Consequences of body perfect obsession

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer

When Hugh Mahoe was growing up in a big Hawaiian family in the 1950s, his mom would stew up dinner for 10 of them in cafeteria pots, and the family would line up for heaping servings, often coming back for more.

Hugh Mahoe of Wai‘anae grew up in a large, loving family in which being overweight wasn’t an issue. But he has found that the outside world isn’t as accepting; at 487 pounds, he is having difficulty finding a job, and thinks his size plays a role in prospective employers’ judgments of his abilities. Now he’s dieting down even as he continues to cook for the family. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

At 487 pounds, Mahoe is on a diet, and that means cutting back on the local-style portions he's comfortable with and choosing carrot sticks for snacking.

His size has become not just a health issue, but an esthetic one. He feels the hot weight of judgment in the eyes of others. "When you sign up for jobs, they look at you," he says. "They tell you they're going to call you back and they don't call you back. When they say 'I'll call you later,' you know you're not going to get hired.

"I'd like to look different," said the man with the 74-inch waist. "So I can walk around with nice clothes."

Mahoe feels caught between the comfortable culture of his childhood and what the rest of the world expects now. But he's not the only one. His issues echo the conflicts faced by slim Honolulu schoolgirls of Japanese-American ancestry, or Native Hawaiian teens growing up in rural communities, or baby boomers of mixed ethnicity flocking in increasing numbers to gyms and cosmetic surgeons, eager to make themselves different.

We are a society constantly judged by looks, and, in turn, endlessly judging our own. We're critical of our faces. Our bodies. Our hair. Our eyes. Our cheekbones. We're constantly comparing ourselves to some global image of perfection, and falling short.

We dye our hair, bleach our teeth, suck the fat from our midriffs, exercise to exhaustion, buy $30 billion worth of diet and weight-loss products every year. And we don't stop there.

Japanese men fly to Hawai'i for surgical implants that chisel their chins, round their buttocks and sculpt their calves to look more Western. Teenagers of Asian ancestry in treatment for eating disorders at Kapi'olani Counseling Center stare at their beautiful broad faces in the mirror and call themselves "fat." Girls of Filipino ancestry at Farrington High School pull on tight black hip-huggers and skimpy halter tops and hope they look like Britney Spears.

Angst over image sometimes drives people to deny their culture, attempt to become something they aren't, or re-create themselves, at great pain and expense, in that perceived image of perfection in magazines, TV or film.

In multicultural Hawai'i, the situation is still more complex. Our media stars include the late "Bruddah Iz" (Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) and sumo heroes like Konishiki — giant men weighing in excess of 600 pounds. And in pockets like Wai'anae, where "big is beautiful" still plays with some, obesity specialist Dr. Stephen Bradley says, rather than wanting to slim down, some want to beef up like Iz.

"I haven't seen people being too upset about their size," said Bradley. "And yet there's talk that 'We've got to cut down.' What hits people out here is the health issue. They saw grandpa or auntie get an amputation (due to diabetes complications) and they don't want to go there."

Sociologist's view

Before the missionaries arrived in the 1820s, according to Linda Arthur, associate professor of Family and Consumer Sciences in the University of Hawai'i's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, "what was attractive was to be big, tall and heavy, very different from today."

In her new book, "Aloha Attire: Hawaiian Dress in the 20th Century," Arthur takes a sociologist's look at the impact of change that began with the coming of Caucasian missionaries. "At the turn of the 19th century, the idealized image was big and tall," said Arthur. "But by the end of that century the image was much slimmer because of the impact of Western fashion and also changes in local perceptions of what attractiveness was."

Those changes are accelerating. Throughout the 20th century, the Western ideal of a woman's body has grown consistently thinner and further from reality. "Twenty-five years ago, the difference in weight between the average female body and bodies in the media was only about 8 percent. Now it's 25 percent," said Arthur.

"The media is putting images before us that are farther and farther from approachability. Less than 5 percent of the female population is tall, lean, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, big-busted and long-legged. That look means dieting and plastic surgery."

In a 1997 Psychology Today survey of 4,000 men and women, 56 percent of the women were dissatisfied with their appearance. Sometimes a strong cultural identification can be a protective factor against such dissatisfaction, the survey found.

Marketing's effects

According to media critic, author and lecturer Jean Kilbourne, the self-esteem of teenage girls plummets when they hit adolescence, largely because of this relentless drive for perfection. Her latest documentary, "Slim Hopes," demonstrates how the advertising industry's manipulation of images to fuel consumer demand creates this fear and loathing of fat and obsession with being thin.

"What these images do, for people who read fashion magazines especially, is create such anxiety because we can't achieve these looks, and yet it's clear that's what's demanded," said Kilbourne in "Slim Hopes." America isn't alone in this. University of Hawai'i researcher and sociology lecturer Barbara Holthus, who has taken an in-depth look at images in Japanese magazines over the past two decades, sees a growing body of advertising for diet-related products — 30-40 pages in a recent issue of An-An, one of Japan's most influential fashion and lifestyle magazines.

"You see so many of the same images that eventually you do want to become like that," said Holthus. Diet products are also heavily advertised — in Japanese — in Hawai'i shops frequented by Japanese tourists. So even those with a genetic and cultural propensity to be slim are being told they're not.

According to Kilbourne, 80 percent of fourth-grade girls in this country claim to be on diets, which could be the beginning of serious future health problems, including osteoporosis, as bones turn brittle because of lack of proper nutrition. Dr. Neal Anzai, director of the Kapi'olani Counseling Center, said eating disorders are becoming "epidemic" among Hawai'i teens, and in some ways our cosmopolitan culture makes the situation worse.

"Everyone is comparing themselves to everyone else. We get petite Japanese girls and they want to be 5-foot-10 inches, have really long legs, blonde hair and that thin Caucasian face. But that's not how they're made. . . . And then there are Caucasian girls who want to look more Asian. So it kind of works against everyone here, especially since our bodies are on display so much."

"Even among slim girls of different Asian ancestries, comparisons are being made," said nutritional therapist Daryl Smith-Oswald of the Kapi'iolani Counseling Center's eating disorders program. And it's taking not just a physical toll, but a psychological one as well. "If they cut half the calories and lose up to 20-25 percent body weight, which oftentimes girls do, that's a sure recipe for psychological problems. It can lead to obsessive-compulsive kinds of behavior, depression and also suicide attempts."

Eating little

Sixteen-year-old high school sophomore Kristen Miyamoto began obsessing about weight when she was 5 or 6 years old and was teased as "ugly and fat" by neighborhood boys. By age 11, she was skipping meals and taking only tiny portions when she did eat. In sixth grade, she began trying to diet down to be thin as pop singer Christina Aguilar, so she'd be able wear spaghetti strap tops like the popular girls. She wanted her collarbone to protrude and her thighs to be so thin they wouldn't jiggle. As to the boys who once teased her: "I wanted them to notice me and like me."

"I fought it (hunger) as much as I could, but if I couldn't I'd binge and purge," said Miyamoto. "It made me numb to feelings. You're in your own little world. You just don't have very many emotions."

After three years in treatment, her weight has returned to normal. She has emerged from depression and is beginning to ponder a happier future.

Punahou School basketball coach and athlete Marlene Zeug, who regularly talks to school students about her own fights with anorexia and bulimia, said it can often begin with the need to be perfect.

"You internalize that pressure for perfection," she said, "and all of a sudden you have to be younger, prettier, sexier, thinner, nicer, more popular. Somewhere along the line you kind of lose the sense of who you are in trying to be superwoman."

In college, Zeug forced her weight down to 85 pounds by eating just a can of tuna a day, and ended up in the hospital. Now she sees ever younger girls pushing themselves the way she once did. "Somewhere along the line, between learning to tie their shoes and drive, they learn they have to hate their bodies, too."

This urgency may be more pronounced among those who are culturally or ethnically different than what they see on TV. Registered dietitian Kristen Lindsey-Dudley at the counseling center has seen patients reject their ethnic body types.

"They hate their round faces," she said of some of the Asian-American teens in therapy for eating disorders. "That's the typical, common problem: staring in the mirror every day and convincing themselves they're fat. And they're not. That's sad. There's not a whole lot you can do about the way your face is shaped."

Part of her job is to educate the young women about normal body development through puberty and adolescence, when females gain an average of 40 pounds. "Girls get the idea they shouldn't gain any weight from the time they're 13. But in these years there's the quickest weight gain and growth, and they don't understand it. We have to teach them that's normal. As part of growing up they get softer and gain weight. But they see the girls in the magazines — thin, long and lean — and it's not at all what these Asian girls look like."

Feeling confident

According to Theone Chock, a Kamehameha Schools physical education teacher who specializes in helping heavier students strive for health and fitness, the influence of societal images is a measure of a teen's self-esteem. "The less confidence they have, the more likely they are to fall into these traps," said Chock. Time and again, she sees students gain in personal esteem as they gain control over their weight, so long as the goal is being healthier.

Seventeen-year-old Keera Le'i is an example. Over two years, Le'i has lost 60 pounds and blossomed into a self-confident young woman. "I used to hesitate to go up to him," she says of a young man on whom she had a crush. "That he wouldn't like me because I was big. It's easier for me now. We just talk."

And while she dreams of the clothes she can now wear, and the boys she may date, her motivation is deeper. With pain, she recalls the teasing she endured as she gained weight when she was younger, and how she'd cry herself to sleep: "It made me so sad."

With the idea of happiness so consistently tied to looks, there's a rising number of people turning to cosmetic surgery to deal with their discontent.

Cosmetic plastic surgeon Dr. Larry Schlesinger believes those in his profession are now the keepers of community standards of beauty. "People come and tell you their feelings and the plastic surgeon, being the good chef, can translate that technically into what to do," he said.

Men having surgery

The desire for change isn't limited to women. Over the past decade, increasing numbers of men have also sought to change themselves through surgical pruning. It's not uncommon for some of Schlesinger's patients to fly in from Japan, returning with chiselled bodies that are the new ideal for Japanese men. Asian women are having eyelids surgically doubled, breasts enlarged with silicon, noses raised or lowered. "They just want to fit in," said Schlesinger.

There's nothing new in this, he protests. The modern nose job was developed in Germany in the first years of the 20th century, "as an attempt for ethnic Jews to fit in in German society."

But the standards keep changing, now moving beyond culture and race to a new universal composite. "We have a single world, a global village," said Schlesinger, "and we all want to meet village standards.

"For instance, big lips are in," he said. "Angelina Jolie would never have made it in the 1950s. Big lips were so out. But now thin lips are a sign of age and big lips are a sign of non-Caucasian. Now the global village makes the diagnosis of what is and isn't in.

"It used to be that a good-looking Irish woman would be the standard in your high school," said Schlesinger. "Now you have to be an Irish woman with an Hispanic grandparent and maybe a black person someplace in your history and maybe some Asian too, just to be perfect."