The Internet has spoken: Quit with the bullshit. Your diet is not fun. You didn’t eat that donut you posed with on Instagram. We know what’s up, and what’s up is that your excitement about kale is a pure farce, an insult to all bearers of mouths. I am here to disagree.
But first, what am I disagreeing with? Exhibit A is this post on The Cut about a new anonymous Instagram account called “You Did Not Eat That.” In it, we learn that the author is a “good-natured whistleblower” on all the staged photos of skinny women next to fatty foods that create the illusion there is any actual relationship between the two:
We see you out there on social media, posing with your comically huge burgers, your face-size cookies and pizza slices the size of your thigh gap. That cookie might be a millimeter from your lips, but you honestly want us to believe that buttery carb made it into your stomach?
Touche. The author of the Instagram account said she’s worked in fashion and media for a decade, so her perspective is born of the usual contrived juxtaposition of hyper-thin with hyper-indulgent, and it wrongly perpetuates this idea that anyone can eat “bad” foods and look “good”:
If you’re a size zero, and you’re frolicking in a tiny bikini on the beach, you probably did not eat the doughnuts that you posed with the sunglasses.
Exhibit B is a follow-up piece at The Cut called “I Don’t Want to Hear About Your Diet,” and the author begs people to shut up already about their digestive system. This was never more painfully irritating for her than when she ordered the steak and fries at a fashion dinner:
Suddenly, every eye on the table was on me. ”You know what I like to do,” Cookbook Lady pronounced slowly, apropos of nothing. “My children and I like to take carrots, and radishes, and other yummy veggies, and we fry them up and we eat them just like French fries!”
Later, after everyone eats her fries, because fries, she concludes that after paying her dues hearing about every cleanse, diet and food trend and every unscientific justification for it, people shouldn’t be ashamed of dieting, they just shouldn’t talk about it.
… I just tire of the fact that, in the industry I work in, people discuss the state of their digestive systems like it’s the weather. There are more interesting things to talk about, like — well, almost anything. And I don’t appreciate the fact that, simply because I happen to order red meat once in a while, I get treated like a member of some anti-diet vanguard who needs to be converted to Team Swishing Cider Vinegar Through Their System. Even if you think eating a fry is a form of passive suicide, I beg you — let me commit it in peace.
Both authors above worked in the magazine industry where being thin IS the job, so it’s no wonder diets are a major topic of discussion — I cannot fathom how they would not be. I can see how it would get tiresome, but I also see that being in the thick of it probably also makes you miss the broccoli for the trees.
Exhibit C is a piece over at Slate that takes both of the above perspectives and chimes in with a thumbs up:
It’s called “Stop Pretending Your Diet is Fun. Also, Stop Pretending You’re Not on a Diet.” This piece argues that what the above folks said is totally right:
Why can’t we just acknowledge that dieting is not as fun as not dieting? Committing to yogurt, lean protein, and salad greens for a sustained period of time may help you secure the body you want, but it means a trade-off in the “Look at this amazing cookie I’m eating” department. People might possess good reasons for watching what they eat, and for not doing same, but the illusion that you can “have it all” food-, appearance-, and health-wise serves nobody well. It makes you look foolish or contemptible for ordering regular pizza, not gluten-free, or for splurging on a buttery dessert. It also means that perennially diet-conscious people are missing out on pleasurable experiences—ones they may have convinced themselves that they are getting via sugar-free sorbet cups but which, actually, they are not.
But I take issue with nearly everything in the above posts, for the following reasons:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
