Why We Need to Challenge Diet Culture

In a world obsessed with appearance and conforming to unrealistic beauty standards, it's essential to recognize and challenge diet culture when we see it. Diet culture - the societal norm that promotes the pursuit of thinness and weight loss - perpetuates harmful ideologies, often disproportionately affecting women and their relationships with their bodies. From promoting unhealthy weights to enforcing rigid beauty ideals to creating a system in which women must spend large amounts of money to try to achieve results, diet culture has far-reaching consequences that extend beyond the superficial. Here are the reasons why we all must actively challenge diet culture when we see it, hear it, or have the urge to participate in it.

Diet Culture Reinforces Gender Stereotypes
Diet culture reinforces and perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes. It re-circulates the very-much alive narrative that a woman's primary value is determined by her appearance rather than her contributions to society, skills, intelligence, values, or achievements. This harmful perspective diminishes women's worth in the world and hinders progress toward gender equality by diverting attention from women's multifaceted contributions to society. 

Diet Culture Promotes Unattainable Beauty Ideals
Diet culture promotes an unattainable and unhealthy standard and view of beauty. Magazines, social media, and advertisements bombard us with images of airbrushed, edited, and heavily filtered models and celebrities, creating unrealistic expectations for women from a very early age. When girls and women inevitably fall short of these unattainable ideals, it leads to feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and even mental health issues and eating disorders.

Diet Culture Steals Women's Attention From What Matters
Diet culture siphons women's attention away from meaningful energy and activities that would genuinely benefit their lives. Constantly fixating on dieting, weight loss, and appearance consumes valuable mental and emotional resources, diverting attention from pursuits like education, career development, hobbies, and relationships. This distraction not only limits personal growth and fulfillment but also perpetuates a cycle where women are encouraged to prioritize superficial concerns over their pursuit of meaningful goals or generating wealth. Challenging diet culture allows women to reclaim their attention and energy for endeavours that truly enrich and benefit their lives.

Diet Culture Is Racist
Diet culture often promotes Eurocentric beauty standards, which prioritize thinness and certain facial features associated with white people. This not only marginalizes people of colour but also reinforces the hurtful and harmful idea that whiteness is the quintessential standard of beauty. Diet trends also often appropriate and commodify traditional foods and practices from non-Western cultures, stripping them of their cultural significance and disrespecting the origins of these practices.

Diet Culture Creates Wealth Disparities Between Women and Men
Diet culture keeps women wasting money by promoting a constant cycle of spending on products, programs, and services that promise to help them conform to unrealistic beauty standards. From expensive diet plans and supplements to fitness memberships and clothing purchases to even plastic surgery, the financial burden of chasing these ideals can be significant. There is also the emotional toll of diet culture, which can hinder women's career opportunities and job performance, potentially impacting their earning potential. By perpetuating these pressures and insecurities, diet culture not only undermines women's financial well-being but also perpetuates a system where women are encouraged to prioritize appearance over saving money and financial stability.

Diet Culture Creates Internationalized Misogyny
Diet culture can lead to internalized misogyny, where women start to believe and perpetuate harmful beliefs about themselves and other women. They may judge and shame other women based on their appearance, reinforcing patriarchal values and creating a sense of competition amongst each other. This practice of body shaming creates a toxic and dangerous environment for those who have larger body types. Challenging diet culture is a means of breaking free from these toxic beliefs and fostering a sense of solidarity among women.

Diet Culture Encourages Women to Stay Small
Diet culture pressures women to shrink and stay small. It reinforces the notion that women should take up as little space as possible, both literally and metaphorically, to fit into narrow beauty ideals and bodies. This pressure often leads to restrictive eating and excessive exercise, which makes our bodies physically weak and reduces our physical power. This lack of physical power makes women more susceptible to abuse and physical attacks and makes it harder to defend ourselves.

Diet Culture Diminishes Older Women's Worth
Diet culture particularly diminishes the worth of older women in society by perpetuating the myth that youth and thinness are the main attributes of value for women. It creates an environment where aging bodies (that naturally get bigger) are stigmatized, and women are pressured to cling to youthful appearances at any cost. This emphasis on external beauty diminishes the wisdom, experience, and contributions that older women bring to society. By marginalizing their value as they age, diet culture erases the richness of their life experiences and the wealth of knowledge they have to offer, perpetuating ageism and undermining the importance of embracing the beauty of growing older.

Diet Culture Is The Worst. Let's Fight Back.
From reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes to promoting unattainable beauty ideals to keeping women down financially, diet culture poses a significant threat to an equal society and the well-being of women. Challenging diet culture is not just about rejecting harmful diets, it's about rejecting the harmful ideologies that underpin them. We need to be advocating for body positivity and acceptance, and actively working towards a world where women, and all people, are celebrated in all their diverse forms. We must continue to raise our voices against these damaging narratives, practice self-love, and actively work against dismantling patriarchal norms. By doing so we can work towards a more inclusive and equitable world where women are free to define their own worth and beauty on their terms and rise up from the societal structures in place that are holding us back.