The Meaning of Size 91their bodies refers to the cultural factors outside themselves” (1986, p. 70).
Bordo (1990), in her essay “Reading the Slender Body,” argued that rep-
resentations of the body can be read to understand the meanings behind
them and suggested that current images of thinness reproduce contempo-
rary concerns and anxieties in society. From these perspectives, weight,
overweight, and thinness have a range of meanings.
Control
The central meaning of size is control, in terms of both the ability to
control the self and the inclination towards loss of control (see figure 5.3).
For example, Bordo (1990) argued that “fat,” “bulges,” and “flab” reflect
factors such as “uncontained desire, unrestrained hunger, uncontrolled
impulse” (p. 89), which must be “busted,” “destroyed,” or “burned,” with
thinness representing the body’s capacity for “self containment and the
control of impulse and desire” (p. 90). The thin body therefore means that
the thin person has self-control over their inner state; it means that they
are psychologically stable and the thinness is a “marker of personal internal
order” (Bordo, 1990, p. 94). Lawrence (1984) also argued that “the ability
to limit food intake and to lose weight bring with them a far reaching moral
kudos, with implications of will power and the capacity to resist temptation”
(p. 33). Similarly Orbach (1978) argued that “fat is a social disease” and
that “non dieting and self acceptance might be keys to weight loss” (p. 12).
This suggests that becoming psychologically stable though self-acceptance
could result in a thinner body – the thin body again reflecting psychological
control. Bordo (1990) also stated that thinness reflects control over the
person’s inner world within the context of a culture of consumerism, and
that “the slender body codes the tantalizing ideal of a well managed self in
which all is ‘in order’ despite the contradictions of the consumer culture”
(1990, p. 97). Thinness represents control over the self within a world which
encourages the abandonment of this control. Likewise, Brownell (1991)
examined the cultural preoccupation with thinness and stated that society
equates thinness with moral perfection and assumes that thinness means
hard work, ambition, self-control, and purity, whereas being overweight is
a sign of laziness and stupidity.
Freedom
Thinness has also been deemed to reflect freedom. First, there is a free-
dom from class. For example, Orbach (1986) described the emergence of
thin models and actresses in the 1960s and how they “exemplified...an