Objectify This

Recently, I won some money and decided to visit a friend who is finishing up her semester abroad in Argentina.

While, as one mentor of mine in high school put it, “Every woman has a funny relationship with food,” in Argentina, it’s an understatement.

Somethingfishy.org, a website about eating disorders, reports that “In Argentina the incidence rate of Anorexia and Bulimia is out of control. The percentage of sufferers (based on population) is almost three times greater than that of the United States. Women across Argentina will resort, at all costs, to look their best and are obsessed with their bodies.

“According to an article written by Lori Leibovich, “Some blamed the nation’s preoccupation with the body on the country’s volatile political and economic climate. Others said that the Italian immigrants who settled in Argentina at the turn of the century simply brought with them a flair for fashion and an appreciation of beauty.

“And some Argentine feminists say that ‘machismo’ is responsible for the epidemic, encouraging a climate where women are valued for how they look, not who they are.” Women that don’t fit the harsh Argentine ideal end up in their own world of self-hate.”

According to the Albion Monitor, “A fairly tall woman weighing 128 pounds might be considered fat in Argentina, a country ruled by a dictatorship of slimness, beauty and eternal youth to the point of causing serious mental and physical health problems.

“Argentina leads Latin America and is fifth in the world in cosmetic implants. The local society for cosmetic medicine reports that cosmetic surgeons carry out between 2,500 and 3,000 operations here each month, with most of the patients being women.”

Why do eating disorders occur? My lonely planet guide describes the citizens of Buenos Aires as “prideful and haughty” and notes that “Argentines have a worldwide reputation for being spoiled, stuck-up and egotistical. They think they’re better than anyone else, and that they belong in Europe rather than at the tail end of a third-world continent like South America. They undergo more cosmetic surgery and psychoanalysis than anyone else in the world. It’s no wonder that people make fun of them.”

While it’s hard to generalize about the causes and prevalence of any mental health issue, there are some cultural differences that jumped out at me when I got here.

Piropos, or catcalls, occur in every country in Latin America, but here, they’re especially egregious. Every interaction that I’ve had with males my own age who were not waiters and whose girlfriends were not in the room has included some kind of comment about my appearance or inquiry as to when they can count the rest of my pecas (freckles) or, more bluntly, when we’re going to have sex.

This is not unusual treatment for a girl – my friend suggested that I pack a chastity belt when I asked her what I would need, but a full suit of armor would probably have been more effective. The culture of piropos creates a dynamic where women are constantly objectified, and men are constantly subjectified. La Revista Fucsia, a women’s magazine akin to Cosmopolitan, encourages women to “liberate themselves and holler back, and not just after their fourth martini,” but this doesn’t seem to address the real problem of a lack of self acceptance.

The problem of eating disorders – a concern with short-term appearance of cool over long term health – is mirrored by the prevalence of smoking. Wikipedia reports that “According to the National Program on Tobacco Control, 33.5% of the adult population of Argentina smokes, and 30% start smoking before 11 years of age.” Smoking is everywhere, perhaps as a result of the combination of European influence and preoccupation with weight, but it also demonstrates a carpe-diem philosophy that embodies the Argentinian mindset.

Perhaps this occured for economic reasons: everyone remembers the catastrophic crash of 2001, when inflation was rising so fast that groceries would be more expensive when you were leaving the store than when you came in.

Yet there are plenty of nations with uncertain pasts and futures which do not struggle so much, or so self-involvedly, to make up a word, with their own identities. I’ll be interested to see if I can learn more about this culture while I’m here. In the meantime, I’m going to go eat an empanada.