We are drowning in this culture that tells us we need to look and feel a certain way to be deemed healthy.
Fortunately, this is not true.
There is a lengthy racial history of fat phobia and diet culture that goes back hundreds of years.
Regardless of whether black people are overweight, white people have been promoting “fatness” as a black attribute for the past 300-plus years. It is a tactic used by white supremacy to separate minority and affluent groups.
Colonialism is the subject that keeps coming up. In order to prove their superiority, white settlers in the 1700s linked black bodies with fatness.
Being white and slim made them look like the settlers, which is said to make one better and more godly.
The first European settlers to the US were primarily Protestants from western Europe who espoused specific ideals, including abstemiousness.
Racism and diet culture both have a large role in misogyny. This prejudice still motivates fat phobia today. Because it is built on the notion of social categorization and comparison, a state to which we aspire and which is innately better than, and everything else is worse. This is how diet culture is supporting white supremacy.
These views are reinforced by pop culture and the media. When all you see are pictures of slim white ladies, it starts to seem normal.
Racism in diet culture has produced hegemonic ideals, or, to put it simply, the belief that we don’t need to take any action. As a result of these societal standards, we both consciously and unconsciously contribute to our own subjugation.
This description of how power operates in the white patriarchy is dead on.
The idea that “thinner is healthier” needs to be contested because the social pressure to diet can be quite detrimental.
Diet culture affects us in a variety of ways that are serious to our physical and psychological health.
Racism in our society must take steps to be eliminated if we are to escape the diet culture.
Comment below how diet culture has impacted you.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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