Opinion – rebranding diet culture is keeping us hooked on thinness

The toxic behaviours we’ve turned to in the past to ‘get skinny’ are supposedly out and wellness is in. But while the ‘clean eating’ revolution is touted as being all about ‘health,’ weight loss is still very much the subliminal message and ‘lifestyle changes’ are often just disordered habits in sheep’s clothing.

I was in a secondhand book store recently when a section caught my eye.

Across multiple shelves, I could read ten, if not 20, titles that prompted me to do a double take.

From ‘get fit not fat’ to ‘how to be skinny,’ the collection served as a reminder that we’ve certainly come a long way in terms of toxic diet culture since before the turn of the century, when most of these self-help ‘guides’ were published. Or have we?

Though the body positivity movement has fought tirelessly for over two decades to leave heroin chic and its inherently damaging glorification of thinness in the past where it belongs, a quick scroll on Instagram in 2024 will show you that this simply isn’t the case.

Today, while you may have to dig deep to find such blatant displays of fatphobia as the ones presented to me on those bookshelves, they still very much exist, under the guise of ‘wellness.’

This is especially evident on social media, where we’re increasingly witnessing the expansion of a breeding ground for pro-disordered habits content sold to us as being ‘health-focused.’

@hoff.phd a diet by any other name would suck as much #antidiet #dietculture #wellness ♬ original sound – Aubrey Hoffer, PhD

The rebranding of diet culture

In 2022, the New York Post reported on how ‘even the famously bootylicious Kardashians [seemed] to be turning away from curvy physiques.’

A couple of Met Galas later, and most of us are now aware that Kim’s tiny waist is the product of Ozempic, a diabetes drug that’s gone viral for its appetite-suppressing effects and that’s hugely popular amongst celebrities determined to shed a few pounds.

The thing is, however, none of these A-listers have actually disclosed that they’re using the stuff, assuring us over and over that their waifish, emaciated figures have been carefully sculpted by militant gym routines and clean eating.

‘Let’s not discredit my years of working out,’ responded Khloe to criticism that she was lying to her followers about how she lost weight.

‘I get up five days a week at 6am to train. Stop with your assumptions.’

Playing into the harmful stereotype that those who ‘successfully’ manage their weight are dedicated to doing so – and those who struggle to aren’t – this clapback highlights a wider issue: that people with platforms (and even their fan pages) purposefully misleading us to maintain their ‘perfect’ image are themselves involved in diet culture’s rebrand.

 

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By implying that such an unattainable level of thinness is possible without any medical intervention (the radical normalisation of cosmetic procedures and photoshop is another example of this), they’ve fostered a perception that weight-loss is equated with wellness.

Marketing to us their Erewhon smoothies and their natural remedies, we’ve been coerced into believing that a healthy approach is all we really need to squeeze into the size 0 box that outdated beauty standards are desperately striving to keep us locked inside of.

Influencers and brands have fervently latched onto this too, telling us half-truths through the screen such as ‘heal your hormones and guts by going carnivore,’ ‘reduce inflammation by taking supplements or trying a juice cleanse,’ and ‘start the 75 hard challenge.’