Diet Culture: How Your Insecurities Make People Rich
Before I start, I want to make it very clear that I will be discussing weight loss and disordered eating in this post. Although I will avoid using numbers in regard to weight or caloric intakes, if these are subjects that trigger you then please proceed with caution. I will try my best to use neutral language - nevertheless, I know this is a sensitive subject and I would urge you to please not expose yourself to anything that may cause you distress. Much love, Isabel.
Patriarchy (noun):
A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
"the dominant ideology of patriarchy"
'The Patriarchy' is a phrase you hear a lot in discussions of beauty standards for women. This is because media forms like magazines and tv shows, which show us what the supposed beauty ideal is, are, due to sexism and discrimination in the business world, usually owned by privileged cisgender white men. In short, these men select women they think are the most beautiful, put them on a magazine cover or on a runway, and through overexposure to one specific body type, we become conditioned to think that is the epitome of beauty. There are three big catches with this though:
1. Most of these models don't even look like that, really. Women in magazines have been photoshopped, and models often go hours without eating before a catwalk or photoshoot so that their stomachs are empty and therefore appear flatter.
2. The beauty ideals that are presented to us are not naturally attainable for most people. Most of us can't be slim and have tanned skin year-round. Not only that, but beauty ideals exclude different races and body types, but then combine the 'best' of all of these physical appearances into one beauty ideal that simply isn't realistically possible without at the very least having a personal trainer, but usually requiring plastic surgery. For example, women are expected to have tiny waists but large boobs, full lips but a tiny nose, dark skin but straight, light hair. These are all physical attributes that can but rarely naturally coincide.
3. If you were to replace all the images we see on a daily basis of thin, tall, tanned white cisgender people with literally any other specific body type, our perspective would change entirely. Our perception of beauty has been manipulated by businessmen for one reason only: to make us feel like we're not good enough as we are.
So, why do they try and undermine our self-confidence by setting a beauty standard for us that we will never be able to achieve? The answer is very simple: to sell us things. We are told that if we can’t look like the people in magazines, we need to do everything we can to ‘improve’ our physical appearance. We’re not good enough, we never will be, but we still need to strive endlessly to be as Not Ugly as possible. And, luckily for us, plenty of expensive products exist to help us achieve this!
Besides hair, weight is generally speaking the “easiest” thing about yourself to change, which is why I believe it's been latched onto so much by businesses as a big money-making opportunity. We're told it's possible for all of us to look more like a model if we just work hard enough. We can't make ourselves taller or change the proportions of our face, but we can all be just that bit skinnier - and we'll be happier for it, too. The thing is, though, not all bodies can healthily maintain a low weight - and that's ok!
I want to preface this next part by saying - if you’ve lost weight and gained confidence from it, great. I’m happy for you. You may well disagree with what I’m about to say; and that’s okay, but I’m going to say it anyway.
It’s really sad to me that people think they need to hit a target weight in order to have permission to like the way they look. If you want to lose weight healthily because you think it will help you feel better physically and/or mentally, that’s great. Go for it. But do it properly, and do it out of self-love. Learn self-care habits that you can carry with you for years to come, and treat your body with the respect it deserves throughout the entire process. If you want to lose weight, do not turn to diet products.
Diet products, while they may technically do what they say, are not your friend. All of these flat tummy teas and weight loss shakes are made by people who want to profit from your insecurity. They know that you're better off losing weight through healthy eating and exercise, but they also know that you feel bad enough about yourself that you'll pay whatever it takes to speed up the weight-loss process. Diet products are the height of capitalism because they have found a way that, when all else fails, they can market our own bodies back to us. They are telling us our bodies aren't good enough unless we use their products. And it works. We buy into it, literally and metaphorically, because we've been bombarded with messages all our lives that reinforce that message. The message that we are not good enough as we are because we don't look a certain way.
Diet products are, above all else, a marketing scheme. The weight loss you achieve while using them will rarely be sustainable without further use of the products - and that's the whole point. They want you to believe that not only are you not good enough as you are, but you are in fact only good enough and beautiful enough when you are spending money on these products. Now, I'm hesitant to place blame at the feet of people who get sucked into these kinds of schemes. I'm sure they mean well, and probably think they're helping people achieve their goal and find happiness. But I think Jameela Jamil said it best when she described celebrities like the Kardashians, who constantly promote diet products, as "double agents for the patriarchy". Granted, this description was aimed at celebrities more than anyone else, but I do believe the concept still applies.
What Jameela is essentially saying is that, although it is not an intentionally harmful thing, by promoting these kinds of products you are passing on the insecurity that made you feel you needed them in the first place. The celebrities who promote these products are lying to you about their effectiveness - they did not achieve their results without the help professional dieticians, chefs, and personal trainers. The 'regular' people who promote them are buying into a toxic narrative about self-worth that has been only added to by the celebrities.
I personally struggled a great deal as a teenager with low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, and disordered eating. Although there were naturally multiple factors that fed into this, I think it is significant that as a pre-teen I began literally holding up images of girls in magazines next to the mirror and comparing the shape of my body to theirs. I was bigger than all the girls I saw, so I decided that I was the problem. As an adult, I have learned to identify the causes of my insecurities, to the point where I can recognise when a specific insecurity is the result of conditioning through media. I came across something on social media a while back that suggested that when you start to feel insecure about your appearance, you ask yourself who profits from this insecurity. This line of thinking has made such a huge difference in how I view myself.
When I start to feel bad about my weight, I remind myself that there are lots of powerful businessmen who would love nothing more than for me to feel so bad about my weight that I buy their products. Thinking of it like this makes loving yourself unconditionally feel like an act of defiance - which, in this day and age, it pretty much is. I have a lot of thoughts to share on self-acceptance and how disability impacts your perception of yourself mentally and physically, but I'll save those for another day. In the meantime, I would urge you, too, to examine where your insecurities come from and to challenge these ideas. You might be surprised what you uncover.
Remember to love yourself fiercely, unconditionally, and unapologetically.
Hugs,
Isabel
Patriarchy (noun):
A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
"the dominant ideology of patriarchy"
'The Patriarchy' is a phrase you hear a lot in discussions of beauty standards for women. This is because media forms like magazines and tv shows, which show us what the supposed beauty ideal is, are, due to sexism and discrimination in the business world, usually owned by privileged cisgender white men. In short, these men select women they think are the most beautiful, put them on a magazine cover or on a runway, and through overexposure to one specific body type, we become conditioned to think that is the epitome of beauty. There are three big catches with this though:
1. Most of these models don't even look like that, really. Women in magazines have been photoshopped, and models often go hours without eating before a catwalk or photoshoot so that their stomachs are empty and therefore appear flatter.
2. The beauty ideals that are presented to us are not naturally attainable for most people. Most of us can't be slim and have tanned skin year-round. Not only that, but beauty ideals exclude different races and body types, but then combine the 'best' of all of these physical appearances into one beauty ideal that simply isn't realistically possible without at the very least having a personal trainer, but usually requiring plastic surgery. For example, women are expected to have tiny waists but large boobs, full lips but a tiny nose, dark skin but straight, light hair. These are all physical attributes that can but rarely naturally coincide.
3. If you were to replace all the images we see on a daily basis of thin, tall, tanned white cisgender people with literally any other specific body type, our perspective would change entirely. Our perception of beauty has been manipulated by businessmen for one reason only: to make us feel like we're not good enough as we are.
So, why do they try and undermine our self-confidence by setting a beauty standard for us that we will never be able to achieve? The answer is very simple: to sell us things. We are told that if we can’t look like the people in magazines, we need to do everything we can to ‘improve’ our physical appearance. We’re not good enough, we never will be, but we still need to strive endlessly to be as Not Ugly as possible. And, luckily for us, plenty of expensive products exist to help us achieve this!
Besides hair, weight is generally speaking the “easiest” thing about yourself to change, which is why I believe it's been latched onto so much by businesses as a big money-making opportunity. We're told it's possible for all of us to look more like a model if we just work hard enough. We can't make ourselves taller or change the proportions of our face, but we can all be just that bit skinnier - and we'll be happier for it, too. The thing is, though, not all bodies can healthily maintain a low weight - and that's ok!
I want to preface this next part by saying - if you’ve lost weight and gained confidence from it, great. I’m happy for you. You may well disagree with what I’m about to say; and that’s okay, but I’m going to say it anyway.
It’s really sad to me that people think they need to hit a target weight in order to have permission to like the way they look. If you want to lose weight healthily because you think it will help you feel better physically and/or mentally, that’s great. Go for it. But do it properly, and do it out of self-love. Learn self-care habits that you can carry with you for years to come, and treat your body with the respect it deserves throughout the entire process. If you want to lose weight, do not turn to diet products.
Diet products, while they may technically do what they say, are not your friend. All of these flat tummy teas and weight loss shakes are made by people who want to profit from your insecurity. They know that you're better off losing weight through healthy eating and exercise, but they also know that you feel bad enough about yourself that you'll pay whatever it takes to speed up the weight-loss process. Diet products are the height of capitalism because they have found a way that, when all else fails, they can market our own bodies back to us. They are telling us our bodies aren't good enough unless we use their products. And it works. We buy into it, literally and metaphorically, because we've been bombarded with messages all our lives that reinforce that message. The message that we are not good enough as we are because we don't look a certain way.
Diet products are, above all else, a marketing scheme. The weight loss you achieve while using them will rarely be sustainable without further use of the products - and that's the whole point. They want you to believe that not only are you not good enough as you are, but you are in fact only good enough and beautiful enough when you are spending money on these products. Now, I'm hesitant to place blame at the feet of people who get sucked into these kinds of schemes. I'm sure they mean well, and probably think they're helping people achieve their goal and find happiness. But I think Jameela Jamil said it best when she described celebrities like the Kardashians, who constantly promote diet products, as "double agents for the patriarchy". Granted, this description was aimed at celebrities more than anyone else, but I do believe the concept still applies.
What Jameela is essentially saying is that, although it is not an intentionally harmful thing, by promoting these kinds of products you are passing on the insecurity that made you feel you needed them in the first place. The celebrities who promote these products are lying to you about their effectiveness - they did not achieve their results without the help professional dieticians, chefs, and personal trainers. The 'regular' people who promote them are buying into a toxic narrative about self-worth that has been only added to by the celebrities.
I personally struggled a great deal as a teenager with low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, and disordered eating. Although there were naturally multiple factors that fed into this, I think it is significant that as a pre-teen I began literally holding up images of girls in magazines next to the mirror and comparing the shape of my body to theirs. I was bigger than all the girls I saw, so I decided that I was the problem. As an adult, I have learned to identify the causes of my insecurities, to the point where I can recognise when a specific insecurity is the result of conditioning through media. I came across something on social media a while back that suggested that when you start to feel insecure about your appearance, you ask yourself who profits from this insecurity. This line of thinking has made such a huge difference in how I view myself.
When I start to feel bad about my weight, I remind myself that there are lots of powerful businessmen who would love nothing more than for me to feel so bad about my weight that I buy their products. Thinking of it like this makes loving yourself unconditionally feel like an act of defiance - which, in this day and age, it pretty much is. I have a lot of thoughts to share on self-acceptance and how disability impacts your perception of yourself mentally and physically, but I'll save those for another day. In the meantime, I would urge you, too, to examine where your insecurities come from and to challenge these ideas. You might be surprised what you uncover.
Remember to love yourself fiercely, unconditionally, and unapologetically.
Hugs,
Isabel
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