WHAT'S BEAUTIFUL?
BODY IMAGE AND THE SOCIOCENTRIC SENSE OF SELF IN FIJI
by Emily Sparks

Chapter 2
Literature Review

Chapter 2

Body and Self in Western Culture

Mind and Body Dualism

Mind Body Dualism and Weight Control

A History of Anorexia in the West

Non-Cultural Theories on Anorexia in the West

The Non-Western Sense of Self

Cultivation of the Body

This chapter will discuss the literature on culture and the body. Two sections will outline the discourse on the body and self in the West, and the body and self in the Pacific. In this chapter I will explore how Western conceptions of the self lead to a preoccupation with weight control, while in the Pacific, Becker and others have suggested that people who have a sociocentric self value the cultivation of relationships more than the cultivation of a lean body.

Body and Self in Western Culture

The statement "culture determines the meaning of the body" (Becker 1995; Bordo 1984) conveys the idea that a body would be void of meaning, or neutral, without a cultural context. The idea that an individual has of his or her body (or other bodies) depends on the world view he or subscribes to. This section will explain bodily aesthetics in Western culture. As Susan Bordo states in Unbearable Weight, "The body--what we eat, how we dress, the daily ritual through which we attend to the body--is a medium of culture" (Bordo 1993: 165). She explains that the culturally cultivated body is a window into a society's world view and that core cultural values can be seen in bodily aesthetics. Anthropologist Anne Becker supports this idea, as she states that "core cultural values are clearly encoded in aesthetic ideals for body shape" (Becker 1995: 27).

Mind and Body Dualism

Scholars such as Becker and Bordo suggest that the Western preoccupation with cultivating a slim body stems from an assumption that mind and body are separate entities. Bordo analyzes this Western belief system by suggesting that the body has always been thought of as part of nature, and that because of this, for Westerners, the mind is seen as responsible for controlling the body. Bordo explains that "through routine [through etic culture], our bodies learn which gestures are forbidden and which are required, how violable or inviolable are the boundaries of our bodies" (Bordo 1993: 16). Here, Bordo seems to be suggesting that our bodies learn how to act within a specific culture, and in Western culture, we learn to separate mind from body, and think of the body as outside our selves though at the same time personal. As a result of this contradiction, an individual may struggle with the relationship between his or her body and mind (the mind striving to obtain an ideal and the body contradicting this). Experience is thus separated into two spheres in Western culture -- that of the body, and the mind.

Becker's discussion on the mind and body dualism suggests that the body's appetite is "formulated as conflicting with the goals and desires of the self" (Becker 1995: 33). She continues, "The legacy of mind-body dualism lends itself to the description and experience of the body as alien, limiting, and the enemy, themes echoed in the anoretic's body imagery" (Becker 1995: 33). Here, Becker states that the body is formulated in Western culture to counteract the self's true aspirations. Thus, the body becomes a separate entity, which, in the Western world, must be controlled by the rationalized, autonomous, and separate self.

Within these cultural assumptions hunger, or desires of the body, become something that may be fought by the self. In this case, "restricting the appetite becomes an exercise in self-control and diet is recast as an arena of moral choices" (Becker 1995: 31). Thus, the body and self become not only separated but also adversaries to each other, with the self separated from the physical and responsible for achieving autonomy through control over the physical body.

The idea that the mind should control the body is part of a larger Western belief system emphasizing the need for individuals to control their own destiny. Most literature written on cross-cultural constructs of the self contrast Western and non-Western cultures. While the Western self is autonomous and independent of other selves within the society, non-Western societies view the self as an extension of the community. Markus and Kitayama (1991: 224) note that the "Western view of the individual as an independent, self-contained, autonomous entity [is one] who (a) compromises a unique configuration of internal attributes (e.g. traits, abilities, motives, and values) and (b) behaves primarily as a consequence of these internal attributes." Here, the theorists assume that individuals have enduring character traits that are relatively unaffected by their environments. Westerners also tend to assume that individuals' behavior is determined more by their personality than by their circumstances. In other words, we believe that people control what happens to them instead of thinking that peoples' fate is determined by their circumstances.

Markus and Kitayama again make reference to this individuated self. They comment that in Western culture:

Achieving the cultural goal of independence requires constructing oneself as an individual whose behavior is organized and made meaningful primarily by reference to one's own internal repertoire of thoughts, feelings, and action, rather than by reference to thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. (Markus and Kitayama 1991: 226)

In other words, the Westerner's goal of obtaining individualism is constructed through his or her own reflection on his or her own personal thoughts, feelings, and his actions. They suggest that the Westerner thus does not construct his or her reality through relations with other individuals, but rather through reflection on his or her internal attributes.

Other anthropologists and psychologists have also noted that Westerners tend to assume that individual selves have enduring characteristics which are relatively unaffected by environment. These scholars also note that Westerners see individual character as the primary thing that shapes people's destiny. According to Clifford Geertz, for example:

The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgement, and action [is] organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background. (Geertz 1984[1974]: 126)

Here, Geertz suggests that a Western self is cognitively the center of his or her consciousness, and is set in contrast to other selves of the same nature. In this brief quotation, he implies many things. He insinuates that Westerners assume that a Westerner is bounded and unique, and more or less integrated (i.e. we think a lot about people as having different personalities and of these personality traits as being consistent and integrated with each other and over time). This means that we spend a lot of time thinking about people's personality differences and think these are very important in influencing what happens to people. Geertz also suggests that a Westerner is organized into a distinctive whole, contrasting against his or her social and natural background: this seems to mean that Westerners do not think of people as being determined by their circumstances. Instead, they think of people as having this enduring personality which does not change across situations, and that this determines how individuals will react to what happens to them. It is clear from these theorists that the Western notion of the self emphasizes an individual autonomous being, with isolated goals from others in society.

Similarly, Kirkpatrick and White (1985: 11) note that a Western conception of self is one where "all psychological matters pertain to the single person." Here, Kirkpatrick and White suggest that a Western ideology of the self is one where the individual is centered around his or her internal attributes. For example, in the Westerner's world view, problems exist because of individuals' personality and psychology, as opposed to a world view where problems exist from the interactions between people. In Fiji mental illness, for example, is not seen as an individual's sickness, bur rather a consequence of ill relations between families.

Shweder and Bourne (1984: 190) also state that through the mind frame of the Western individuated self "society is imagined to have been created to serve the interests of some idealized autonomous, abstract individual existing free of society yet living in society." Shweder and Bourne thus go so far to say that not only is the self individuated in Western ideology, but also that it is detached from society and uses society only for individualistic endeavors.

One core assumption in the West is that the individual is responsible for his or her own actions and destiny; consequently, Westerners tend to devote less attention to the ways that destiny is affected by outside forces like other people, and nature. These ideas that the ideal individual is autonomous and self sufficient lead to a preoccupation with controlling one's own body. In the West, the body is seen as a reflection of individual personality rather than as an expression of how well the individual is looked after by a community. Becker notes that "the use of the body as a vehicle for self-expression is facilitated by [Western culture's] core values supporting individuation and autonomy, and the authorization of use of the body as personal space" (1995: 37). Becker points out that following the Western ideals of creating personal autonomy for an individual, an individual's body represents his or her personal endeavors. Becker continues, "The Western cultivation of the personal body requires that personal excellence and identity can be represented (or misrepresented) by manipulation of bodily symbols indexing aptitude and discipline" (1995: 37). The body is thus a medium to display Western personality traits such as discipline and control.

Mind Body Dualism and Weight Control

In Western thought, since the body is seen as a separate entity from the mind (as the discourse of the mind and body dualism suggests), the control, cultivation, and maintenance of one's personal body is viewed as essential for a worthy individual. Not surprisingly, this is a main factor contributing to anorexia.

There are several theories dealing with how Western dieting and anorexia are related to the mind and body dualism and the individuated self. One common theory is that Western dieting and exercise are a direct attempt to conform to cultural ideals saying that the individual should be in control of their environment, and that the body is in some way external to the self. Therefore, the individual should control his/her body just like any other part of the environment. Here, we see that the body is not perceived as part of the self, but as representative of the outside environment, as the mind/body dualism suggests. Becker points out that "restricting the appetite becomes an exercise in self-control and diet is recast as an arena of moral choice" (1995: 32). It is evident from Becker's quotation that control of one's hunger is in fact an attempt to control one's environment. For example, Bordo notes that in Western culture "the obese and anoretic are disturbing partly because they embody resistance to cultural norms" (1993: 203). Specifically, Bordo argues there is pressure to obtain a "normal" body shape in Western society. Individuals, struggling, as their culture has prompted them to, for some control over their lives, rebel against this pressure, either through anorexia on one extreme and compulsive overeating on the other. The anoretic uses his or her physical body as a medium to respond to his or her culture's ideals for an individual's body and the roles that the body signifies. A thin body suggests self-control, autonomy, and perhaps (as we will see later), resistance to parental expectations.

In the West, the media reinforces the view that a slim body reflects a worthy person. Women in the West are bombarded with media images that are suggestive of how women should feel about themselves and their bodies. Through the media, the well-to-do have set the standard for thinness. Becker emphasizes that "the promotion of the self through a particular image referable to public symbols may well have begun at the turn of the century with the romanticizing of tuberculosis" (1995: 33). She continues, "During the 1920s American beauty culture was institutionalized through the fashion, modeling, and cosmetics industries and the advent of beauty contests and motion pictures" (Becker 1995: 33). Every day a Western woman is faced with advertisement after advertisement portraying unrealistically slim women, suggesting that they are superior because of their shape. Theorists focus on the emphasis the fashion industry places on sliminess and argue that this may be responsible for the increase in anorexia (Garner, et al. 1983). Garner points to Bruch's 1978 study where it was stated that "magazines and movies carry the same message, but most persistent is television, drumming it in, day in day out, that one can be loved and respected only when slender" (Garner et al. 1983: 67). In that study, the authors draw attention to another study that found that on television "not only did thin body types predominate (less than 2% of the actors were obese), but also youth, female sex, and positive personality attributes were related to thinness" (Garner et al. 1983: 69). As Becker notes of the tradition of associating slim bodies with wealth, television today portrays the lives of the upper-middle class, where the desire to cultivate and maintain a slender figure is particularly pressing. Of course television is viewed by all classes, and the thin ideal among the upper classes becomes desired by all, through television (Garner et al. 1983: 72).

Bordo also says that the Western media gives the message that only slim people are morally worthy. Advertisements selling everything from diet plans, exercise machines, food, cigarettes, and other commodities, rely on Western women's desiring to control their weight. For example, one advertisement Bordo analyzes is for Virginia Slims cigarettes. The photograph shows a slim, glamorous woman holding a cigarette. Across the photograph reads the caption, "Decisions are easy. When I get to a fork in the road, I eat." In this particular ad, the speaker exerts proficient yet casual control over herself, and her desire to eat. The image suggests that she ostracizes obsessiveness, as if to say her relationship with food and the cultivation of her body is effortless. These types of advertisements convince women that they should feel partial to eating, and this brings about an obsession with hunger, since women try to convince themselves that they do not desire food. Thus, hunger takes on a power unto itself -- as Bordo mentions, "Hunger is represented as an insistent, powerful force with a life of its own" (1993: 103). Again Bordo mentions that "control--a word that rarely used to appear in commercial contexts--has become a common trope in advertisements for products as disparate as mascara ("Perfect Pen Eyeliner. Puts you in control. And isn't that nice for a change?)" (1993:105). Based on the implications of advertising, one can understand how dieting obsessively can develop in the context of Western culture. But why does anorexia, this culturally bound disorder, mainly affect women?

As we have discussed, in the West, the body becomes associated with one's self, a personal sphere, though separate from the mind. Interestingly enough, Bordo suggests that the body becomes associated with women, since matters of the mind (reason) are associated with masculinity:

And for women, associated with the body and largely confined to a life centered on the body (both beautification of one's own body and the reproduction, care, and maintenance of the bodies and others), culture's grip on the body is a constant, intimate fact of everyday life. (1993: 16)

Here we see that women are associated with the body rather than the mind -- a position that is looked down upon in Western popular culture. Bordo insinuates that this natural, physical aspect of experience has a strong, cultural tie with women -- one that is apparent in everyday life. Thus, emotions, intuition, as well as the natural domain of the body, are associated with femininity, while the mind and reason are associated with masculinity.

As popular culture dictates the mainstream Western world view, feminine culture plays a less influential role. Feminine experience, or a woman's role, is identified with docility and subservience, as women's culture is secondary to men's in influencing Western popular culture. Bordo suggests that this shared culture is one that sees women as subordinate to men. This is not to say that women are always subservient to men in today's Western culture, but rather that the cultural ideal for women is that they be docile and subservient.

This cultural ideology creates a problem in the reality of how women view their bodies: women are expected to control their bodies yet are not associated with the personal traits of control and reason. Instead they are associated with the body -- something that must be controlled. Women work to exhibit authority over their bodies, yet they also are associated with matters of the body -- thus they are left in a double bind of wanting to control, yet being told that they should be controlled. Bordo suggests that in order for women to win approval within Western culture (which emphasizes control), they need to control their own bodies; however, controlling their own bodies just reinforces their own subordinate position in the culture.

I view our bodies as a site of struggle, where we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of resistance to gender domination, not in the service of docility and gender normalization. This work requires, I believe, a determinedly sure skeptical attitude toward the routes of seeming liberation and pleasure offered by our culture. (1993: 184)

Thus, Bordo is suggesting that women should be more skeptical about what they do with their bodies: they should not just diet and play into the cultural ideal that women's bodies are terribly inadequate and therefore should be controlled. Messages about their roles as women, their bodies' roles, and the connection between the two, are contradictory and confuse women today. However, it is true that as a result, or as an answer to these confusing messages sent to Western women, a double bind for women emerges -- when women do diet they win respect but are supporting the view that natural feminine bodies are unattractive, whereas if they do not diet then they do not even get respect within Western culture, because it appears as though they can not control their bodies, or themselves.

Bordo also argues that the preoccupation with slimness in Western culture represents a rejection of femininity. Since self control is valued and females are associated with lack of control, many women reject femininity by getting rid of their feminine fat. This feminine fat, or even a softness of body tissue, connotes the idea that a woman does not have control over her body (and thus over her self, and her life), and it reminds the anoretic that she is in fact a woman and thus is associated with female characteristics in Western culture. Many anoretics claim that they fear turning into a woman and consequently grow to hate the parts of their body that show fat and represent womanhood. Among her anoretic students, Bordo notes that the breasts and the stomachs were the most scorned body parts. One of her students commented in her journal, "If only I could eliminate my breasts, cut them off if need be (Bordo 1993: 57). A trend to obtain a boyish figure is common among anoretics (Bordo, Liss, Silverstein, et al.). Theorists have noted that wishing away one's breasts and stomach represents the idea of wishing away a woman's bind in Western culture. Breasts, and a bulged stomach, remind a woman or girl of pregnancy and motherhood. According to Bordo, pregnancy represents "domestic entrapment" and vulnerability, leaving women with no sense of control in the world -- something that they are trying to show they do obtain through rigid cultivation of a thin body. As an anoretic's body becomes less womanly, she begins to feel cleansed, untouchable, "out of reach of hurt," according to Bordo. While feeling less vulnerable, a sense of control empowers the anoretic, and she finds available a sense of control, self-mastery, and a superior will typically encoded as "male." Thus, one can imagine that this falsely gives the anoretic a feeling of control in her life (Bordo 1993: 178). In this way, anorexia appears liberating to those with the disorder.

One can imagine that wishing away femininity for a women is certainly a reflection of very low self esteem. Garner et al. have suggested that the unrealistic demands that are supported by cultural messages associate self-worth with physical attractiveness (1983: 78). However, as we have established, the body is never seen as physically attractive for those with anorexia, due to the anoretic's painfully critical standards. This indicates the idea that a lack of self-esteem or, never feeling good enough, is the cause of women's bodily disorders. Thompson argued that "the better people feel about themselves, the less they tend to overestimate their size" (1986: 42). However, most women in our society do not feel good about their bodies. Bordo consequently argues that

most women in our culture, then, are "disordered" when it come to issues of self-worth, self-entitlement, self-nourishment, and comfort with their own bodies. Eating disorders, far from being "bizarre" and anomalous, are utterly continuous with a dominant element of the experience of being female in this culture. (1993: 57)

Wishing away femininity is thus certainly a reflection of low self-esteem, something Thompson and Bordo (among others) have noted is in conjunction with wanting to ignore the implications of feminine status within Western culture.

The pressure to be thin in Western culture stems from a number of fears and vulnerabilities instilled in women by popular Western culture. Bordo reminds us that Western culture not only creates an ideal body shape for women to try and cultivate, it also influences how women look at their bodies. She notes that "culture not only has taught women to be insecure [about their] bodies, constantly monitoring themselves for signs of imperfection… it is also constantly teaching women (and, let us not forget, men as well) how to see bodies (1993: 57). Here Bordo suggests that the subscription to the Western world view causes one to feel insecure when looking at one's body. I would argue that, based on the connection between the self and the body, this critical eye that examines the body also causes one to feel insecure about one's self. Due to this critical eye Westerners have on their own bodies, any bit of fat may represent something lazy, dependent and non self-sufficient. Bordo comments on this idea, "Our bodily ideals have become firmer and more contained (we worship not merely slimness but flablessness), any softness or bulge comes to be seen as unsightly -- as disgusting, disorderly 'fat,' which must be eliminated" (1993: 57). Here, we must recognize that Westerners are trained, through their culture, to look at any bulge, non-muscular part of the body, on an extreme level, as non-cultivated, and insufficient and as caused by an inadequate self. Bordo takes this Western women's reading on their bodies to be quite accurate, based on what the culture dictates. She observes, "Given this analysis, the anoretic does not 'misperceive' her body; rather, she has learned all to well the dominant cultural standards of how to perceive her body" (1993: 57).

We have established that in Western culture autonomy and self-sufficiency are considered important characteristics of a Western self. Scholars have linked the Western preoccupations with slimness with a cultural ideology which emphasizes individuals' control over their own destiny and to a general ideology which both demands that women have self control and says that they should be socially docile.

A History of Anorexia in the West

In this section I will show how anorexia in the West has been rooted historically in a culture which dictated that women could only win respect through distancing themselves from their bodies. Although anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders have been popular terms in recent psychological studies, similar neurotic disorders with different symptoms have existed in upper-class society since the Victorian era. The most popular of these nervosa was called "hysteria." Hysteria was a culture-bound and gender-bound disorder that swept through Western Europe and America among the middle and upper classes during the second half of the nineteenth century. It is known as anorexia's "sister-phenomenon" because the pressures on women in this era were comparable to those of today. That is, both societies have seen "the opening up of new possibilities versus the continuing grip of the old expectations" (Bordo 1993: 157). Thus, the parallel response to this similar environment is not surprising. Just as anorexia is an extreme response to the requirements of the cultural construction of femininity today, hysteria was a response to ideas about women of the Victorian era. Diagnoses of hysteria are almost identical to anorexia, as Bordo points out:

Loss of mobility, loss of voice, inability to leave the home, feeding others while starving oneself, taking up space, and whittling down the space one's body takes up -- all have symbolic meaning, all have political meaning under the varying rules governing the historical construction of gender. (1993: 158)

Hysterics were responding to their cultural expectations just as anoretics do today. The political meaning that Bordo points to refers to what the body and the self represented in the culture during the Victorian decades. Hysteria and anorexia are the extreme responses to the women's expected role in society -- to be docile, subservient, domestic, quiet, and of course, not to crave large amounts of food. Becoming mute, immobile, and belittling one's existence in the world were typical symptoms of hysteria. Although it seems that women were going along with the stereotypes expected of them, these behaviors were, like anorexia, a great exaggeration of the expectations. Thus, Bordo suggests that these women were protesting (subconsciously) against the cultural values by taking the required behaviors to such extremes that others saw them as problematic. In other words, Bordo is suggesting that Victorian-era eating behaviors, like today's anorexia, were actually a form of protest against unreasonable demands of the culture.

As most hysterics belonged to the middle and upper class, and as hysterics took on a slim figure from not eating (based on their disorder), a slim female appearance became the model for a suitable female figure. Middle and lower-middle class women (who traditionally were not hysterics because the women often worked and at first did not feel aristocratic societal pressures) admired the slim figure because it represented wealth. Women in families who were borderline middle class idealized this thin figure because it symbolized a woman who did not worry about having enough food on the table for her family. Food was never an issue for the well-to-do, and the middle class women wanted to show that they too were rich enough not to care about food. This brought about a change in class attitude. Bordo connects disdain for eating with the idea of striving to be upper class: "Then, as in today, [being] aristocratically cool and unconcerned with the mere facts of material survival was highly fashionable. The hungering bourgeois wished to appear, like the aristocrat, above the material desires that in fact ruled his life" (1993: 117). In this status-seeking middle class, the ideal of a thin-shaped wife became the "showpiece" of a husband's economic success (Bordo 1993: 191); thus, the pressure for middle class wives to maintain a thin body must have been enormous. Naturally, the bourgeois class wanted to appear upwardly mobile and hard-working; a fit body suggested a managerial ability to control one's self.

The trend to be thin continued when it ceased to be only associated with the aristocracy. Becker points out that the middle class bourgeois looked first toward the romanticized image of tuberculosis amongst the aristocracy (Becker 1995: 30). Later the associations with thinness changed. To appear fat now symbolized lower class, as laziness and a lack of discipline were and still are associated with little motivation and a loss of control over one's self and life. In these pre-industrial times, the idealized sliminess, as associated with the romantic tuberculosis victim, stems from a dualism between the spirit and the body whereby the spiritual side was not affected by the tuberculosis-stricken body. According to this view, the patient became more and more pure as his or her body wasted away. This system of values changed during the industrial era where the focus was on discipline and control. Now, the dualism becomes one of mind and body, whereby Westerners show that the mind is in control of the body, and thus the environment.

These associations with the self, and the properly managed body, as a reflection of one's ability to succeed, can be detected in today's literature on anorexia. Garner, et al. draw our attention to this connection by saying in today's culture it is believed that "weight control is equal to self control and will lead to beauty and success" (1983: 76).

During the Victorian era, anorexia appeared in Western culture, only to increase in the 1920s and 30s. A number of studies have been done that suggest a growth in the culture-bound disorder over this century. Silverstein et al. (1986) note early literature on eating disorders. They note that the first public indication of a recognition of a starvation diet occurred in a brief September 19, 1925 article headlined "Stylish Girls Starve." In a 1926 article entitled "Find Girls Starving to Keep up Weight," the "modern" girl is "so afraid of being overweight that she is not willing to be even normal in weight" (Silverstein et al. 1986: 902). At the time, extreme dieting like this was called a "psychic phenomenon" by doctors, and the Delineator, a fashion magazine of the day, had letters that showed women would do almost anything to reduce their weight, "regardless of the effect their efforts might have on their health … Starvation diets, going without water, and the use of thyroid, iodine and smoking in excess" were popular in the twenties among middle and upper middle class women (Silverstein et al. 1986: 902).

In the Victorian era, the eating disorders of the early twentieth century reflected contradictory demands on women. On one hand, eating disorders were manifestations of the culture's pressures on women to display a subservient ideal, while on another hand, they were a rebellion against what the culture demands by embracing the expectations and exaggerating them. Hysteria, and the eating behavior that followed, was a rebellion against societal expectations, for although it embraced an ideology which matched the culture's ideas on body control, it exaggerated them to the point where the individual could not physically survive within this world view. Thus, it was a disorder that rebelled against the severe expectations by showing that a person could not live if she reached the ideal. Throughout history women have been faced with the conflict of being associated with the realm of the body and then being required to deny their associations with the body in search of a more rational, controlling identity. This contradiction of what the body represented to the woman continued through the first half of the twentieth century. Becker states:

From 1900 to 1920 medico-actuarial standards for weight were constructed to promote a leaner body as healthier. During the 1920s American beauty culture was institutionalized through fashion, modeling, and cosmetics industries and the advent of beauty contestants and motion pictures. Through advertising, women were encouraged to study themselves visually and to compare their own appearance with those of others. (1995: 29)

Thus, as time passed the cultural pressures for women to live up to standards pertaining to cultivating their bodies, and to what these shapes represented, increased.

Cheryl Ritenbaugh suggests that in more recent history the increase in anorexia over the past twenty-five years could be due to standards marked by the RDA. As of 1974, the RDA suggested that individuals should choose an ideal weight within an acceptable range. It is interesting that the guidelines for determining weight allow men to deduct more weight for clothing than women are allowed to. Perhaps as a consequence, according to a study based on the RDA outlines, "it is clear that the average man is at the edge of obesity, while the average woman is obese" (Ritenbaugh 1983: 357). What I am suggesting is not that the average man or woman is near obesity or obese, but rather that by lowering the ideal weight standards for both sexes, there is more pressure to cultivate and maintain a thin body.

Non-Cultural Theories on Anorexia in the West

I have been emphasizing the influence of culture on dieting behavior in the West. Many scholars, however, argue that psychological factors rooted in family dynamics are more important than culture in producing anorexia. In this section, I will show that the family dynamics in themselves would not lead to anorexia in absence of a larger culture linking dieting to control and moral worthiness.

Although most theories about the causes of anorexia point to cultural factors, there is some literature covering non-cultural causes of anorexia. For example, one theorized cause of anorexia is sexual child abuse. Theorists note that girls who are sexually abused might think it their fault as they grow older (Bordo 1993: 177). Like other factors contributing to anorexia, this would not necessarily lead to anorexia in the absence of a cultural system devaluing women's bodies and valuing self control. Bordo notes that within the family, if a father comments casually, yet critically, on a daughter's weight, an eating disorder may develop (1993: 178). Garner, et al. emphasize that "cultural influences do not in a precise sense cause serious eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia. Culture is mediated by the psychology of the individual…" Garner et al. continue by noting that both individual and family characteristics and dynamics may be either predisposing or protecting for any particular disorder (1983: 179). Garner et al.'s hypothesis is important in that neither culture nor the individual is distinctly responsible for anorexia; one or both must exist for the disorder to develop and reveal itself. The next section will throw into relief the importance of these cultural ideals in influencing attitudes toward weight by examining a very different way of viewing individuals in Pacific societies.

The Non-Western Sense of Self

In their article, "Does the Concept of the Self Vary Cross-Culturally," Shweder and Bourne say that for non-Western cultures "the goal is not to find one's distinct identity, but rather to merge one's soul with the souls of others" (1984: 191). On the following few pages, I will examine the non-Western sense of self and the body, and how bodies are cultivated in the Pacific -- as a backdrop for the rest of this thesis. I will first look at non-Western definitions of the self and then review at the literature on the cultivation of body in Fiji.

As Shweder and Bourne point out, the idea of the self does fluctuate from society to society. Specifically, many non-Western societies emphasize an engagement and connectedness between individuals, rather than the disconectedness that exists between individuals in Western societies.

In Fiji, as well as other Pacific societies, an ethos of connectedness between individuals is highly valued. This world view is often called a "sociocentric" construction of self. As we will see in chapter two, "innumerable mechanisms connect the Fijian individual to a dense social network comprised of kinship, regional and mythical relations" (Becker 1995: 17) or, in other words, the Fijian sense of self is based on being connected to other people, as well as connecting to ancestral spirits. Following this model, Becker describes the world view of the Fijian self: "The pivotal existential quest of the Fijian is to engage with others via multiple established channels of serving, caring, and material exchange. Cultivation of the self is ideally achieved through the cultivation of others" (1995: 18). Here, Becker draws upon the idea that a Fijian sense of self is created through the cultivation and care of relationships among others within their community.

Other theorists describe a similar sense of self in non-Western societies. Many theorists draw a sharp distinction between the Western and non-Western conceptions of the self. Where Western definitions of the self establish a strong self/other division, non-Western definitions (defined by Western anthropologists, remember) explain the non-Western self as different from the Western conception. Sampson characterizes the Western self as "self-contained individualism," and the non-Western self as "ensembled individualism" (Sampson as cited in Spiro 1988: 15-16), The non-Western self is seen as a working part of the greater whole, as opposed to the Western notion of the self-contained self. Similarly, Markus and Kitayama contrast and "independent" Western self with a "interdependent" non-Western self. They explain that the interdependent, or sociocentric self as "a self-in-relation-to-other," where "the expression and the experience of emotions and motives may be significantly shaped and governed by a consideration of the reactions of others,… [and that] others are included within the boundaries of the self" (Markus and Kitayama 1991: 4-5). Clearly, the non-Western notion of self (although this is a highly generalized suggestion), is one where autonomy is not as important as the development of intra-personal relations.

Markus and Kitayama introduce the idea of boundaries pertaining to the definition of the self. Other theorists (Spiro 1993, for example) discuss "fluid boundaries" in the discourse of the non-Western conception of the self. This wording reflects the idea that the concept of the self is embedded in the context of others, and not isolated unto itself. In the non-Western world, the boundary is not limited to one person, but, rather, as Sampson states, in the non-Western world, it is less clear "where the person ends and the world begins" (Sampson 1988: 4-5).

Following this ideology, if Westerners assume that all motivation comes from an individual personality that is relatively unaffected by social context, then sociocentric individuals are not motivated by internal selves, but by external social ties. In their introduction to Person, Self, and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies, Kirkpatrick and White suggest that Pacific islanders see emotions as between people, rather than inside an individual's body. For example, when someone is angry, people immediately think about the social circumstances that made them angry, not about their internal personality traits (Kirkpatrick and White 1985). Thus, their argument is that Pacific islanders focus more on social relations than on internal traits. This emphasis on social connectedness can also be seen in the way Fijians view illness. Fijians tend to view illness as caused by the social problems reflecting their idea that the individual is connected to other people. On the topic of Fijian illness, being a part of the community, Becker notes:

It is not that Fijians do not suffer through their bodies; rather, this experience cannot be privatized. Not contained within a body, illness is claimed by the collective. It is both the right and the obligation of the family, mataqwali [sic], and village to read illness like a text, to absorb it into collective experience, and ultimately to give it meaning. (Becker 1995: 126)

Thus, in Fiji, an entire community is personally affected by an individual's sickness. According to traditional Fijian thought, a mother-in-law will fall ill if her daughter-in-law hides her pregnancy. If the daughter-in-law tries to attain a certain level of autonomy by withholding this personal information, she will bring illness upon her mother-in-law, and the community will suspect her of not sharing her news with the rest of the family. This example supports Becker's theory that "bodily disorder, whether via possession of illness, is conceived of as a manifestation of social disharmony" (Becker 1995: 126). This demonstrates that in Fiji (as well as other Pacific societies), an individual's personal status is only emphasized as it's connection to others.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz describes this non-Western ethos of social-connectedness in Bali as far more important than individual within a community. Here, He describes the impact of the individual on the greater community:

It is dramatis personae, not actors, that in the proper sense really exist. Physically men come and go, mere incidents in a happenstance of history, of no genuine importance even to themselves. But the masks they wear, the stage they occupy, the parts they play, and most important, the spectacle they mount remain and comprise not the facade but the substance of things, not least the self… Of course players perish, but they play doesn't and it is the latter, the performed rather than performer, that really matters. (Geertz 1984[1974]: 129)

Here, Geertz calls attention to the idea that individuals do not really matter, rather, the role that they play within the society is of greater importance, and depends on an ethos of compliance. Across may non-Western cultures, we see that social connectedness, rather than internal character, determines one's destiny.

Cultivation of the Body

In societies where communal efforts are more important than individual goals, the cultivation of the body is bound to reflect these communal efforts over individualistic pursuits. As one would expect, the body is not cultivated to illustrate a self-sufficient self. In many societies, especially where food has the possibility of being scarce, a plump body reflects firstly an individual that has the wealth of sources to provide enough food, as well as one who has been cared for by others with in the community. Becker notes that in Pacific societies, "the relative vulnerability to food shortage also makes prestige unlikely to be symbolized in dietary restraint" (Becker 1995: 38). Similarly, in their study entitled, "Cross-Cultural Differences in the Perception of Female Body Shapes," Furnham and Alibhai (1983: 830) note that "in less affluent countries there is a direct positive correlation between body weight and socio-economic status, … [where] increasing standard of living is associated with an increasing mean body weight." However, larger figures also connote something about the self in all societies.

In their study, Furnham and Alibhai found that British women and Kenyan-British women rated larger figures negatively, while Kenyan women (living in Kenya) rated this shape positively. Specifically, larger figures were associated with a self that was "more attractive, more confident, more unemotional, more friendly, more happy, more secure, more popular, more affectionate, more warm, more assertive, and more feminine," while the British and Kenyan-British rated thin figures more positively (Furnham and Alibhai 1983: 833). Furnham and Alibhai's study shows that well-rounded, and even obese figures are valued not only because they reflect a higher economic status, but also because they display a more likable self. The culturally defined forms thus imply valued characteristics of the self. Accordingly, the question of why these shapes are more likable arises.

Anne Becker draws attention to a number of studies conducted in the South Pacific, including Fiji, where a large body is associated with social prestige. Specifically, Becker notes that Fijians "associate weight loss and thinness with social neglect or deprivation, and compliments relating a robust form with healthy vigor and social connectedness" (Becker 1995:38). Thus being skinny in Fijian society means not being cared for by the community. Since the Fijian ethos places such a high value on caring for others, a neglected individual would be pitied. While there seems to be an interest in cultivating other bodies, Becker states that there is little interest in cultivating one's own body. She notes that while there are of course physical ideals in Fiji, "There is a striking absence of interest in attaining these as a personal goal" (Becker 1995: 45). Becker continues, "Moreover, given the close attention directed towards others' body shapes and sizes reflected in constant commentary, there is a paradoxical denial of interest in cultivating one's own shape to approximate the ideal" (Becker 1995: 45). Here, Becker suggests that Fijians spend more time and effort cultivating others' bodies, rather than their own, in order to reflect a communal world view. In chapter two, we will examine this Fijian world view more closely.

In discussing the non-Western self, it is important to remember that although it is easy to construct a dualism between Western and non-Western notions of the self as individuated and sociocentric respectively, one must keep in mind that constructs of the self are certainly more complex than that. Markus and Kitayama point out that the theories on the non-Western cultural sense of self are often simplified, declaring that people in non-Western societies merge their individuality with others within the society. They state that "an interdependent view of self does not always result in a merging of self and other, nor does it imply that one must always be in the company of others to function effectively, or that people do not have a sense of themselves as agents who are the origins of their own actions" (Markus and Kitayama date: 298). Thus the literature on culture and the self draws an oversimplified contrast between West and non-West. This discourse is important to keep in mind in chapters six, seven, and eight, as I will offer brief narratives of seven Fijians and will show variations in commitment to this sociocentric world view.

In this chapter I have reviewed the literature on the concept of the self, cross-culturally, as well as considered how anorexia is a culturally bound disease. In reviewing the literature on anorexia, it is not surprising that this disorder occurs in the Western world because of the ideals of autonomy and self-sufficiency created in the Western world view. Given the statement, "Culture determines the meaning of the body," we have come to understand that a body's meaning is created through cultural constructs of the self, and that the cultivation of the body is a reflection of these world views. In the West one wants to cultivate a slender body to express control and individuality, while in some non-Western societies, and specifically in Fiji, where a sociocentric self is idealized, a robust figure is glorified because it reflects a self that works to create bonds within the community.

On to Chapter 3...