Oysterville Women’s Club, 1932
Does it bother anyone else that there is a huge disconnect between our addiction to food in this country and our yammering on about the cost of obesity?
We are slammed with commercials for fast foods, diet foods, organic foods, food substitutes interspersed with footage about diet techniques, fitness centers, and health facilities. We are told, relentlessly, that being overweight can lead to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoarthritis and more problems than you can shake a stick at. But not ever do we hear uttered the word “fat.”
We talk about the “size-challenged” and “plus sized” and “generously proportioned.” God forbid we should call anyone the three-letter f-word! I referred to some people as “hefties” in a blog I wrote a few years back and Whoa Nellie! Such a load of flack I caught. No doubt this one will get some nasty responses as well.
Oysterville Sewing Circle 1918
But, really! When did we start putting a politically correct spin on the problem of being overweight? I suspect it was about the same time that a Size 12 dress became the new Size 8 and those seats that once-upon-a-time were called “love seats” went into theaters and doctor’s offices for the “Heroically Proportioned.”
Yesterday Nyel was thumbing through a very tattered 1964 edition of Joy of Cooking. He was looking for a new salad dressing recipe and ran across a recipe for “Dressing Without Oil.” Said authors Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker: No, it isn’t particularly good, but it may be eaten by the bulging with a clear conscience.
I’m not sure whether “bulging” was used as a euphemism for f** or not, but I’m pretty sure Irma and Marion didn’t get the kind of defensive back-biting I did for my less-offensive (in my opinion) use of hefty. Well, that was fifty years ago. Julia Child was just beginning to raise our consciousness about food and Jack LaLanne was on his way to becoming the ‘godfather of fitness.’
Fifty years before that, in the program for Oysterville’s Fourth of July Picnic, there was a list of 12 races. One of them was the Fat Woman’s Race (1st Prize, 50 cents; 2nd Prize, 25 cents). So apparently 100 years ago, when people were still eating out of their gardens and getting their milk straight from the family cow, it was still okay to characterize people as ‘fat.’ I’m pretty sure entrants weren’t qualified based on a BMI calculator.
What a difference a century makes! In the matter of size… a HUGE difference. Boy howdy!
Well, to me the word “hefty” has the connotation of a garbage bag and derives from heifer, a cow, so I would be offended if you called me hefty. My one question to you is not about the word “fat” but why is it necessary to even use the word in describing people? In a size-obessed culture we are surrounded by words, skinny, gaunt, svelte, fat, plump, curvy. Women in particular have these words hung on them – usually as the first (or only) word in a description. Why don’t we, as women, just agree to stop focusing on other women’s bodies.?
For the record: “Hefty” can be traced back to the Indo-European kap (to grasp), linking HEFT (heavy weight) to “heave” (to throw) and “have.” The Bible offers ??? KaBHaiD, weighty, in Psalms 38:5. The adverb, “heavily,” is in Exodus 14:25. Kaf-Bhet-Dalet means heavy, as in “severe” to describe the famine in Genesis 12:10.
As for the word “heifer” — Old English seems to have had the word *hægfore ‘heifer.’ The first element (*hæg-) presumably meant ‘enclosure’ (as do haw and hedge), whereas -fore was a suffix meaning ‘dweller, occupant’ …
It is important to realize that in our society, unless one is referring to the butterfat content in milk, FAT is a perjorative, not merely a descriptor.
Yes, of course. Which was the entire point of my title. When and why did it get to be that way? It wasn’t always so.
An excellent book to read on this topic is “The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health” by Paul Campos.
““Campos makes his case against the “fat kills” dogma with unimpeachable evidence. The Obesity Myth should be required reading for every health professional in America. I believe any open-minded person who reads this book will conclude that we’ve been duped by a pack of self-serving lies. And we cannot get at the truth without first recognizing those lies. The Obesity Myth is a great place to start.” —Glenn A. Gaesser, Ph.D., professor and director, Kinesiology Program, University of Virginia”
Well ‘Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English’, my go to guide for word derivations, shows a common link between hefty and heifer but lexicons can be argued endlessly which is why they are so fun. However, using hefty to describe people (particularly when contemporary usage is a large garbage bag) is pretty insensitive and would rightly get you push-back. Maybe ‘fat’ became pejorative when people began using it as a way to shame other people. Words change over time as a reflection of the culture. If you feel the need to hang on to the former usage of “fat” as a nonjudgmental descriptor, you risk offending many people.