As someone who grew up in the 80s and was a teenager in the 90s, I have watched a lot of food and body trends come and go. In the 90s, I watched people have Snackwells cookies and eat chips with Olestra (if you know you know) and focus on low fat.
I remember watching Ally McBeal and Calista Flockhart came on the scene in with an ultra thin body that became all the rage. She was then compared to Twiggy, a model in the 1960s that rose to fame with notoriety around her very small frame.
When I was in high school, I was at a “normal” weight but never happy with myself. The constant comparisons and wanting to be smaller was something I grappled with constantly. Despite having great grades, being involved in many extracurriculars, and having a thriving friend group, I felt like I was never enough.
Then came the 2000s. We had Tyra Banks telling models they were fat when they were a very normal, if not low, body weight. This really began to drive home the messaging that fat is the worst thing you could be. We had the rise of of things many women that were a “normal” size being blasted and ridiculed on magazine covers at the slightest bit of weight gain.
It was truly hard to exist through those times because it felt like acceptable body standards were a moving target. (Spoiler alert: It still feels that way.) I remember looking around at all of the messaging we were inundated with around bodies feeling very pressured to look a certain way.
During this time is when I began to develop an eating disorder that was strongly associated with the desire to be thin and socially accepted (among other things.) I was convinced that if I lost enough weight, built enough muscle, had plastic surgery (yep, did that too!), that I would be someone that nobody would leave because then I’d be perfect.
That’s what society was telling me, right? (Also, my 20s helped me determine that this was a lie.)
Fast forward to the 2010s. Somewhere in there we began to move toward body positivity. I remember reading Health at Every Size and feeling like I was given the missing puzzle pieces. During the next years, I learned so much about the body positivity movement. I loved the idea that you could exist in any size body and potentially be happy. That was such a foreign concept to me that I was intrigued.
When I began to do my own work around accepting my genetic blueprint for body size, I healed. I healed my relationship with food. I healed my relationship with my body. I began to wear clothing that I liked that made me feel good with little thought around what others might think.
And damn that felt good.
I loved watching the rise of body positive and body neutral social media and feeling like I had found my people that also were tired of being told that the only way you could love yourself was if you were in a thin body and fit the thin ideal. (Disclaimer: Nothing wrong with thin bodies. All bodies are fine - but EVERYONE should get to exist just as they are.)
In my work with my clients we talked about this concept and it truly felt like the tide was shifting for women.
To be clear, if someone wants to lose weight then that is their choice. I believe in body autonomy and the belief that adults make decisions that are right for them. It just felt nice that it wasn’t a pre-requisite to be on a diet and focusing all your precious brain space on losing weight.
Then we hit the GLP1 era.
Also to be clear, I’m not anti-GLP1. I think that they have their place for different people for various reasons. They are amazing for blood sugar control, diabetes, insulin resistance. Some studies are showing they help with alcohol cravings in people struggling with alcoholism. They’re shown to help with inflammation and inflammatory diseases. I think that they’re often contraindicated in eating disorder treatment but that, too, is nuanced.
The problem for me, however, is watching what is happening to societal expectations and the shrinking of women, so many women, to body sizes that are very small.
And now that there is a medication that is this potent for weight loss, I feel like there is an underlying expectation that if you’re in a larger body, you should be on a GLP1 and working toward a smaller body size.
There’s a “cure” now, right? So if someone is in a larger body, it must be their “fault.”
One tenant of the body positivity movement for so long was that diets don’t work because 97% of people gain back weight after they’d lost it. So, what is the body positive world to do when there is a way that people CAN keep weight off for life?
Suddenly, and what seemed like overnight, that argument was a fallacy.
We have watched movie starts shrink before our eyes to weights that we would be very concerned about in eating disorders treatment. We watched one person after another walk out at this year’s Oscars in bodies that were noticeably thinner, often to the point of being clinically underweight.
I do want to make perfectly clear that if someone is at lower body weight and that is their natural body size, that is great! I don’t ever intend to shame anyone for their body size, be it a smaller, larger, or “in the middle” size.
What I am arguing is that the weight loss that we are watching occur right now is suddenly EXPECTED of everyone and is sending a strong message again that the smaller you are, the better you are. The more socially acceptable you are. The more worthy human you are.
So I have really been asking myself, did the body positivity movement ever really exist? I think that this has a couple of explanations.
One, I think that many women were finally happy that the pressure was off to look a certain way, but the deeply embedded desire to lose weight and be “small” was still there. Many people that are in their 30s-70s grew up indoctrinated thinking the thinner, the better. Thin at all costs. Nothing tastes better than skinny feels.
Decades of that messaging is extremely difficult to undo. But, it certainly felt like we were getting somewhere.
The second thought I have for this is that body positivity is something that people genuinely accept as a value and concept for others. This is not blaming anyone, just more of a thought that it is FINE for larger bodied people to exist and that there shouldn’t be weight stigma, as long as that person does not have to be one of them.
Honestly, I completely understand both lines of thinking.
I think that it is a reality in our culture that you are seen as more beautiful and worthy in a smaller body. Even if you can accept yourself in a larger body (whatever that might be, it’s different for different people), and you love the mental freedom you get from not having to diet anymore, it is extremely scary to not conform to societal standards and risk being outcast.
The pressure to be the ideal of the moment could mean that someone is afraid they won’t find a job, be promoted, find a partner, have children if that’s what they want, find friends, etc.
There is a lot riding on that body size and conformity.
I really believe that you can be happy with yourself at any weight. I truly believe that people of all sizes can be healthy (if we are looking at things like labs, blood pressure, strength and stamina as metrics, not just BMI.) I think that we were so close to allowing people to just exist and be who they are.
But now it feels like we are back to the early 2000s again. I have been resolute in raising my daughter that I will absolutely not let her grow up with body negativity the way my generation did. I have been resolute that this stops with me. But the messaging from the world is back and, in some ways, louder than before.
Again, to be perfectly clear, I do not have an issue with someone losing weight if that is what they want to do. What I am very fearful of is the messaging at large. I work with women and girls everyday that are struggling with disordered eating, eating disorders, and body pre-occupation that is often debilitating. I am watching this happen more and more.
What happens if someone starts a GLP1 and they can’t tolerate the side effects? Are they a failure? If someone does lose weight on a GLP1, they are often told they took “the easy way out.” Are they a failure? If someone takes a GLP1 and has no weight loss but their blood sugar control is better, are they a failure? If someone in a larger body just is not interested in a GLP1 for weight loss? Are they a failure. In all of these situations, “yes” would most often be the answer.
So I’ll leave you with this question:
How do we find body neutrality again in the weight loss inundated messaging we are getting now? How do we make sure that people are taking care of themselves, mentally and physically, no matter which road they choose? How do we let people work toward whatever health goals they have for themselves without it leading to the overarching, overwhelming ideal that now that there is a “cure” that everyone should be in the smallest body they can “achieve”?
I think the science and research is going to show us a lot in the next 10 years but I do think that this is question worth considering before we see the rise of osteoporosis, other nutrient deficiency related disease, compromised health in aging (when gaining weight is a protective mechanism for longevity), and impacts on the rise of eating disorders.
It’s such a new and different space for everyone. The nuanced, hard conversations are worth being had at this point.