Sobo - The Sweetness of Fat (2)

In the rural Jamaica culture, eating with others means healthy socialization. People associate a person’s body size with personality, sociality, health and wealth. If a person is plump, then others consider that person to be generous, happy, social, family-friendly, and fertile– all positive attributes. If a person is slim, then others consider that person to be just the opposite: greedy, selfishness, anti-social, and infertile. Fertility has a significant role in this culture, as having a child matures a person both literally and figuratively.

Plump people are "fertile" because they are considered to be full of nutrients, such as blood and other fluids necessary for having a child, which come from having excessive fat. Meanwhile, slim people are "infertile" because they lack these nutrients. These connotations that body sizes have in this culture cause plumpness to be associated with life and adulthood, while slimness is associated with death and decay. However, there are exceptions to these associations. A person with either too much or too little body fat has come to represent a waste of their nutrients.

Having grown-up in the North American culture, I find these associations with body size are in complete opposition to rural Jamaica. Here, plumpness is often associated with laziness and a lack of physical activity, whereas slimness is associated with healthiness and the right amount of physical activity. Despite their opposites, I found that both the North American and Jamaican cultures express standards of "too fat" or "too thin."

I did not have any disagreements with Sobo’s argument because I have never experienced the Jamaican culture.

Questions for further discussion: Why is the Jamaican culture so different from the North American culture in regard to body size?