Sobo - The Sweetness of Fat

This chapter describes the traditional health beliefs in rural Jamaica.

1. The ideal body for Jamaicans is plump with vital fluids.
2. Jamaicans are physically linked by body liquids
   Blood (red wine, built from thick, dark liquid items such as soup
   Sinews (come from okra, fish eyes, and other pale slimy foods)
3. Jamaicans villages consist of people brought together by ancestry, or by proximity to a shop.
4. Food: serve to make people feel full.
5. Food sharing and social relations
   Socially dominant individuals
   A respected adult is called “a big man” or “a big woman”, good relations involve food sharing.
   Weight loss signals social neglect
6. Mothers feed children, kin feed kin, and lovers feed each other.
7. Fatness at its best is associated with moistness, fertility, and kindness.
8. Drinks, warm moist, cooked food can make the fat.
9. Plump woman more attractive for man.
10. Plumpness is important for good health.
11. A few Jamaicans want to reduce.
12. Diet food and drink are only in bigger town.
13. People meant for diabetics.
14. People taunt others by saying they will dry up and grow thin from antisocial meanness.
15. Kindness involves altruistic, kinglike sharing
    Kind people: give what is asking for, offer things, treat others as family.
16. Mean person: stranger, never share, refuses, requests. Use very little salt, salt costs money.
17. Jamaican kinship ideally involves a sense of interdependence and obligation.
    Jamaicans ascertain kinship through blood ties.
18. Parents feed, build, and grow the fetus with their body substances.
19. White blood=mothers’ milk
20. Nurture kinship can be altered after birth.
21. Thin people have little nurturing, willingly sociable capacity.
22. Mules do not reproduce, just work, serve as pack animal, do not breed. Mules are traditionally associated with prostitutes, do not reproduce.
23. Women carry wood, water. No fecund woman are called mules.
24. A good shape is a matter of firmness and proportion.
25. Men should be muscular, never flabby. Women’s bottoms should be broad.
26. Sexual fluid: fatness itself must be discharged. Prostitution and oral sex are not condoned.
27. Men need to be careful about semen, albeit, emphasize the importance of intercourse and ejaculation.
28. Jamaicans believe men as opposed to Women. Men always want sextant cannot control their urges easily. Male sexual behavior is justified. Men lose much more sinews when discharging than do women.
29. Dry spine can occur if a man involves himself with abnormally libidinous, can reverse itself over time. Men with dry spine will draw down thin.
30. Cow’s milk and other foods build sinews increase a woman’s store.
31. A nursing woman should only have intercourse with lovers.
32. The body shape associated with a separation between sex and reproduction.
33. Americans prefer regimes that lead to thinness. Jamaicans attempt to fatten their bodies.
34. Plump body is healthily, happily to fulfill, obligations to kin and community, but fat person’s body is richly fertile. Thinness is linked with death.

Sobo - The Sweetness of Fat (3)

In rural Jamaica, keeping slim has antisocial connotations, because people sharing money and food, and they feed each other, especially kin. Thin individuals are neither sick nor poor. Rural Jamaicans’ negative ideas about thinness are linked with their ideas about health. And the ideal body is plump with vital fluids, and maintaining the flow of substances through the body is essential for good health. They value large size, and they build the body by eating. Socially dominant individual who are enmeshed in sound relationships are usually large. Fatness at its best is associated with moistness, fertility, and kindness as well as with happiness, vitality, and bodily health in general. In this article, it also said that not all that gets ingested is transformed into specific components like sinews or blood, and some things are not utilized in the body’s structure at all. Plumpness is important for good health in Jamaica. Few rural Jamaicans want to reduce, so diet foods and beverages are getting more popular. Jamaican kinship ideally involves a sense of interdependence and obligation, which ensues from shared bodily substance. Thin people have little bodily substance to spare. Thin body can cause embarrassment and shame because this means a person can be cast as infertile and antisocial. Sexual fluid, like fatness itself, is good, but here again too much can be harmful and balance must be maintained. A buildup of unreleased semen or sweet water can cause teenager bumps or pimples as excess sexual fluid tries to work its way out through the pores. Bodily equilibrium is essential, so sexual fluids must be discharged now and again. Meanings attribute d to personal appearances are context-specific, and circumstances such as personal vendettas affect which meanings get linked with whose bodies. Finally, this article describes a larger study of Jamaican health traditions and their uses, ideas and information.

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?

Sobo

In rural Jamaica, amassing wealth and keeping slim have antisocial connotations. Kin feed each other, sharing money and food, no one become thin. Rural Jamaican has some negative ideas about thinness; they are linked with their ideas about health of thinness. Notions about health are notions about body ideals, and they have social meaning, The traditional health belief systems that inform understandings of body shape. For rural Jamaicans, the ideal body is plump with vital fluids, and maintaining the flow of substances through the body is essential for good health. Body is common among those who value reciprocity and emphasize the obligation kin have to share with each other. The concept of the body-in-relation tends to view the body like they view the self as autonomous, individual, and independent. Jamaican villages typically consist of people brought together by ancestry, or by proximity to a shop or postal agency. Jamaicans value large size and they build the body by eating. Different foods answered different needs. Blood is the most vital and most meaning invested bodily component. Red wine and meat's juices can be used to build blood. Another type of blood is sinew; it comes from okra, fish eyes, and other pale slimy foods. belly is the most important part of the inner body, blood made in it. Good relationships and good eating go hand in hand, but plumpness depends on more than mere food. Fatness as its best associated with with moistness, fertility, and kindness as well as happiness, vitality, and bodily health in general. Jamaicans call pleasing things sweet. Something sweet is ready to eat or ripe for enjoyment. Another, Thinness and fatness are to each other as the lean, dry, white meat of a chicken is to its fatty, moist, dark parts. Jamaican kinship ideally involves a sense of interdependence and obligation, which from share bodily substance. Mules are no fecund women, they do not reproduce, and so cannot establish any from of community. Jamaicans denigrated for thinness were never extraordinarily. The thin body lacks vital fluids, which can cause embarrassment and shame. Sexual fluids must be discharged now and again, because bodily equilibrium is essential. Dry spine can occur and reverse itself overtime, Many women whose spines are fine take the roots regularly anyhow, swearing by its effects on potency. Women take it too, for general health enhancement. Traditional health beliefs and social moral ideas exposes much of the logic behind body shape and the regimes people attempt to adhere to in order to affect them.

He fat person';s body is richly fertile, and the fat person is judged a nurturant and constructive member of a thriving network of interdependent kin. But Thinness is ultimately linked with death.

Sobo

There is amassing wealth and keeping slim have that have antisocial connotations in rural Jamaica. The negative ideas about thinness are linked with their ideas about health. Notions about healthy are notions about body ideals and they all have important social meaning. For rural Jamaicans, the ideal body is plump with vital fluids, and maintaining the flow of substances through the body is essential for good health. Both vital bodily fluids and foods fatten the body, making plumpness an index of the quality and extent of one’s social relations as well as an index of good physical health. The concept of the body-in-relation tends to view the body like they view the self as autonomous, individual, and independent. Due to the influenced by British interests, much of the anthropological literature on Jamaica deals with kinship and social structure. Jamaican villages typically consist of people brought together by ancestry, or by proximity to a shop or postal agency. Jamaican builds the body by eating to value a large size. Blood is the most vital and most meaning invested bodily component. Therefore, Sinews, another type of blood comes form okra, fish eyes, and other pale slimy foods. Belly is the most important part of the inner body where blood is made. In Jamaica, the respected adult is called a bog man or a big woman because the sound relationships are usually large. Good relationships and good eating go hand in hand, but plumpness depends on more than mere food. Therefore, “people with worries can’t fat.” Fatness as its best associated with moistness, fertility, and kindness as well as happiness, vitality, and bodily health in general. Jamaicans call pleasing things sweet. Ideas about decay give expletives power and fuel subversive banter. All that gets taken into the body, whether to build or fill belly, must get used or expelled because unincorporated excess begins to swell and decay. On the other hand, thinness is associated with ideas antithetical to those that “good” fat connotes; Thinness and fatness are to each other as the lean, dry, white meat of a chicken is to its fatty, moist, dark parts. A sense of interdependence and obligation are involved as the ideal of Jamaican kinship which ensues from shared bodily substance. The people who do not reproduce only serve to work, their blood disappears from the social circles that individuals, joining together in the culturally recommended fashion, create and re-create. The thin body lacks vital fluids, which can cause embarrassment and shame because this means a person can be cast as infertile and antisocial. Sexual fluid, like fatness itself, is good, but here again too much can be harmful and balance must be maintained. After woman has had children or after a miscarriage or abortion, sags flat and low this is most noticeable in the bosom by women lost fluid. Thus, the body shape associated with a separation between sex and reproduction, and with aging and death, is thin and flaccid, not firmly plump like the sociable one. Therefore, Thinness is ultimately linked with death, but the fat person’s body is richly fertile, and the fat person is judged a nurturant and constructive member of a thriving network of interdependent kin.