Top Ramen and the Historical Narratives Impacting Fat, Poor Bodies
As I cook my nightly Top Ramen, it occurs to me that this isn’t a very nutritious meal. Freeze dried noodles and a packet of salt. Yum. Normally I care about what I eat. But let’s be honest, when you’re poor that is a luxury you literally can’t afford. I add some of the dog’s food to my ramen. It’s protein. I applied for food stamps two days ago. I told them I have maybe a few cents to my name, including my checking account and the savings account I’ve never had cause I barely even keep anything in it. My credit card was long ago maxed out from the time I was homeless several years back, so that has long since not been an option.
News media is seemingly obsessed with stories related to how fat Americans are; how heart disease is a number one obesity related killer and how if you cared at all about your health you would really be eating your fruits and veggies etc etc etc. That’s nice in theory. But what happens when you literally have no control over what you can choose to put into your body? If you were given $1.75 to buy a week’s worth of grocery (this was my dilemma last week) what would you buy? One lone apple is at least fifty cents and will fill you up for mayyyyybe an hour? Top Ramen on the other hand is nineteen cents per package and because it is full of complex carbohydrates will give you a feeling of being satiated from hunger pangs for much much longer than that little apple. Don’t get me wrong, I love healthy food. I was raised vegetarian actually and never even tried a piece of meat until I was almost a teenager. I would much rather buy a bottle of kombucha, or a jar of organic almond butter than ground beef in a tube for two dollars or a bag of cheese puffs at the dollar store. But these aren’t realistic choices I’m given as a poor person.
The systemic relationship between institutional oppression, poverty and bodily autonomy and agency goes back to the foundations of America; from the evils of slavery and manifest destiny to the horrors of factory working conditions as described in Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle and the horrid forced sterilization of Native women in the 1970’s and the challenges to abortion rights under the Trump administration….And the list goes on and on. The current conversation we are having around health practices is not just one dimensional it is socially irresponsible and must be seen as part of a long historical narrative of the targeted isolation and deprivation of certain groups of people over others. The fact that I have to basically eat dog food does not exist in a vacuum. It is representative of the deliberate lack of agency I and every single other poor person in the US has over their bodies. I am not an anomaly.
Taking all of this historical narrative into account when talking about weight in America is imperative to an ethical approach to conversations around obesity and body image. We also need to recognize the inverse relationship that historical narratives around poverty have to body image and desirability politics. In Victorian America, pale white (eyeroll) skin was considered to be the most beautiful because it meant that (white) person had the money and prestige not to have to work hard outdoors all day. Today, tan white (eyeroll) skin is considered the mark of regal wealthy beauty because it means said white person can afford fancy vacations and plenty of leisure time in exotic locales. Similarly, when food was more scarce in ancient times, it was a more rubenesque female form that was considered beautiful while today, the converse is true as “obese” people are seen as being the personification of gluttonous, fast food eating, uneducated, sloppy, welfare recipient/drain-on-the-system poor people. This narrative is particularly harshly applied to people of color in America, who have historically been unjustly associated with the aforementioned.
So this Top Ramen in my bowl is actually pretty instrinsically tied to a lot of our history as a country. The fact that I picked it over an apple, the reasons why I’m not the only poor person having to make these choices and the reality that i will probably be sentenced to a lifetime of eating Top Ramen all float here in my bowl like smelly dead fish floating at the surface of the ocean.
There sadly isn’t much I can do to increase my bodily autonomy as a poor person. The American idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is a deliberate myth promulgated by the %1 to make us all believe that India is the only country to ever have a caste system. If you’re another poor person like me, you might not feel like there’s anything you can do to effect change in this regard. I disagree. I may not be able to change my economic reality much, but I can call out the long historical narrative, and the narratives that live and breathe today to reinforce our subjugation as fat, poor bodies. I can be heard. I can be visible. If that isn’t radical for poor folks than I didn’t just eat dog food ramen for dinner.
