What To Do About a Problem Like Cultural Stereotypes
Believe it or not, I also follow blogs outside of the fatosphere (god, I still loathe that term), and have been following Sundry Mourning since we were both blogging over on Diaryland. I’m still a DINK (for the moment, anyway) while she’s had two very adorable boys, which I guess makes her a DITK. I guess you could call her a Mommyblogger (but I wouldn’t do that to her face, as she might just kick your ass for it. I’ve met her. She’s nimble) but apparently that’s not the only thing that sets us apart. Recently, she received an email from someone identifying themselves as a professor at the Xi’an University of Science and Technology in the Shaanxi province of China. The teacher explains in the e-mail that:
My students’ perception of the American family can be quite extreme and I am planning a lesson to introduce them to the many varieties of families that can be found in the US. I’ve been looking through 30+ pages of your blog on suggest from a friend, and I would love to feature your family as one that: is not obese or otherwise unhealthy, partially relies on childcare outside of the home, actively chooses to keep a family size that is manageable without government assistance, is without religious fervor and is centered around a healthy marriage.
While the author of the e-mail doesn’t specifically state this, it seems as though they are trying to counter specific concerns that his/her students have brought up in class. Some of the issues are obviously cultural differences between China and the US that would be interesting to the students of a Western Studies class, but the ordering of the concerns really stood out for me, especially considering that China bans adoptions to non-Chinese if they have a BMI above 40 and is one of two countries that I know of to have instituted official bans there are stories of people being denied adoptions in England and Australia for high BMIs, but I’m not finding any official decrees about BMI limits for either country).
I’m fine with having Sundry represent a typical American family (mostly because I enjoy imagining their reaction to her wicked bicep tat), but I’m very perplexed by the idea that fat people are singled out as being outside of the norm, meanwhile an entire country is convinced that we are an entire nation of fat families. Who is in denial there?
Meanwhile, the Chinese are fighting (or enjoying) the reverse stereotype.
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In the UK at the minute people approaching their local councils to adopt are subject to medicals and this includes a BMI test, and people are increasingly being refused on the grounds that they are too overweight. We also don’t grant adoptions to smokers for health reasons. It’s not a general rule yet and each local authority will differ but increasingly it is becoming the norm – and rightly so I have to say!
Um, I’m pretty sure that I’ve read and/or heard of a large number of studies finding that BMI is very strongly related to genetics (using things like the classic twins separated at birth type set up). Which would mean that the adoptive parent’s BMI would not necessarily bear any relationship to the adopted child’s BMI. If this decision is based on the “ooh no! U R fat, U gonna die, like, right now” stereotype, then it would be much more effective to look at actual measures of potential adoptive parents health (which would prevent non-obese unhealthy people from adopting too).
The BMI rule makes me think of the last time in my life when I was not overweight – I had lost a lot of weight through a mess of eating disordered behavior. I think it would be much worse for a child to be placed in a home with a bulimic mother than a fat mother.
Second hand smoke is dangerous for children, so I’d say not allowing smokers to adopt is a much more logical decision.
All of that said, it’s generally so bad for children in the foster care system that unless the adoptive parents are doing something so harmful that they would be incapacitated and unable to care for a child (for example, an alcoholic) the smoking household might not be so bad.
Finally, I have seen fat Chinese people.
There are a lot of problems that come along with being a “model minority” (Asian people are thin, Asian people are smarter, etc). So while the ad might seem flattering in a way, it also encourages a culture of eating disorders.
It also makes me eager to see the inevitable extenze ad “have you ever seen a black guy with small penis?”
For some reason I was thinking that her message implied that she was going to use a bunch of different examples representing different families, not that my family was specifically intended to counter a stereotype. Not sure why I thought this, though. Mostly I was thinking, great, she is TOTALLY going to have to translate the 4839 different instances of the term “dirty sanchez” on my freaking blog.
Argh. I’ll be a nice southern lady and not relay to the kind gentleman from the PRC the kinds of stereotypes I have to counter in my classes when we cover China.
A family without religious fervor….oh yeah loyalty to a govt that routinely commits human rights abuses isn’t religious fervor. Tell that to Falun Gong followers.
I’ve been thinking about this for the past hour and I finally realized what bugged me about the post. I would never contact someone of another identity group, relay a bunch of stereotypes about that group, and then ask how to counter those because they’re perceived to be negative in my culture. That demonstrates a breathtaking arrogance. How about just saying “I’m looking to show my students the diverse experiences in your culture” As it stands this instructor is just reinforcing his students’ myopic view of the world.
Well, to be devil’s advocate here…I’d think that in a country where the government still actively produces anti-American propaganda, a college professor asking for something like this might in fact simply be trying to counter negative stereotypes in his/her students in an attempt to get the students to see Americans as, you know, people. Ie., discrete individuals, not just a collection of cultural stereotypes. Is that really a bad thing? I don’t think it implies that the professor believes the stereotypes, in fact if he/she did why bother trying to counter them? And the reality is, most people in most cultures DO view people from other cultures as a collection of stereotypes, especially when they’re young. So in a way isn’t this professor just doing what college professors are supposed to do? It seems to me that he/she isn’t trying to reinforce a myopic worldview, more trying to challenge it.
The issue of how fat people are seen in Chinese culture is a whole different issue and I’m not opening that can of worms because I’m not Chinese and it’s not appropriate for me to speak for a perspective that is not mine. The stereotype that most Americans are very fat isn’t limited to China, though, it’s present in most of Asia. The question of what moral judgements are attached to that stereotype is where I start feeling wierd about passing comment because again, I’m not really comfortable with white people going all “culture X should not hold opinion Y” when culture X is not one that they belong to at all.
I dunno. My husband is Asian and so are most of his friends (mostly Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino), and I work with a lot of Japanese bands (music journalist) and so I have observed that yeah, attitudes towards fat are different, and the level at which people are considered “obese” is set a lot lower in most Asian cultures. What can be done about how that attitude intersects with adoption policy I’m not sure.
Well I’m definitely less bothered by denying smokers the right to adopt than I am by banning fat people. Smoking does actual proven harm to the people around the smoker — especially children. However, I don’t think that being a smoker should be a lifetime ban from adopting — but I do think that the parent to be should be very very strongly encouraged to quit. I mean, a protective worker shouldn’t be forced to send a child into a home where they will (potentially) then spend their childhood with chronic asthma recurring bouts of bronchitis.
When I went to China a few years ago I was about 280-300 pounds (I honestly don’t know for sure, I’m judging by what I look like in my pictures compared to what I looked like when I knew my weight last year). I don’t recall anyone staring or making fun or anything — I mean, people stared because there was a group of 300 American college students, but not at me specifically that I noticed — but I had to argue with someone about what size t-shirt I needed. I bought one of those “I climbed the Great Wall” shirts, and they had men’s tee sizes, in which I usually get a M so it’ll fit more like a fitted women’s shirt. The woman selling them argued with me insisting I would need a 3X. We went back and forth until I was like, look, I know I’m fat, but I also know what size I need. I think I wound up conceding and getting a L just to get it over with (which is OK because they did run a little small) but I was very annoyed with her. There’s probably a language barrier or something that didn’t help but it still kinda hurt.
What’s bothersome about the situation in the OP is that they specifically said “not obese or otherwise unhealthy.” My family is naturally plump on both sides — especially my dad’s side, but hey, my mom is half Italian and we Mediterranean ladies have some curves. So this person would probably assume we were “unhealthy.” But here’s the kicker — I ran a 5K not too long ago and my mom taught aerobics for 20-some years. My dad’s not quite as active, but he’s been exercising more to help his knees. There are various non-weight related health things going on, sure, but on the whole we’re a “healthy” family. Especially if you look at the meals we eat and all that. But my dad’s got a big belly and my mom and I are both in the size 14-16 clothing range, so we would apparently look unhealthy to this person.
And the stereotype that all Americans are fat isn’t just limited to Asia. I think it’s pretty much the whole world.
Here’s why the the professor’s approach is problematic. Say he goes along with the idea of countering stereotypes and he successfully does that. However, he hasn’t dealt with the fact there are families who do fit the stereotypes he originally tried to point them away from. In fact, he’s basically invalidated those experiences.
As a university instructor I think about this a lot especially since I’m usually teaching about the cultural practices of different regions of the world. I also think about this as a person who is from Appalachia. Frequently, people want to disavow the trailer park, toothless, uneducated yada yada. Fine. My family is one that wouldn’t fit that stereotype. But there are many people who do. Why deny that out of some sort of misguided desire to make a culture more palatable for my students? The goal is to affirm people’s right to live as they chose/find themselves rather than reifying one image over another.
My government regularly produces propaganda about Muslims, North Koreans whatever. But when I’m discussing women in the Middle East I’m going to point out the ways in which women in the region have more control and influence that western cultures often recognize because we focus on public demonstrations of power. But I’m not going to focus on that to the exclusion of veiling, Islamism, etc because that’s not the truth.
The focus on obesity as unhealthy bugs me but it also angers me that religiosity, welfare, and large families are being stigmatized. Those identities are apart of what it means to be American whether we or the professor want it to be that way.
I think there may also be a language problem. Maybe the professor just didn’t express herself in English the way she wanted to come across. I also had the same impression as Sundry, that they are looking for several different types of American families to show the diversity of our culture.
Interesting about stereotypes. I worked with a group of indigenous women in Chile for two years. They were mostly plump. They asked me why American women were so concerned about being thin. “Don’t they care that they look sick if they are thin?” they wondered.
A friend of mine who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa told me that an African man told her happily about his new wife. He opened his arms wide and said that her butt was “this big!”
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