Diet Culture is the Antagonist No One Wants to Talk About

As part of my writing program, I’ve been asked to think about the antagonist in my story. An antagonist in literature is defined as “a character, group, or force that opposes the protagonist, driving the conflict and hindering them from achieving their goals.”

In a tale about how an eating disorder ruled my life, guided my actions and held me back from real personal growth, the illness seems like the obvious antagonist. But I’ve realized that it does not operate alone. There is another force at play that fuels and strengthens the enemy, making it almost unstoppable. If the eating disorder is the vehicle, diet culture is what sits in the driver’s seat of that car-deciding which roads to take and where the destination will be.

The Diet Culture Decades

While there is no one, concrete reason why eating disorders begin, it is certainly not a secret that we live in a culture that seems to support its growth and development. At almost 43 years old, I have now lived through four, very insidious and diet-happy decades- from the 1980s to the 2000s.

There was the aerobic era of the 1980s when low-fat was king, calorie counting became mainstream and group fitness exploded. The 90s “heroin chic” era where Kate Moss was the benchmark and when the term “nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels” was coined. The early 2000s brought low-rise jeans, exposed flat midriffs and belly button rings coupled with low-carb or no-carb diets like Atkins and Sugar Busters. And immediately following a very brief, very quiet movement for body positivity in the 2010s, the current era of the GLP-1 has completely eclipsed everything that came before it. With each passing decade, the ante was upped and the message remained that being thin equates to health and moral virtue.

The Diet Culture Even Takes Down Giants

At this point the diet culture antagonist has grown so powerful that it can take down giants. Look no further than Oprah Winfrey or Serena Williams; two resilient women who worked hard to overcome poverty and adversity and achieve incredible things using their God-given talents. Based on everything but their physical appearance, each of these women developed the power to influence the masses. But instead of celebrating Oprah’s ability to break barriers for women and people of color-and reach billionaire status in the process- the world has spent fifty years focusing on her yo-yo dieting and pattern of losing and gaining weight. Serena Williams held the title of the number one women’s tennis player on Earth for 319 weeks. But her success was tainted by the fact that she was repeatedly forced to waste bandwidth on addressing the scrutiny about her muscular stature and masculine physique.

And now both Oprah and Serena are using their impact to convince us that they only reached their highest potential when they began injecting themselves with medication to lose weight-reinforcing the idea that even unprecedented greatness is incomplete without shrinking your body.  

If diet culture can convince a four-time gold medalist and a woman known by her first name alone that their dress size matters more than their achievements, what chance did I have? Eating disorders prey on the broken, the traumatized and the compliant. Resisting them- or recovering from them- requires an iron will and the courage to be contrary. To remain unaffected, you must stand up repeatedly to both the eating disorder and the society that drives it. And that is not something that I ever dreamed I would have the strength or the confidence to do.

Find Your “Why”

I have learned that a big part of reaching and maintaining recovery is finding your “why.” Your reason for remaining strong and refusing to be overcome by the powerful whims and desires of your illness. Often that means looking at your accomplishments or talents (outside of the physical) and leaning into them. I thought that had to mean things like winning at Wimbledon or being the world’s most influential woman. But recently I realized that by resisting the impulses that were programmed in my brain by the eating disorder and reinforced by diet culture, I have done something great. The victories against my antagonist and the machine that keeps it running are worthy of pride and recognition.

In four short years, I have managed to work so hard that I don’t recognize the person that I’ve become. I was someone who believed I didn’t deserve to be seen or heard; someone who tried to stay anonymous by disappearing into a crowd. My self-worth was so low that I convinced myself I wasn’t “good enough” at my eating disorder to seek help to recover from it. And now I am using my voice to reject the standards I used to live by.

Without a doubt, compliance and conformity are the easier options. But blindly trusting my antagonist and following social norms has never led me anywhere good. It was only when I chose rebellion that my life started to change for the better.

Authentically Yours,