Spooky Season: Diet Culture Edition

It is Spooky Season, y’all. I thought I would tackle it head on, discussing many of the myths around food and fitness that make diet culture such a terrifying presence that can haunt you for years!

Diet Culture is a system that values thinness and is rooted in capitalism and yt supremacy.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s tackle the Yt Supremacy aspect first. The book “Fearing the Black Body” is often mentioned as an example of this. Modern beauty standards are based around Eurocentric features and additionally are created to separate “white bodies” aka “good bodies” from all other bodies. When a person of color does not conform to white beauty standards, their body is often disregarded or mistreated, and in many cases also fetishized.

Capitalism comes into play when we think about what a Standard of Beauty actually creates. It creates a market. A market for surgery, weight loss pills and potions, targeted exercise, make up, and clothing. If people were happy with the way they looked, they would not spend money to change it. Therefore, beauty standards change frequently to keep people unsatisfied and locked into the market.

Diet culture is the umbrella that houses disordered eating and various mental illnesses, fatphobia, predatory marketing, and more.

Follow along this month if you are interested in exploring some of the sneaky and non-sneaky way diet culture can really haunt our lives and steal our joy!

Captions for the video above: Happy October 1st! Let's talk about something that's actually scary *whispers* diet culture. Diet culture is a system that values thinness and is rooted in capitalism and whyt supremacy. Some things about diet culture are super obvious while others are not. For the entire month of October, I will be talking about diet culture and all of the myths and scariness around it. And maybe when we get to the end of the month, we can all enjoy some discount candy together.