Next year, like that to predict the trend watchers, reverses the nineties hero chic look à la Kate Moss back. Kim Kardashian has already informed her plastic surgeons and the daughter of la Moss walked the runway even skinnier than Mum. In 2023 we can again mirror ourselves to women who, in the most beautiful clothes, emaciated and with sunken cheeks, look deadly bored and angry. I look back in fear and horror.
A number on a scale. A clothing size. A fat roll more or less. How many women have not committed to lose weight in 2023? Certainly, men also want to be slim, but the reality is that body weight has a completely different history, context and social significance for men. Of course there are extremes: women with serious weight problems or thin women who can do nothing for or against it. That’s not what this essay is about.
It’s about your neighbor, your employer, your sister, your best friend. About Susan Sontag, Virginia Woolf, Lady Gaga, Lady Di. About how we as women are so different and yet entangled in the same lie. An obsession that has become so normalized in our Western society that it is considered harmless, self-evident and even socially desirable.
The post-war Western ideal of the female body can be summed up in three words: less is more. Less, slimmer, thinner please. After a commercially driven uptick in plus size commercials, we’re back where we left off. The smooth return of hero chic betrays that the body positive movement over the years has been nothing but a veneer, a weak plaster on a stinking wound.
The shine of slim seems irresistible, almost a religion. Kate Moss once said: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
Studies of women’s eating behavior all indicate the same thing: about three-quarters (three-quarters, yes) of all women are concerned with their weight in some way on a daily basis and therefore have a disturbed relationship with food. We think about meals in terms of “sinning” and “rewarding.” Thin women, fat women; it doesn’t matter a damn. The mechanism finds something for every body type to be dissatisfied with. One is concerned about ten kilos, the other about three hundred grams, but the result is the same: a dormant stress, fear, shame and guilt. Our body has to change and something has to be done.
Imagine a table in a restaurant where four women are sitting: three of them are not only enjoying themselves, but also dubbing, fighting, counting. They allow their self-image and self-esteem to be determined by a number. Three out of four women engage in calorie intake, diets, pills, fasting, laxatives or vomiting. They last a lifetime without ever losing the weight they want to lose, with infinite amounts lost along the way. They don’t get angry about what the diet culture has taken away from them. The, er, balance is rarely made.
Anyone who thinks that curvy singers like Beyoncé have a positive effect on the new generation is wrong. During the pandemic, the number of girls with eating disorders has grown at an alarming rate. on TikTok there are plenty of hashtags circulating that promote unhealthy weight loss with names like #thinspo or #whatieatinaday. The weight doctrine starts earlier and earlier, girls in 8th grade are already dieting and when my daughter told me that someone taught her how to put a finger down your throat, I went white hot. After that I felt powerless and decided to write this piece.
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It’s a tricky subject because it can easily be dismissed as “trivial.” Weight seems like a luxury problem, a rich country frat. There are so many more important things: our climate is going to pieces, the world is on fire and then you worry about it body weight?
I want to echo that last sentence. Read it again, not as a commentary on this piece, but as a commentary through this piece. That question is difficult to answer. The obsession of the contemporary Western woman with her weight is highly irrational.
That an ‘ideal weight’ will bring happiness is a fairy tale that almost every woman believes in something. A poignant manifestation of the value women place on their weight is the high school reunion. A recent study looked at the criteria by which women judge each other, and when they viewed their former classmates as “successful.” What turned out? It was not the classmates with the most impressive careers or the highest social positions that were envied (as is the case with men), but the thinnest women.
A successful life is a slim life for most women. It’s sad to read, but the inconvenient truth. The shine of slim seems irresistible. It’s almost a religion. Or, like heroin-chicmom Kate Moss once said: „Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
And we’re back heroin. Karl Marx characterized religion as the opium of the people and an obstacle to revolution. Well, dietary rules, clothing sizes, target weights: they are the opium of today’s woman. Her addiction is fueled and maintained by an economic system in which she participates not only as a consumer, but also as a provider. Entire sectors depend on her uncertainty about her weight. Everything from magazines to low-carb bread is there to facilitate her addiction. And it may cost a bit.
It is no longer a choice. The weight doctrine has penetrated the capillaries of Western society. Women are constantly beckoned, prodded and harassed by it every day: from the billboards at the station to the magazine on the train, from the conversations with colleagues at work to the series on the couch in the evening. It is whispered everywhere: be slim, then you will do well. Beneath every chubby woman lurks a slender wench – another lie. Because you’re worth it! But you are only really worth something if you live up to the ideal. And who succeeds?
Read also: The Netherlands has too few rules for healthier eating
Insidious weight doctrine
An ideal sounds like something unattainable, but the sneaky thing about the weight doctrine is that the goal is considered perfectly achievable. The path to slim seems paved with recipes, rules, numbers, calorie tables. Seen in this way, the doctrine resembles those old-fashioned grabs at the fair. You see the watch, look at the gripper and before you know it you put another coin in it.
After so many years, we are not only addicted to the watch, but perhaps also to the game. Addicted to the addiction. The (over) focus on weight also offers us a comfortable certainty. It provides a purpose and a crystal clear distinction between good and bad. It offers something to hold on to, despite the fact that it is compelling, even oppressive.
Because the effect of the weight doctrine is also comparable to opium: narcotic. A disturbed relationship with food makes women weaker. In the most literal sense, food is energy. Women who eat less or diet less, deny themselves nutrients, building materials, a healthy balance of vitamins and minerals. They will not function optimally during a diet period. Of course I don’t promote unhealthy eating habits or limitless eating. The lure of fatty and sugary foods is ironically correct thanks to the weight doctrine disproportionately large. What is forbidden seduces and stays in your head.
The weight doctrine weakens women in this area too: those who invest time in thinking about weight (however short or long, however consciously or casually), who put thoughts into counting calories and worry about kilograms, cannot handle it at that moment think constructive, really meaningful things. Brain trash. Weight thoughts are downright ballast for any sane brain.
Collective underachievement
If we really dare to zoom out and look at the consequences of the weight doctrine on a societal scale, women are missing out enormously. We ourselves ensure that we underperform not only as individuals, but also collectively. We envision an ideal weight that is below the healthy, scientifically determined BMI. Why? Don’t we dare to succeed? There is something bitter about it: in recent decades women have gained a lot of influence and power, yet three out of four women try to make themselves ‘lighter’ with all their might. As if we have to compensate for the space gained somewhere…
Precisely because the weight doctrine asserts itself in countless aspects of our daily lives, it’s damn hard to let go of it. Maybe even unthinkable. The doctrine has, as it were, become one with our body, our self-image. Generations of women have been raised by mothers who followed and propagated the doctrine. Because, don’t be under any illusions, our daughters are aware that mom is concerned about her figure. That mom is on a diet – the umpteenth. That mom looks sadly at her scale. In other words, without wanting to, we indoctrinate the next generation ourselves.
Perhaps we are afraid of the unknown. What if? What if the majority of those three-quarters of women still decide to call it quits today? What if we refuse to play the game anymore, throw our scales in the trash, and choose to spend our time doing more fun, meaningful things? Don’t we actually owe it to our daughters? Wouldn’t it be nice if they could grow up without the suffocating, numbing effects of a doctrine that keeps us smaller than we could be?
After all, if we do take stock, we can only conclude that the costs of addiction far outweigh the benefits – whatever Mama Moss claims. To hell with heroin chic. I wish 2023 an abundance of heroins; heroines who believe with their hearts, their souls and their whole bodies that they should never be less. #moreismmore
A version of this article also appeared in the January 7, 2023 newspaper
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