"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." ¹

Judge the state of a woman's character by examining the state of her body: that's an antique notion that still touches our lives. The equation used to be "virginity equals virtue;" in many cultures, chastity defined a woman's honor. Men have been known to reserve more active types of moral excellence, such as courage, for themselves. In our current industrialized world, the kind of body appraisal has changed, but the formula has persisted: a woman's honor is located in her body. There are good, that is, virtuous bodies, distinguished by thinness (which equates to discipline and self-denial) and there are bad, that is, sinful bodies, marked by fatness (which means laziness and greed).

At the 2011 SLC Women's History Conference, "Breaking Boundaries: Body Politics and the Dynamics of Difference," several speakers analyzed a division between good and bad bodies. The conference participants most often used neoliberalism as an explanatory framework. A look at the Puritan tradition in the United States, however, might offer an additional way to help us understand our culture's attitude to women's bodies. While neoliberalism proposes that the responsible citizen disciplines her/himself as a duty toward the state, a type of Puritanism suggests that the individual denies oneself pleasure in order to please God. Although Puritans may not have counted calories, they did identify virtue with self-denial. And an aura of the religious crusade does attach to the fervor of public health campaigns and medical establishment pronouncements about weight: we fight a holy war against fat.

The Puritan emphasis on a life of visible purity resonates with our quest for a visibly slender body as a testament to virtue. In her essay, "Neoliberalism and the Constitution of Contemporary Bodies," Julie Guthman suggests another meaning for thinness; for neoliberalism, thinness is the visible sign of self-discipline as it relates to the duty to seek health:

The neoliberal critique of too much intervention returns improvement to the individual who is expected to . . . become responsible for his or her risks. In that way neoliberalism also produces a hyper-vigilism about control and self-discipline. The pursuit of an often unexamined social value of 'health' is, in that way, the sine qua non of neoliberal responsibilization . . . . Thinness, albeit a poor proxy for health, is thus viewed as a reflection of self-control . . . regardless of whether it is even consciously pursued. ²

Guthman also notes that neoliberalism stigmatizes the visibly fat as a way to exert control over the "normal" population; making fat people into outcasts is a way for society to terrify the rest of the citizenry into trying to conform.

Moral posturing often accompanies the war on fat. Marilyn Wann, a fat acceptance activist and the keynote conference speaker, led the audience at her presentation in a free association exercise, where we came up with a list of terms descriptive of fatness. Judgments, such as "lazy," "greedy," and "out of control," dominated our offerings. Wann also suggested that fitness can make us feel good, but she added that exercising is not a duty—we don't owe it to anyone. Both neoliberalism and Puritanism would argue that we do owe that obligation, either to our state or our God.

Fat as a moral issue popped up throughout the conference. Heather Lang, in "Big (Fat) Burlesque Backlash: Burlesque Bodies as Rhetorical Agents of Social Change," mentioned the kinds of comments that her burlesque troupe's largest performers evoked in online responses to the group's Web site. While many responses were positive, Lang said that they got lots of "fat as a moral failing" rants, as well. Kathleen LeBesco, in "Fatness and the Self-Governing Citizen: Health, Morality and Ideology," mentioned the concept of "healthism:" the healthy is moral, the unhealthy is immoral. People are at fault if they do not meet the currently fashionable standards for a healthy body. Jackie Wykes's critique of the television series Huge referred again to a neoliberal frame; Wykes stated that citizenship is premised on the proper functioning of the individual. Obesity is not a right, since it conflicts with the interests of the state, which is the guardian and arbiter of morality.

Maintaining a culturally-approved weight equals maintaining health, as a duty of citizenship, but there seems to be an additional factor involved. American exceptionalism and utopianism has long made extraordinary claims on its people. We aren't just asked to be good citizens because that is what a rational republic requires. We're called to help build a "virtuous republic," a New Jerusalem that needs our whole bodies and souls to succeed. Founding father Benjamin Rush said each citizen must become "public property [and] his time and talents—his youth—his manhood—his old age—nay more, life, all belong to his country." ³ Do women's bodies, then, belong to their country and to its quest for a moral republic; does dieting demonstrate godliness, as well as civic virtue?

¹ Attributed to H.L. Mencken at www.thefreedictionary.com/Puritanism, probably from H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1916).

² Julie Guthman, "Neoliberalism and the Constitution of Contemporary Bodies," in The Fat Studies Reader, eds. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 193, accessed at http://bit.ly/opVpj2.

³ Benjamin Rush quoted in The Rising Glory of America: 1760-1820, ed. Gordon Wood (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 5-6, cited by John H. Houchin, Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 17.