Men Will Never Understand Diet Culture.
For years, I have been working on untangling myself from the throes of diet culture and fatphobia.
It wasn’t easy. Doing so required so much mental restructuring, research, and Instagram unfollowing. It required reexamining my personal biases and coming to terms with my own shortcomings. It required changing the lens through which I see the world.
But I did it. I continue to do it. Now, I have a healthy relationship with food. I have a healthy relationship with social media. And any time I see an ad for a new diet or liposuction or coolsculpting, I look the other way.
So when the topic of fatphobia came up in conversation with a couple male friends, I was shocked at their views.
“If fatphobia is being scared of being fat,” one of them said, “Then I’m fatphobic.”
“I just can’t support a practice that takes years off of your life,” the other said.
I was stunned.
It was hard for me to listen to them speak of a topic we clearly disagreed on. They shared my political views and even my sports opinions, but not this. I felt betrayed, almost. I didn’t feel like I could form a strong enough argument to convince them of my views.
Now, though, I can. So here’s what I would say to them if I could go back to that conversation:
- Weight is not a reliable indicator of health. This has been confirmed over and over by sources ranging from a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine to books by people with PhDs. Diet culture is toxic because it values weight, size, and shape over health and well-being. Plus, BMI is completely outdated and racist.
- Weight has no morality. Our society, on the other hand, worships thinness as idyllic and perfect while demonizing fat people. But weight does not make a person good or bad — it just makes them human.
- Diets — all diets — encourage disordered eating. According to the National Eating Disorders Collaboration, “Disordered eating may include restrictive eating, compulsive eating, or irregular or inflexible eating patterns. Dieting is one of the most common forms of disordered eating.” And while disordered eating is not the same thing as an eating disorder, it frequently leads to one.
- You’re not afraid of being fat. You’re afraid of being treated the way fat people are treated. Diet culture oppresses people who don’t match up with the supposed “picture of health.” Fat people are discriminated against at hospitals and doctor’s offices when their doctors dismiss their concerns and tell them to “just lose weight.” They are also constantly told by society to shrink themselves by any means in order to attain the higher social status that accompanies thinness.
- Men will never understand diet culture like women because they will never experience diet culture like women do. Fatphobia is rooted in the patriarchy. That is proven by fat men being more accepted in society that fat women are. It is proven by the glorification of the “dad bod” but the animosity towards postpartum bodies. It is proven by the eating disorders that overwhelmingly belong to women. Steph Gaudreau, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, said it best: “The constant pursuit of body perfection tries to keep us spinning on a hamster wheel so that we do not have the time or energy for anything else.” Fatphobia is an inherently feminist issue.
So next time a woman speaks up about her qualms with diet culture, listen.
