How Diet Culture Distorts Body Image: A Christian Response
I was with an acquaintance (whom I’ll call Margaret) and my teenage daughter when Margaret began talking about her neighbor, a young man who’d lived next door for two decades and had gotten married a couple of years before. “I always thought his wife was pretty,” Margaret said, and put her hands on her extremely thin hips, “but you know, recently she let herself get chubby!”
When Thinness Is Glorified and Larger Bodies Are Shamed
I can’t begin to describe the wide range of emotions I felt over her words. Shock that she would make such a comment so flippantly. Horror that she made it in front of my daughter. Desperation to call her out on the comment, and fear that if I did, it would draw my daughter’s attention to it - when there was a good chance she’d zoned out on the conversation ten minutes earlier anyway. Frustration that Margaret had implied that chubbiness was “bad.” I wanted to strike back with all the information I had learned about a person’s natural body size during my extensive research on eating disorders. But I also didn’t want to appear rude or disrespectful. In the end, kindness won, and I kept my mouth shut. But obviously, the comment made an impact.
Part of me wanted to stay angry, and here’s why: Some people, who are naturally thin no matter how much they eat, can act or speak in ways that contribute to the spread of devastating problems like anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, low self-worth … the list goes on. They may admire themselves for their self-control around food, for their high metabolisms and small-framed bodies, and feel superior to women who live in larger bodies and therefore must have larger appetites and never exercise. Some even view plus-sized women as gluttonous, sloppy, and lazy. Large women, they believe, apparently don’t care about having a “desirable” slender figure - or if they do, they don’t have the discipline to acquire it.
The Real Enemy: Diet Culture
While part of me wants to resent Margaret, I’m acutely aware that her thoughts are not her fault. Yes, her criticism of the neighbor’s wife was insensitive and judgemental. But it stems from a larger problem: the widespread brainwashing of diet culture. My anger was best directed not toward Margaret, but toward the culture that teaches a woman’s worth is identified by the size of her body - and that the slimmer the body, the higher the worth.
Even many medical professionals are warped by diet culture’s messages. They see that a patient’s weight is “off the BMI chart” and tell her to lose a few pounds, advice that can have devastating consequences if the woman is predisposed to disordered eating. These physicians seem to lack the extra knowledge that many dietitians have acquired in their specific studies - that no two people are the same and not everyone is going to fit perfectly into a chart devised by a mathematician (not a health practitioner) back in the 1830s based on the bodies of European men. While the BMI is a helpful resource when considering an entire population, it fails many patients on an individual level because it does not differentiate between body fat, muscle mass, and bone density. Doctors tout “health concerns” and “the risk of diabetes and heart problems” as reasons to fit within the BMI parameters, and I most definitely do not want to downplay them as they are serious illnesses. But some women, through God’s inerrant and omniscient and beautiful design, are truly meant to live in larger bodies, and if they dieted, their health could suffer in different ways.
Disordered Eating Isn’t “One Size Fits All”
Larger women can have anorexia and bulimia. They can eat an inadequate amount of calories to meet their needs and suffer from malnourishment and physiological health problems. From a biological perspective, the body actually has a “set point weight range” programmed into its DNA and will do everything possible to get there, from slowing the metabolism to interfering with sleep when food intake is inadequate. Yet countless women force themselves into extreme diets every year in desperate attempts to meet societal expectations of thinness. And when their bodies refuse to dip below a certain weight, they believe they have failed, and they hate themselves for it. In reality, it’s the diets - no, the culture - that has failed them.
The automatic assumption that overeating caused a woman to be “overweight” is presumptuous and unfair. The belief that thin women are more attractive and superior is a fleeting cultural concept that controls more opinions than it should. And making derogatory comments about other women’s bodies only perpetuates the unfair, untrue beliefs. It also leads some women - fully aware of this larger conversation and judgement - to stay trapped in the cycle of disordered eating, knowing that if they gain weight, they’ll be the next ones discussed behind Margaret’s closed doors.
We as a society need to educate ourselves about the truth behind body sizes, but even more importantly, we need to look at women as unique image bearers, and not as bodies that are large, overweight, thin, obese, ideal, etc. We do not dictate worthiness. Each woman is created in the image of God, and in His marvelous, all-knowing, intelligent design, He knew exactly what He was doing. He does not make mistakes.
Author: Jessie Tucker Mitchell, MA, LCMHCA, NCC
Jessie is currently accepting new clients and specializes in eating disorders, anxiety, and OCD. Click below to book now!
