Issue 07: Please stop asking about my weight.
Talking weight and body image
For many brown kids, coming home to family after some time away means you're in for an impromptu analysis of just how much weight you've put on or lost since you've been gone.
"You look thin! Good for you!"
"Have you been dieting?"
"Be careful, you're starting to gain again!"
"I don't even recognize you anymore!"
It's common to hear any iteration of the above before anyone even asks about your new gig, how school's going or what-have-you. While our loved ones usually don't intend to hurt us, for many of us struggling with body image or diagnosed mental illness, that repetitive emphasis on weight can exacerbate our already fragile relationships with our bodies.
Take Brown Girl Magazine's Vaidehi Gajjar, a 24-year-old Gujarati grad student in South Carolina. She's been suffering with anxiety and depression since she was a teenager. Over the years, her illness has left her physically exhausted and without much of an appetite.
For about two years, Vaidehi ate the bare minimum. Sometimes that came in the form of a glass of milk or one item off the Taco Bell menu. "I was shriveling away, and to a certain extent, I wanted to do nothing about it," she says.
Here's how she describes the experience: "It was as if the weight of my thoughts had trickled from my brain into my bones, and I was left dragging myself around, or rather my anxiety and depression were left dragging me around."
People often equate being skinny with being healthy and even happy. But for Vaidehi, the comments about her weight, which were often positive, only made her feel further invalidated. She couldn't look in the mirror because seeing her protruding bones made her feel sick. She was known as "that girl," the one who covered her full plate with napkins to hide how little she was eating. But at least she wasn't overweight, people said.
No one seemed to understand why or how she could possibly be unhappy, making it even harder to talk about mental health, an already taboo subject in her South Asian community. Instead, Vaidehi struggled alone, didn't seek professional help and silently fell apart.
She did, however, find some comfort in writing before a friend who happened to be a professional offered some guidance.
In August, Vaidehi wrote about her personal struggles with anxiety and weight in The Lily. Her story made it back home to the Nehru Science Center in Mumbai, India.
"The biggest thing I want people to know is that my experience isn’t something new or different," she says. "I don’t want sympathy from anybody. I don’t want pity. I want understanding. And that’s not just for me. It’s for every individual suffering in silence day in and day out, simply because they’ve been made to feel like they don’t matter."
My brother's story is a little different.
Whereas anxiety fueled Vaidehi's weight loss, his social anxiety only erupted after he dropped 170 pounds. The persistent chit-chat about his weight hasn't helped.
Faiz is a 23-year-old soon-to-be law student. His dramatic weight loss story has been the subject of nearly every family dinner, extended reunion, family phone call, etcetera. I don't remember the last time we hung out with our grandparents, aunts and cousins without someone mentioning the big drop in poundage. And it was certainly a significant change. At his heaviest, Faiz weighed 332 pounds. At his lightest, 161.
I wanted to know how his weight loss and the subsequent spotlight was affecting him personally.
"In high school, it's like I fit some kind of trope. The funny fat guy trope," he says. People adored him. Faiz wasn't ever bullied for his weight, nor did he lack self-confidence. On the contrary, he was one of the most confident people I'd known at the time. At no point during high school, even when he crossed that 300-pound mark, did he feel compelled to lose weight. The constant outpouring of lectures and tears from our folks (and me!) only encouraged him to rebel a little harder.
Things changed when college came around. Faiz moved to Los Angeles and was on his own for the first time in a city of beautiful people. He wanted to create a new identity for himself, let the high school trope stay in high school. He wanted to look like the people around him. At the same time, he struggled to walk to class; his body always ached.
Health concerns drove Faiz to make some kind of lifestyle change, but body image and anxiety kept him on course.
"The way I lost the weight was not emotionally healthy. I need people to recognize that," he says. "I still see myself as 300 pounds."
At his worst, Faiz would weigh himself twice a day, consume 500-600 calories per day, open up Instagram just to scroll through photos of male fitness gurus, then close the app, determined to starve himself.
"It was a catch-22. I wanted to lose weight to feel comfortable around strangers, but when I stopped eating, I was too exhausted to go anywhere," he says.
In fact, the more weight he lost, the harder it was to be around people in general.
Our folks didn't really understand the anxiety that came with extreme weight loss or why he needed therapy at all. He looked great, he was graduating, what could possibly be wrong?
But there was the unexpected issue of loose skin.
"I remember lifting up my shirt—and maybe I'm exaggerating in retrospect—but it seems like mom and dad were a little disgusted," he says. They immediately recommended cosmetic surgery, something I wasn't personally advocating for, just because I wanted Faiz to fall in love with the body he had.
That was a tough moment for him. "I think I've always had a poor understanding of how my body looks like to other people," he says about his body dysmorphia. But our parents' reaction to his loose skin made him feel the insecurities were somehow rational.
Faiz has since had surgery, and doesn't regret it at all. If anything, the surgery, which he worked up in his head as the final fix to his body image issues, reminded him yet again how unrealistic it is to expect a magic solution.
Therapy has helped him unfurl the underlying issues behind his poor self-esteem and social anxiety, and how weight loss (among other big life changes) have played a role. As his big sis, I've definitely seen a significant improvement in Faiz's self-esteem since he found this new therapist.
But what hasn't really helped is the constant conversation around his weight. Like I mentioned earlier, there's no escaping the subject in family settings with Faiz nearby.
"Anytime someone isn't explicitly asking for advice, it only contributes to my anxiety. I'm constantly wondering whether they'll say something next time. And if they don't, does that mean I've gained weight? Even when someone's asking for advice, it's not like I want anyone emulating the lifestyle choices I made when I was losing 150 pounds," he says.
That's not to say he isn't happy people are proud of him, especially dad, who undoubtedly gained a new level of respect for his son after watching him accomplish something he's always personally struggled with.
And it's not to say he totally regrets losing the weight. One big change since his high school days: His dreams are bigger, and he can imagine himself doing more in this body than he might have done in the old.
"I just don't like that it's become the central point of my identity," Faiz says. "It's strange, having people portray the weight loss as this big positive thing in my life when there was so much negativity associated with it."
Faiz also recognizes how the constant emphasis on weight during family outings (usually at a not-so-healthy Indian restaurant) might be hurting the people around him, particularly our younger cousins growing up in the highly image-focused world of social media.
It's such a layered issue, weight and image, particularly in immigrant cultures like ours where food is central to community, where lack of nutrition education is the norm and where what's most affordable and available has always been something unhealthy off the dollar menu at McDonald's.
It's not that Faiz blames our upbringing, though mom's expressed some guilt about feeding us fast food on the daily as kids. It's so much more complicated than that. Like lots of families, we didn't grow up with parents who had time to cook every day. And when you're financially struggling, it's hard to justify paying $4 for one salad entree when you can feed the entire family for the same price.
But I'll save that topic for a future issue. Want to talk food culture and mental health (or health in general)? Reach out.
For now, maybe we can rethink how and when we talk about weight around each other, especially when there's food on the table. Faiz says if you'd like to talk about weight loss, he'd love to chat. But individually. Not in group settings. We're all dealing with our own body image problems, and while some might find it helpful to commiserate out loud, Vaidehi and Faiz can tell you that's just not the case for everyone.
The research on weight, body image among immigrants
For immigrants in America, a growing body of research shows the longer we live in this country, the worse our rates of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. But why?
The New York Times had a great analysis on this in 2013.
"For the recently arrived, the quantity and accessibility of food speaks to the boundless promise of the United States." Supersized food = Supersized success.
“You work so hard, you want to use your money in a smart way,” Aris Ramirez, a community health worker in Brownsville, Texas, told the Times. “So when they hear ‘twice the fries for an extra 49 cents,’ people think, ‘That’s economical.’”
On the other end of the spectrum, you have struggling parents working odd jobs and eating hamburgers because of the convenience. You have nightshift workers losing control over their children's diets because they're rarely around at mealtimes.
“In Mexico, we ate healthily and didn’t even know it,” Esther Angeles told NYT. "Here, we know the food we eat is bad for us. We feel guilty. But we eat it anyway."
Couple all that with a general pressure to adhere to certain beauty standards and you've got quite the recipe for disaster. I did some browsing and reading to learn more about the immigrant groups at high risk for body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders. As always, research is scarce.
But in general, research shows the greater the number of migrant generations born in the United States, the more likely they are to acculturate to U.S. body ideals perpetuated in the media.
And overall, negative body image is strongly associated with mental health issues and eating disorders.
Here's more data:
Male and female Latinos are as likely, if not more likely, to develop eating disorders versus any other ethnic group. (Schooler and Lowry, 2011)
In Indian cultures, body image is highly influenced by social comparisons to actors and actresses on the Bollywood screen. While Bollywood used to feature more shapely women and men with average bodies, actresses now fit the slim Hollywood ideal and actors, a more chiseled muscular ideal. The changing media portrayals have affected body image perceptions at least in Indian women. (Kapadia, 2009)
Chinese women are increasingly attaching a greater importance to body image. In recent years, more and more women are labeling underweight bodies as "normal weight" and normal weight bodies as "overweight." Researchers noted associations with rising body dissatisfaction, shame and anxiety as well as higher risks of depression, eating disorders and sexual dysfunction. (Zhang, Qian, Fu, 2018)
South Asian immigrants have high susceptibility to eating-related psychopathology and food addiction (Rehman, 2018).
Among African residents in Europe, ethnic groups living in great isolation or with low incomes still have an ancestral idea of beauty, preferring a shapely body. Those living in urban areas are moving toward Westernization of beauty ideals, preferring underweight or normal weight bodies and are at increased risk of nutritional disorders as a result. (Toselli, Rinaldo, Gualdi-Russo, 2016)
Compared to populations living in Africa, African immigrants in Europe have higher body dissatisfaction. (Toselli, Rinaldo, Gualdi-Russo, 2016)
In Latinx individuals, cultural disparities in body ideals heavily influence the messages they receive about their bodies. A pressure to acculturate to American ideals (more thin) has led to increased body image disturbance. But social support from friends and family can help. (Menon and Harter, 2012)
Binge eating disorder among black individuals of Caribbean origin may be explained by the abundance, variety, and availability of foods in the United States. Additionally, Caribbean black teens may yield to pressures to over consume in order to fit in with their peers. (Taylor, Caldwell, Baser et al., 2013)
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How to recognize triggers and environmental causes behind body image issues
I Love My LGBT Body (Facebook page)
More stories
In this 2011 NPR interview, plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony Youn talks body dysmorphic disorder in rhinoplasty patients and why it's actually more prevalent among ethnic minorities. Hint: 'Cause we're a society heavily based on the Caucasian ideal of beauty. Read or listen here.
Slate's Michelle Konstantinovsky wrote this incredibly well-reported piece titled "Eating Disorders Do Not Discriminate" in 2014 to debunk the dangerous myth that only white women deal with eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Read here.
HuffPost lifestyle editor Arti Patel penned this essay titled, "Growing Up As A Brown Girl, I Was Used To Being Called 'Fat'" in 2016. "The words 'fat' and 'skinny' were thrown around my community like 'hello' and 'goodbye' ...I would hear people suggest skipping meals and fad diets like it was a one-stop easy fix." Read here.
"Would I have developed anorexia nervosa had we not emigrated from India to Canada?" Don't miss this beautiful first-person essay from Dr. Amba Balu for nationaleatingdisorders.org. Read here.
"Fresh Off the Boat" author Eddie Huang got super real in this 2017 GQ essay about male body anxiety and growing up as "the fat kid" in his Asian family. "A lot of times, as a man, you don’t feel empowered or enabled, or you’re not given the opportunity to speak about negative body image or how insecure you are about the way you look. We’re supposed to just be measured on our abilities and our work." Read here.
Read about racialized body dysmorphia from Black Youth Project's Gloria Oladipo and her essay on how African features aren't just "obsessively viewed as beastly and unattractive," but are subsequently criminalized. Read here.
I love collections of personal anecdotes, so I definitely want to share this list of seven Latinas on body image and insecurities from Hip Latina. "Growing up as a Latina was hard because I wasn't curvy and I didn't look remotely close to J.Lo or Jessica Alba," writes Columbian and Peruvian Giselle Castro. Read here.
Unhealthy body image and body dysmorphia is still rampant in the gay community. This Vice piece examines how, for queer people of color, impossible standards of male bodies are compounded by the overwhelming whiteness of the LGBTQ community in the media. Read here.
Refinery29 ran this piece last year on how the body positivity movement as we see it has primarily targeted cisgender women and men. So, they asked trans men and women and non-gender conforming folks what exactly body positive means to them. Read here.
Interested in helping fact-check this newsletter? I could use the help! Send me a note: fiza.pirani@gmail.com.
Foreign Bodies is a monthly e-mail newsletter dedicated to the unique experiences of immigrants and refugees as they relate to coping with mental illness and wellness. It’s written and curated by Atlanta-based writer Fiza Pirani with copyediting and fact-checking help from New Jersey-based independent journalist Hanaa’ Tameez. Want to contribute your time or share your own #ForeignBodies story? Send an email to 4nbodies@gmail.com or say hi on Twitter @4nbodies. Special shout-out to Carter Fellow and friend Rory Linnane for the adorable animated logo!
If you're thinking about suicide or worried about someone who might be, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text 741741 to connect to a crisis counselor. You can also find a wealth of culture- or language-specific recommended resources on our site, foreignbodies.net.
