CULTURE | HEALTH
Diet Culture: A Feminist Perspective
WORDS BY LARA GIBBS | LARA@THEIWI.ORG | 29 FEBRUARY 2024
What is ‘Diet Culture’?
Diet culture is a set of ideals surrounding food, dieting and body image which promote weight loss. It pushes fad diets which are often not based on medical research, of which the sole purpose is weight loss, most notably; the Atkins diet or Keto. These diets often involve extreme restrictive behaviours synonymous with eating disorders. The diet industry is worth $76 billion in the US and at least £2 billion in the UK, making it a very lucrative business. With the demand not going anywhere, these numbers are liable to increase.
Diet culture is promoted through social media, fashion and magazines. Binary notions surrounding dieting often categorise food into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, leaving foods with higher calories labelled as ‘bad’.
How is ‘diet culture’ gendered?
Thinness began to enter Western female consciousness in the 1920s. According to research, the “highest reported prevalence of disordered eating occurred during the 1920s and 1980s, the two periods during which the “ideal woman” was thinnest in U.S. history.” While beauty ideals are constantly evolving and the most desirable figure for a woman can change like a trend, thinness seems to have stood the test of time. Feminist writer Susan Bordo postulates that the hourglass figure, idealised during the 1950s, is representative of maternal femininity. Bordo argues that the move towards a slender body ideal symbolises a separation from maternal power as women moved into professional and male spheres. She asserts that this led to women being/ deterred from placing success over physical appearance.
Jennifer Wilson builds on this by postulating that women who take up space threaten the patriarchal structure. She says that “If a woman can be bigger than a man (or even just as big) how can his size and strength maintain power?” As women, we are often made to feel like we should take up less space, making ourselves smaller and weaker. Perhaps, in this instance, more work needs to be done to understand the ‘male gaze’. We may assume that the scrutinization of female bodies is based on male sexual desires or what is attractive to men. But examining existing patriarchal power structures reveals that Western society’s preoccupation with thinness stems from “an obsession about female obedience.” Men are socialised to be confident, leaderful and take up space, while women are socialised to be polite, obedient and take up less space, even at our own expense.
But at what cost?
Dieting and the pressure to be thin has resulted in dangerous repercussions for women’s health. One study found that women who engaged in moderate dieting were five times more likely to develop an eating disorder, while those practising extreme restriction became 18 times more likely. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate amongst mental health disorders. While there are resources available, waiting lists to receive medical treatment for an eating disorder are usually long. Another study revealed that 69–84% of US women are not satisfied with their bodies and want to lose weight. These are hard perceptions to combat due to the inescapable pressures created by the diet industry.
Women appear to be increasingly aware of the power structures that allow the diet industry to maintain its stronghold. We are seeing brands celebrating body diversity and providing women with the representation that we deserve. There is more accountability within the public sphere. However, Emma Dabiri comments that we must go further than ‘inclusive’ representation and understand the root causes of the issue. She argues that without this understanding, we will be unable to move away from constantly changing beauty and body weight trends. With the power of Instagram and photo editing, women are faced with further unreachable standards of beauty. Despite the work of body positivity activists, fatphobia persists and is arguably more prevalent than ever. At the same time, drugs like Ozempic, heralded as a ‘miracle’ for weight loss, are becoming more easily accessible. The pressure for women to adhere to certain body ideals remains, as weight and appearance are all too often equated to our value as women.
i. Harrison, K., & Cantor, J. (1997). The relationship between media consumption and eating disorders. Journal of Communication, 47(1), 40–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1997.tb02692.x
ii. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight. 1993.
iii. Wilson, Jennifer S., "Publicly Fat: Narratives of Fatphobia, Diet Culture, and Intersectional Feminism" (2021). University Honors Program Senior Projects. https://neiudc.neiu.edu/uhp-projects/22
iv. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth, 2002.
v. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/statistics/#dieting-and-eating-disorders Accessed February 8th, 2024.
vi. Ibid.
vii. Dabiri, Emma, Disobedient Bodies, 2023.