The reality of diet culture

You may not know this, but I’m actually a presenter with the Butterfly Foundation! I have had the privilege of speaking with thousands of young people aged 10-18 about body image and diet culture.

And whilst this is an extremely empowering role, I often see first hand the stress and pressure our young people experience growing up in a very appearance-focused and toxic diet centred culture. 

Let me tell you a bit about what diet culture looked like for me growing up, and anyone else in their mid-20’s and above:

First we had WHO and other magazines pushing titles like “Here’s how to drop 10kg in 20 days” and “finally get that bikini body”. Often these mags would feature paparazzi snaps of celebs at the beach, mocking the way they looked and shaming them for “piling on the kilos”... 

A common household TV show was The Biggest Loser, which literally took a group of people and put them through extreme measures to lose as much weight as quickly as possible. The show would shame those that didn’t lose a ridiculous amount of weight, and glorify those that did.

We also had The Next Top Model TV show playing in homes of teen girls in particular. This was all about finding the thinnest, tallest and “most beautiful” girls and blatantly dehumanised any of the contestants that didn’t fit the mould they were after, often encouraging disordered eating. 

And of course there were oh-so many popular TV shows and movies that were pushing fat phobia and appearance ideals - like Friends, which regularly talked about how fat Monica was when she was younger, and how much better her life is in a thinner body. Another favourite at the time was Devil Wears Prada, where a direct quote from Emily was "Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.”... 

While these were incredibly harmful, when we threw out the magazines and turned off the TV, we were somewhat able to escape these harmful messages. Today, it’s not that simple.

It seems like every second person on Instagram and TikTok is some kind of health expert, selling their latest workout guide and telling you the do’s and don’t’s for getting the “body of your dreams”...

We also have this obsession with clean eating, with #whatieatinaday videos going viral on social media every day - glorifying “healthy” foods, and vilifying anything that isn’t green and organic. 

Of course, we can’t forget the rise and fall of microtrends constantly popping up for different lifestyles that give you the “clean girl aesthetic” - the current trend. 

Today, it’s almost impossible to escape diet culture. Everywhere we turn and in every corner of the internet we see content screaming about what we should eat, drink and do in order to have that dream body. Failing to mention that actually, we are so much more than what we look like. 

The impact of all of this? Over 1 million Australians are living with an eating disorder, and less than a quarter of those receive treatment or support.

So, what can you do? You can educate yourself on the harms of body image issues and diet culture. You can open up the conversation with the people around you. And you can unfollow those creators that are particularly harmful.