Laurel, I agree; I’m glad you brought this up. I think it is scary and that that guy is out of touch with what I think is a pretty frightening beauty culture here. And this is a common experience for me of guys here, being way more out of touch with women's experience than in the US where I'm from (not saying they're not mean or bad, just out of touch with their female counterparts). It is one thing to feel good about yourself and take care of yourself, to choose to be healthy and/or well-dressed, but what I have seen here is really different - and I have been very careful not to project.
I saw another article that clarified the stats are for young people, and of course, it is a disorder that particularly occur in young folks, particularly young women. Being in the university, in a program where almost all of my colleagues at least work in a business and many directly for various government Ministerios, I am not surprised at all, as I see so many younger women very worried about their appearance and weight. There's a lot of pressure professionally to be attractive in order to be successful, to have buena presencia. When I asked a young store clerk in Cordoba why so many stores carry only small sizes and how Argentine girls stay so slender and pretty, her first response was not what I expected - for her to say, "oh thanks." She remarked right away that there was a darker side to it, that a lot of girls have eating disorders. I think this speaks to a problem that goes beyond the eating disorders, only once it reaches a level that being skinny and pretty can be pathologized because it starts "visibly" damaging someone's health, it suddenly becomes visible.
I think that it should be pointed out that obesity rate stats don't necessarily say anything about the number of women (and some men) suffering with an eating disorder...and how many fat or skinny women we see walking around on the streets is something very separate from women in the stats suffering from eating disorders. Plus, we can "see" some of the more obvious cases of women who are very skinny and "out" about their eating disorders, but there are plenty of women you could not necessarily pick out depending on the severity of their disorder.
I saw another article that clarified the stats are for young people, and of course, it is a disorder that particularly occur in young folks, particularly young women. Being in the university, in a program where almost all of my colleagues at least work in a business and many directly for various government Ministerios, I am not surprised at all, as I see so many younger women very worried about their appearance and weight. There's a lot of pressure professionally to be attractive in order to be successful, to have buena presencia. When I asked a young store clerk in Cordoba why so many stores carry only small sizes and how Argentine girls stay so slender and pretty, her first response was not what I expected - for her to say, "oh thanks." She remarked right away that there was a darker side to it, that a lot of girls have eating disorders. I think this speaks to a problem that goes beyond the eating disorders, only once it reaches a level that being skinny and pretty can be pathologized because it starts "visibly" damaging someone's health, it suddenly becomes visible.
I think that it should be pointed out that obesity rate stats don't necessarily say anything about the number of women (and some men) suffering with an eating disorder...and how many fat or skinny women we see walking around on the streets is something very separate from women in the stats suffering from eating disorders. Plus, we can "see" some of the more obvious cases of women who are very skinny and "out" about their eating disorders, but there are plenty of women you could not necessarily pick out depending on the severity of their disorder.
