Nancy N. Chen: The inaccurate link between body ideals and health | TED

Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier Reviewer: Hello and welcome. As visual beings, we rely on images to perceive the world and make meaning. Imagine I ask you to draw a human body. How would you depict this body? Body ideals reflect social meanings about how we dwell in spaces both physical and cultural. We often interpret bodies with categories of gender, race, ethnicity, class and belonging -- or not -- through modifications such as hair, skin, clothing. As a medical anthropologist, I study cultural concepts about bodies and how these shape both being in the world and health. Curvy bodies have been around for millennia. The limestone figurine, known as the Venus of Willendorf, is considered to reflect two values that were ranked high in the past: reproduction and abundance. Fertility figures with voluptuous curves suggest that body ideals for females have focused on full-figured, curvy bodies, especially in agrarian societies. Low waist-to-hip ratios, or hourglass figures, have long been considered to be more attractive, from an evolutionary perspective, in terms of the ability for childbearing. Then something changed. In the past century, body ideals shifted significantly when Western societies increasingly featured thin-bodied female models in mainstream media. The Western body ideal in the 1960s was Marilyn Monroe. By the 1970s, magazines featured Twiggy. That’s a huge shift, and such body ideals continued shrinking. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the gap between the average size of regular women and the size of models continue to grow. This gap between actual and ideal can impact self-image. Over the past three decades, thinness has come to be associated with dominant portrayals of prestige, in addition to well-being. The systemic proliferation of thin body ideals circulates on a global scale. Body dysmorphia, and often accompanying eating disorders, can be found around the world. Thinness has become a matter of achievement through diet regimes, food avoidances, exercise -- even surgery. In 1998, the category of orthorexia, the obsessive focus on healthy eating, was coined as a new category of eating disorder. During this pandemic, social media followed the journeys of celebrities documenting weight loss and other transformations. Idealized body types aren’t just about thinness anymore. New forms of thin -- lean, muscular bodies -- have come to be pursued across gender, age, income and locations with accompanying bias against fat. It's important to note, however, that not all societies and cultures fully embrace thin bodies as ideals. Curves remain significant for many cultures and ethnic groups even today, including Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities. Moreover, standards of beauty differ and are not solely based on external features. An earlier study of body ideals in rural Jamaica found that bodies there are reflections of one’s social relations. Whether by shared fluids or food, plump bodies in this rural context are considered to be desirable, healthy and loveable in this measure of well-being. Thin bodies there were interpreted to be antisocial or neglected without social capital or relations to feed or care for them. Similar positive views about ample or thick bodies have been found in ethnographic studies across Africa, the Pacific Islands and the U. S. With increased globalization and market reach, body ideals change over time, even in rural and remote areas. Weight stigma, or fat phobia and bias, are increasingly found not only in the Global North, but also the Global South. With increasing obesity around the world, public health campaigns to address overweight and obesity may backfire by reinforcing weight stigma. How is it possible to move beyond these body ideals that may be harmful for esteem or self-care? The problem is that no matter the preference for thick or thin

these universally imposed body ideals miss a key point. There are many different kinds of body shapes, weight and looks. Yet the conflation of appearance with health often facilitates unhealthy shaming of oneself or others based on outdated ideals. The good news is that body diversity is being recognized as a critical component and reflection of social diversity, equity and inclusion. In calling out standard media portrayals, which feature size-two models while the average American woman may be a size 16, body diverse activists, along with earlier queer and Black activists, have pointed out the harm of body-shaming and they advocate instead for retraining social lenses on systemic ideals. With increasing body positive advocacy, there’s been a shift in national and global ad campaigns that feature more diversity of bodies, skin color, hairstyles and even age. Another way to enhance body diversity entails expanding where we look for diverse bodies. For instance, sports events are major stages where bodies are on display Rather than uniformly thin or lean, different proportions, sizes and abilities can be seen in the bodies of Olympians, Paralympians and other athletes. Beyond athletes, ad campaigns for clothing or cosmetics may also feature a range of ordinary consumers to represent their brand as accessible and inclusive. These approaches are helpful correctives to address the divergence between ideals and actual lived bodies in everyday life. These are important directions addressing narrow body ideals by expanding diversity and inclusion of bodies that become the focus of media, social media and advertising. Nonetheless, these images keep our views, often subjective, on outer body features as opposed to objectively thinking about health. If we are concerned about health and well-being, then we need to go beyond body standards or ideals. We need to consider how healthy bodies are based on what’s going on inside, rather than focusing on externalities. Medical anthropology, the history of medicine and comparative knowledge, offers insights on how to examine bodies in different ways. All the classical systems of medicine -- Ayurveda, Chinese, Greco-Islamic, as well as Indigenous healing knowledge, understood bodies through one’s life force and the energy in connection to natural and social environment. Energetic qualities of bodies such as dosha, chi or vital essences such as blood, are much more significant than external features. The outside body was a reflection of one’s interior to understand what was happening inside for health and balance. Well-being meant being able to harmonize one’s body in relation to dynamic relations between vital substances, human organs and one’s environment to live as long as possible. The immune system and microbiome are contemporary examples. They help to understand human bodies in relation to entities such as bacteria, microbes or pathogens. These offer key opportunities to reframe body ideals that engage vitality from within, such as metabolic health, rather than focus solely on externalities or ideal representations. We are in dire need of healthy bodies, societies and environments. We come in all shapes and features that are desirable and beautiful. By caring for healthy bodies, placing more value on internal vitality, which takes into account living in relation to our environment and each other, we might be able to experience better health and collective well-being in this century. We can begin to heal by looking within ourselves. We can thrive by seeing vitality together. Thank you.