Dismantling Diet Culture
By: Lauren Faust
Body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and diet culture have long been prevalent, especially in Western culture. But the rise of social media has drastically changed the implications of the terms. Diet culture in particular has molded into an incredibly profitable industry, making it increasingly more difficult to regulate. In order to understand the close ties between diet culture and social media, it is necessary to understand what the term really means.
Diet culture, an attempt at prioritizing thinness over health, is harmful to people of all classes, genders, and sizes. From the government-funded “war on obesity,” to popular media’s constant equating thinness with beauty, diet culture stigmatizes overweight bodies and perpetuates the notion that skinny bodies are more worthy of desire and respect. This plague of internal and external oppression problematically implies that a person’s worth is defined by their body rather than their morals, values, or personality. The diet culture industry encourages this culture of inherent fatphobia, and continues to profit off of those unhappy with their bodies.
After reaching a record 78 billion dollar value in 2019, the industry faced a massive recession due to COVID-19. The hope within the industry was that once the economy reopened, the market would skyrocket as a result of quarantine weight gain. But throughout the pandemic, social media—especially the rise of TikTok—caused a huge resurgence in diet culture’s profitability. Pivoting their strategies, the diet industries began targeting influencers to promote diet culture behaviors disguised as “quarantine trends” on TikTok and beyond, transforming social media as a way to perpetuate a new wave of “health and wellness.” These “wellness” influencers, with enviable bodies and perfectly curated meal plans, pushed the notion that there was a need to be productive—whether through weight loss or life transformation. The lack of routine and structure during the lockdown amplified the attractiveness of these workouts and diet trends, infiltrating the “For You” pages of teens across the United States.
Simply put, TikTok profits off of diet culture and users’ weight insecurity. Since the early days of quarantine, the app has come largely under fire for its lack of censorship and resulting promotion of both anorexic and orthorexic behavior. Once a user starts to interact with videos that promote this behavior, they will be shown similar content, causing an endless cycle of harmful videos in their field of view. ‘What I eat in a day,’ workout routine, and weight loss tip videos have a proven severe impact on the mental health of younger generations grappling with self-image insecurities. This pressure of comparison that social media has encouraged, combined with fewer in-person interactions, has led to increased participation in diet culture and a misconstrued sense of what “normal bodies” look like. What we must now explore is how to combat these unrealistic societal standards of productivity, motivation, and appearance that were encouraged on social media during the lockdown and persist even as we phase out of it.
A big step is the creation of a new self-love movement on Instagram and TikTok, with many influencers vocalizing the toxicity of diet culture. Some creators, like Victoria Paris, have taken to TikTok to express their frustration with the ever-growing social demand by diet culture for women to be one definition of “perfect.” Other creators, who are licensed dietitians, have also taken to posting more legitimate health and wellness tips and videos that debunk diet culture myths. Though an daunting task, only by understanding the toxicity of social media’s diet culture, and what really constitutes the term “health and wellness,” can we be adequately equipped to dismantle it.