Only now that I am pregnant do I realise how much – and how routinely - women are discouraged to eat!

[SkaterGrrrrl]

I am pregnant and for the first time in my life - or rather, for the first time since I was about 10, I am being encouraged to eat. Relatives press a second helping on me: ?Go on ? have some more?. Female friends/ acquaintances encourage me to order cake rather than a salad or sandwich when we meet in a cafe: ?You?re allowed to! You?re eating for two!? and colleagues offer me the biscuit tin ?Make the most of it while you can!?

It has really hit me how throughout my adult life, I have never been encouraged to eat dessert or take seconds. It?s as if , by being pregnant, a temporary loophole has opened up on the lifelong strict cultural expectation on women to eat very little. (The terrible pressure on women and girls to diet is detailed better than this in The Beauty Myth and Fat is a Feminist Issue).

I am also beginning to realise why some women put on a lot of weight during pregnancy ? a friend of mine put on 55 lbs. Because for the first time ever we are allowed to eat, guilt free, ask for seconds and not be censured.

I think there is a very big difference to suggesting that some one lose weight because they are obese and damaging their health or commenting positively when they do nad the food of a perfectly healthy woman being restricted or them being encouraged to eat because in the eye of the beholder they are 'skinny'.

The messages I have had since being pregnant of how you should use this as the one time in your life you can eat what you like, have nothing to do with general discussions of healthy eating etc. As I and others have reported.

I have been reading this thread with interest. Personally, I have only ever felt under pressure from one person to be thin and that was my dad (who had eating problems of his own).

I have not noticed this amazing amount of pressure to be thin. Personally, I think the pressure exists less in real life than people think. Of my previous boyfriends there were none that cared particularly whether I was a size 10 or 14 and DH certainly would not care unless he thought I was damaging my health. Within my circle of friends it is not something that we ever talk about.

The message for being thin is only really ever present in teenagers who think that boys care about size and who actually read trashy magazines and I assume that most teenagers who are stable grow out of this eventually anyway.

Thought I would throw in an interesting titbit of information (not quite sure what it means out there in the wild for individuals). I'm on the phone & can't link to the study, sorry.

Did you know that there are strong correlations between rates of obesity & depression? And which way do those correlations run?

The highest rates if depression are found in areas of the USA with the LOWEST rates of obesity.

noobydoo - I think it's more about the pressure to not eat much than to be thin.

Food is something some of my friends talk about a lot, others don't. i think anecdotally it's been demonstrated on this threas that a lot of women are on diets of one kind or another.

On the whole individual experience vs what women experience as a class, I cant put it better than Basil:

I think that the problem with arming your daughters against the messages that society is continually sending them, is that as you rightly point out, we're all individuals and will respond differently to those messages. Some people get more harmed than others, by the messages. In the short term, we can try and teach our daughters to not be vulnerable to those messages. We can try and teach our sons to withstand the different messages they will get. But what about all those kids whose parent aren't going to teach them, because they themselves have been too damaged by those messages? If we changed the messages society is sending them, we wouldn't have to bother - we could concentrate on raising happy, healthy children who didn't have to battle with the shit messages that their society is sending them. We have to change society because changing each of us on an individual basis, just isn't going to work - too many people will fall through the net."

Oh and this hits the nail so perfectly on the head about women, our bodies, and the damage we do to our bodies:

Chibi: While food has never really been an issue for me (luckily) i only really identified with my body once i had been pregnant, gave birth and breastfed before that, me and my body were almost 2 seperate entities, the body was almost just the vehicle that the real 'me' happened to be in our culture fetishes this kind of mind body split people who see their flesh as actually them would not cavalierly consider cosmetic surgery -lopping bits off/augmenting other parts- it would be almost mutilative to do that to healthy tissue. (bold my own).

As for me, still pregnant - 20 weeks now - still being pressed to take more food and genuinely astounded that for the first time in my life I am entitled to eat without apologising for it.

I definitely feel that I am my mind, and my body is the thing that carries me around. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to look after it - even if it were possible to be a brain in a jar it doesn't sound like much fun. I want to look after my body because it allows my mind to do all the things that it wants to do.

?The reason pregnancy is seen as a time to eat is because it is the only time when women are not seen as a sex object, she is going to become 'unattractive' in terms of western ideas of beauty anyway so why not eat what you like too, you are no longer desirable so being fat makes no difference. It is positive not to be seen as an object but negative that pregnancy is seen as so repulsive.?

I think this is a really interesting point. The rule seems to be, only young, sexually available women are allowed to display their bodies.

My grandmother for example is horrified by pregnant women who flaunt their bumps in crop tops a la The Spice Girls & All Saints. And popular culture is full of examples of laughing at/revulsion towards older women?s naked bodies (thinking of the scene in There?s Something About Mary when a peeping tom accidentally sees an older woman?s naked breasts, queue much horror/hilarity).

So maybe that?s part of the ?pregnancy loophole? where the normal rules for women are relaxed... pregnant women are visibly, blatantly not sexually available.

Honeycrunch speaks truth