This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. I don’t have enough superlatives for today’s interview with Virginia Sole-Smith about weight stigma, diet culture, #bopo, men’s disordered eating, 75Hard, and
"Y'all, the grandparents are not okay" hit me so hard.
**mention of dieting below**
A friend in my Quaker meeting was telling me last week about her & her wife's fasting routine and I just... had no idea how to respond. It's a specific kind of heartbreaking to hear a 70 year old feminist lesbian artist and activist talk so matter-of-factly about needing to maintain their weight.
My mother is around the age of the "great aunts" in the article, which is kind of a trip... I mean, I'm forty and my mother is in her seventies, but all of my great aunts (now dead) were Really Old, but possibly they were just my mom's current age? I wonder how old my mother seems to my cousins' kids?
I think a lot about how my maternal grandmother had an early life made precarious by knock on effects of the 1918 Flu Pandemic and then the Great Depression. For her, marrying my grandfather wasn't just about love, but also a step towards the security that eluded her mother. And I think that definitely affected how she understood her body, and the bodies of her daughters. (Complicated by a husband who looked like JFK and who brought his secretary/mistress home for Sunday dinners.)
My mother understands herself in terms of her ability to keep my father happy (to the best of my knowledge my father is more or less unaware of women who aren't my mother as sexually relevant), and suffers great angst because I'm forty, look forty, and am not married.
And I (out on the very tall end of the bell curve of women's height*) woke up one morning, looked at Vogue and realized that everyone in it was either under 25 or had serious money or both. I decided that since I suffered from neither affliction, trying to look like I was still 22 was not an achievable goal. This is not to say I am a perfect font of body positivity or suggest that one of my solutions to my own problems is also a solution to someone else's--when the real problem is 'our society is infested by the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy-- just that every so often I look in the mirror and think "the fact that I'm feeling bad about my [whatever the neurosis of the moment is] is a clear sign that I survived my twenties long enough to look like this." And that feels really powerful.
*Which is a Whole Thing, once you're taller than 5'8" or so.
I've struggled with weight my whole life but a big part of that is because it has caused me health problems. I understand that when my mom told me at age 8 that "diets aren't for kids" she wasn't anticipating that I would start to have symptoms of insulin resistance at age 13 and a whole host of chronic health issues by my late 20s. I struggled with asthma as a child and wanted to be able to run without triggering an attack. I wanted these things to improve - but since everyone was too afraid to give me real answers, I turned to anorexic behavior instead. I have been through a lot of diets over the past twenty years not just chasing a particular figure but to reduce and make my health problems go away.
I'm frustrated at Sole-Smith's comment that macros don't matter because for some people (like me) they really do matter and that is backed by science. Weight loss and gain is not just calories in-calories out (CICO) - hormones, especially insulin, play a huge role (yet CICO is pervasive in diet culture). The lower the insulin, the better, and sugars and carbs raise insulin. Some people can eat as much as they want of everything with no problem but there are others like me who cannot because they are insulin resistant and will go into fat storage mode when they eat too many carbs. But as much as Sole-Smith wants to she can't ignore the science and down people who've "done their research" as well as their personal experiences. I do not believe that going sugar-free and keto is for everyone but it has put most of my chronic health issues in remission because of the science stated above.
Same goes with intuitive eating - we cannot ignore the research behind addiction and that for some people their brains react to certain foods in the same way they would react to drugs and alcohol. Like alcohol, most people are fine, but a small subset are not. Some people can intuitively eat and be fine. I am not one of those people. If I eat two Oreos, I eat the whole bag, so I choose not to eat them. This is because my body treats Oreos like a drug. I eliminated my personally addictive foods long-term and as a result I no longer have cravings for them and overall have a higher quality of life because I'm not obsessively thinking about food.
To say we don't know why kids are bigger today is also false. It's the same reason why everyone is fatter - because of the increase of sugars and carbs in the standard American diet. I don't believe in demonizing these foods (unless our children are having addiction issues) but we also don't need to be giving them free access to them left and right (unless they are struggling to eat).
Obesity isn't a disease but is a symptom of at least two disorders - metabolic disorder (caused primary by insulin) and Binge Eating Disorder. Acknowledging this is NOT fatphobic - I have pictures of myself in a bikini at 185, 206, and 225 pounds on my Instagram that I am really proud of (all obese at 5'5") - yet given the choice I would much rather be on 2 medications at 185 pounds that completely manage my health problems than on 8 medications at 225 pounds that barely manage them. We need more acceptance of large bodies and larger seats and to not judge people on their weight but we can't ignore the health issues or the people with them.
A few things: I once took a religious studies paper at university (college?sorry I get so confused about what you call them all in the US!) which looked at “what replaces traditional religion?” We spent a lot of time looking at diet / “health” fads and on reflection I’m so glad I took that paper as it helped shape lots of my thinking on all of this - especially as a somewhat unapologetic young fat person. We talked a lot about how the language of the Bible had been co-opted, with people talking about food being “good” or “bad” or even “sinful”. It’s one of those things that once you’ve noticed it, it’s hard to stop noticing it.
Slightly related, I’m was struck by the mention of how we deal with fatphobia every day, and how invisible this is to lots of people, including lots of those people who in other ways are really aware of inequities. (And I thought of this because one of my colleagues, who is so switched on in general, the other day said she couldn’t have a hot chocolate because she was “trying to be good”. )
I'm teaching a college-level course on food and culture in the ancient mediterranean, and one of the things I always do as a teacher is encourage students to make connections between the ancient and modern world, so this and the Maintenance Phase podcast (which I just found out about today, thanks to another commenter) are both going to be recommended to my students. The concept of luxury is really interesting for the period I teach - wouldn't it be great to have students to a comparison to diet culture?
This was so excellent. I am also a small-fat white woman, and I definitely have always gotten almost a full pass of thin privilege due to my proportions (busty, hourglass), but I also have kind of a lot of food/weight trauma from my childhood (my mother -- who was, I'd say, a medium-fat woman, was _very_ unhappy with her body and constantly doing one fad diet or another, she got into Weight Watchers when I was in maybe 3rd grade, and...made me, her mildly chubby NINE-YEAR-OLD, do it with her; I also had a horrendous pediatrician who, along with her, basically turned every check-up into a "if you don't lose x-amount-of-weight you'll get diabetes and die of a heart attack by the time you're in college" -- literally, this is a thing a doctor told a NOT EVEN VERY LARGE 4th-GRADER!! Out loud! With his mouth! And my mother...agreed wholeheartedly!). I'd say it's a miracle that I never ended up in a full-on eating disorder and have had more or less the same weight (I assume, I have never had a scale)/shape since finishing puberty, and now as an adult have always had a pretty reasonable relationship with food/eating and also my body (weirdly, I think acquiring a chronic illness/some varying levels of invisible and occasionally visible disability starting in my early 20's really helped with that -- it kind of made me go directly to 'worrying about what my body looks like doesn't matter, let's focus on how it feels and what it can do and shut up about everything else'; getting comfortable with the reality that, like, genetically speaking I'm kind of a lemon, and also everything is chaos and nonsense and things can stop working in an instant for absolutely no reason, made me much more of an immediate body-acceptance person than decades of therapy probably would have ever done...)
This hit home. I’ve been big all my life, and I used a diet that worked once. I kind of know the weight my body wants to be now, and I don’t fight it so much as try to stay fit enough to do what I enjoy, like hiking, without getting too tired. But I’ve seen the toxic diet culture affect a lot of men. For some it’s kind of like a religion or punishment for prior drug or alcohol abuse, coupled with body shaming and “cleanses” that seem to be used to absolve one’s soul from “bad eating”.
My mom - always thin herself - used to tell me I had to be thin to secure, then keep a husband. Since I've always been curvy, she feared me a future fat penniless divorcée... In any case, still curvy, now married, and the main income earner of a family of four. So there mom. I love her and she meant well, but what shitty message to convey to your 14 year old daughter.
I have no time for Gwyneth's orthorexia. Just another way to control women and profit off of them.
Thanks so much for this interview! I wanted to pass on one more thing to Virginia in case this hasn't come up much in her research yet. My dad is a newly-retired pediatrician who has been deeply involved in environmental issues, both for the AAP and other groups, and there seems to be a lot of concern revolving around exposure to pesticides and children's health.
One of my internet friend groups is so into their diets. It’s inescapable, and it’s honestly sad. It’s also hurtful—of course all the women on diets are multiple sizes smaller than I am, even at their “oh my god I can’t believe I weigh this much” weights. They just matter of factly talk about their 1200-calorie diets.
What a wonderful piece. I promptly followed Virginia and started reading her work. I am a pushing-6-feet-tall curvy woman and my weight’s fluctuated wildly my whole life. Roxane Gay’s book Hunger was life changing in that she advocated for a kind of body neutrality. Body positivity never resonated with me because it centered my body in a way that felt outsized (pardon the pun) to my body’s actual relevance to my life and identity and happiness. Body neutrality allows me to think of my body as nothing but a useful vehicle and conduit to my humanity. It’s not good or bad - it just is. And feeding it well and often means I can do more with it!
Ironic that the two things I was looking forward to reading today were this newsletter and Goop! Like....I know Goop is mostly bs but I can't help but be drawn in by the beautiful, perfect world it portrays. I guess it's a bit like diet culture -- intoxicating and toxic.
I also have very mixed feelings about this article.
Coming from a Middle Eastern /Mediterranean family, there is enormous pressure on women to look a certain way. She must be thin, always look like a trophy wife, and anyone who weighs more is useless and unattractive to society. Who would want to hire her? Marry her? My grandmother was a neurotic chainsmoker till she died and was happy the habit kept her thin. This should not have been normalized. I really liked Virginia's take on this subject when it comes to being more inclusive and welcoming to the experiences of Black, queer, and so many other women who are overlooked, only to be replaced by white women who already saturate the landscape. However, working in healthcare and a current med student, it is false to say that people are bigger nowadays and we can't be sure it is because of weight. Oppression and trauma should not be ignored and are very important when discussing compulsive behaviors and psychopathology, but weight itself has been shown to play a role in an individual's health from a biochemical, mechanical, and microbacterial basis. Obesity itself is considered a restrictive lung disease and also contributes to sleep apnea by mechanics alone. The accumulation of fat causes estrogen disturbances and has also been shown to affect the gut biota for the worse. The mechanisms by which weight exerts an impact have broad multi-organ and systemic consequences.
The fixation on diet is a weird one and only in the U.S have I seen people treat their diet as a religion. Do whatever works for you in that your biomarkers are at appropriate levels and it is SUSTAINABLE. I have met so many people who engage in fad diets, quit keto quick because of its restrictive nature and so on. Maybe it is because my grandparents were farmers that I take farm to table seriously as a philosophy, but be lax and accomodating. We can't all afford avocado toast, hemp seed smoothies, etc and shouldn't be shamed and judged if we want a bite of cheesecake. In the medical profession, there is tons of hypocrisy on this subject in which the overweight physician will condescingly talk to an overweight patient to lose weight or die, with no practical and sincere conversation. The stigma is huge but I sometimes wonder about the impact of stigma.
In clinical psychology, we talk about self-conscious emotions not as the media does. They include pride, shame, guilt, and embarassment with shame being the most painful to experience. Not a vague sense of insecurity. There was a time at one of the hospitals I worked at in which a patient was admitted who weighed over 600 pounds and there was no way to care for him since he couldn't fit in the MRI machine. We all felt horrible and we ended up having to take him to a zoo for his MRI. It was mortifying for all of us, so much shame, and I can't even begin to grasp how the patient himself must have felt. A year later, he came in with a substantial degree of weight lost and attributed the shame he felt then as a chief motivating factor. I have heard many similar stories from other patients and it does leave me wondering given that self-conscious emotions did evolve to allow us to avoid isolation and improve pro-social and motivational behaviors.
Ooh, I loved this!
"Y'all, the grandparents are not okay" hit me so hard.
**mention of dieting below**
A friend in my Quaker meeting was telling me last week about her & her wife's fasting routine and I just... had no idea how to respond. It's a specific kind of heartbreaking to hear a 70 year old feminist lesbian artist and activist talk so matter-of-factly about needing to maintain their weight.
My mother is around the age of the "great aunts" in the article, which is kind of a trip... I mean, I'm forty and my mother is in her seventies, but all of my great aunts (now dead) were Really Old, but possibly they were just my mom's current age? I wonder how old my mother seems to my cousins' kids?
I think a lot about how my maternal grandmother had an early life made precarious by knock on effects of the 1918 Flu Pandemic and then the Great Depression. For her, marrying my grandfather wasn't just about love, but also a step towards the security that eluded her mother. And I think that definitely affected how she understood her body, and the bodies of her daughters. (Complicated by a husband who looked like JFK and who brought his secretary/mistress home for Sunday dinners.)
My mother understands herself in terms of her ability to keep my father happy (to the best of my knowledge my father is more or less unaware of women who aren't my mother as sexually relevant), and suffers great angst because I'm forty, look forty, and am not married.
And I (out on the very tall end of the bell curve of women's height*) woke up one morning, looked at Vogue and realized that everyone in it was either under 25 or had serious money or both. I decided that since I suffered from neither affliction, trying to look like I was still 22 was not an achievable goal. This is not to say I am a perfect font of body positivity or suggest that one of my solutions to my own problems is also a solution to someone else's--when the real problem is 'our society is infested by the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy-- just that every so often I look in the mirror and think "the fact that I'm feeling bad about my [whatever the neurosis of the moment is] is a clear sign that I survived my twenties long enough to look like this." And that feels really powerful.
*Which is a Whole Thing, once you're taller than 5'8" or so.
Hey a shoutout to the Annehelen reader who turned me onto Aubrey Gordon's new podcast, Maintenance Phase (with Michael Hobbes). Wow it's good.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/maintenance-phase/id1535408667
Just as fantastic as promised. And totally agree about Virginia's recent post about the 13-year-old enjoying Oreos, wow wow wow that was great
I have mixed feelings about this article.
I've struggled with weight my whole life but a big part of that is because it has caused me health problems. I understand that when my mom told me at age 8 that "diets aren't for kids" she wasn't anticipating that I would start to have symptoms of insulin resistance at age 13 and a whole host of chronic health issues by my late 20s. I struggled with asthma as a child and wanted to be able to run without triggering an attack. I wanted these things to improve - but since everyone was too afraid to give me real answers, I turned to anorexic behavior instead. I have been through a lot of diets over the past twenty years not just chasing a particular figure but to reduce and make my health problems go away.
I'm frustrated at Sole-Smith's comment that macros don't matter because for some people (like me) they really do matter and that is backed by science. Weight loss and gain is not just calories in-calories out (CICO) - hormones, especially insulin, play a huge role (yet CICO is pervasive in diet culture). The lower the insulin, the better, and sugars and carbs raise insulin. Some people can eat as much as they want of everything with no problem but there are others like me who cannot because they are insulin resistant and will go into fat storage mode when they eat too many carbs. But as much as Sole-Smith wants to she can't ignore the science and down people who've "done their research" as well as their personal experiences. I do not believe that going sugar-free and keto is for everyone but it has put most of my chronic health issues in remission because of the science stated above.
Same goes with intuitive eating - we cannot ignore the research behind addiction and that for some people their brains react to certain foods in the same way they would react to drugs and alcohol. Like alcohol, most people are fine, but a small subset are not. Some people can intuitively eat and be fine. I am not one of those people. If I eat two Oreos, I eat the whole bag, so I choose not to eat them. This is because my body treats Oreos like a drug. I eliminated my personally addictive foods long-term and as a result I no longer have cravings for them and overall have a higher quality of life because I'm not obsessively thinking about food.
To say we don't know why kids are bigger today is also false. It's the same reason why everyone is fatter - because of the increase of sugars and carbs in the standard American diet. I don't believe in demonizing these foods (unless our children are having addiction issues) but we also don't need to be giving them free access to them left and right (unless they are struggling to eat).
Obesity isn't a disease but is a symptom of at least two disorders - metabolic disorder (caused primary by insulin) and Binge Eating Disorder. Acknowledging this is NOT fatphobic - I have pictures of myself in a bikini at 185, 206, and 225 pounds on my Instagram that I am really proud of (all obese at 5'5") - yet given the choice I would much rather be on 2 medications at 185 pounds that completely manage my health problems than on 8 medications at 225 pounds that barely manage them. We need more acceptance of large bodies and larger seats and to not judge people on their weight but we can't ignore the health issues or the people with them.
From one small fat white woman to another--thanks!
Thanks for this interview, so much hit home here.
A few things: I once took a religious studies paper at university (college?sorry I get so confused about what you call them all in the US!) which looked at “what replaces traditional religion?” We spent a lot of time looking at diet / “health” fads and on reflection I’m so glad I took that paper as it helped shape lots of my thinking on all of this - especially as a somewhat unapologetic young fat person. We talked a lot about how the language of the Bible had been co-opted, with people talking about food being “good” or “bad” or even “sinful”. It’s one of those things that once you’ve noticed it, it’s hard to stop noticing it.
Slightly related, I’m was struck by the mention of how we deal with fatphobia every day, and how invisible this is to lots of people, including lots of those people who in other ways are really aware of inequities. (And I thought of this because one of my colleagues, who is so switched on in general, the other day said she couldn’t have a hot chocolate because she was “trying to be good”. )
I'm teaching a college-level course on food and culture in the ancient mediterranean, and one of the things I always do as a teacher is encourage students to make connections between the ancient and modern world, so this and the Maintenance Phase podcast (which I just found out about today, thanks to another commenter) are both going to be recommended to my students. The concept of luxury is really interesting for the period I teach - wouldn't it be great to have students to a comparison to diet culture?
This was so excellent. I am also a small-fat white woman, and I definitely have always gotten almost a full pass of thin privilege due to my proportions (busty, hourglass), but I also have kind of a lot of food/weight trauma from my childhood (my mother -- who was, I'd say, a medium-fat woman, was _very_ unhappy with her body and constantly doing one fad diet or another, she got into Weight Watchers when I was in maybe 3rd grade, and...made me, her mildly chubby NINE-YEAR-OLD, do it with her; I also had a horrendous pediatrician who, along with her, basically turned every check-up into a "if you don't lose x-amount-of-weight you'll get diabetes and die of a heart attack by the time you're in college" -- literally, this is a thing a doctor told a NOT EVEN VERY LARGE 4th-GRADER!! Out loud! With his mouth! And my mother...agreed wholeheartedly!). I'd say it's a miracle that I never ended up in a full-on eating disorder and have had more or less the same weight (I assume, I have never had a scale)/shape since finishing puberty, and now as an adult have always had a pretty reasonable relationship with food/eating and also my body (weirdly, I think acquiring a chronic illness/some varying levels of invisible and occasionally visible disability starting in my early 20's really helped with that -- it kind of made me go directly to 'worrying about what my body looks like doesn't matter, let's focus on how it feels and what it can do and shut up about everything else'; getting comfortable with the reality that, like, genetically speaking I'm kind of a lemon, and also everything is chaos and nonsense and things can stop working in an instant for absolutely no reason, made me much more of an immediate body-acceptance person than decades of therapy probably would have ever done...)
This hit home. I’ve been big all my life, and I used a diet that worked once. I kind of know the weight my body wants to be now, and I don’t fight it so much as try to stay fit enough to do what I enjoy, like hiking, without getting too tired. But I’ve seen the toxic diet culture affect a lot of men. For some it’s kind of like a religion or punishment for prior drug or alcohol abuse, coupled with body shaming and “cleanses” that seem to be used to absolve one’s soul from “bad eating”.
My mom - always thin herself - used to tell me I had to be thin to secure, then keep a husband. Since I've always been curvy, she feared me a future fat penniless divorcée... In any case, still curvy, now married, and the main income earner of a family of four. So there mom. I love her and she meant well, but what shitty message to convey to your 14 year old daughter.
I have no time for Gwyneth's orthorexia. Just another way to control women and profit off of them.
Thanks so much for this interview! I wanted to pass on one more thing to Virginia in case this hasn't come up much in her research yet. My dad is a newly-retired pediatrician who has been deeply involved in environmental issues, both for the AAP and other groups, and there seems to be a lot of concern revolving around exposure to pesticides and children's health.
One of my internet friend groups is so into their diets. It’s inescapable, and it’s honestly sad. It’s also hurtful—of course all the women on diets are multiple sizes smaller than I am, even at their “oh my god I can’t believe I weigh this much” weights. They just matter of factly talk about their 1200-calorie diets.
What a wonderful piece. I promptly followed Virginia and started reading her work. I am a pushing-6-feet-tall curvy woman and my weight’s fluctuated wildly my whole life. Roxane Gay’s book Hunger was life changing in that she advocated for a kind of body neutrality. Body positivity never resonated with me because it centered my body in a way that felt outsized (pardon the pun) to my body’s actual relevance to my life and identity and happiness. Body neutrality allows me to think of my body as nothing but a useful vehicle and conduit to my humanity. It’s not good or bad - it just is. And feeding it well and often means I can do more with it!
Ironic that the two things I was looking forward to reading today were this newsletter and Goop! Like....I know Goop is mostly bs but I can't help but be drawn in by the beautiful, perfect world it portrays. I guess it's a bit like diet culture -- intoxicating and toxic.
I also have very mixed feelings about this article.
Coming from a Middle Eastern /Mediterranean family, there is enormous pressure on women to look a certain way. She must be thin, always look like a trophy wife, and anyone who weighs more is useless and unattractive to society. Who would want to hire her? Marry her? My grandmother was a neurotic chainsmoker till she died and was happy the habit kept her thin. This should not have been normalized. I really liked Virginia's take on this subject when it comes to being more inclusive and welcoming to the experiences of Black, queer, and so many other women who are overlooked, only to be replaced by white women who already saturate the landscape. However, working in healthcare and a current med student, it is false to say that people are bigger nowadays and we can't be sure it is because of weight. Oppression and trauma should not be ignored and are very important when discussing compulsive behaviors and psychopathology, but weight itself has been shown to play a role in an individual's health from a biochemical, mechanical, and microbacterial basis. Obesity itself is considered a restrictive lung disease and also contributes to sleep apnea by mechanics alone. The accumulation of fat causes estrogen disturbances and has also been shown to affect the gut biota for the worse. The mechanisms by which weight exerts an impact have broad multi-organ and systemic consequences.
The fixation on diet is a weird one and only in the U.S have I seen people treat their diet as a religion. Do whatever works for you in that your biomarkers are at appropriate levels and it is SUSTAINABLE. I have met so many people who engage in fad diets, quit keto quick because of its restrictive nature and so on. Maybe it is because my grandparents were farmers that I take farm to table seriously as a philosophy, but be lax and accomodating. We can't all afford avocado toast, hemp seed smoothies, etc and shouldn't be shamed and judged if we want a bite of cheesecake. In the medical profession, there is tons of hypocrisy on this subject in which the overweight physician will condescingly talk to an overweight patient to lose weight or die, with no practical and sincere conversation. The stigma is huge but I sometimes wonder about the impact of stigma.
In clinical psychology, we talk about self-conscious emotions not as the media does. They include pride, shame, guilt, and embarassment with shame being the most painful to experience. Not a vague sense of insecurity. There was a time at one of the hospitals I worked at in which a patient was admitted who weighed over 600 pounds and there was no way to care for him since he couldn't fit in the MRI machine. We all felt horrible and we ended up having to take him to a zoo for his MRI. It was mortifying for all of us, so much shame, and I can't even begin to grasp how the patient himself must have felt. A year later, he came in with a substantial degree of weight lost and attributed the shame he felt then as a chief motivating factor. I have heard many similar stories from other patients and it does leave me wondering given that self-conscious emotions did evolve to allow us to avoid isolation and improve pro-social and motivational behaviors.