Speaker 1: It is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff I've
Speaker 1: never told to your Protection of my Heart radio is
Speaker 1: how stuff works. I believe this is coming out in
Speaker 1: a new decade. Yes, yes, And so the topic we
Speaker 1: chose because it is resolution season for this this classic
Speaker 1: episode is actually something we've talked about a lot before
Speaker 1: on here, and we've struggled with a lot. Is dieting
Speaker 1: anti feminist, right, And this comes on the coat tails
Speaker 1: of another ad that calls a lot of controversy so
Speaker 1: much the Peloton ad where a husband gives his very fit, wire,
Speaker 1: very fit, very appairly, very surprised wife, yes, a two
Speaker 1: thous dollar exercise bike and she like spends a year
Speaker 1: working out and then gives him a video that thanks
Speaker 1: him at the end of the next year. It was
Speaker 1: that terrified face she has apparently that's resting scared face.
Speaker 1: Scared face. Uh, you definitely have heard of that. I'd
Speaker 1: be shocked if you hadn't. The company lost almost a
Speaker 1: billion dollars and talking one day. She has become famous
Speaker 1: and has even done a Gin snatched her up and
Speaker 1: got her to act on a gym commercial. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole idea of dieting and can you do it
Speaker 1: when we have all of these standards around how women
Speaker 1: should look and how does that interact with feminism and
Speaker 1: health and just something we're still kind of thinking on,
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of listeners are thinking on
Speaker 1: and again, as you're going to be bombarded with I've
Speaker 1: already gotten it, like the he joined this gym, or
Speaker 1: here's this juice clans or or here's these vitamins or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be that people are trying to sell
Speaker 1: you so you look a certain way for your New
Speaker 1: Year's resolution, have this body right exactly. So we thought
Speaker 1: you would play this classic episode on dieting and whether
Speaker 1: or not it's anti feminist, So please enjoy. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
Speaker 1: and today's topic came um from the co host of
Speaker 1: Pop Stuff, one of our fellow How Stuff Works podcast Tracy.
Speaker 1: She came up to me one day and she said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea for stuff Mom Never Told you
Speaker 1: You and Caroline should tackle whether or not dieting is
Speaker 1: anti feminist because uh, and I was like, hmm, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a good idea, because the more I thought
Speaker 1: about it, the more complicated the answer to that question
Speaker 1: quickly became. Yeah, everybody has opinions on what you should
Speaker 1: do with your diet, right because on on the one hand, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you can argue from the choice perspective of
Speaker 1: feminism that well, if you choose to diet, and in
Speaker 1: terms of dieting, we're talking about like the typical like
Speaker 1: caloric restriction in order to lose weight and saying like,
Speaker 1: if that's your choice and that should be fine, and
Speaker 1: then other camp saying no, dieting should not be practiced
Speaker 1: because it only I guess goes in like feeds pun there,
Speaker 1: it only feeds the male gaze. You're only getting thin
Speaker 1: for ultimately paternalistic reasons. And then some people saying you
Speaker 1: shouldn't even look in the mirror to begin with. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of and and in a good way.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of um fat acceptance going around
Speaker 1: right now and that definitely needs to happen. But then
Speaker 1: like it just starts, it can be over welming though,
Speaker 1: if you just want to answer that question of dieting
Speaker 1: right because when Kristen and I were talking about this topic.
Speaker 1: We were emailing back and forth about it, and I
Speaker 1: told her, I was like, I feel like I'm going
Speaker 1: down the fat rabbit hole here because you start reading
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, diets gender seems pretty straightforward, right, No,
Speaker 1: not not at all, because yeah, you can read the
Speaker 1: statistics on you know, who's dieting, how much are they dieting,
Speaker 1: Does it work, does it fail? Um? But then you
Speaker 1: start getting into well, if you diet, you're not a
Speaker 1: good woman. You're you're being bad at being a woman. Basically, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're buying into this system, the patriarchy. But then there's
Speaker 1: people who say, well, I'm just gonna eat whatever I
Speaker 1: want and I'm not going to let the doctor way
Speaker 1: way me way myself, you know, at the doctor's office,
Speaker 1: because that's body fascism. There's a lot of like extreme
Speaker 1: resistance to the idea of diets. And while I could
Speaker 1: go on a tangent about how I diets are stupid
Speaker 1: and if you want to take care of your body,
Speaker 1: you should, and you should just make a lifestyle change,
Speaker 1: like a lifestyle diet, the capital d diet of paying
Speaker 1: attention to eating wholesome foods, exactly. But I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you that you should do that. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to tell you that you should lose weight or
Speaker 1: not lose weight based on whether you're a woman, a man,
Speaker 1: a feminist and anti feminist, whether you're a child, someone
Speaker 1: who lives in another country, whether you're a puppy. I
Speaker 1: don't know. And it's not just like saying no to dieting,
Speaker 1: but you know the type of weight loss program they
Speaker 1: want to go to. But one thing I think that
Speaker 1: that we can go ahead and establish is that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of companies making a lot of money
Speaker 1: off of a fat phobia, of all of this diet
Speaker 1: marketing um that goes on. For instance, uh, the US
Speaker 1: diet and weight loss industry produced over sixty billion dollars
Speaker 1: in revenue in two thousand eleven alone, So a lot
Speaker 1: of us are buying into it. And then I mean,
Speaker 1: we could just tail spin off into conversations about whether
Speaker 1: or not processed diet food is really all that good
Speaker 1: for you. But it's big. The marketing is mostly targeted
Speaker 1: two women. I believe it was in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: that weight Watchers launched its first campaign toward men and
Speaker 1: Sociological Images, a great blog they should totally check out
Speaker 1: if you haven't before. Uh did a comparison of a
Speaker 1: typical weight Watchers at targeted toward women. That's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're gonna look so good eat these
Speaker 1: small portions of food and I'm not trying to diswait
Speaker 1: watch And I also know that plenty of people have
Speaker 1: had success from that system, and that's totally fine. But
Speaker 1: then when they had an ad for their men's launch,
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, get on weight Watchers and
Speaker 1: you're like a man. It was still very you know,
Speaker 1: there was obviously it was obviously saying you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we know that dieting is more this thing for for women,
Speaker 1: but look, you can retain your masculinity and still do it.
Speaker 1: It's the same reason why diet coke exists and has
Speaker 1: like a nice font and a lot of times in
Speaker 1: the commercials that is held by you know, a thin
Speaker 1: woman who's watching a shirtless construction worker, and then Coke
Speaker 1: zero exists in black Anda. You know, why don't men ever,
Speaker 1: Why aren't there ever men in yoga commercials? Because they're
Speaker 1: all eating man witches on their man diet. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is no hungry woman brand of frozen dinner, which maybe
Speaker 1: I should start. Maybe I don't know why. That just
Speaker 1: made me so sad hungry woman dinners. It's just yogurt, guys,
Speaker 1: guess what surprised now? And on the front there's like
Speaker 1: just a cartoon picture of a woman like staring digit
Speaker 1: holding a spoon, staring dejectedly into her bowl. It's just
Speaker 1: a frozen yogurt and salad. It's no dressing goodness a
Speaker 1: single cherry tomato. Well, let's get into some research because
Speaker 1: the sad thing too about this whole uh dieting question
Speaker 1: is that there is a seed that is often planted
Speaker 1: very early in little girl's brains, especially that they do
Speaker 1: need to change their shape. Yeah, we're so screwed. Um.
Speaker 1: The aversion to foundness starts very young. This is a
Speaker 1: study from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology that found
Speaker 1: the existence of negative attitudes toward overweight people in kids
Speaker 1: as young as three. Yeah, and that also that's that
Speaker 1: study also found that both boys and girls will adopt
Speaker 1: this fat is bad mindset at um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, overweight preschoolers also demonstrated stronger stigmatism. So it
Speaker 1: starts to compound because they are aware of of this
Speaker 1: um fat phobia in our culture. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: playing off of that, these whole these attitudes about weight
Speaker 1: can be passed down from moms to daughters. This is
Speaker 1: a British Journal of Clinical Psychology study from July. It
Speaker 1: found that mothers of high restraint girls basically that means
Speaker 1: high restraint means they practice a lot of high restraint
Speaker 1: behaviors as far as food goes and calories. So mothers
Speaker 1: of high restraint girls reported more between meal snacking and
Speaker 1: fasting than comparison mothers. They also rated their daughters attractiveness
Speaker 1: significantly lower than other mothers. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: um like moving parts in the study that they looked at,
Speaker 1: like family dynamics when the mother has food issues and
Speaker 1: the daughter ends up inheriting those food issues from her
Speaker 1: mother because it's kind of a learned behavior. This happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think that I have terrible food
Speaker 1: issues or anything, but I watched my mother diet throughout
Speaker 1: my childhood. She wasn't even big, but I watched. I mean,
Speaker 1: I went to she'd take me to weight watchers. I
Speaker 1: sat in the lobby at the Nutral system building in
Speaker 1: the strip mall, Like, I went to a lot of
Speaker 1: diet related activities with her. Do you think that that,
Speaker 1: as a result kind of increased your version toward dieting,
Speaker 1: like seeing that endless cycle. It could be because it's
Speaker 1: not like she would go to weight watchers and come
Speaker 1: home and be like, you know what, that was great.
Speaker 1: I feel really good about myself. You know, I met
Speaker 1: a lot of women who were also struggling, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to press forward or Okay, I went to neutral
Speaker 1: system and I picked up my great meals. No, she
Speaker 1: would come home and complain about the meetings, complain about
Speaker 1: how hard it was, complain about how terrible the food was,
Speaker 1: and cardboard and all that stuff. So I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: why would you want to do that. I'll have another
Speaker 1: cup of ice cream plays thanks mom. Uh. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I would also be interested to see UM if they
Speaker 1: expanded that study population from I mean, it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense to to look at that mother daughter relationship,
Speaker 1: but I am sure that it can criss cross from
Speaker 1: fathers to children, UH sons as well. Especially we're seeing
Speaker 1: that more and more now with UH younger boys having
Speaker 1: similar kinds of body image issues. As we would typically
Speaker 1: associate with younger girls. Um, and you mentioned the highly
Speaker 1: restrained activities like I eat, lots of portion control going on,
Speaker 1: and uh. In that same issue of the British Journal
Speaker 1: of Clinical Psychology, there was a study tracking the rise
Speaker 1: of dieting and childhood, childhood and adolescence and it was
Speaker 1: looking at nine year olds and fourteen year old girls.
Speaker 1: And yes, they're they're dieting, and that's not to me,
Speaker 1: that's not surprising at all, especially for the fourteen year olds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is sad to think, like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think back to myself as a nine year old, and
Speaker 1: I think, to me that just now was of course
Speaker 1: sounds so young, like oh my gosh, you're such a baby,
Speaker 1: like go play on the sandbox or whatever. But I
Speaker 1: remember being ten and writing in my diary like I'm fat,
Speaker 1: I don't feel good about myself, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So it is terrible to know that, like our cultural
Speaker 1: prejudices are seeping into children's brains. Yeah, and those and
Speaker 1: those girls who are dieting would express lower body esteem
Speaker 1: and discontent with their body build, and they would have
Speaker 1: certain already even at nine and fourteen, they would have
Speaker 1: trouble spots that they would point out. And I remember,
Speaker 1: I remember similar things, you know, looking in uh A
Speaker 1: Delia's catalog and those girls thighs did not touch. My
Speaker 1: thighs touched and I hated and I was yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's that same age range. Yeah, well there's you know,
Speaker 1: we we mentioned that there's also issues with boys. This
Speaker 1: is not just contained two girls and their dieting problems.
Speaker 1: Uh A Record study found that similar to women and girls,
Speaker 1: boys were more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies
Speaker 1: when they were relatively heavy and had low self esteem. However,
Speaker 1: while weight status is usually the primary predictor of girls
Speaker 1: body dissatisfaction, there's more at play for boys. It's kind
Speaker 1: of different. It appears that, according to the study, psychological
Speaker 1: factors like self esteem may be more es central to
Speaker 1: boys body perceptions, whereas typically all it takes is girls
Speaker 1: just looking in the mirror and looking at everything around
Speaker 1: them and starting to mentally compare um. And I mean
Speaker 1: you also have to take into account when we're talking
Speaker 1: about these kinds of gender differences, the beauty myth differences
Speaker 1: in the and this is in big old air quotes,
Speaker 1: ideal body shape for a woman compared to an ideal
Speaker 1: body shape for a man. A lot of times, Um,
Speaker 1: you'll have more men can like complaining of being underweight
Speaker 1: because they don't have that that muscular V shape that
Speaker 1: is idealized in masculine culture as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: the thin, whispy feminine shape. Although can you really I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know that it would have been constitute feminine
Speaker 1: at that point when you get when you get so
Speaker 1: so bonesy about it right, well, you know you you
Speaker 1: talked about the difference between what men and women want
Speaker 1: to attain as far as that ideal body shape. Um,
Speaker 1: and that just goes right along with an October two
Speaker 1: thousand five study in the journal Sex Roles that found
Speaker 1: different motivations behind are potentially health compromising diet behavior. So
Speaker 1: we're not talking about like having a healthy routine at
Speaker 1: the gym and a healthy like I'm going to eat
Speaker 1: a salad with dinner kind of thing. We're talking about
Speaker 1: health compromising having a hungry woman dinner, having a hungry
Speaker 1: woman dinner and just crying, I'm gonna drink tears with
Speaker 1: dinner tonight, honey. Um. Yeah. They found that in their
Speaker 1: sample of this study. The majority of men in the
Speaker 1: study sample were overweight or obese, but they were more
Speaker 1: likely than women to be satisfied with their bodies. What's
Speaker 1: up with that? Well, I think it's it has to
Speaker 1: do a little bit with um different psychologies that it
Speaker 1: mentioned that, uh, men don't consider they don't label eating
Speaker 1: a lot of food at one time as binging in
Speaker 1: the same way and then and they also have more
Speaker 1: of an aversion to fur into something as as dieting.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not it's not. It doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it's quite as uh, this is good food, this is
Speaker 1: bad food. Yeah. Well, they also point out that, uh,
Speaker 1: as far as the motives behind the unhealthy behavior, men
Speaker 1: were more likely to engage in unhealthy like crash diet
Speaker 1: stuff if they were heavier, So like, Okay, i'm heavier,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to lose weight, whereas women wanted
Speaker 1: to look thinner. They wanted to look much thinner than
Speaker 1: even the infrequent dieters did. So women it was more
Speaker 1: about appearance, looking a certain way. Men were just like,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of heavy, I should lose weight. Well, and
Speaker 1: this would be a good time to point out this
Speaker 1: this theory, uh, that was written about in Salon in
Speaker 1: April two tholeven by David Saroda, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about fat guy privilege and essentially saying that there is
Speaker 1: a double standard in the demand for physical perfection from
Speaker 1: women while bigger dudes, yeah whatever, you're just a big guy. Hey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one that I think of all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: because this is something I think about all the time.
Speaker 1: But it is it's like you see in all these sitcoms,
Speaker 1: like a guy like Kevin James paired with what's her name,
Speaker 1: the teeny tiny lady who plays his wife on that show,
Speaker 1: and but that's okay, Like that's socially acceptable, big funny guy,
Speaker 1: big funny people whatever, paired with little teeny tiny women.
Speaker 1: We'll even think about, um, John Goodman and Roseanne Barr
Speaker 1: on Rosanne and like John Goodman was, you know, he's
Speaker 1: awesome and he's a hilarious big guy. And then Roseanne
Speaker 1: always was getting like bodies snarked for being a bigger
Speaker 1: woman and her, you know, she was portrayed as more
Speaker 1: of you know, an old crab, and it was related
Speaker 1: in a way. I mean, it's partially just her her
Speaker 1: comedic style. Uh, but I think it was a lot
Speaker 1: to do with that, with that double standard, because we
Speaker 1: don't you know, it's not as much of an okay,
Speaker 1: passable thing. Yeah, it's not a liability for men, yeah,
Speaker 1: to be really big like Chris Farley. Obviously everybody loves
Speaker 1: Chris Farley, big guy, whereas female comedians or female actresses
Speaker 1: don't get that same consideration. It's like, oh, I just
Speaker 1: see your weight first. And perhaps that's why, as sorta
Speaker 1: points out, of the commercial weight loss industries, clients are female,
Speaker 1: and uh, probably weight watchers waited so long to even
Speaker 1: target men because they haven't seen them as a via
Speaker 1: a bowl um demographic. But I have a feeling though,
Speaker 1: we're going to see more of that as the beauty
Speaker 1: industries has started pay far more attention to getting stoking
Speaker 1: the fears of men. So welcome to crazy town, fellas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: join us soon, hungry man dinners will be justice said, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you know, we've touched on issues of
Speaker 1: like how it's more socially acceptable for a guy to
Speaker 1: be big a woman should be small, but somehow with
Speaker 1: ginormous boobs and hips and all that stuff, unrealistic expectations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so on that it sounds Like what we're saying now
Speaker 1: is with this question of whether or not, uh it's
Speaker 1: okay for a woman to diet, and can she still
Speaker 1: be like a liberal minded, pro woman, pro equality gal um. No, right,
Speaker 1: you know we we should just abandon all of that
Speaker 1: and not buy into this culture. But then, but then
Speaker 1: it's also I can tell you that I feel better,
Speaker 1: I have more energy, I am friendlier in general when
Speaker 1: I am I'm not not dieting necessarily, but I'm eating
Speaker 1: well and exercising and probably am slimmer than I am
Speaker 1: when I'm not well. That is part of the Is
Speaker 1: it more feminist to take care of yourself on a consistent,
Speaker 1: you know, lifestyle basis, or is it more feminist to say,
Speaker 1: screw you, you guys are making me feel bad about
Speaker 1: my spare tire. Yeah, And also like, uh, you know
Speaker 1: you don't want to It's like your a cog and
Speaker 1: that giant machine and you don't want to comply. So
Speaker 1: let's let's let's first touch on some arguments out there,
Speaker 1: because some women certainly say, like the dieting is a
Speaker 1: huge feminist issue because it has to deal directly with
Speaker 1: our bodies and how we relate to the world. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: Janna Ficken and Esther rothbloom In even had a great study,
Speaker 1: a great analysis that looked at the prices that women
Speaker 1: pay as a result of weight based discrimination. Basically that
Speaker 1: being overweight affects a lot of aspects of women's lives,
Speaker 1: whereas men don't receive. They're not on the receiving end
Speaker 1: of that same type of discrimination, which would probably go
Speaker 1: back to that quote unquote fat guy privilege that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and so as a result, and this was
Speaker 1: something that was initially um written about in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: eight by Susie Orbach in the book Fat as a
Speaker 1: Feminist Issue. They argue that because women are held to
Speaker 1: higher standards of thin thinness and suffer greater penalties if
Speaker 1: they don't meet that thinness ideal, then yes, this is
Speaker 1: a feminist issue and we need to nip it in
Speaker 1: the bud right. They are also argue that it's a
Speaker 1: feminist issue because it ties into the workplace. Uh. They
Speaker 1: looked at several different studies about you know, a fat
Speaker 1: woman wouldn't be hired whereas a fat man would have
Speaker 1: no problem, or people expressed prejudice like well, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to work with a fat woman. And so
Speaker 1: this study about like people who don't want to work
Speaker 1: with fat women. Um, they were rated negatively on supervisory potential,
Speaker 1: self discipline, professional appearance, personal hygiene, and ability to perform
Speaker 1: a physically strenuous job. And that's crazy to me because
Speaker 1: all these uh, these people in the study, the raiders
Speaker 1: that they were rating written descriptions. It's not like they
Speaker 1: were looking at someone in front of them and judging
Speaker 1: whether that person could be a good boss. But it
Speaker 1: just kind of blows my mind that you would rate
Speaker 1: someone negatively on supervisory potential because they're overweight. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's a big argument that, like, you know, if people
Speaker 1: don't want to work for or with overweight women, then
Speaker 1: that is a feminist issue. Yeah. There's also um an
Speaker 1: interesting sexual orientation tie in as well that was written
Speaker 1: in the written about in the journal Sex Roles in
Speaker 1: October two thousand eleven by Abigail Saggy and Um. She
Speaker 1: talks about how, uh, with fat activism like the whole
Speaker 1: body acceptance campaigns, lesbians have been disproportionately active and outspoken
Speaker 1: in the fat rights movement, and she quotes British activist
Speaker 1: Charlotte Cooper Um talking about how while fat women typically
Speaker 1: internalized quote social messages of being second class, fat queers
Speaker 1: are quote a little bit more advanced, and that we
Speaker 1: are able better able to reject homophobia or question assimilation
Speaker 1: um and then going on to another essay in the
Speaker 1: Fat Stuff He's Reader from two thousand nine, there's an
Speaker 1: essay by s. Bear Bergman, whom identifies as transgender UM
Speaker 1: and it's often perceived as a man two thirds of
Speaker 1: the time, and Bergman is is larger and and talks
Speaker 1: about how before um identifying as transgender and uh and
Speaker 1: dressing as a woman, there was so much humiliation associated
Speaker 1: with being overweight, but being perceived as a big guy,
Speaker 1: it's completely gone away. Yeah. Bergman was writing about how
Speaker 1: when being perceived as a woman, she would be followed,
Speaker 1: like people would be yelling at her. Even described an
Speaker 1: instance where in a restaurant, you know, she would ask
Speaker 1: for butter or something and they would be like nah,
Speaker 1: they would conveniently forget to bring it. Whereas when identifying
Speaker 1: as a man, he was treated like, hey, dude, you're
Speaker 1: an awesome guy. You're funny, you're great, Like nobody looked
Speaker 1: askance when he was shopping for clothes at the store,
Speaker 1: whereas as a big woman, people are like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at that woman shopping for big clothes. So again,
Speaker 1: it seems like things might be stacking up in favor
Speaker 1: of saying no dieting. That's we're just buying into this
Speaker 1: horrible system and we need to change that, right, But
Speaker 1: there's still, uh, there's still another side of that argument.
Speaker 1: And Kirsten Grus knows about this firsthand. She is a
Speaker 1: sociologist and she's also writing a book that's coming out
Speaker 1: in spring of two thousand thirteen called Mirror, Mirror Off
Speaker 1: the Wall that documents the three sixty five days she
Speaker 1: spent not looking at herself in the mirror. And she
Speaker 1: wrote a post for society Pages dot org talking about
Speaker 1: how she is she's a recovered anorexic and that process
Speaker 1: made her a feminist, but now she wants to lose
Speaker 1: some weight and she is incredibly conflicted about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the whole thing is like, Okay, well, I found
Speaker 1: myself at an uncomfortable weight for me personally, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in I'm in kind of tricky territory because as
Speaker 1: of recovering anorexic and someone who considers herself a feminist, like,
Speaker 1: am I allowed to lose weight? Will people judge me?
Speaker 1: Will it be dangerous? Will be bad for me? And
Speaker 1: so she says, given the patriarch patriarchal bargain of weight loss,
Speaker 1: being radically anti diet as a political stance doesn't always
Speaker 1: fit comfortably as a personal stance, right because I guess
Speaker 1: the way that it has been framed. Unfortunately, because of
Speaker 1: all of the fat phobia and the thin privilege that
Speaker 1: exists in our culture that we don't want to support
Speaker 1: when it comes down to our personal choice of perhaps
Speaker 1: wanting to lose weight, perhaps wanting to go on a
Speaker 1: diet um for instance, Emily McCombs um, who is an
Speaker 1: editor over at exo jain dot com, or a post
Speaker 1: about how um she diets because she has an unhealthy
Speaker 1: relationship with food and she needs that kind of structure
Speaker 1: or else there will be a tailspin. And that's simply
Speaker 1: how it's going to have to be. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: her less of a feminist, but for her, that's what
Speaker 1: works best. But then other people say, don't use choice
Speaker 1: feminism as a cop out, you know, just acknowledge. Call
Speaker 1: a spade a spade and say yeah, at some point,
Speaker 1: like we are just buying in but you want to diet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there was the argument that just because you're
Speaker 1: a woman and you're doing something doesn't make it feminist.
Speaker 1: But that's okay, because it's really not anybody else's business
Speaker 1: what you're doing with your body or your weight, whether
Speaker 1: you're eating right and exercising or not. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: wonder if, um, I don't know, if we're we're too
Speaker 1: I don't want to say if we're like too concerned
Speaker 1: about it, because obviously body image, having nine year old
Speaker 1: dieting that is, that is not a sign that we
Speaker 1: are in a healthy place as like a collective um community.
Speaker 1: But if if I am stressing out over you know,
Speaker 1: choosing to be choosier about my food for a little
Speaker 1: while because I put on more weight than I wanted to,
Speaker 1: then should I feel some kind of feminist guilt? I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's a good sign of things either,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's why this, uh, like
Speaker 1: we said at the beginning of this podcast, answering this
Speaker 1: question was perhaps more complicated than than we thought it
Speaker 1: would be. Yeah, well, I mean it's an issue of
Speaker 1: control uh Aerial stallings of an alternate dot Org wrote
Speaker 1: that when you buy into the idea that thinking about
Speaker 1: food makes you a victim of the patriarchy, there's a
Speaker 1: certain loss of control. So there's a potential loss of
Speaker 1: control everywhere, because you're gonna lose control as a feminist,
Speaker 1: or you're gonna lose control as a thin person or
Speaker 1: as a fat person, or as you know, someone who's
Speaker 1: worried about the patriarchy and what society wants from us.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, who am I answering to today? Uh?
Speaker 1: So you know in that regard, just it's like, just
Speaker 1: eat a sandwich or don't eat a sandwich, but stop
Speaker 1: stressing me out about it? Right? Is that a cop out? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that. Um, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a cop out at all, because if we all right,
Speaker 1: so let's let's take it one more time, like to
Speaker 1: the extreme other side saying like absolutely food is a
Speaker 1: feminist issue. This was coming from Heather Lane Tally and
Speaker 1: she was writing about the uh the new U s
Speaker 1: d A guidelines. Instead of getting rid of the food
Speaker 1: pyramid and having um my my plate, you know, the
Speaker 1: nice little plate with it all portioned off showing you
Speaker 1: how many leafy grains and such that you should eat,
Speaker 1: and she says that, you know, nutrition is merely a
Speaker 1: trope that employs scientific neutrality to disguise body fascism. She
Speaker 1: went to a doctor. She refused to get on the scale.
Speaker 1: The doctor was like what, and she was like, don't
Speaker 1: be a body fascist. I don't. It's when we get
Speaker 1: into we swing into that territory. That's when I say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's I'm gonna go ahead. And I'm fine saying that.
Speaker 1: I in my opinion, that is too far because that
Speaker 1: you can't get away from the relationship between nutrition and diet.
Speaker 1: And yes, like I, I think it's also difficult to
Speaker 1: make a blanket statement about whether or not dieting is
Speaker 1: an appropriate choice because you know, some people are going
Speaker 1: to finger wag and say like, you're only doing it
Speaker 1: to serve the male gaze, not you know, paying attention
Speaker 1: to the fact that everyone has a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different relation chip with food. You know, some people
Speaker 1: are stretched eaters, some people are emotional eaters, some people
Speaker 1: are stressed non eaters. I have to pay in my experience,
Speaker 1: I have to pay more attention to how much I'm
Speaker 1: eating if I'm stressing and freaking out. Yeah, okay, so listen,
Speaker 1: we've been back and forth about this about is it
Speaker 1: feminist to go on a diet? Is it anti feminist
Speaker 1: to go on a diet? Is this even a question
Speaker 1: we're asking or should we use? Caroline said, just eat
Speaker 1: a sandwich. You just so much to let me alone. Well,
Speaker 1: as feminist writer and activist Audrey Lord said, caring for
Speaker 1: myself is not a self indulgence. It is self preservation,
Speaker 1: and that is an act of political warfare. And I
Speaker 1: think Caroline may I speak for the both of us
Speaker 1: and say that is where we stand on this issue
Speaker 1: of dieting. I I want to take care of myself,
Speaker 1: and I think you want to take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: And you know what I mean, do what's right for yourself,
Speaker 1: Be healthy, be happy, don't worry, be happy, right right,
Speaker 1: It's not where it's I think you can say to
Speaker 1: that that dieting is not inherent advocating um inherently advocating
Speaker 1: for a Thinness ideal either. It's more trying to look
Speaker 1: at it from a health perspective. And maybe it's just
Speaker 1: also a call. It's just change our collective definition of diet.
Speaker 1: That's what we you know, we're always on a diet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't understand why the opposite of diet and
Speaker 1: thin privilege and the idea of the ideal thin body,
Speaker 1: Why does the opposite of that have to be I mean,
Speaker 1: eat whatever the whatever I want and not let anyone
Speaker 1: weigh me and not weigh myself and not be conscious
Speaker 1: of what I'm putting in my body? Like, isn't there
Speaker 1: a happy middle ground? I think so, I definitely think so. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my confused two sense. Yeah, thank you Tracy at
Speaker 1: pop stuff for asking us complicated question. But now it
Speaker 1: is time to turn it over to our listeners because
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that considering the vast number of
Speaker 1: women who go on diets, there was also I didn't
Speaker 1: throw the statistic out, but there was a survey. Granted
Speaker 1: it was published by or commissioned by the Laughing Cow
Speaker 1: Cheese Company, but it was reported on in the Telegraph
Speaker 1: saying that the average woman will diet for thirty one
Speaker 1: years of her life. And with that, that's that's who.
Speaker 1: That's really a lot um. But for folks out there
Speaker 1: who have grappled with this aspect of dieting, specifically for
Speaker 1: weight loss. Want to year from you. Let us know
Speaker 1: your thoughts, mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where
Speaker 1: you can send them, and of course you can also
Speaker 1: head over to our Facebook and start a conversation over there.
Speaker 1: And before we get to a couple of listening listener
Speaker 1: letters that we have, we've got a quick message from
Speaker 1: our sponsor and now back to our letters. I've got
Speaker 1: one to kick things off from Jessica, and this is
Speaker 1: in response to our episode a while ago on women
Speaker 1: and NFL football. She writes, I've been a huge football
Speaker 1: fan for most of my life, since I come from
Speaker 1: a family of rabid New Orleans Saints fans Hohoda go Saints,
Speaker 1: and I recently started my own small blog and Twitter
Speaker 1: account to channel my obsession. At first, I was really
Speaker 1: excited to find out that there were a number of
Speaker 1: other female NFL bloggers out there, but with somewhat disappointed
Speaker 1: to learn that most sites tend to emphasize the stereotypically
Speaker 1: gendered topics of fashion, party planning, and off the field
Speaker 1: celebrity aspects of football and players far more than the
Speaker 1: game itself. On the one hand, I'm excited to see
Speaker 1: a game. I'm passionate about take hold with a growing
Speaker 1: audience of women, including many of my own friends, But
Speaker 1: I also feel like the pageantry that surrounds this kind
Speaker 1: of marketing signals that women still need a safely gendered
Speaker 1: entry point into football fandom. Of course, can you really
Speaker 1: blame them When you look at how the NFL mainstream
Speaker 1: media operates and broadcasting, female reporters are always relegated to
Speaker 1: the sidelines staring games to talk about the personal interest
Speaker 1: side of the story, injuries and coach players sound bites,
Speaker 1: while men always call and analyze the actual game itself.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could even count on one
Speaker 1: hand the number of women who write about football regularly
Speaker 1: from mainstream websites like NFL dot Com, dead Spin, and
Speaker 1: bleacher Report. From the outside looking in, I'd say it's
Speaker 1: still incredibly tough for smart women who know their football
Speaker 1: to break through this arena without assuming sanctioned role from
Speaker 1: the sidelines of a tailgate. Still, I'm hopeful that the
Speaker 1: growing NFL female fan base produces a ton of knowledgeable
Speaker 1: die hards in the long run. Baby Teas or not
Speaker 1: uh And you can visit Jessica's NFL blog at Lady
Speaker 1: Blitz Football dot blog spot dot com. And here's an
Speaker 1: email from Tracy about our child Caregiver's podcast. She wanted
Speaker 1: to share her own personal experience with the issue. She
Speaker 1: said that my brother and two sisters took care of
Speaker 1: my mother. She suffered from heart and kidney disease brought
Speaker 1: on by lupus. My parents divorced shortly before her health
Speaker 1: declined and our father disappeared. My mother pulled myself and
Speaker 1: my younger brother out of school at the ages of
Speaker 1: twelve and thirteen to take care of her. My sisters
Speaker 1: were just old enough to work full time, and they
Speaker 1: paid for all the bills, working long hours to do so.
Speaker 1: They would help out around the house as best they
Speaker 1: could when they were off work. My brother and I
Speaker 1: administered her medications, including giving her home dialysis, cleaned her bedside, commode,
Speaker 1: bathed her, cooked and cleaned, and took care of my
Speaker 1: sister autistic Sun while she was at work. We took
Speaker 1: care of her until her death in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: when I was twenty three. It was extremely difficult for
Speaker 1: all four of us. Thankfully we had each other to
Speaker 1: lean on, and we're all still very close. Despite the
Speaker 1: tremendous responsibilities we faced. With our sister's support, my brother
Speaker 1: and I got our g e d s and went
Speaker 1: to college. Thank you for doing this podcast. I hope
Speaker 1: that with the support groups out there, young caregivers have
Speaker 1: somewhere to turn for assistance. So thank you, Tracy, and
Speaker 1: thanks to everyone who's written in to mom Stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. And like I said, you can head
Speaker 1: over face to our Facebook page, like us and start
Speaker 1: a conversation over there, and follow us on Twitter as well.
Speaker 1: You can tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast and you
Speaker 1: can also follow us on tumbler. It's stuff mom Never
Speaker 1: Told You dot tumbler dot com. And if you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about healthy eating, there are lots
Speaker 1: of articles about it at our website, it's how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. M