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02.11.2004

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In addition to the topics of personal weight assessment and subjective measurements, other themes explored in this study are:

Weight management strategies: daily habits, goals and barriers
Portion size and labeling information
Information sources: credibility and use
Influence of community and social networks
Food habits, occasions and settings: indulgence, snacking and context

Linguistic Themes on Body Weight

People who view themselves as being "somewhat overweight" are more likely to use euphemisms and descriptive language about body shape than make specific weight goals or fat/muscle correlations. Some of the most interesting language used includes expressions such as "healthy," "curvy" and "big boned." These terms are more often used in contexts of social networks.

"healthy"
For many people, particularly from rural or working-class backgrounds, the word "healthy" has a double meaning in everyday discourse. Literally, it has all the dictionary definitions related to folk and medical understandings of well-being. Figuratively, however, it is a positive, tongue-in-cheek euphemism for being overweight. People who use this word tend to come from families and social networks where being overweight is often considered a positive sign of well-being. In fact, it isn't necessarily about being "overweight" at all. These people, who grew up with one standard of ideal weight, are finding themselves exposed to media and society where that ideal has suddenly become very thin by comparison. People who use the term "healthy" in this way are the least likely to apply the term "obese" to individuals who would otherwise qualify as obese according to the BMI.

"curvy"
This word, and others closely related to it (e.g., "full-figured," "busty," "ample" etc.), are mostly used by women to describe their bodies in terms that are deemed to be pleasant, flattering and sexy. These terms are used by some in a humorous manner in order to make their weight seem less serious, while others are using the term to indicate that they are content with their current body shape. Many of the latter express a desire to "feel comfortable with my body" and "accept my body for what is." These expressions are becoming increasingly common as women verbally oppose cultural ideals of extremely thin bodies.

"big boned"
This euphemism is one used with equal likelihood by overweight individuals describing their own bodies and by people describing other overweight individuals. It is a rationalization for having a high BMI or for appearing "heavy," "large," etc. This is attributed to actual bone size and genetic heritage as opposed to body fat or muscle. This expression is heard most often within intimate social networks such as a family member referring to another family member.

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Don't Tell Me I'm Obese, I'm Just Big Boned

an abstract from The Hartman Group's Obesity Study, 2004

The experts all agree. Obesity is a national health problem of epidemic proportions. While public health officials, nutritionists, the media, food retailers and manufacturers watch the number of overweight individuals grow, they seem to have lost sight of a very important piece of information. According to The Hartman Group's 2004 obesity study, Obesity in America: Understanding Weight Management from a Consumer Perspective, most of the overweight do not seem overly interested in doing anything about it. Certainly, they are very concerned about the "problem of obesity." But they are also very concerned about global warming, asbestos and gingivitis.

Questions about how obesity, the problem, affects individuals' day-to-day lives, however, remain largely unanswered. It is also not true that people lack basic nutrition information or that they somehow cannot seem to grasp the relationship between calories taken in and calories burned. And policies aimed at educating the overweight and near overweight about how to "overcome their problem" are doomed to failure as long as they persistently ignore the fact that people have yet to agree they have a problem. Sure, they know an ideal body when they see one. And no, overweight is not the product of a delusional mind. Rather, the body image that people carry around with them and that informs their internal weight manager is an amalgam of the images of real people encountered in the daily grind.

Personal Weight Assessment

Not surprisingly, ideals about how one's body "should" be shaped are influenced primarily by images that are disseminated through the mass media (i.e., advertising, television, movies, magazines, etc.) as well as general cultural politics. For most people these ideals serve as desirable goals, but goals that are in the form of wishes:

"I really wish that my body looked like that [picture of a fashion model]..."

In the same breath that people articulate their desires for an idealized body, they also realize that these goals are not necessarily realistic:

These idealized goals are typically not associated with a plan of action precisely because they are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Therefore, rather than serving as direct comparisons or gauges for managing one's weight, these ideals become a marker for fashion and entertainment. In other words, they are not driving changes in behavior with regard to attaining or maintaining a certain body shape. ¹

Instead of using these ideals as gauges, how we see ourselves derives as much from the comparisons we make with those around us as it does from our own attributes. We implicitly compare ourselves to others, for example, to see if we are under or overweight. And we spend much less time studying body mass index (BMI) charts than we do keeping an eye on our friends and relatives to decide when it is time to gain or lose weight.

This does not necessarily mean that people openly discuss weight-related issues within their social networks, but that these intimate networks provide the visual standards they use to evaluate their own body shape. In fact, we have found that many people find it difficult to discuss body image and weight issues with those closest to them. Instead, they prefer highly impersonal networks that are typically developed around targeted weight loss programs, most of which rely on "therapeutic" or "support" models as an integral programmatic component (e.g., Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, etc.). Ultimately, this means that individual assessments of a person's own body weight are highly subjective and often transitory.

Subjective Measurements

Although people are not oblivious to weight in an absolute sense, their subjective assessments of weight are definitely not constrained by mere physical measurements. Scales, calipers, charts and tape measures - or even the way a person's clothes fit - are employed as tools for assessing progress, not as isolated instruments for assessing weight or establishing goals. In general, people's perception of their appearance in photographs or reflections in store windows and mirrors is accurate, but subjective body image is not merely a replica of one's physical image.

Body image also reflects a person's sense of how a "normal" body should look. During in-person interviews most people readily admit to needing to shed a few pounds, and one out of every three will even strongly agree with the statement, "I should lose 20 pounds or more." But these commonly expressed sentiments belie the fact that being "somewhat overweight" is now the normal state of affairs and our collective sense of what constitutes "normal" weight has crept upward.

When asked to rate themselves on a scale running from extremely underweight to extremely overweight, and without any other cues to help guide their responses, respondents arrayed themselves in what appears a nearly perfect normal (i.e., bell-shaped) distribution (see Figure 1). Moreover, the center of the distribution comes surprisingly close to the exact midpoint of the scale, despite these individuals' high average BMI scores, which are three points higher than the cutoff for the overweight category established by the CDC. This suggests most of us do indeed consider our weight to be fairly average, neither overly high nor overly low.

The CDC's verdict that nearly two-thirds of the population is overweight or worse relies on objective physical measures of height and weight, but most people believe that such statistics have very little, if anything, to do with themselves or their immediate social networks. Again, rather than rely solely on the bathroom scale and other objective measurements, most of us turn to our social networks, our co-workers and the people around us to decide when and how much to worry about weight. The two-thirds statistic tends to relate to strangers such as "people I see at the grocery store" or "those heavy folks on TV who are doing that Dr. Phil challenge" and not to us.

In sharp contrast to the way individuals see themselves, they generally hold others to a different, often higher, standard. When charged with the task of assessing the weight condition of the man illustrated in Figure 2, respondents placed him significantly higher up on the weight scale than they placed themselves. The average assessment of the man's weight is considerably higher than the average self-assessment and is closer to what we would expect to see for the sample in view of the sample's high average BMI.

Whereas we form opinions of ourselves in reference to specific aspects of our daily lives, such as how we compare to those in our social networks, we tend to judge others, especially strangers, against more generalized cultural standards. In part, this stems from the fact that we rely on personal circumstances to flesh out our self-assessments ("I've gotten chunky over the years, mostly because of an ankle injury that prevents a lot of walking and standing"), but we often lack this basic information when it comes to evaluating others. When asked to form judgments about an individual in an illustration, our subjects made up stories that helped them better assess the individual's condition. Invariably these stories drew on culturally derived images and language, which moved the standard used to judge the illustrated individual closer to what we might consider an idealized body image. This propensity to use a double standard, rather than an inability to see ourselves accurately, is what makes our self-assessments generally less critical than our assessments of others.

¹ We do see exceptions to this general rule with teens, particularly females, as well as those who suffer from eating disorders such as anorexia, but for the vast majority of adults these remain essentially irrelevant ideals.

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