Ditch the diet, embrace fat activism
How money and consumerism affect how we view weight, and what we can do to change that.
When I think of New Year’s Resolutions, I think of diets.
Then, I think of all the ways the diet industry profits off of our insecurities.
As of 2019, the diet industry in the United States was worth $72 billion. Despite numerous studies showing that diets don’t work (and that they, in fact, teach our bodies to hold onto weight), we — and the industry — persist.
It’s kind of a brilliant strategy. Promote an idealized look, deride people who don’t look that way, then promise that they will look and feel better if they use your product. So they buy it, and at first, the product helps. Then, life happens. They gain the weight back and are right back where they started. The cycle continues, Weight Watchers makes money, and we continue to fear fatness, marginalizing a significant portion of the population.
Enter body positivity, the promise of a new, better world, where we can all love ourselves for the skin we’re in. Well, at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be doing for us.
A quick scroll of the #bodypositive tag on Instagram reveals where the public conversation on the topic is at: lots of thin or hourglass-shaped women celebrating themselves — the same body type diet companies push. Many have monetized their followings by selling products and partnering with companies.
To be sure, there are more images of fat folks than there may be when you scroll other tags on Instagram. But body positivity wasn’t always like this.
Back in the ‘60s, activists began to raise awareness about fat discrimination, advocating for a health at every size approach to medicine and fair treatment for everyone, no matter their body size.
There’s a name for how we got from point A to B: diffusion and defusion. Diffusion is the process by which a subculture — in this case, fat activism and body positivity — is spread via media, promotion, and eventually advertising. Meanwhile, defusion is the process by which its original meaning has been watered down.
I have spent a lot of time lately feeling frustrated by the way advertisers have used a watered-down version of body positivity to promote products. I learned about body positivity back in 2013 when I began recovering from an eating disorder. It completely changed my life: I learned about how we live in a culture that profits from a fabricated hatred toward fat bodies, and in the process, revamped the way I viewed other people.
I, like many of you, had grown up inundated with tabloid imagery that criticized Jessica Simpson for wearing a size four, celebrated shows like The Biggest Loser and laughed at Cathy, the cartoon woman who could never lose weight (Ack!). Within that context, fat people posting about body positivity on a site like Instagram really was radical.
But then, Instagram transitioned its business model to advertising. Jessica Cwynar-Horta, a scholar who explored this subject in her research entitled The Commodification of the Body Positive Movement on Instagram, traced the movement’s shift toward commodification to 2013 when the social media site began selling user’s data to companies.
Brands realized that the movement was growing, adopted certain signifiers of it, then used it to sell products. As a part of the process, they approached influencers within the body positive movement to become “faces” of their company.
“Influencers work hard maintaining an identity coherent with the brand, creating images that are perfected and fit the aesthetic of Instagram,” Cwynar-Horta wrote. “What followers see in these artificial images is what companies want consumers to see, and is not the real lives of the influencers, but rather a branded identity.”
This, she added, has shifted the movement to one more aligned with companies’ interests, promoting not only this positive self-image, but also teas, exercise equipment, clothing, and more.
“Companies are always going to be doing fake feminism,” said Sophia Carter-Kahn, co-founder of the She’s All Fat podcast. “This is just a new way for them to do it.”
Take Weight Watchers, for example. In 2018, the company rebranded to WW and declared that its new objective was to focus on health, not weight. However, WW still holds weekly meetings where clients are expected to weigh themselves.
“It’s kind of the same as how you can buy a shirt from Target that says feminism,” Carter-Kahn said, adding that this doesn’t really have anything to do with the movement.
Carter-Kahn, who I spoke with by phone mid-December, said she believes that body positivity is still important, but that it must be coupled with fat activism, which seeks to challenge anti-fat bias in all aspects of our lives.
“Body positivity has cycled to be about self-love more than anything else,” Carter-Kahn said. “It’s not the same as fat activism. It won’t make the doctor treat you right, but it will help you get to therapy.”
She pointed out that body positivity has become widespread, which means we are making progress, even if it has been watered down from its original meaning. “It has made it much easier for me as a fat person to exist,” she said.
But fat activism, which advocates for fair treatment of fat folks in medical settings, at work, in media, etc., should be a part of that.
“Fat activism, which is what a lot fewer people are willing to talk about, is more focused on written theory and intersectionality,” Carter-Kahn said. “That’s not going to help somebody who still has their mom pushing Jenny Craig on them at Thanksgiving,” she added.
Carter-Kahn emphasized that there’s room for both: the conversations some of her listeners are having with their families are not the same as the intersectional, scholarly ones fat activists are having. That doesn’t make one less important than the other.
And both have financial implications: while body positivity has become a tool to sell products, most companies aren’t considering how they’re contributing to a culture that unfairly makes fatness a financial burden.
“One thing people may not realize is that fatness is expensive,” Carter-Kahn said. “Our clothes cost more, our medical care costs more. It’s harder for us to get jobs. We’re more likely to be sentenced to long terms in prison. There are financial ramifications in being fat, and of course, those are multiplied when you’re not white.”
So where do we go from here? First, I urge you to reconsider your plan for a 2021 diet. In its place, consider how you can begin engaging in body positivity and fat activism in your personal life.
“A very first step is starting to consume media of fat people doing fat people things,” Carter-Kahn said. (soooo…. Go listen to She’s All Fat!)
Carter-Kahn also recommends reading Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings and Aubrey Gordon’s What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat. For conversations on capitalism and fatness specifically, Carter-Kahn suggested Da'Shaun Harrison’s work.
The She’s All Fat website has a fantastic resources page listing people to follow, links to fat acceptance history, and fat fashion ideas among so many other topics.
- Alicia McElhaney
