Speaking of Body Image

While I'm on the topic, Heather and I watched the strangely compelling MTV series TrueLife the other night, and the real-life story was about three people who went to "fat camp." Fortunately it was not as disturbing as "The Biggest Loser" and they didn't have lots of XTRA BIG XTRA CHEEZY Pizza Hut Pizza ads at the break. Still, it was strange to see that the one who enjoyed camp the most (and was there for the first time) had the hardest time sticking with the program afterwards.

It also made me think about who we decide is an outcast in our society, and I think that overweight people (especially very overweight people, and young overweight people) get ostracized, or at least treated like second-class citizens. Somewhere I read an article on secularism that suggested that being overweight was a kind of moral failing or sin in that philosophy. (Here's the article. I realize now that it's a little more touchy and editorial that I remembered.)

I want to tread lightly here, because I'm talking about an issue I don't have a lot of direct personal experience with here, but I think that obesity does have this kind of strange position as secular "sin". Should it have the shame attached to it that it often does? No. Is it productive or helpful to make people feel bad about themselves and their bodies? No.

One of the girls on the TV show tried to get at why weight was a problem for her, and she said that she thinks it's because she's always talking about food. She talked about how much she was eating as much as she talked about how much she wasn't eating.

But I think diets are, for the most part, unnatural and harmful, too. Our bodies are designed with a natural ability to gauge when we've had enough and what we need to eat. Denying those urges throws us as off-balance as overindulging them.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that our bodies are a gift from God, that proper care of them is important, but that God judges us based on our hearts and our actions, not on our appearances.

Of course then there's this whole other thing about the extravagant availability of high-calorie food in the US, in the face of starvation in the 3rd world. That's more of a widespread, social analysis kind of a question. This post may need some revisions. Any thoughts?