Hello Love!
Today I have the first in a three part series about the machine that is 'Diet Culture.'
As I'm sure you're well aware, there are many amazing critiques and explorations out there around diet culture, why it exists, how it perpetuates itself, how we get sucked into it, it's consequences and so on - and many of them are quite brilliant.
Today and for the next few weeks I'd like to this discourse, and I'd like to see if I can help us see just how pervasive this normalizing of our bodies not belonging to ourselves is. I want to see if I can tie in the awareness of how our current 'influencer' culture is parading itself as the 'anti-diet culture' while being the exact monster it's claiming to slay, and I want to see if I can help us all pull back from these ways of thinking and being so that we can take some pieces of our humanity back.
Diet culture is about us giving up our bodily autonomy. It's about us accepting a world where certain bodies aren't safe purely based on their appearance. It's about continuing the tradition of locking certain people out of wealth, access and resource and it's about perpetuating our hyper consumption/production based society that's on its way to drowning all of us - both literally and figuratively.
Diet culture is part and parcel with toxic capitalism, prejudice and systems of oppression that have been so normalized we don't even realize we should be fighting against them.
Let's take a broad look at how all of this plays together, so we can do our due-diligence to move towards a more equitable world as we heal our relationships with our own bodies and the bodies of those around us.
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We're Swimming In Diet Culture So Much We Don't Even Notice The Water:
Influencer culture is perpetuating 'diet culture' while pretending to be the solution to diet culture.
On the surface, seeing those bright, well lit, shiny, ambiguously tanned and made-over influencer bodies all over our social media feeds may not *seem* like that big of an issue. Especially nowadays when it appears as though there’s a move being made towards our images of ‘aspirational bodies’ being more ‘inclusive.’ We’re seeing a trending away from the only acceptable bodies being those of the excessively lean, tall, Euro-centric featured white women towards a ‘celebration’ (put in quotes for a reason) of bodies with different skin tones, higher levels of body fat, more muscle and even - dare we say it - those with visible imperfections and/or those with noses, lips, cheekbones and jawlines that are characteristic of places outside of ‘Western’ dominance.
We’re seeing as ‘influencers’ show us their cellulite, tell us about their digestive system functions in great detail, who let us know when they’re ‘bleeding’, who are working to get ‘strong not skinny’, who eat more than a plate of lettuce with lemon juice and stevia in a day and who are promoting that we should all ‘love our bodies’ and treat them with respect rather than loathing.
This is, on its face, a great thing.
The world does need more body positivity/inclusion and messages that to suffer to be as thin as possible is no longer what’s required to be considered socially acceptable.
The increasing rates of people with all kinds of body types, shapes, skin tones and ascetics being represented and showcased as beautiful IS a good thing - and I don't want to minimize this. Representation and 'normalization' of something OTHER than the thin, white, blonde haired, blue eyed model type IS an important step.
But this isn't actually STOPPING diet culture, it's not actually combating diet culture, and it's not really a DEPARTURE from diet culture.
The problem with our diet/wellness culture is SO much deeper than showing some blemishes and telling us to lift heavier weights.
Our influencer/fitness culture is still TOTALLY entangled with our toxic, capitalist society.
Our influencer and fitness culture is still continuing to sell a message that leads to shame, guilt, body obsession and food micromanagement.
Our beauty standards aren’t changing in how they OPERATE, they are simply shifting in what we do and don’t ‘value.’
The problem is that this whole, entire beauty culture is based on the idea that there are SOME bodies that are worthy of love, respect, dignity and to be taken seriously, and some bodies that are up for exploitation, abuse, rejection, abandonment and dismissal.
As much as it may *look* like we’re trending in a positive direction, I personally feel like in reality, we’re keeping the same skeleton of diet/beauty culture being a tool for keeping certain people out of positions of wealth, power, access or the capacity to have a good life, so that those who are considered ‘in’ can continue to have MORE than they need.
Some photos of zits and some extra belly fat on our fitness models isn’t changing the system. In fact, oftentimes these things are actually DISGUISING the system - keeping us complacent in it.
Let’s take a little look deeper, shall we?
The HUGE Problem With Influencer/Celebrity Diet Culture:
I realize that Kelly Ripa isn’t an ‘influencer’ - however, she very much plays the role of your typical wellness influencer in her Harpers Bazar ‘what I eat in a day’ video here.
In the video, Kelly, in great detail, lists every morsel of food/beverage/supplement she puts into her body every day, outlining the very nuanced and well-worn routine that helps her ‘stay ready so she doesn’t have to get ready.’
Her regimen is incredibly restrictive, repetitive and filled with all sorts of potions and powders that take the place of actual food.
By all standards it’s outside of the ‘norm’ - there are more fruits and veggies in her lunch than many people in the Western world get in a day, there are fewer calories that most 12 year olds need, and more high priced food concentrates than actual calorically significant edible items in many of her meals.
Some look at this and think that Kelly is obsessive. That she’s got an eating disorder, that she’s setting a terrible example by being so chronically lean and having to live such a tightly controlled life in order to maintain said leanness. Some feel betrayed by the fact that, no, she’s not ‘just like you but skinnier’ - she admits that to look how she looks one has to live a lifestyle that’s completely out of reach and frankly unattractive. Some were so upset that they demanded the video be removed from Youtube.
Others look at her as pseudo inspiration. They admire her discipline and commitment. They feel moderately or not so moderately bad about themselves that they too aren’t eating as ‘clean’ as she is. They see her as a kind of symbol of true wellness - abstaining from all the ‘sins’ of junk food in order to stay ‘pure’ in her quest for glowing skin, visible abs and a chiseled jawline.
They love her. They hate her. They pedestalize her. They judge her.
All of which is a total waste of time.
Why?
The reality is, the diet Kelly is eating has nothing to do with Kelly.
It has little to do with her food preferences, her body preferences, her personal desire to look or feel a certain way.
The reality is, Kelly’s body doesn't belong to Kelly.
Kelly’s body belongs to the corporations that pay her paycheck.
Those corporations are pumping out images of what is and isn’t acceptable that highlight bodies like Kelly’s PRECISELY because it’s impossible to achieve for most people.
Kelly’s body is a tool that is being used to keep people buying products that they don’t need, focusing on every lump and bump rather than being able to focus on anything that actually matters, and that keeps the wheel of disenfranchisement and straight up abuse that happens to some bodies turning - so that those at the top of our pyramid can stay comfortably at the top.
Kelly’s body isn’t about Kelly.
Kelly maintains her body so she can keep her job.
Kelly represents the loop that many women on our planet are in. In her industry, in order to keep her job, she essentially has to stay ageless and super thin. It's likely that the moment she stops looking young or if she were to ever 'lose her figure', she would be dropped from her show. It would likely be the end of her career. When she says it’s ‘easier to stay ready than to get ready’ what she means is, there’s never a time in her life when she’s allowed to NOT be ready. There’s no true ‘off season’. She has to stay as she is, in order to stay employable.
'College Humor' did a great sketch about this called 'My Last Fuckable Day' - which basically outlines the fact that in Hollywood, women are considered viable as leading ladies so long as they could be considered conventionally attractive - and the MOMENT that's no longer the case, they are relegated to the 'mom'/side roles. It's exceedingly rare for a woman to continue being cast in leading roles past that date of being young and hot, essentially.
Kelly is playing the game of keeping herself ‘profit making’ for the corporations that fund her show because they employ her. She is their employee, and it’s her youth/leanness/bubbly personality that SELLS the products they associate with her, thus keeping THEM in business.
Because what ‘sells’ products these days isn’t a demonstration of their utility, durability or even their ability to remedy basic day to day dilemmas and problems.
What sells products are the associations made between the product and what it will ‘do’ for our social standing, how they will make us look to others, our level of inclusion, and perhaps the ease it will add to our lives so that we have time for other things.
What sells is CULTURE. How much you fit into the current culture, and what that then ‘says’ about you in terms of your worth, value and attractiveness.
The entertainment industry is STILL incredibly sexist and based on looks - and they are the ones who 'create' culture - telling ‘us’ what to buy, how to look and who to be so that we will be 'relevant.'
We live in a world where, for better or worse, we have such a deep association with ‘fitting in’ and ‘being safe’ that to live UP to culture is essentially the same to us as being happy, healthy, safe and fulfilled.
Diet Culture Is About Trying To Be Included So That We Will Be SAFE
We’ve been sold the idea that when we have the right identity, all of our problems will go away. When we’re in the right tax bracket that THIS means we will be safe.
They sell to us based on a deep physiological correlation we humans have between fitting in and being safe. They sell to us via exploiting our desire to soothe our existential dread via fitting in - because that WAS how we survived for MOST of human history, and that WAS how we survived as CHILDREN when we were getting our first programs about the world. We ALL have a deeply held nervous system program that to be ‘in’ is to have our needs met - and THIS is how goods are sold to us.
Our biology is literally being used against us.
We’re being constantly triggered into a state of fear via the ever changing trends, and then sold the ‘solution’ to that fear via the latest and greatest. Via the shiny lives of those selling us the latest and greatest.
We want to be safe and we want to have connection - and we’re being told over and over again that the goods we consume and the work we do IS THE MEANS to those ends. Point blank. They are playing on deep, root fears, they aren’t playing to our reasoning or logic.
The reality is, it’s TRUE that to a certain extent the more money you have, the more resources you can afford, the more access you have to things like health care and other necessities for life, the more you can take care of yourself and the more you’re going to be ‘taken care of’ by society around you - because let’s be honest, the way the rich are treated compared to the way the poor are treated IS saying that the rich are safer than the poor - and the more access to upwards mobility you’re going to have. It IS true that to a certain extent, money CAN buy the security that’s possible for us on this planet.
But it’s not true that luxury, excess and overconsumption make any of our existential dread go away. It’s not true that any amount of money BEYOND being able to afford a decent life makes our lives any better. It’s not true that sacrificing more and more of our time for the pursuit of money makes us happier. It’s not true that money fulfills us. It’s not true that consumption and production are the pinnacle answers to what makes us feel like life is worth living. They’ve studied this.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture that tells us that ANY amount of fear, dread, feeling hopeless or being lost, any amount of dissatisfaction or burnout, any amount of PAIN, any amount of disconnection, any amount of confusion or discomfort on any level can be soothed by either buying something or producing more.
We’ve been convinced that the wheel of capitalism is the ULTIMATE solution to all things - that in having the right things we will fit in, feel loved, feel safe and thus have our entire lives feel good.
We’re sold over and over again that the wealthy and ultra wealthy have SO MUCH BETTER lives than everyone else, and that this is ‘fair’ because they have EARNED their way there.
Thus, if you want a better life, you too must EARN your way there through working harder so you can afford more. Our culture tells us that the status of the wealthy is directly correlated to their value - and thus their safety. They represent ‘acceptable’ culture - and thus how they LOOK is projected as the desirable WAY TO BE.
Our culture tells us that to fit in, to have the right look, to live up to standard IS to be happy, fulfilled and safe.
Thus, any time we feel any amount of discomfort, we have a million people coming at us all day long telling us that the solution lies in their product, service or their place in the cultural totem pole - and that you too can feel as AMAZING as they do, if you just consume or produce how they do.
This is what keeps US consuming the products that they sell. This is what keeps us selling our time and labor for completely unfair prices - because we believe that it’s simply through hard work that we ‘climb our way’ to the top, and that it’s through LOOKING the part that we earn our safety and value.
To the point where we will literally PUT OURSELVES IN DEBT in order to buy goods that make us LOOK like we occupy certain sections of society as a means to trying to fit in and be happy. We are literally trained that to go into debt (to actually make ourselves LESS safe) is the BEST thing to do because it makes us LOOK like we’re in a societal position where we WOULD have our needs met and then some. We’re not seeing that having the Channel belt is a STATUS SYMBOL - it REPRESENTS the very real security that money CAN buy us. But to have that belt when you actually can’t afford it doesn’t give you the BENEFITS of occupying that tax bracket - other than some people believing that you do and therefore treating you differently. Looking the part isn’t the same as the real thing. And yet…
It’s all totally backwards but we can’t see that because again, the marketing is so all inclusive and is so deeply triggering our deep fear/survival instincts that we don’t even see it.
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Let's take a break here and come back for part two next week!
<3
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[…] Part One […]