems, is not just unexpected but incomprehensible. As a nation, we are so convinced that fat is antithetical to athleticism and good shape that we don’t even know what to do with the combination when it is shown in unmistakable glory.

Kudos to ESPN for using Fielder’s photo. I just hope every fat kid who wants to be a baseball player sees this picture (and doesn’t have a father who can’t figure out what to tell their kid about an athlete’s pot belly).

Also thanks to Lizzie Fox and Lynn Kendall for the pointer to Cowart, and Steven Schwartz for the pointer to the ESPN issue.

New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Watch Your Weight

Laurie and Debbie say:

At this time of year, we are bombarded with mainstream media lists of New Year’s resolutions, and it’s almost impossible to find one that doesn’t include weight loss. Here’s what we hate about that:

Making good changes is often impossible if your focus is weight loss.

Here’s Ragen Chastain from Dances with Fat:

“Join the gym, become more active, get healthier!” There are no guarantees but this is ok advice if someone has access to and can afford a gym, if going to the gym sounds like something they want to do, and if they are interested in movement as a path to health.  “Join the gym, become more active, and then you lose weight”.   Horrible advice no matter what the circumstances-  there is no evidence to support that people will lose weight long term, in fact, there is a lot of evidence that increased activity increases health but does not lead to weight loss.  Sadly, since many gyms choose to grossly overstate what the evidence shows they can achieve, when people don’t lose weight, or when they lose it short term and then plateau and start gaining it back, they quit going to the gym (or whatever activity they picked to make them healthier) because they think it’s not “working” because they’ve been wrongly convinced by the gym that if they aren’t thinner then they aren’t healthier.

Humans are (as a group) goal-oriented. We like to know where we’re going; we like to see progress; we like to move forward. If the goal is “become more active, get healthier,” then that can work. Maybe we can walk further without getting tired, climb more stairs, lift heavier weights. Maybe something hurts less, or stops hurting. Maybe anxiety decreases and brain weasels shut up. Or maybe we are just more cheerful and enjoy life more.

But since weight loss for any length of time is not achievable for most people, it works against making the changes that have a fine chance of making our bodies feel well in one way or another.

The other thing we hate about dieting for weight loss is that it discourages us from listening to our bodies, from noticing changes, from appreciating success. It reduces everything to numbers. If you’ve ever said, or heard someone say, “I need to lose 7-1/2 pounds,” when you know perfectly well that your weight changes more than half a pound in the course of the day, then this is obvious. But it’s equally true if the number in your head is 40 pounds, or 150. Obsession with numbers gets in the way of seeing/feeling what’s actually changing.

So don’t watch your weight. Smash the scale. Listen to your body, and do what feels good.