Every New Year, we are flooded with diet culture marketing, imploring us to shrink our bodies in the name of “healthy” living. Let’s begin rejecting the diet culture mentality. By Dalia Kinsey Diet culture: a toxic belief system that exclusively links thinness to desirability, worthiness, healthiness and morality. Every year the U.S. diet industry uses...
Tag: diet culture
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Food Insecurity, Anti-Blackness, and Fatphobia: What Food Access Advocates Need To Understand
We can’t talk about the politics of food insecurity in the United States without talking about systemic racism, anti-Blackness, and fatphobia. By Patrilie Hernandez, MS It was almost one in the morning when I ended my shift as the hostess of an upscale Latin American restaurant in downtown St. Louis city when I got a...
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Diet Culture, Healthism, and Intuitive Eating: A Primer
We fail to recognize the many ways our health is impacted by racism, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, poverty, and more. Through diet culture and healthism, the pursuit of wellness has been transformed into a highly moralized personal project. CW: food, diet culture, eating disorders, disordered eating By Alexandra Xu In recent years, our collective fixation with...
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We Shouldn’t Have To Say This: Breasts, Areolae, and Nipples Vary In Appearance
It’s critical that we call out and interrogate the misogynoir at the forefront of people’s reactions to Cardi B’s breasts. By Sherronda J. Brown and Lara Witt We really shouldn’t have to even say this, but it’s a fact that breasts, nipples, and areolae vary in size, color, position, and shape, and even in texture....
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Celebrating Adele’s Weight “Loss” Promotes Fatphobia and Misogyny
It is necessary for us to seriously assess and wrestle with why we see Adele’s weight loss as inherently good. TW/CW: This article discusses weight change, dieting, eating disorders, and fatphobia. Adele “lost” (more) weight. I say “more” because when she revealed herself for the first time in a long time for Christmas, many people...
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Forcing Children To Lose Weight Is Child Abuse
There is no other way to put it. Forcing exercise and diets on your children is an attempt to punish them for their (perceived) fatness and that is abuse. TW: this piece discusses anti-fatness, fat camps, diet & exercise, and familial/social child abuse. please proceed with caution. I have been fat for as far back...
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It’s Time for PCOS Advocacy To Embrace Fat Activism
What if fatness was allowed to be part of the experience of PCOS without multiple calls to eradicate it? This essay contains mentions of eating disorders, PCOS, diets, and fatphobia By Nadia Mohd Rasidi I received my diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) when I was 15-years-old. I remember telling the doctor about my menstrual...
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Health and Wellness Is About Mental Health, Not Food Intake
These standards place a burden on fat scholars to shrink themselves and their bodies to fit the mold of health and wellness constructed by white supremacy. CW: this article discusses food, diets, and other content around fatphobia. By Bry Reed It’s Sunday and my mother stands over her black cast iron skillet. The grease pops...
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Diet Culture and Weight Loss Programs Are A Scam
Those who have a vested interest in diet culture are investing in systemic anti-fatness, anti-Blackness, ableism, misogyny/-noir, and capitalism. TW/CW: this article discusses fatphobia, diet culture, and Weight Watchers In September of 2018, Weight Watchers—now known as “WW”— published a press release that showcased the company’s new name, new tagline, and its overall “new” focus....
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Video: Fatphobia Is Not a Sexual Preference by Sonalee Rashatwar
Sexual preferences are not hardwired, they are socially ingrained ideas that we ingest and rarely question. By Sonalee Rashatwar TW/CW: The following video transcript and audio contain mentions of fatphobia, dieting, and trauma. Transcript: Hi! My name is Sonalee Rashatwar, I use she and they pronouns because I identify as non-binary and I’m popularly known...