FOR RELEASE: May 21, 1999
Contact: Susan S. Lang
Office: (607) 255-3613
[email protected]
Compuserve: Bill Steele, 72650,565
http://www.news.cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- How do brides prepare for their weddings when it comes to their weight? What do overweight women do to resist the social stigma of being fat? How does society dictate what the "ideal" woman should weigh? Are vegetarians too skinny, or vibrant and healthy?
These are just a few of the issues that two Cornell University sociologists explore in two new books about social issues relating to weight, fatness and thinness.
"What you weigh is a simple fact. But what you do with that fact in developing your identity or resisting stigma and eating disorders in a society that highly values thinness and often discriminates against fat people is complex," says Jeffery Sobal, a Cornell nutritional sociologist and co-editor of Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness and Weighty Issues: Fatness and Thinness as Social Problems (both published by Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne, N.Y.).
"Although many people consider weight a personal problem, in many cases, body weight issues have become social problems," adds co-editor Donna Maurer, a sociologist and a John S. Knight postdoctoral fellow in the Writing Program at Cornell.
Both books include chapters written by sociologists, psychologists and nutritionists and are intended for students, academics and professionals.
Interpreting Weight focuses on how individuals cope with social problems relating to being too fat or too thin. The scholars explore, for example, how people develop their weight-related identities and cope in social situations, how our society and culture shape weight ideals, and whether cultural ideals can be reshaped. Weighty Issues, on the other hand, looks at how society deals with fatness and thinness through historical and medical perspectives, by gender and through consumer and professional lenses. It also looks at the management of weight among vegetarians and at society's acceptance of size.
"With millions of Americans on a diet at any given time and thousands of different weight-loss plans to choose from, it's obvious that Americans highly value thinness. Being thin or large has numerous social meanings for people in many aspects of life," says Sobal, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell and an expert on the sociology of obesity and social factors that influence food choices and nutrition.
"Weight control is not just a health issue but a major social and cultural force in our society. For many people, weight is a major concern because failure to control it can have devastating social consequences," he says.
These can range from difficulty in finding a romantic partner, failure to get a good job, low self-esteem, prejudice in college admissions and medical care, and lower wages, according to research. "However, cultural standards concerning weight are continually shifting, and it's important to understand these processes," Sobal says.
Interpreting Weight looks at weight issues from the individual's points of view. Its chapters focus on adopting and managing a "fat" identity; how some overweight women protect their identities and resist the stigma of obesity; how concepts of weight control are shifting from "dieting" to "healthy eating"; how the pressure to be a beautiful bride conflicts with weight problems; how social networks of female college athletes, such as cross country runners, influence an athlete's risk of developing eating disorders; and a discussion of body image changes.
Weighty Issues addresses similar issues from a societal perspective. Its chapters look at the history of children and dieting and eating disorders, and a history of obesity; how body types, physiques and fitness are assessed; views on what ideal weights are, and different views of men and women; how nutritional health promotion influences the diet industry; weight and vegetarians; and weight and the size acceptance movement.
Each book is available in hardback for $49.95 and paperback for $24.95. Each book is 250 pages long and includes references and an index.
Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release.
-- For more about Jeffrey Sobal:
http://www.human.cornell.edu/dns/dnsfac/sobal.html
-- For more about the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University:
http://www.human.cornell.edu/dns/about.html
-- For information about a previous book edited by Jeffrey Sobal and Donna Maurer:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/general/Feb96/sobal.book.ssl.html
-30-
EDITORS: To obtain a review copy, contact Diana McDermott at Aldine de Gruyter publishers, (914) 747-0110 or fax (914) 747-1326.
RSS