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The Christianity Today women's blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.

Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

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April 14, 2011

Obese and Beautiful

As the West exports its fat stigma to developing countries, the church might export its welcome embrace to those on all ends of the body mass index.

Marlena Graves

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The New York Times recently reported that the West is exporting its ideals of beauty and body size to developing nations, including our stigma against overweight people. We are, it is said, globalizing the “fat stigma.” It appears that our prejudices have so proliferated that they’re even infecting those societies that traditionally preferred larger bodies, such as Puerto Rico and Samoa. And our notions aren’t just affecting women; increasingly more and more men are suffering from a negative body image or what some have called “body image distress.” The term manorexia has arrived in our vocabulary.

These reports turn my thoughts toward Sandra,* one of our family’s dearest friends. Together, she and her husband Matthew* were hospitality incarnate. Their home was open to myriads of people. From kids in our youth group to church folk, from grad student jazz musicians who endlessly wailed on the piano and other instruments through ungodly hours of the night, to their peers, to neighborhood kids and folk — anyone looking for a heart-warming, welcoming place to call home found it with them. Shawn and I were, like others, invited to walk in anytime, whether day or night, without knocking or needing to unlock the door.

Hesitant to take them up on the too-good-to-be-true offer, at first Shawn and I balked, but Sandra insisted. She meant it. And since she and Matthew, like Jesus, were so magnetic because of their love, we happily spent much of our time with them. Christmas Day was the only day reserved for their immediate family members. It’s no exaggeration to say that from her home, Sandra directly influenced thousands of people in the name of Jesus — and plenty more indirectly.

Sandra was morbidly obese.

She spoke freely to us about the dirty looks and the under-the-breath mutters of “disgusting” that she heard while out and about. She knew first-hand the biases against fat people. Yet we found her to be one of the most gorgeous persons alive and an engaging disciple. Six months after our job relocation, she died in her sleep. It has been nearly four years, and we still miss her like crazy.

We are made to believe, through advertising and entertainment, that a youthful, well-endowed size 0 is the ideal for women, and that a chiseled David Beckham-like body is the archetypal man. (Never mind that the glossy magazines we consume are air-brushed, or that many of our celebrities are nipped and tucked or enhanced so that even our ideals are illusions.) Accordingly, the further away on the spectrum of the ideal we find ourselves — the more we look like a Sandra or her male counterpart — the less worth we are implicitly thought to have. As Father Greg Boyle notes in his book, Tattoos on the Heart, “The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.” Hopefully our churches are welcoming communities where our looks and body mass index don’t rule the day, a refuge for those who struggle with their weight or body image. In my experience, it has been. Then again, I have never been in Sandra’s shoes.

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Of course, we cannot divorce our bodies from discipleship (see Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart). God has made us stewards of our bodies. We dare not resort to Gnosticism. But I wonder if there is a way for us to dismantle the “fat stigma” along with other corrupted notions of beauty and body image — notions that communicate that some people matter less than others. Is there a way to be “culture makers” in the arenas of beauty and body image? I think so.

We do well by listening to artist-theologians like Bruce Herman. In a brilliant essay entitled “Wounded Beauty” (in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, edited by Daniel Treier, Mark Husbands, and Roger Lundin), Herman posits that
Beauty is inextricably intertwined with eros, and . . . the best expression of both (beauty and eros) is seen in the face of the earthly beloved — not an idealized and unattainable one. . . . Redeemed marriage . . . is the best image of human beauty we have. The face of an earthly beloved transfigured by lifelong committed fidelity is likely someday to be full of wrinkles and loss of muscle tone. But trust me, as a seasoned artist and one who has been married for over thirty years to the same woman, that aging face will be a beautiful face. . . . Only eyes trained by gazing continually toward the cross — only eyes cleansed by that second innocence, childlike habitual charity — can see true beauty, true goodness.
Singles need not feel excluded. Herman explains that true beauty and love are found in other forms of covenantal relationships where there are mutuality and reciprocity. And that is what the church is when we are at our best. That is what the church was for Sandra. Instead of spreading the fat stigma, in our words and attitudes, may we overcome evil with good in the name of Jesus by incarnating the best expression of beauty in our Christian communities.

*Names changed to protect the family’s identity.
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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on April 14, 2011 11:42 AM

Comments

Thanks for this piece, Marlena. The first image chosen to go with your post is so apropos: three skinny white (and blonde!) women, all with virtually the same hairdo, in virtually the same pose, on three supposedly different magazines!

I hope, too, for a church that celebrates beauty in all its diverse forms and embraces the body as a God-given gift and recognizes the gifts in people of all shapes and sizes.

Posted By: Hannah | April 14, 2011 1:18 PM

AMEN. There are beautiful people in our church (and in our world) who are fat, skinny, and everything in between. They have different skin colors, facial features, scars, birthmarks, hair types, and physical abilities. We grieve the heart of God when we judge people based on appearance. It's a mark of the saturation of sin in our world that mainstream media teach people to assign worth/value to a human being based on appearance and perceived sexuality. Women have always been objectified in this manner. Increasingly, we are seeing men objectified as well. And this fallenness is having a profound spiritual impact against we must vigilantly fight. Sadly.

Posted By: Robyn | April 14, 2011 3:11 PM

Unfortunately, the churches I have belonged to in over 50 years as a Christian have had the same fat stigma as outside the church. It is very difficult for me to go to church anymore.

Posted By: Linda | April 14, 2011 8:13 PM

Just heard a sermon last week that "overweight people have a spiritual void and psychological problems." Husbaand went to talk to preacher about this falacy. Now the preacher will not talk to him and avoids him visibly in front of our friends at church.

Posted By: Joan Keller | April 14, 2011 8:36 PM

Wonderful article! I wrote an article on my Christian weight loss site called 'Does God Care About Your Weight?' that relates to this controversial issue. Even though I was once obese and lost 85 pounds, I realized in my journey that God is not up in heaven with a tape measure or a scale, judging us on our outward appearance. Rather, he is concerned about anything that keeps us from bearing fruit - which is a product of what's going on in our hearts. In my case, I was tormented by past pain and addiction to food.

Posted By: Kim | April 14, 2011 8:54 PM

I love the quote at the end of this article. When we look at people through the lens of love, they are beautiful.

Whether or not obesity is pleasing to God is irrelevant to how we should treat a person who has issues with weight. None of us is without struggles, some are just more visible.

Thank you for a thoughtful and sensitive treatment of this issue.

Posted By: Suzy | April 15, 2011 7:55 AM

Oh, I absolutely love this article. Thank you Marlena for such beautiful words. I can say this touches on a root that is deep within our society and the church at large. I have seen the heartbreak and pain this stigma causes especially to one of my loved ones. And it is plain evil. Everyone loses, the overweight, the dangerously thin, the actresses and actors who feel the need to change themselves to keep their jobs. Everyone, absolutely everyone loses. God looks at the heart not the surface of a person.

Yes, we are stewards of our bodies and maybe if someone has a real overweight issue they might eat too much, but what is that sin compared to others that go unseen? The ugliest sin I believe is judment and spiritual pride in Believers. We should be the most compassionate, the ones who can look past and exterior of a person and see the heart.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this compassionate, sensitive and godly essay.

Posted By: Jane Hinrichs | April 15, 2011 11:11 AM

God looks at your heart not your body parts!!! Whether big or small, God loves us all!!!

Posted By: Christine | April 15, 2011 11:15 AM

Thanks for the article, it's very true that God loves us no matter how we look, fat people are just as saved and beloved as thin people or unhealthily thin people. I think part of the stigma is that gluttony is a sin and so people assume that if you're fat your a "big" sinner. I'm very fat, morbidly obese, I have been since I was a child, but being fat is Not a sin, eating to fill a part of me that only God can really fill is sin though, since it's looking for independence from God which ultimately fails. But it can be easy to confuse, I have been a glutton (still do sometimes) and I'm still fat, I battle with gluttony but God is making headway and healing me, and I look forward to the day when I can recognize that food isn't the answer and stop eating to fill up on what only God can truly satisfy.
Over-eating, bulimia, and anorexia are all serious problems, and I think Over-eating gets less true attention because it's not seen as an emotional/spiritual/physical problem like other eating disorders, people really do think for fat people that they need to "just stop eating and put the fork down" when there's so much more to it than that, people don't over-eat for grins and giggles, people have a serious problem that delves deeper than just eating to much on a consitent basis, and diets since they focus on the physical only don't help the true issue.
Thank you again for the article it's important that all people see the truth behind the food and the stigma's. fat and thin people need love equally and are worth the same amount.

Posted By: Morbidly Obese | April 15, 2011 12:02 PM

Somebody needs to comment the great wisdom above to Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., who equates weight loss with holiness.

Posted By: Joe | April 15, 2011 5:47 PM

I'll never forget, back when I was a young and fairly new Christian, that obese, 300-pound pastor. He was sweating profusely and looked like he was going to explode at any minute as he went on and on, railing on me about the great sin of my cigarette smoking. Well, I'm still around almost 40 years later, and he's long-dead of a coronary. It seems like every 10 years or so Christians have to find some new group of people to pick on. It's really shameful, because the ones who do the most accusing and finger-pointing are usually the sickest ones in the body of Christ.

Posted By: Mark Miwerds | April 15, 2011 6:18 PM

I agree about the 'fat stigma' and think society as a whole needs to work on that. Sad to hear that others face that in churches too. I heard Daniel Treier report on that one time and interesting to see that he also edited the article you cited here.

Posted By: Xavier | April 15, 2011 8:32 PM

If food can be an addiction, does that mean that food has become an idol to us? Are we placing food in greater importance than we do God? What did the Lord teach his disciples? -- to FAST and pray. Why, what was important about fasting? Did it allow the Apostles to focus their spiritual attention on God, rather than devoting themselves to physical attention?

When prayer is the focus of our lives, our physical needs can not seduce us into focusing our attention on ourselves rather than Him.

Posted By: Margaret | April 21, 2011 2:42 AM

And then we die. Sure, Margaret, fasting has a place. An important one. But if we do not attend to our physical needs, such as, oh maybe eating, we're not likely to be around long to pray or serve God, are we? Maybe I'm missing your point?

Posted By: Robyn Widmer | April 23, 2011 9:38 PM

yeah, i agree with the article and what Jane Hinrich said.
"God looks at your heart not your body parts!!! Whether big or small, God loves us all!!!"

Posted By: Jane Doe | April 24, 2011 11:27 PM

I don't disagree that many unhealthy behaviors are endorsed and encouraged by our society and (sometimes, it seems) the church. At the same time, however, I feel that it's perhaps irresponsible to swing to the exact opposite end of the spectrum and say this does not matter at all. God gave us bodies; presumably we're supposed to take care of them as we take care of the rest of our lives.

To say that the body can be mistreated through irresponsible consumption of unhealthy foods or alcohol or whatever and that this is fine, as long as you're not having premarital sex because only that dishonors the temple of the Holy Spirit, seems inconsistent to me. The more capable our bodies, the better (and longer) we can use them for the kingdom. I'm not saying this to condemn the obese (or the skinny and weak); I just think that to pretend that we can treat our bodies with disdain when it comes to food and exercise is symptomatic of at least as much proto-Gnosticism as sexual promiscuity (perhaps more).

This is an issue for individual believers to work out in their own walk, and where individuals ask for help from their church community they should receive it.

Posted By: Rick | April 27, 2011 6:13 AM

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