Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and diet culture

This may seem like a bit of a non-sequitur, given that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about diet culture and fatphobia on the blog or in our work… at least not extensively.

It’s something I’ve been on a personal journey with that isn’t entirely my story to tell, and so I am realizing it is something I have held back on.

This morning, though, I stumbled on a social media thread in a group I’m not very active in that reinforced just how deeply indoctrination into patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism and fatphobia goes.

The thread was pretty typical, I’m just not around it much any more - white women in their 40s and 50s talking about how “active” and “healthy” they are in their exercise and eating, and how devastated they are that despite this, they are still gaining weight.

I get it, and I’ve been there, and I’ve had to do a lot of unlearning myself.

And unless you have been around those suffering from the impacts of eating disorders, I can guarantee that you have absolutely no idea how devastating the impact of these seemingly harmless myths about physical size, health and diet can have.

The most important thing I’ve learned is that you can be healthy at every size. Thin people can be healthy and fat people can be healthy.

However, it’s also important to note that this means that thin people can be unhealthy and fat people can be unhealthy.

There are “healthy” and “unhealthy” people at all points of the size spectrum.

(See the Health at Every Size Principles.)

This is because there are more factors that determine health outcomes other than weight, and while studies may show a correlation between lower weights and health, there is little evidence of causation.

What there IS evidence of is that fat phobia itself - discrimination based on weight and size - in the workplace, in our social lives and in the healthcare system itself - does contribute to poorer health outcomes due to stress, lack of access to healthcare etc.

And that a focus on well-being, care, and healing at any weight also contributes to positive health outcomes more than weight itself does.

What does this have to do with patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism?

There’s a kind of moral superiority, intentional or not, conscious nor not, that I read in comments from white women about how they are vegetarian, or gluten-free, or that they exercise 5-6 times a week, or that they couldn’t possibly have dessert, or even supposedly self-deprecating comments about how if they take the leftover cookies home they’ll just eat them all.

It just smacks of the way that white women are put on a pedestal by both white supremacy and patriarchy as the paragons of virtue and beauty… as long as they conform to the societal standards set by these same systems of oppression. Privileging thin white women and setting impossible “beauty” standards is another way of turning women against one another, especially across racial lines.

It doesn’t take much googling to dig into the historical roots of fatphobia.

Says Sabrina Springs, author of “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia”:

“Fat phobia is not based on health concerns. What I found in my research is that in the West, it’s actually rooted in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Protestantism. In the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonists and race scientists suggested that black people were sensuous and thus prone to sexual and oral excesses. Protestantism encouraged temperance in all pleasures, including those of the palate. By the early 19th century, particularly in the U.S., fatness was deemed evidence of immorality and racial inferiority.”

(See: Where does fat phobia come from?)

Of course, patriarchy and capitalism took this idea and ran with it. Plantation wives were literally the property of men who made it their job to put a pretty bow on the atrocities of enslavement.

As Naomi Wolf states in The Beauty Myth:

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

(See: Why Do We Say “Diet Culture” Instead of “the Patriarchy”?)

And an entire beauty industry profits from these myths.

(See: How White Supremacy and Capitalism Influence Beauty Standards.)

Awareness is the first step

As always, being aware of our own internalized biases from patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism and fat phobia is the first step towards undoing harmful beliefs that we may be unintentionally and unconsciously perpetuating.

As always, it’s also important to acknowledge that these are systemic and cultural issues and not just individual ones. The healthcare system is one of the systems through which oppression is perpetuated. Attaching individual morality to health is unhelpful at best, oppressive at worst.

Here is more reading:

Two books I haven’t read yet but are on my list:

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Springs
The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

Helpful articles I found upon googling: