Does diet culture strip away our femininity?
I can’t tell whether it’s ironic or fitting that diet culture, an empire historically aimed at targeting and belittling women, is extremely masculine in its energy.
Feminine and masculine energy will mean different things to different people, but generally speaking, qualities associated with masculine energy tend to be strength, hardness, rigidity, productivity, agility, goal focussed, analytical, drive and ambition.
When we think (again, in general) about feminine energy, we are talking about traits such as empathy, intuition, embodiment, softness, gentleness, creativity, community, openness, vulnerability, collaboration, rest and rejuvenation, wisdom, and flow state.
I know women are not the only victims of diet culture, it fucks up people’s self-worth no matter what their gender. However I can’t help but find it curious, that an industry so invested in women’s insecurities, and so obsessed with the ins and outs of the female body, lacks any feminine energy at all.
Before I go further, I need to clear up what I mean when I say feminine or masculine energy. What I do not mean is women’s or mens’ energy (although the vast majority of the top-dog money makers in the weight loss industry do tend to be men, let’s be honest). But no, it is not nearly as black and white as this. All of us, regardless of gender (or gender-non-conformity) have masculine qualities and feminine qualities. Unfortunately, due to the ridiculously gendered world in which we live, it’s hard not to see these qualities as indicators of how male, female or gender-non-conforming someone is. But, in reality, at their origin masculine and feminine traits are more indicators of personality and approach to life, than anything to do with sex or gender. Whilst, of course, if you took a basic average of all cis-men and all cis-women, we would probably see that the average cis-man has a slightly higher ratio of masculine energy to feminine energy than the average cis-woman (and vice-versa). BUT (and it’s a big but) everyone, men, women and gender-non-conformists alike, has their own individual ratio of feminine to masculine energy depending on who they are as a person.
Neither feminine nor masculine qualities are better or worse than the other. This is very important to make crystal clear. Everyone needs both, and it is actually when we reject either one that our bodies and minds start to go haywire.
Diet culture rejects feminine energy, and squeezes the feminine out of us in a myriad of ways.
It denounces our intuition and instead pushes us to use external factors to guide our decisions around food and body. We are led to trust exercise and diet plans above our instincts and taught to use calories to dictate what we should and shouldn’t eat rather than eating what simply sounds tasty (hello stupid calories on menus). All the while, diet culture upholds and amplifies the masculine energy. Adopting an extremely analytical and numbers focussed approach to health and our bodies: the arbitrary 10,000 steps a day (a number pulled out of a Chinese advertising company’s arse because “10,000” in Chinese sounded best in their promotion jingle…I’m serious), the amount of time we ‘should’ be exercising, and the number on the scale. These are all external goals we are taught to latch onto, dismissing the feminine qualities of embodiment and flow, and favours rigidity and order, both of which are typically masculine traits.
Relentless glorification of willpower and drive is another example of how diet culture heightens the masculine and squashes the feminine. Willpower is a fucking badge of honour when it comes to fitness and weight loss. The ability to tap out and deny the body’s biological need for rest and adequate nourishment is admired. Leaning into our desire (a classically feminine quality) is seen as weak, whereas being ‘strong’ (a classically masculine quality) enough to choose the salad over burger and chips is seen as morally superior. It’s no coincidence that one of the most common compliments people receive after some kind of bodily ‘transformation’ is, “Wow, well done you have such determination!”.
Similarly, diet culture’s vendetta against rest and rejuvenation, and obsession with productivity, is another rejection of the feminine. There is always a focus on doing the ‘most effective’ workouts and getting the quickest and ‘best’ results. Diet culture teaches us that rest is lazy and a waste of time. The feminine quality of gentleness is looked down upon, whilst the typically masculine stead-fast discipline is lauded. I mean no one ever regrets a workout, it’s legit scientifically proven xxxx
We can see the diet industry reject feminine energy in a very literal sense, with the prevalence of period loss as a result of under eating and/or overexercising. Dragging those who have a menstrual cycle back to their pre-pubescent selves, when we are all naturally more androgynous given the lack of physical development. Whilst I don’t think the diet industry deliberately sought to remove people’s menstrual cycles, these consequences are completely and utterly linked to the fostering of masculine willpower; pushing through regardless of the body’s clear signals.
Something I have observed that diet culture despises most, is (surprise surprise) another feminine quality. Softness. In my opinion, the vilification of fat, cellulite and of flesh full-stop, is one of the most harmful things about the diet industry. Not only because it encourages gross fatphobia, but because it teaches women, men and those of any gender, that the natural human body is inherently bad. It harnesses the masculine trait of hardness and runs with it, deifying muscle definition, ‘thighs of steel’ and washboard abs. There is an obsession with burning the fat and bulking the muscle, in other words, minimising the softness and amplifying the hardness, as if our flesh was never meant to be there in the first place.
We are ashamed of the softness, squishiness and wobbliness of our flesh. It has become the enemy, something that we begrudgingly pinch, tug and attack as if it weren’t welcome on our bodies. Due to diet culture’s constant subliminal messaging, we have formed a negative association between softness and inefficiency. Softness has become the poster-girl for laziness, weakness and incompetence. All the while, hardness maintains its positive association with productivity, order and reliability.
I can’t help but draw two parallels here. Firstly, to the way that women have been perceived throughout history as weaker, more sensitive, and therefore less capable to deal with the challenges of the working and political world. Secondly, the way in which softness and vulnerability has been beaten out of men, precisely because it has historically been seen as ‘too feminine’, and thus ‘too weak’. The consequences of which have caused men to suffer from severe body image issues, with the extreme pressure to appear visually ‘big and strong’, as well as men often feeling unable to share or articulate mental health struggles.
Of course, diet culture is not the sole reason these beliefs exist, that is down to a complicated web of structures and systems put in place by the patriarchy that we don’t have time to go into today. What diet culture is responsible for however, is encouraging and amplifying our unease with softness, and framing the slower, more reflective and grounded feminine qualities in a negative light.
It’s funny, for as long as I can remember, diet culture has sold me images of what the ‘epitome of femininity’ looks like. I would look at these images as a young girl and believe that I wasn’t feminine enough, because my body felt so different to the bodies of the models and movie stars that were being pitched as the definition of what a woman should look like. But now, having been pulled into diet culture’s depths, I couldn’t feel more detached from many of my feminine qualities, and even have resentment towards them. I have internalised that rest is a waste of time and the softness of the human body makes me extremely uncomfortable. I mean, in a way it is rather unsurprising that an industry hugely dominated by men has inadvertently pushed everyone to nurture their masculine qualities, and reject their feminine ones. Even cis-women like me, are sent to find their ‘divine feminine’ selves through tapping into masculine qualities and discarding feminine ones.
As a result, the masculine, hard and fast attitude towards life and self remains the top dog, which does no one any favours. It traps cis and trans men and women, and gender-non-conformists into a soviet-style toxic grind of productivity and crazy capitalist profit.
I need to make it clear that I am not shitting on either men or masculine energy here. As I mentioned, everyone needs BOTH feminine and masculine energies, just like yin needs yang. But when femininity is thrown to the wayside and masculinity is upheld as superior, we start to form unhealthy and cruel relationships with ourselves.
