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Body Size and Culture Author(s): Futhi Zikalala Source: Agenda, No. 23, Body Politics (1994), pp. 19-22 Published by: Agenda Feminist Media Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4065941 . Accessed: 15/02/2011 10:42

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in brief

Body Size

and Culture In some cultures women aspire to befat, in others they diet to be thin. The ideal size differs, but the pressures remain the same. By Futhi Zikalala

I know no woman - virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate - whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a scanner of brain waves - for whom her body is not a fundamental problem. (Rich, in Kupfermann, 1979:frontispiece)

The issue is: why would a person think that there is a problem with her body? The answer lies mainly with culture.

Women's bodies have throughout history aroused interest and contempt at the same time. It matters, for instance, in most societies whether a woman is small, overweight or has a great shape, meaning thereby that her body parts are proportional to one another. But I have never come across any culture that emphasises the bodies of men, for as long as a man has property he is a man regardless of the front pouches that usually accompany such ownership. These cultural expectations of women's bodies, be they for smaller or bigger

bodies, are generally held by men and, in the process - at least in some cases - women are exploited as a result of the sizes of their bodies'.

Traditional culture In traditional African culture a woman's body size was also an issue, but maybe to a lesser extent than other cultures. It was thought or accepted that a woman with a rounder body or even an overweight body was well provided for by her guardian, and male admirers would also enjoy being seen with such a woman. Men liked the idea of being married to women of cn fuller figures as this meant that they were : good providers. It should be noted that men have always regarded themselves as the upholders of culture, which leads to >- rn the observation that it is actually not u women who create the feeling that their c bodies are fundamental problems.

Culture is not static or uniform for any particular group of people. We talk of

Body size and culture Agenda 19

in brief < :

traditional African culture, which indicates that culture has developed from what it was at the turn of the century or even three decades later. For African people, Western cultures, particularly the English culture, have played a major role in influencing changes to what we have in most areas today. At one stage you would hear African women talking about, and some in fact aspiring to achieve, what they called English figures. This was not only a result of what they saw, but also what they were made to believe they had to be, what they were pressurised to accept as the norm. Clothing shops sold beautiful clothes in small sizes, therefore if a woman did not have that size figure she would not be able to get clothes from these shops. (The alternatives were not as good as they are today.) The irony of this was that these shops were mainly owned by white men and the clothes themselves were designed by such men.

Culture also differs according to the geographic locations of people of the same group. We can therefore distinguish between rural and urban cultural practices, for instance, and then say that in rural areas women are still inclined to follow what is no longer acceptable to a majority of women in urban areas. Women in urban areas are more exposed to Western cultures than their rural counterparts. The former have the visual

media readily accessible to them and are exposed to advertisements depicting slim women dressed in fashionable clothes; as a result they are likely to follow the trend. Such media are not readily available to most women in the rural areas and consequently the pace at which the development of culture in such areas is growing is much slower. That is not to say that in the rural areas there are no women who strive to attain what they see in the available media. And by the same token not all women in urban areas aspire to be thin or even appreciate what they are exposed to in the media.

African women talked about and some aspired to achieve English figures

Educated culture There is another culture that affects women wherever they may be geographically: the 'educated' culture. As a result of education, women become aware not only of other nations' cultural practices, but also of the need to maintain healthier bodies; as a consequence they aspire to have healthy, fit and indeed smaller bodies. Again this is not to say that the uneducated women do not appreciate healthy bodies, for they do, but it is usually a case of what they accept to be healthy bodies. Most of them need their physical strength to perform their duties at work and in the home. Thus a healthy body to them may be bigger and stronger. The fact of the matter is that some of the educated women have other reasons for maintaining slim bodies, like appearance and fashion to please their 'Westernised' partners.

I spoke to some professional women about the size of their bodies and it was interesting to note the range of responses. An urban woman advocate (who unfortunately did not given me permission to publish her name) said:

20 Agenda Body size and culture

in brief I like to be this size - a size 8 - and in fact enjoy it because clothes fit better, and I look good and even like looking this good...

A qualified woman librarian, also from an urban area, (and again who preferred to remain anonymous) had this response:

I do not really think of my body in terms of its size, which is incidentally a 14, but I think women make too much of what they see on television which is based on men's views about women's bodies.. .this is also a form of culture...

While these women can be categorised as educated and urbanised, their responses show a great difference in values. It would be of even more interest to get personal views of women in other categories.

In addition to the Western influence on African cultures, there are elements that are part of the cultures themselves that determine body sizes for women. One of these is the maleness of our societies. Men still exert a major influence on what women's lives ought to be like, including the sizes of their bodies. This also extends to what other women think of other women's body sizes. All these have the effect of prescribing to women what they ought to look like and exacting pressure on them to change. For some this pressure is unbearable and they end up conforming to other people's ideals rather than achieving their own ideals.

Some women end up conforming to other people's ideals rather than achieving

their own ideals

A mental hold

As long as men are seen to appreciate slim women's companionship, most women will strive to be slim - against all odds. It is a kind of mental hold that men

seem to have on women. In a recent issue of You magazine (23 June 1994), a man who descnibed himself as a 43-year-old foreigner wrote about his passion for 'a real super-thin woman' and how he goes for 'real anorexidcs'. He went on to say that for 'his taste 99 percent of all South African women are much too fat' and how he and many foreigners who share this view with him were 'all shocked' when they came to this country. Some women responded in the weeks that followed and expressed their disgust at his pleasure. While this man's statement may be laughed off as unimportant, in reality his pleasure, as he himself stated, is shared by a number of men who even go further to insist that their partners attain such bodies.

There are also many women who, maybe in kindness, pressurise other women to have slim bodies. If a woman boss, for instance, tells a woman employee that 'you atre too big", the latter, as a result possibly of her subordinate position, is more than likely to act upon it than tell the boss that she is happier as she is or that it is none of the boss's business. But then again our cultures demand that younger people respect their elders. Sometimes a slim woman is told by her mother or another female relatfve that she is too thin and must gain more weight. As a result, the younger woman

Body size and culture Agenda 21

5R- -' X I in brief feels she must comply with the comments and out of the window go her desires, ideals and confidence.

Subtle abuse There are women who are unhappy about their body sizes simply because their husbands or partners do not approve of their sizes. For various reasons, these women strive to ensure that their partners' opinions on anything, including their bodies, are given priority - come what may. In fact this is one form of abuse which may be so subtle that many people brush it aside. This is still part of the cultures of many societies.

Women strive to ensure that their partners' opinions on anything, including

their bodies, are given priority

There is also the case of the woman who eventually died weighing only 24kg, simply because her husband taunted and ridiculed her for the slightest increase in her body weight (You magazine, 7 July 1994). It was said that he would reward her with clothes and jewellery on reaching the ideal weight and that he would boast about her body to his friends. He was described as 'an overweight boozer and out of shape'. While this may not be part of the culture as it is widely accepted, its frequent practice makes it a culture of its own - the abuse culture.

From all these practices it becomes clear that the body, as we all know it, becomes a social phenomenon. As is stated by

Connell (1991: 83): The body, without ceasing to be the body, is taken in hand and transformed in social practice.'

There are other measurements that cultures use to determine the value

of men

Culture, in its various forms, thus plays a major role in determining what the size of the body ought to be. This mainly applies to women, as it has been said that there are other measurements that cultures use to determine the value of men. Yet again, since culture is always developing, it must be one great challenge to women, in particular, to develop another culture which should ensure that bodies remain bodies, private entities, which no-one should use for their purposes other than the owner. O

FOOTNOTES 1. The cases of pornography, advertising and

prostitution are just some of the examples where women are usually exploited. The 'norm' is to use slim women for these abuses.

REFERENCES Connell RW (1991) Gender & Power: Society, the

Person and Sexual Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Kupfennann J (1979) The Mistaken Body, London: Granada.

Futhi Zikalala is an attorney and a researcher at the Centre for Criminal

Justice, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg

22 Agenda Body size and culture