Lifestyle Choices

The average member of Weight Watchers is 2¹/2 stone overweight. However, this number is high owing to the few obese members who push up the average. Most members have only a stone to lose. Do most of their members need to lose this weight or are they responding to media pressure to be thin?

Slimmer Clubs accept people with only a few pounds to lose. These women are encouraged to see these few pounds as a problem and something to get rid of. They are not asked why they want to be that little bit thinner.

The Cambridge diet is recommended for use by the severely overweight only, i.e. those about 50 per cent above the average weight for their height. Yet it is available to anyone who wants to lose weight — even if that person just sees themselves as fat.

Women who are not obese or even overweight also want to lose weight. They believe that if they could shed a few pounds their lives would be better and they would be happier people. These women also attend slimming clubs and read the dieting literature.

Only 16 per cent of the female population are obese. However, many more diet. If the dieting industry was aimed only at those who needed to diet for health reasons then their membership would be very small. But, by involving all those women who just want to be a few pounds lighter their membership grows enormously. And this is what they do. Not only do the magazines run articles on losing stones they also run ones which offer ‘how to lose those extra pounds for summer’ and ‘clothes feeling tight? lose excess weight quickly and now’. Weight Watchers report that their members have been getting increasingly lighter over the last six to seven years, which suggests that this is a response to the ‘desirable woman’ becoming thinner. Research suggests that the general population is getting gradually heavier and yet the population who attend slimming clubs is getting lighter. A study carried out in Minneapolis in 1980 evaluated the weightsand heights of those women attending slimming clubs. The results suggested that more than half of the members did not meet an objective criterion for being overweight.

Society pressurises women to be thin and this idea of thinness is getting thinner. Most women feel fat but are not objectively overweight. They have a problem with their perceived weight and not their actual weight and yet the dieting industry treats this perception as fact. When dieters say ‘I feel fat’ it is translated into ‘I am fat’ and then the industry offers to solve the problem. The industry aims itself at women who are dissatisfied with their bodies.

Rosemary Conley’s Complete Hip and Thigh Diet takes this extension of the dieting market to the extreme. She records numerous readers’ success stories, many of which are from women who start off by saying ‘Although I have never exactly been overweight‘, ‘As I was not really overweight or fat to start with’ and ‘I could hardly be described as overweight‘. These women are obviously not fat, nor do they even see themselves as being fat, but they still diet. This expands the dieting market even further and offers dieting not just to women who are objectively overweight, or even perceive themselves as fat, but to those women who don’t even feel fat. This suggests that dieting can be used by everyone of whatever size to make them feel better about themselves.

I interviewed several editors of various magazines and organisers of slimming clubs and asked them whether they felt that aiming dieting at women who felt fat, or in some cases did not even see themselves as overweight, was exploitation. None wanted to be quoted directly, but all argued that it was not their place to challenge a dieter’s wish to lose weight. They believed that they were respecting the individual’s right to make her own decision, and argued that it was patronising to challenge this drive for thinness. On a recent television programme a representative from What Diet and Lifestyle magazine said ‘if you are not happy with your weight we offer a way to change it’. She believed in accepting the public’s decision to be ‘not happy with their weight‘ and was responding to it. She did not challenge whyso many women feel fat or whether there was an alternative cure for this feeling other than weight loss.

But maybe there are other ways of responding to this unhappiness without promoting weight loss. We are all brought up to respect other people for their attitudes and beliefs. Even if we disagree, we do not challenge or criticise a conviction, but believe that each person has the right to make their own decisions. But we tend to forget that these beliefs are a product of social pressures and expectations and are not necessarily sacred. Attitudes are changed by being challenged, and new beliefs are formed. It is not patronising to question someone’s beliefs and to suggest an alternative way of looking at things.

But the dieting industry benefits from not challenging these beliefs. Recent reports show the degree to which they benefit financially from having a membership which is increased by large numbers of women who simply feel fat.

Not only does the industry respond to a need but it also exploits a need. By refusing to patronize those women who are not overweight, but feel fat, it can behave as if they have an objective weight problem. It exploits women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies to widen the market and to benefit financially.

Creating A Need

The dieting industry creates the need for the dieting industry. It is a massive part of the media pressure which suggests and even dictates which female figure is in fashion. Slimming magazines use size 10 models to show off the latest clothes and slimming aids such as the Cambridge diet, Slendertone and diet foods are all advertised using very thin women. Magazines publish success stories of women who have lost weight which illustrate how much happier these women feel and how their lives have changed. Yet success is defined according to social expectations, not that particular individual’s idea of success. Women who have dieted from 18 to 14 stone and have decided to stop do not get their pictures taken and their stories reported. Reaching the target weight is defined according to what the industry believes your ideal weight should be, not when you feel more positive about yourself. All the other readers who never manage to lose weight do not get their stories published; no weight loss is not something to be encouraged.

The dieting industry also suggests dieting as a way to change your life. The success stories, the offers of future satisfaction any the constant pairing of thinness with happiness promote the idea that thinness is happiness and dieting is the way to this happiness. It is impossible to read a slimming magazine without feeling fat and without making plans to eat less in future.

Magazines, television, films all show us how thin we should be. They use thin women to be attractive, to model their clothes and to be seduced by the male heroes. The slimming industry it part of this promotion. It is part of the creation of the need for a slimming industry.

The dieting industry responds to a need in that women who need to lose weight can find support and a structure in the form of clubs and magazines. However, the industry also exploits women’s body dissatisfaction by treating their perceived problem as an actual problem and offering to solve it. It is also responsible for creating this problem in the first place. It is the perfect industry. By creating a market for itself it ensures that women will continue to feel fat and will continue to support the dieting industry.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
How does the industry exploit your need for weight loss?

• Preoccupation with weight
• How successful are Dieters?
• Behavioural modification of obesity
• How successful are Dieters? Continue….
• Emotions and Overeating
• What if The Diet Isn’t Working?
• The Wonder of Water
• Diet Don'ts
• SECRETS OF HOLFORD LOW-GL DIET Rule No 1
• Weight Changes and Depression