One of the reasons I've been blogging so much about obesity, class, and race, is that these are the questions I live with. To set down the road of food consciousness, to endeavor to understand what you're putting in the only body you'll ever have, is to phase-shift into a parallel world. You become acquainted with ritual of unwrapping aluminum foil on long plane rides. You cut elaborate deals with your partner over child-care and cleaning. You go hurtling through the internet in search of a decent pizza stone. It angers your son, because his simple request for Pop-Tarts turns into a pop-quiz referencing the ingredients on the box.
But more than that, it's the world I live in. The buses in Harlem heave under the weight of wrecked bodies. New York will not super-size itself, so you'll see whole rows in which one person is taking up two seats and aisles in which people strain to squeeze past each other. And then there are the middle-age amputees in wheelchairs who've lost a leg or two way before their time. When I lived in Brooklyn, the most depressing aspect of my day was the commute back home. The deeper the five train wended into Brooklyn, the blacker it became, and the blacker it became, the fatter it got.
I was there among them--the blacker and fatter--and filled with a sort of shameful self-loathing at myself and my greater selves around me. One of the hardest thing about being black is coming up dead last in almost anything that matters. As a child, and a young adult, I was lucky. Segregation was a cocoon brimming with all the lovely variety of black life. But out in the world you come to see, in the words of Peggy Olson, that they have it all--and so much of it. Working on the richest island in the world, then training through Brooklyn, or watching the buses slog down 125th has become a kind of corporeal metaphor--the achievement gap of our failing bodies, a slow sickness as the racial chasm.
The metaphor is, of course, deceptive--more about how it feels, than
how it is. For one thing, because of where we live, some of the most
afflicted areas of black America are five minutes away from major
media. Unless someone kills a census worker, media generally avoids
Clay County, Kentucky. Moreover, you can't really hide in your car in
New York. On the train, it's all right there. And then there's the
absurd illusion of WhiteLand--this mythical place where there are no
problems, because white people don't actually have problems.
But
intellectually understanding something doesn't change your religion. In
every black person, there's a desire to, as a buddy once put it, "show
these motherfuckers." I keep going back to Bill Cosby, not as a
leader, but as a marker of how we feel. "My problem," he once told a
crowd of black men. "Is that I'm sick of losing to white people." When
I heard him say that, I heard my mother and father. I heard my older
brother. I heard the Babas from my old Rights of Passage program. I
heard my professors at Howard. I heard one of my good friends--and his
wife is white.
I heard them all. And I heard me. And I know that
it is small of me. And I know that it is wrong of me. And I live for
the day when I am right. But this is what I think about sometimes on
the 2 train uptown. This is what I think about sometimes while cleaning
the kitchen. And this is what I think about, almost always,before I
write. I think about showing them. I think about showing myself.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Thank you for this. Thank you. It's beautiful. Thank you.
I happen to thinking a lot today about shame and the role it plays in our lives. I cannot speak to your experience, I cannot know what "I think about showing them" feels inside of you when it's there. But I think that the American experience is riddled with shame and the need to respond to it, to beat it back, and I am so saddened by it. So many of us read and revere the very Holy Words that tell us that we were created in God's image (Genesis 1), that we are "awesomely, wondrously made" (Psalms 139) and yet so few of us are taught to believe it. So few of us can access it when we're trying to beat back at the forces that would make us small and quiet. So many of us look around at the world and fear what we believe the world sees in us.
Thank you for your truth.
Thank you again for sharing TNC. These things you write must be hard to get out. I know for me they would be.
I am white. I don't come from money. I would assume I have no where near the wealth you have now.
But I know that I am priviledged because of my birth status. I am also aware that I haven't had to experience what you have. I don't know what those things are.
It is why I come here to read what you have to say.
mjnew0n,
What a beautifully and simply written, moving, from the heart statement! A long-distance hug to you,Wendy
On a day when I'm taking a chance to try to prove my worth to some people in the writing game, I'm glad I saw this. Thanks, TNC. Keep on keeping on.
Thanks for this beautifully written post.
I can't really comment on the shame you speak of, but this just makes me think that for those who have always been the victors, it is easy to ignore the pain of losing. When the game has always been rigged, that only makes it easier, and for some, it makes it absolutely necessary to ignore the pain of losing.
It's not really knowable, that pain, from the other side. But it is imaginable, it is possible to acknowledge it. That so many choose not to is a shame.
You hooked me there with Clay County. It's different for those of us whose roots are in rural poverty, most importantly because whiteness lets me leave that history at the door, from Austin to Boston. But Clay County...
It is the home of my ancestors. My sister worked and lived there for a time, as an officer in the US Public Health Service, trying to save the health of our third cousins twice removed, the 24 year old mothers of 4, who got through their fifth pregnancies on Diet Pepsi and grits and Kool Lites.
The one time we visited, my (adopted) child integrated the dirtiest Wal-Mart I've ever seen. She said, Mama, why is everyone here hitting their kids?
I have never been so ashamed. That these people are my relatives at some not-too-distant degree embarrasses me and drives me, despite the fact that it's not visible on my skin. Does that sting, that feeling of needing to prove myself to the educated city people I spend my life among, pass to my kid? I don't know, and it's a very interesting question.
I went back to western PA over Labor Day and went to the local fair. The number of fat people seems to grow every year. I guess it doesn't help that these events are meccas for things like fried butter but even if they were surving tofu and spring water, the number of plump folks would still be alarming.
Pittsburgh, Philly, and Alabama in between. (Though where that leaves an Erie kid like me is anybody's guess - Cleveland maybe?) My hometown was shot through with the same sort of feelings TNC was talking about, though without the racial angle and not quite so deep-set. It wasn't so much coming in dead last in everything, but feeling that hey, we're good people, but nothing good ever seems to happen to us. Tired of the good jobs leaving for who-knows-where, tired of the people we keep electing not actually getting anything done, living with that slow gnawing feeling that no matter what we do, nothing's going to change for the better.
Not everybody felt that way of course, and there were always people actively trying to make things better - but there was an awful lot of that sense going around.
We didn't even need to see the flip side of it. We knew that there were big cities out there where, for some reason, things seemed to function a lot better and where people could make money. But a lot of people talked down about them. Pittsburgh was great, but Philly or (God help us) New York? Thought they were the center of the universe. And everything's so expensive! How could you afford to live there anyway? Must be a bunch of rich folks. Better stay where you are, where you can afford a nice big house that only costs $90,000. Stay right here and forget that city - that'll show 'em.
Being from the Detroit area, I hear you. The main industry is a shell of its former self, we are on the worst lists for foreclosures, unemployment, and crime, the Mayor was tossed in the slammer, and the football team went 0-16 last year.
Compared to a lot of people around here, I have it relatively good, but knowing that much of the area has its collective dicks in the dirt, hangs over you constantly.
I often read TNC, and can't believe how much common ground Appalachia has with black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, or Baltimore. I'm now 20 lbs lighter, munching a carrot, and commenting on a blog (and without a chip on my shoulder, either). You'd never know me.
This is the flip side of Appalachia being so far from media centers and white: invisibility for escapees. The "media" doesn't know about that windowless Foodland in Lawrenceville that sells high fructose corn syrup in its various forms, from Doritos to Del Monte sugar canned peaches or its denizens. It is a place that skinny = meth. The G20 protesters marched right close to that Foodland, but it is invisible as the airwaves of the all polka station. And so am I, except on those days I crave sauerkraut and pierogies - and not the good kind, either.
What a beautiful reflection TNC. Thank you. I can identify a lot.
I would like to add that for those of us who are not black, but not quite "white" (according to many Americans) as in the WASPY sense, we experience similar feelings.
Shame: Shame that one or both of our parents speaks with an accent and is from a strange part of the world. Shame that we are kind of smaller, more nebisshy and less enamored with guns, God and American exceptionalism as religion. Shame at be labeled "not real americans". Shame that our skin is yellow, brown or other. Shame that we can't make our lives and homes look like Martha Stewart's. Shame that we are not Protestants. Shame about not having blonde hair, blue eys and a healthy stocky build. Shame about funny names.
I realize that does not mean we go through the same kind of things or with the same intensity perhpas that people in the AA community do but....
As someone whose father came off the boat in 1960 (at age 18) from Lebanon and whose great-grandparents came off the boat from Italy in 1896, who is Catholic and whose wife is Jewish, our ethnicity and backrounds leave us somewhat outside the WASP or even mainstream "white" establishment. I was born in NJ. I'm an American. I have never felt anything but. That's the only thing I know how to be, and to have it questioned, however rarely (in person as I have) or in the media/mainstream can be very painful.
Where you feel the glare on the obesity and the poverty we can feel the questioning of our American bona fides, paranoia about Italian mobsters and "arab" terrorists". That goes for my brothers and sisters in NYC from India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Russia and elsewhere.
When I am on the subway here in NYC I see hardworking, gutsy immigrants who left everything behind to start a new life. The most American of Americans considering our formation. And yet, I feel we are still in that "not real americans" boat together.
The sense of being the other, as the not quite all-american version of humanity, as people who are told we don't live in the "real america" or that we are even "real americans" creates in us as well a desire to "show them". In its simplist manifestation for me, it is a Philip Roth-like feeling of being both enamored with WASPY goy life and the feeling of being less than in regards to them, ultimately creating a desire for us to "win" for once.
Taken further I think this feeling among peoples of all colors, origins and backgrounds is part of what is dooming the GOP to a regional white populist party.
The white populists know what's coming and they sense that this time "we" will ultimately win.
Being white and having relatives who have been in America since the 17th century is not the same as being WASP. The "regional white populists" are NOT WASPs, not in the sense that Philip Roth used the term and not as most southerners would understand the term. You want WASPs, you better hang out in New England and the mid-Atlantic, not the place where the repubs have circled their shame-constructed wagons around a defeated people. The white people of the South felt their definitive defeat more recently than some others (within the last 150 years (...and thank goodness, btw). Maybe the fits of anger and the near unanimity of their politics (first, to democrats and then to republicans) stems from a shame that is akin to the "I'll show them" mentality TNC is describing.
You are right. Most of the white populists are probably descendents of the Scotch Irish, Huegonots and and Germans.
I live in NYC and have spent the vast majority of my time between Boston and Washington DC.
The differences between the two areas are obvious as you point out. So we have gone from feeling shame at not ever being able to beat/live up to the Old Line WASPS up here in the Northeast to not being able to beat/live up to the new Southern version.
Either way the effects seem to be the same.
Man, you got me with the last two paragraphs. Beautiful reflection. I see myself in it quite clearly. It is always frustrating, too, because I'm not sure what the way out of wanting to win is.
I don't think it's small of you. Not in the slightest. Anyone who was capable of feeling anything at all would feel the same way.
It's no good to point out that the fattest people I personally have ever seen, in a group, were the crowd in the airport at St. Louis, white people, every last one of them. Or to quote statistics about how many white people are dangerously obese as opposed to how many black people. (Talk about a contest you don't want to win!) You know very well that WhiteLand is an "absurd illusion", "this mythical place where there are no problems, because white people don't actually have problems."
Because this post isn't really about who can eat themselves to death faster: it's about privilege, who has it, and who doesn't.
Thank you for this beautiful piece.
What a tremendous piece. Thanks to you, TNC, for sharing this, and thanks also to the other posters here for enriching this already great article with their own experiences and stories. That's why this is far and away the best blog going right now.
I have nothing to add here -- only that I am awed by the beauty in this piece. This is a wonderful way to start my day -- it being the first thing I've read.
this is why they are lucky to have found you, Coates. this was beautiful and on point and makes you think and sigh.
thanks.
This shame is part of every anxiety attack I have. The thought of "not showing them" or myself bruises my soul. I guess the thought of being inadequate?? Not sure. But yeah, that ride on the 2 train can hurt, especially after 96th Street.
True story.
About 7 years ago, when I was living on 96th Street, I took an uptown 3 train to 96, and as the door opened, an African American man, looking to be about 60, white beard, casual clothes, boomed this out:
"Okay, 96th Street, white people off the train, brown people, enjoy your ride home."
I was flabbergasted. He just out and out said wht we regular 2-3 riders saw everyday.
Ha! I've heard this on the Lex line, at 86th.
And to your above post, I know that shame. I would like to add the shame of having too much hair in too many places. Heh.
Then there's the shame of living on a drug block in a blighted neighborhood, where once-good (white) friends are scared to come visit. The shame in the awkward moment of silence when you tell someone vaguely where you live, and you have to correct them when they guess at a neighborhood you couldn't possibly afford. That immediate attempt to rescue themselves with a "oh... well I've heard that things are really getting better there."
It all adds up to, "is this all there is?"
Beautiful post. Shame and guilt are languages we all understand to some degree. I think it's our most human struggle, as Sturgeon would say. Heh I've heard that on the 7 train as well. Once you get past Queensboro Plaza, it's all Latino and Chinese folk, a couple Indians and Arabs. Some drunk white dude who was getting off there went "and all white people off here" and stepped off, laughing his ass off.
I recently went out with a beautiful black woman in NYC but she refused to entertain the thought of taking the PATH to Newark, where I work. She asked me if things were as bad as they make it out to be. I think, in her case, or perhaps mine, it gets tiring to be on the defensive and avoidance is easier than confrontation.
I live up in the Bronx, at Kingsbridge Rd on the D, and except for the occasional Fordham University student, or if there's a ballgame, I'm generally the last white person on the train after 145th St in Harlem. I met a guy at a wedding last year who had also lived in the Bronx and we were talking about it--he said that once he fell asleep on the train and a woman woke him up at Yankee Stadium to tell him it was "his stop". She wasn't making fun of him--she quite reasonably figured that he *must* be going to the game.
Great piece, the connection between shame and weight loss has been something that I find so fascinating. As I approached my 39th birthday, I had packed on about 40 pounds in a few short years. I knew it, but it didn't hit me until my cousin blurted out how big I got after not having seen him for some months.
I understand that that shame I felt in that moment is less encompassing than the shame TNC is talking about, but it was motivating more than any lecture by my doctor or any article about evils of HFCS or trans fats.
While shame (along with fears of dying before my children grow up) got me eating better and exercising more, shame isn't always effective. Some will feel shame and will double down, and eat more as a result of just giving up. Some will do the opposite and get an eating disorder. Others will deny there is a problem. (saying skinny people die younger than heavier people) So I don't know the answer for society, I only know the answer for me.
Good post. I've always found it odd that a country with obesity rates such as ours also has a massive (and probably more important) problem with eating disorders.
Thank you. I have also found it odd as well, but I have heard people say that the two problems aren't all that unrelated. Seeing how my knowledge of eating disorders is miminal, I will invoke the TNC Ingorance Rule and say no more.
Interesting because i see the connection between fatness and eating disorders as very much interwoven, for some people. For some, the absolute mortal fear of fatness contributes to compulsive dieting, the binging, the purging, the fasting, etc. And for some people, the shame and humiliation will cause an unhealthy relationship with food, where overeating becomes a crutch.
And others will do this: after trying everythig, and doing everything to get thin, they will be more pragmatic, and change eating and excercise behaviors to the best of their ability, and let go of shame and choose to be happy regardless of the shame and stigma of fatness. Responsiblity for one's behavior is one thing, shame and guilt is another. I think the later two are useless for many people, including myself: those two emotions are not motivating for me at all. When I have entertained those two emotions, they have caused more paralyzing self-hatred for me. And I don't think I'm alone in that.
Thank you. It's good to know you're there
1,211.7 miles away.
[deactivating lurker cloak of invisibility]
Ta-Nehisi,
Not only are you one of the finest writers on the internet, you are also one of the most intellectually honest, ethically trustworthy, and (I don't know how else to say it) "right on" thinkers in America today. Not so much because you're "right" all the time (tho' 'tis a joy when you are, naturally), but because you strive so very forcefully to not be "wrong." I believe that this is a crucial distinction.
You're an inspiration, and some of us treasure your contribution to the public forum of ideas immensely. The only other blogger I might have placed in your category of integrity, trustworthiness, and forthrightness would be hilzoy, and she retired. This might be the highest compliment I can think of for a blogger.
That is all. Just had to say it. This is a great piece, and touched me deeply.
And no pressure, or anything.
/fanboy
[Reactivating lurker cloak of invisibility]
this is the shame it feels being African and seeing all these wars,famine and smiling dictators on TV while listenning to pundits call your country a failed state,knowing full well there is nothing you can do about it. you can't diet,you have moved but it still haunt you. you girlfriend doesn't know that Africa is not a country and that we actually don't manufacture guns and that the children of these politician actually live in the USA and elsewhere in europe and that the west is actually behind all the strife and suffering of the people.
what do you do when diet, fat, inteligence, nor success can really cure shame of being inadequate? cry freedom.
This is a lovely post. Thank you.
Obesity, though, isn't a problem in itself. People of all sizes get diabetes, heart disease, etc. Healthier diets and exercise are important for everyone, obese or not, and whether or not it leads to weight loss. (Which for most people it doesn't, long-term, though for you it has.)
What you're saying has some truth ot it, rosmar, but I think the larger point TNC was making was the he took his anger, acknowledged it, and used it as a motivator to make a positivie change.
No, diet and exercise aren't a panacea. But they are things that you can control, and when you're getting your ass kicked by life, having a sense of control over a small portion of it is vital to makikng big changes. You can't control the economy, but you can watch what you eat and make an effort to exercise. No, you can't control for you genes in this area, but you certainly are tilting the odds in your favor. The longer-term benefit is the sense that is that if you can perservere and take better care of yourself, maybe you can tough it out out in the wider world. And that kind of cautious optimism - mixed with a healthy dose of realism - can go a long, long way towards increasing your odds of success. From tiny acorns and all of that.
I agree - the fear that we can change our lives is the real challenge. There ARE things we can control. And those things are absolutely empowering and lead to new horizons. We just have to let out a primal yell and get started in a new direction. (An internal "yell" may help us reset or stagnate situations). Thanks for the post - useful and real.
Those last two paragraphs are everything.
Brother, I don't know how you do this day in, day out? But keep on doing what you do. This post is pure science.
"his simple request for Pop-Tarts turns into a pop-quiz referencing over the ingredients on the box."
OK, let me just say that brown sugar and cinnamon Pop Tarts are the king of comfort foods. I'm wincing now because I probably should give the things up but they still have a hellacious hold over me. *sigh* We all have our kryptonite, I suppose.
I did this with my kids. And they hated it. "Everyone else" lives on Pop-Tarts (or in our case, Hostess Ding-Dongs) and kids are really not cool with you explaining why this is a bad idea. Ya gotta read the box? What??!? This closes up their centers. And yours, if they can manage that.
Poverty was an incentive here in our case. Not that they knew or cared how much money we had, but I both knew AND cared, and neither Pop-Tarts nor Ding-Dongs are at all a good deal so far as nutrition goes. In fact, you'd be better off pouring the money down the gutter. My kids resisted this notion, but after all, I had the wallet.
And now? The kids are adults, and have their own kids. They (the adult kids) still seem kind of fuzzy on the concept, maybe because they have so freaking much money. (Yikes! It's incredible! They're swimming in the stuff!) I go over to their houses, and there seems to be an awful lot of junk foods over there, and a lot of children fussy eaters who mostly like sugar. Hello?
But here's the deal. As a parent, I'm responsible for myself, and to some extent, for my kids. When those kids have their own kids? Then I sign off, and good luck. If, like my daughter, you won't eat whole wheat bread because you had to as my kid? Good luck to you, my dear, and to your children.
TNC--When you say "the Babas from my old Rights of Passage program", who does that mean? I've never heard that term before. In my world, my Baba is my grandmother.
The largest single TNC feast (all highly nutritious and home-cooked) is served up in his book. The Babas are in there.
No, sorry, maybe i was unclear. What does the word "Baba" mean? Uncle? Big guy in the neighborhood? Is it a respectful form of address to an older man?
I'm still lost.
Yoruba (Nigerian) word for "daddy" or "big man" or "elder male" right, TNC?
Babe = Nigerian (yoruba) word for "elder male" "father" "big man" I think.
Love this. Have lived "showing motherfuckers" with my own background/race. Am living now with reaching a certain age and realizing there are things I will never be able to accomplish, that I fantasized at sixteen, twenty five, thirty five, might give me that satisfaction of proving I was "more than" where I came from. Finally beginning to recognize that it doesn't matter. But it still hurts sometimes.
Man, this kills.
I had one of those reality moments the other day along these same lines. I'm doing some work in an older working class neighborhood south of Portland, OR. Mostly old white retirees that have been there forever, mixed with really struggling young white families. The place is just lousy with strip clubs and fast food, sidewalks stop and start, no crosswalks, everything is surrounded by acres of parking. It's just grim.
And then here's this one dude. He's out of work. He wants to help out on my project. He comes to community meetings and offers to lend a hand. At first I was suspicious of the guy, but eventually, he starts talking about how he had started walking to church to save money, and how he decided to pick up trash on the side of the road on the way. "Every single thing I pick up is a wrapper for some kind of garbage that people are eating...just....they are killing themselves, and they are hurting, and they don't know how to make it stop."
And when I think about it, I think he is talking about everywhere.
Depressing. It's terrible enough to struggle with my own sense of failure, much less the gnawing anxiety that my community's failures might be my own as well. And then when you wrestle with your demons and "show 'em" that you're not what they thought you were, well, are your achievements acknowledged and honored? And what if "they" don't; have you failed?
Ta-Nehisi, I'm no longer a regular reader of blogs, but yours is in the top ten I bounce to when I give myself a session. I signed in today because last night I finished A Beautiful Struggle and it was simply lovely. It made me want to teach a literature class, just so I could present it as an example of prose-poem-memoir-epic, and hear it read aloud by students, and read their inspired reflections. I will be rereading and annotating it for days--so many references and allusions to unpack!--but for now, thank you. Worlds that seem completely separate are tied together by words.
And this post is an example of your elegant, honest writing. On the surface I should have very little to share here, but you invoke an emotional core that can then call out to its brethren, hiding inside your readers. Through most of school I was "the only one," (South Asian America, vegetarian, religious Hindu) so that every personality trait became representative signage, a guide to 1 billion people. Despite years of deconstruction and retrofitting, even with all the privilege of class and model minority status there is, still, this irrational embarrassment and shame for every little flaw with childish roots. A weird little hiccup that makes my dissatisfaction flare beyond self-chiding and turns it into letting down whole nations. We do so much to tear ourselves down when there is so much work needed to build ourselves up.
This is a lovely post.
And, I agree wholeheartedly with your accessment of A Beautiful Struggle.
okay, so the bad thing about writing is that you've got to keep doing it, and people expect more, and next week about now i'm gonna be all "tnc? what's he done lately? i mean, like, today?"
but for now, let the future take care of itself. because the good thing about writing is that when you do it and it comes out right, then you really have done something.
and i'll be goddamned if you haven't done it right, right here and now.
this piece is as impressive as all hell. you showed me. you showed the whole goddamn world with this piece.
and if humanity had any sense of gratitude, this piece would be laurels enough to rest on for the rest of your life. i've got to tell you--this is damned good stuff.
I grew up in a similar "cocoon" as a child in Boyle Heights, the eastside of L.A. I didn't know anyone that wasn't Mexican or Mexican-American. I didn't meet other "latinos" until I was a teenager. I grew up with a sense of being protected in an everyday sense - none of us were WASP, very few of us were Hollywood thin, and so on....Diabete and fatness is quite common in our culture.
It wasn't till I was older, getting into higher education that I was exposed to the pressures of what it meant to be acceptable, which included, amongst other things: to be really, really thin.
I don't have that body. I try my best to be as excercise and food conscious as possible, but I can't change myself into a size 6 blond, blue eyed white girl. It ain't gonna happen. And I refuse to play the dieting game anymore.
I refuse to be ashamed. I carry with me a fury of being alternately ignored and maligned for being too brown, too big, too "spanish", whatever. I absolutely refuse.
Thank you for the brutal, bracing honesty of your writing.
Okay, now that I've calmed down and let my emotions take a walk, I'd like to be a bit more clinical and take a cold look at the last two paragraphs.
The cadence is astounding. It is like listening to a poem while standing by a fireplace on a quiet night. It is like an important scene in a biopic of a revolutionary when the protagonist explains why this or that is being done. It sounds like the final words of the autobiography of a hero who still has to live out a major part of his life.
And you seem to do that so effortlessly. I'm sure you're putting a ton of effort behind it, but it comes off as good speaking as opposed to good writing. The art of writing turned into personal conversation. That's why it has such a high degree of impact.
Quite breathtaking, TNC.
I think it's important to note that the Obamas are also talking about food and health, with a focus on locally grown organic produce from farmers markets.
Yes, and do you recall the general reaction from the American public to (or about) the Obamas' healthy-food priorities? Mainly dismissal and sneers from their political opponents (for being prissy elitists); a little approbation from their supporters, and general disinterest from everybody else. And sadly, the dismissal is probably way more closer to the "normal" American attitude about food.
T-NC nails it again - accurately and from the heart.
I finally got on the scale the other day. I've been avoiding seeing the damage I've done to my body although I can feel it in the clothes that no longer fit and the hooded eyes that look past me now. In one short year I have gained close to 50 pounds. The recession almost took out my consulting business so I could no longer afford fresh fruit and vegetables or even fresh fish. The cheapest things in the stores are the foods that help you commit suicide by fork and spoon. Over the past year I have demanded that food do for me what food was never meant to do for any person: I have demanded that food comfort, soothe, console, entertain, pity, energize, and numb me.
Years ago I confided to my best friend that I lost weight because I didn't want to be a fat Black woman. "It's so redundant," I laughed at the time. In the past few months I've learned that it may not be redundant but it sure is invisible.
atlantapril, for God's sake get a grip.
You said it all. "The damage I've done to my body." (Emphasis added.)
The recession almost took out my consulting business so I could no longer afford fresh fruit and vegetables or even fresh fish.
BS, and you know it's BS. Stop already. You can still eat a healthy diet on your budget. You know it, and I know it.
Why is this not happening? Here's the key: "Over the past year I have demanded that food do for me what food was never meant to do for any person: I have demanded that food comfort, soothe, console, entertain, pity, energize, and numb me."
I get it. Wow, do I ever get it. I'm 40 pounds overweight myself (on a strict diet to lose it) so don't think I'm talking from a position of imagined superiority, please.
For your own sake. To "get" the folks who you identify as enemies. Whatever. Black is irrelevant. Woman is irrelevant. Your life is relevant. May God love you, may you receive that!
Juaquin,
I don't think you're trying to be malicious here, but a little compassion might be in order. Atlantapril is doing the hard and essential work of baring her soul. Telling her how wrong she is doesn't help. Again, I don't fault your intent. But I think some discretion might be a good thing, here.
@Juaquin...You can still eat a healthy diet on your budget.
See, that's just it. I was so broke I couldn't afford a food budget. Food was bought with whatever was left over after I paid my monthly bills. What I could afford was usually cheap, processed foods that would stretch over several meals. Hello ramen noodles! :-)
I am glad that you are losing your excess weight. It's hard work and I salute your energy, determination, and focus.
By the way, I didn't gain this weight to "get" the folks I identify as enemies. On second thought, maybe I did. But the "enemy" I blamed was me and my lack of long-term planning to ride out a financial downturn. Fortunately, life is looking up and my business has picked up lately. This year has taught me many lessons, including how to be a compassionate presence in the world.
@TNC, thank you for understanding that I wrote my earlier comment because I had to, not because I wanted to. I have to own the shame of standing on that scale and witnessing a configuration of three numbers I never thought would apply to me.
I think you've touched on a huge issue in why people (irrespective of class or race) overeat/are overweight: "I have demanded that food do for me what food was never meant to do for any person: I have demanded that food comfort, soothe, console, entertain, pity, energize, and numb me." I think that a lot of people are looking to something outside themselves for this kind of thing, and for people who have fewer options, food is the one they can most easily AFFORD.
People who have more options with regard to time and money can 'choose' shopping, exercise/gym visits, spas, reading, TV watching, internet use -- all of which can be done compulsively for the results you describe. Drugs and alcohol are also an option, though a risky one if one is supporting a family. There's also sex/romance; also risky and nowhere near as reliable as the others. Food also has the 'advantage' in that it is a requirement for living, and it is the one most likely to be subsidized by gov't., helpful neighbors/family or church groups.
There can also be benefits to being overweight that only an individual can know (and I think is most of the time a subconscious thing). For example, as a woman I've been thin and I've been fat and when I'm fat there's definitely a comfort/safety factor in being almost invisible to the opposite sex. If a woman fears male attention of a sexual nature and/or doesn't have the tools to cope with that kind of attention, maintaining a state of overweight provides a protective barrier. Such a woman may be desperate to lose weight, and trying every diet under the sun, but if her subconscious is working against her it's a losing battle (or if not a losing battle, then at least much, much harder than if it weren't).
Wow. Just - wow.
I lost 27% of my body weight in 2008. I wrote a lot that year about what was working or not working for me, what spurred me to change, hoping something I wrote might help someone else.
One thing that struck me reading this, something I forgot, was that people can have such vastly different stories, such vastly different motivations to change. It's so personal. Whatever it was that changed me, inside, is not the thing that can or will change other people.
Thanks for this.
TNC - longtime reader, first time commenter.
I want to echo a lot of these sentiments, but mostly to thank you for talking about obesity at all. It's incredible that so many Americans are on the fast track to early death and disease because of what we put into our bodies, and yet any mainstream discussions of obesity and food politics are so superficial - certainly they wouldn't GASP talk about it through the prism of race.
Which do you think is more likely to be reported on: the nexus between obesity, food, and race that you've been writing about these last few weeks? Or the fact that our tax dollars subsidize corn to the point that corn syrup-filled snacks are the only thing cheap enough for poor people to buy?
Anyway, everything you write makes me think, especially this post here, so thanks again.
This post is the reason why I've enjoyed your writing for so long. I live in Chicago and you managed to crystallize with brevity and compassion the things that I've (shamefully) thought to myself, as a young black woman, riding the L trains in Chicago. I've lived on both the south (predominately black) and north (predominately white) sides of town and seeing that switch is nothing like it. To be riding a train and know that after a certain dividing line (Roosevelt Road if you're headed south) the trains will literally become blacker and fatter. And looking around you and knowing that the people on the train with you are your sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins, but still feeling like in some indescribeable way, you've failed and we've all failed. Or to be riding north past a certain point (usually Lake Street) and see all the passengers get whiter and thinner and wonder what is it that they have, what is it that they're doing that gives them this life over the ones I see my people having who ride South? And you know the answer and are angry, but helpless.
Yes we're all in control of our actions, but so many people don't understand that "showing 'em" is still so much a mix of luck--like James Bennet giving TNC a chance to shine--that it's easy to forget about the people who don't get the breaks that others take for granted. I eat a lot of garbage sometimes. But I was *lucky* enough to be blessed with a decent metabolism that keeps me relatively thin. I've been down on my luck financially but was *lucky* to have family members who could help me out. There's so many ways in which my life was just a coin toss and I could be just another American numbing myself with food, numbing myself with alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling or any other thing that we use to get through those days when you can barely bring yourself to wake up, let alone strap on armor to prove the world wrong about you and your sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, cousins, aunts and uncles.
thanks for this piece.
Negative body image runs many ways - most of my life I've been too scrawny, too much acne, too pale (tans were the thing in the 80s, esp. in California). Growing up I always hated the way I looked, and as a result I was rather misanthropic to others as well. Now I'm over 40 and I've got a BMI that many people would sell their souls for. Go figure. But age has given me enough wisdom to understand the difference between me being lucky (I am) and me being better (I'm not).
TNC, once again you remind us how our self-image shapes how we see the World. You're so damn honest about who you are, and how that shapes your perceptions. I keep coming back to this blog because you've got a rare gift for conveying what being a minority *feels* like, emotionally. I've read enough history to understand intellectually the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, institutional racism, etc, etc. I've been in enough poor black folks' homes (umm, it's a long story) to see the reality of their physical surroundings. But I never got a sense of that emotional landscape until I came here.
You've said before that you're done trying to explain shit to white people. I don't blame you, but thankfully you keep doing it anyway every time you write honestly about yourself. And your example creates a space where your commenters can do the same, regardless of their backgrounds.
TNC, I truly don't understand the shame you are describing. Can you perhaps write more about why you care about "showing these motherfuckers" anything?
I think an Ayn Rand quote is relevant here (replace "genius" with "fit person" and "moron" with "fatty" if you like):
Not really. It's all basically there. That's a cool quote.
I'm overweight, white, upper middle class background at an elite university. I spend my days around beautiful, thin young aristocrats. I feel invisible there, or worse. I'm technically just barely obese, which is better than I used to be. I've played the self-loathing game about my body for a long time now.
I read more and more about America's obesity problem every day, and I can barely take it. So much of what gets written is thinly-veiled disgust and fat jokes, or else insulting liberal condescension about these poor, revolting fatsos who just can't stop eating themselves to death, because they're weak, or because corporate America has done this to them, or whatever. The kind of liberal condescension I'm almost sure I've spewed on other issues.
I even wince a little at this article - is fatness really so horrible, has it come to be seen as such a sign of failure in life, that Ta-Nehisi feels shame at seeing it in the black people on NYC public transit? I think of that Dubois line: what does it feel like to be a problem? I've never been a problem before. I'm privileged, I know. I'm not asking for you to cry for me or anything. But here I am, the increasingly rare non-poor person who struggles with his weight, and apparently ever since this obesity talk really got going in the last few years, I am a social problem.
So I guess, you see fat people on the bus and feel shame at black people coming up dead last in all matters. I see your point. It's a beautiful piece you've written. And obesity, race, and class need to be talked about together, because otherwise we'll never escape this horrible 'personal weakness' language that seems to be the only way Americans want to talk about it. But I read this piece and feel shame, too, because it reminds me of what my body now signifies to anyone who sees me on the street.
P.S. Looking back at my last comment, I think I'm unclear when I say "because otherwise we'll never escape this horrible 'personal weakness' language that seems to be the only way Americans want to talk about it." What I mean is that it's really frustrating that people always seem to want to talk about this in the most apolitical terms possible. It seems that, whenever anyone talks about poverty and obesity, some commenter, apropos of nothing, chimes in with a long explanation of their personal diet and exercise routine and how it helps them keep thin.
That's important as far as it goes - in any given person's case, the way to go from fat to not fat is diet and big lifestyle changes (I think TNC once said that being overweight has a culture and a deeply-rooted lifestyle to it that's trickier to change than just writing up a diet plan). But bringing up your own diet, or that other 'willpower and determination' stuff can also be an obnoxious display of status, and it hijacks the conversation. Namely, it gets in the way of talking about it in political terms, and we do need to talk about it politically, both in terms of where this situation came from, and its effects. Size discrimination and class discrimination, for instance, go together and are very real, and that's, umm, bad if you believe in things like meritocracy.
How you talk about it depends on what you're trying to do -- counsel/encourage an individual, or make policy for a population? Or neither, and just tell your own story the best you can, throwing it out there? I think it's okay to recognize that your own story might only help people who are kind of like yourself, and still find it worth telling.
Honestly, though -- I never thought about the possibility that describing (assume a willing listener or reader) my own significant weight loss could register as an "obnoxious display of status." And yet I see immediately what you mean. There's no way that the tactic I took, and that my family took to support me, would be adequate (possible?) for someone in a vastly different economic or familial situation. On the other hand, some of the things I learned, I think are fairly generally applicable, and they are things I was clueless about when I started. Could be wrong though, about how generally applicable they are.
Interesting.
There's a spot I never forgot in that classic '80s documentary "Sherman's March" where a Southern white woman actually says, completely non-ironically, "I don't understand what all the fuss is about slavery. If people want to be slaves, let 'em be slaves!"
I wonder how you feel about the libertarian notion that body size is a matter of civil liberties and tolerance -- more or less, "If people want to be fat, let 'em be fat!" To me it reflects a lesser version of the same kind of absurd blindness to the inevitable reality of social compulsion.
*This* is why I read you! Thanks, boss.
Awesome. Sauce.
I might be white of outer body but my mind is multi-colored and yours is beautiful!
I have been reading you for months, TNC -- thanks to your regular readers on Basket of Kisses (www.lippsisters.com) and your fan, Rachel Maddow. This is my first post.
Thank you for your consistently high standards. Thank you for taking on the difficult task of speaking as our (and I mean the American, multiracial "our") occasional conscience. Thank you for the surprise of your work.
This is the best essay I've recently read. Again, so many thanks!
I'm just dropping in to congratulate you for the little burst of attention you're getting via Rachel Maddow. I noticed this post yesterday too, and spent my walk home thinking about it. The kind of specific praise that your getting today really speaks to what a nice job your doing here. This post makes something abstract and fuzzyand unnoticed into something real and important. Keep up the good work.
This piece really hit me from both sides. You see, I can completely relate. I've spent years swearing to "beat those mothers", and still - at 37 - feel those urges and needs to prove myself pop up every now and again. But why do I feel that need? I'm a white woman, middle class, highly educated...and overweight. I have been my entire life, and in all likelihood always will be.
You see, for some of us, it's not as easy as "just eat less and exercise more." I've been dieting, and hating myself, and drowning in shame over it, since I was 5 years old.
When I was a child and teenager, I tried every fad diet in the books. In my 20s, I went on the extremely low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets popular at the time, combined with extensive exercise. I lost >75 pounds over the period of a couple years (to the point where I just barely reached a normal BMI), but have regained 50 pounds since, despite continuous dieting ever since.
I have spent the last 10 years averaging 1500-1800 calories/day of whole grains, vegetables, limited chicken and fish, limited fats, and limited processed foods, while running 3-4 times/week. I spent a year on a 1200 low-carb diet, and though I only lost
People look at me and assume I'm eating junk food and never exercising. I've had many people, even doctors, tell me I'm obviously lying when I tell them what I eat and how I exercise. I've lived with 3 people who ate the exact same diet in 2-3x larger quantities, and despite exercising less than I, have lost weight while I maintained or gained.
This is my shame, and I feel helpless - after >3 decades of effort - to do anything about it. Yet, even here - on a liberal, progressive blog where shaming comments based on color, gender, or sexual preference are banned, shaming people like myself is considered completely acceptable.
Sometimes, I just want to show them too.