Beyond body shaming

For years, Lana Sussman Davis has listened to clients and community members express disdain for their bodies.

A clinical social worker and arts psychotherapist, Lana is the co-founder of The Parents Village and founder of Mind.Body.Connection, where she supports folks to make peace with their bodies.

Lana is also my sister. We sat down in her kitchen to talk about our Jewish community’s attitude to body image.

Tami: Why do you think so many people thought it was okay to comment on our weight gain or loss when we were kids?

Lana: I think with any close tight-knit communities, people feel immediate kinship with other members of that group. So, they might have said something about your body or mine because intuitively, they felt like we were almost an extension of them.

Tami: In my memory, people’s grandparents were some of the worst perpetrators. I think I know where that stemmed from. I’m curious to see if you have the same instinct.  

Lana: Obviously the Holocaust is important to name, because many of us Jews in Australia had grandparents who did experience starvation in World War Two and the camps. We’ve both seen the upsetting photo of our emaciated grandfather after he was liberated from Auschwitz. But there’s another side to that which we don’t often see represented, and that is what happened when the survivors became nourished again. I imagine gaining weight was celebrated – finally they could eat! But don’t forget, there were still societal norms.

Tami: Do you mean like what was happening in the 40s with fashion and ideal body types for women?

Lana: Yes. Prior to and during the war, Jewish people were being persecuted, they had been portrayed as ugly and disgusting. So perhaps in order to assimilate, many Jews needed to prove their desirability. There was a big focus on “beauty” amongst survivors and a lot of that stemmed from fear. Fear of lacking value, of not being “wanted”.

Tami: What red flags do you see in the Jewish community today, both as a body image therapist and as a mother of young kids?

Lana: I see body shaming. Mainly people towards themselves. Apologising for their bodies, or what they are eating. I see parents imposing diets or restrictions on their children, and parents modelling their own restrictive diets. I do think – or maybe it’s a hope – that things are getting better. We have a lot more knowledge than we used to. These days we have prominent dieticians like Lyndi Cohen who are weight and size inclusive and follow an intuitive eating approach. Healthcare professionals are aware of “health at every size” and have training in intuitive eating to prevent eating disorders. We’ve come a long way when you compare that to our time, when parents took their kids to dieticians to lose weight.

Tami: Am I allowed to talk to you about the Sydney Jewish community dietician you went to as a kid?

Lana: The one who used to make me count my grapes?

Tami: Yeah, the one who’d shame you on the scales. I used to come along and play with the kilo of lard on her desk. I remember she used to ask you, “do you want to be an ogre?”.

Lana: That is actually so horrific. But she thought she was doing everyone a favour… and you know what, NSW Health still uses outdated tools that encourage body shaming to “combat the obesity crisis”. We all know the science now: you cannot shame someone into losing weight. You just can't. It doesn't work. And we know that being in a larger body doesn't necessarily correlate with being unhealthy. It's about lifestyle factors. Bigger can mean healthier! But there’s this fear that people might say, “oh, she's really let herself go”, when in reality, she's let herself go in the best way possible. Which means actually recovering from an eating disorder or recovering from a chronic health issue or accepting your body in its natural, healthy form.

Tami: I’m still flabbergasted when I hear people who may not have seen each other in a while “compliment” a person’s weight loss.

Lana: Yes, that’s a terrible habit. We’re a very social community and there are so many other things we could say to each other instead as a greeting. How someone looks is the least interesting thing about them.

Tami: As you know, I had an eating disorder in my teens. I’ve never really asked you what it was like witnessing your sibling go through that?

Lana: Eating disorders are not always obvious to other people. With you, I always thought “something is not quite right”, but because weight loss was so championed in our society and within our family, it was seen as a “good thing” at first. And because it was paired with exercising obsessively, I never really thought, “this is an eating disorder”. I just thought, “gosh, she's motivated”. It can be quite an insidious mental health disorder. Folks can be so high functioning on the one hand but deeply suffering on the other.

Tami: Do you think you ever had an eating disorder?

Lana: In my late 20s, I definitely had disordered eating habits because I was deep into “wellness culture”. I cut out different foods, entire food groups, mainly because my naturopath told me to do it. I believed it would make me healthier. It didn't.

Tami: Was that orthorexia?

Lana: Orthorexia is a term that describes an obsession with eating healthy food, so I guess yes, it’s possible that was part of the picture. All that really started when I wanted to lose weight before my wedding.

Tami: You did buy into the “shredding for the wedding” phenomenon.

Lana: That was a real shame because I had such positive body image before then. Purposeful weight loss is not always an eating disorder. But research tells us that purposeful weight loss can encourage people to engage in behaviours that are potentially harmful because they're not intuitive and they're not sustainable. And it did become a bit obsessive. It’s so easy when everyone gives you such positive feedback regarding your decreasing body size.

Tami: What was it like for you to finally embrace your natural size and shape?

Lana: It was hard Tam! Very hard. But I also remember thinking, “oh, I can never go back”. Because for so long, I thought there was something wrong with me and my body for never being able to be thin... I now know better.

Tami: Was it a relief for you?

Lana: It eventually became relief, but it started as grief. A full year or so of actual grief, I’d say.

Tami: What do you think you were grieving?

Lana: Dieting can feel like a solution to a “problem”. So, when you say, “I'm never going to diet again”, because it’s not intuitive or sustainable, you don’t have the safety net of “I'm going to start this particular diet on Monday, and then I’ll be ok again”. The fantasy of a diet making you feel and be better dies… and you have to accept your reality.

Tami: Is that why you started Mind.Body.Connection? To help others accept or embrace their reality?

Lana: Yes! I’m so passionate about this area of prevention. We waste so much of our lives worrying about our weight and our bodies. I want to support folks to learn how to embrace mental and physical health through body acceptance and a “health at every size” approach.