TEEN-AGED GIRLS hate their bodies and diet obsessively, or so we
hear. News stories and reports of survey research often claim that
as many as three girls in five are on a diet at any given time, and
they grimly suggest that many are "at risk" for eating disorders.
But how much can we believe these frightening stories? What do
teenagers mean when they say they are dieting?
Anthropologist Mimi Nichter spent three years interviewing
middle school and high school girls -- lower-middle to middle
class, white, black, and Latina -- about their feelings concerning
appearance, their eating habits, and dieting. In Fat Talk, she
tells us what the girls told her, and explores the influence of
peers, family, and the media on girls' sense of self. Letting girls
speak for themselves, she gives us the human side of survey
statistics.
Most of the white girls in her study disliked something about
their bodies and knew all too well that they did not look like the
envied, hated "perfect girl". But they did not diet so much as talk
about dieting. Nichter wryly argues -- in fact some of the girls as
much as tell her -- that "fat talk" is a kind of social ritual
among friends, a way of being, or creating solidarity. It allows
the girls to show that they are concerned about their weight, but
it lessens the urgency to do anything about it, other than diet
from breakfast to lunch. Nichter concludes that if anything, girls
are watching their weight and what they eat, as well as trying to
get some exercise and eat "healthfully", in a way that sounds much
less disturbing than stories about the epidemic of eating disorders
among American girls.
Black girls, Nichter learned, escape the weight obsession and
the"fat talk" that is so pervasive among white girls. The
African-American girls she talked with were much more satisfied
with their bodies than were the white girls. For them, beauty was a
matter of projecting attitude ("'tude") and moving with confidence
and style.
Fat Talk takes the reader into the lives of girls as daughters,
providing insights into how parents talk to their teenagers about
their changing bodies. The black girls admired their mothers'
strength; the white girls described their mothers' own "fat talk",
their fathers' uncomfortable teasing, and the way they and their
mothers sometimes dieted together to escape the family "curse" --
flabby thighs, ample hips. Moving beyond negative stereotypes of
mother-daughter relationships, Nichter sensitively examines the
issues and struggles that mothers face in bringing up their
daughters, particularly in relation to body image, and considers
how they can help their daughters move beyond rigid and stereotyped
images of ideal beauty.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(4)
(2)
