Naomi Watts is being naughty. “Tonight I’ll be eating like nobody’s watching…”
In the billboard ad for Uber Eats, slapped all over bus-stops around the country, she gives the camera a coy smile while holding a slice of cheesy pizza strategically away from the silk of her nightie. The ad is facetious, the longer video version set up like a dramatic Hollywood scene. But, facing the image every day on my way to work, I get a different message. One that whispers quietly in my ear.
She looks like someone just made her feel bad about absolutely loving that pizza.
You should only eat pizza when no-one can see you doing it. If you are glamorous and beloved like Naomi Watts, pizza is shame food. If you want to be like her, pizza is off limits.
I was first told I wasn’t eating like a lady when I was 12 years old. I was eating too vigorously, enjoying it too much. “Boys don’t want to see that,” said the pretty friend of my older sister who I looked up to. I paused, fork-to-mouth, my stomach twisting with shame.
According to her teenage wisdom, eating like a lady is all tiny bites and coy professions that you are “so full!” Having an appetite is unladylike. The key to eating like a lady, in fact, is to appear like you’re not really eating at all.
It was my first lesson in diet culture, something that Jennifer Beveridge, the CEO of Eating Disorders Victoria, says can be incredibly dangerous. “The association between diet culture and eating disorders is irrefutably clear,” says Beveridge. “Dieting or diet culture in general promotes an extremely narrow view of ‘health’ that is fixated on external appearance.”
If you keep your eyes open to it, you notice diet culture everywhere. It’s a pair of socks in Sportsgirl with hamburgers on them that say “Cheat Day”. It’s people saying “Oh, aren’t you good” when they spy you eating a salad for lunch and, conversely, “I’m being naughty today” when accepting a sliver of birthday cake at morning tea. It’s every second ad during The Bachelorette being for Lean Cuisine or Jenny Craig, the screen filled with women declaring how much more like themselves they felt once they lost the weight.
It’s the constant demurring of food, with protestations of, “I just don’t have a big appetite” or, “I’m cutting back on sugar”, or “That slice is way too big!” Diet culture is Naomi Watts admitting that she can only eat pizza when nobody is around to see her do it.
“Dieting is the single biggest behavioural risk factor for developing an eating disorder,” says Beveridge. “In fact, we know that girls who engage in dieting behaviour, even moderately, are five times more likely to go on to develop an eating disorder.” According to EDV, at any one time more than 900,000 Australians have an eating disorder – 64 per cent of those are women.
My heart thuds at the recollection of a conversation with a friend’s little sister, just newly emerging from her teens. She plaintively confided that she had been on a diet. “How can I still call myself a feminist?” she asked me. “One day I’ll be thinking, I don’t care what society says, I can look however I want, and the next I’ll be celebrating because I lost two kilos!” I didn’t know what to tell her.
Dietician and co-director of Body Positive Australia Fiona Sutherland has written a rousing open letter to diet culture itself: “Ah diet culture, you fickle and slippery creature,” she writes. “With both subtle and overt messages of shame and doubt, you permeate the human experience. You invite yourself into our everyday conversations…and you whisper your dark and sinister words into the ears of billions of people every day.”
I’ve never officially been on a diet. But I spend more time than I would like to admit thinking about what I eat. Often, at the end of the day, I run through what I’ve consumed in a mental version of ‘My Day on a Plate’, quietly congratulating myself when I have eaten a handful of almonds at 2pm instead of chocolate, and feeling real guilt when I’ve done the opposite. Every bite I take is marked up in either the good or bad column. Then I shake my head and declare the whole thing absurd, not at all what I believe in. The next day it all starts again.
As Sutherland writes to diet culture: “You suck, not only in a colloquial sense, but also in a literal sense. You suck energy, time, opportunity, confidence and sanity… You take our power. You drive us away from our values, and strip away our consciousness and our truth.”
As my inner feminist wrestles with the insidious strength of cultural conditioning, I think of the concept of mindful eating that Jennifer Beveridge explained to me. “Mindful eating is not a diet. Mindful eating is all about the way we eat, not what we eat,” she said.
“Being mindful is about focusing your attention and awareness on the present moment…which can help change the way we respond to food, both physically and emotionally.”
Sutherland believes that by calling out the harmful patterns of diet culture, we can break its hold on us. Simply, she states: “Let’s call bullshit together.”
So, in honour of my friend’s little sister, in honour of my twelve-year-old self, tonight I will order pizza. Tonight, I will take a big messy bite and let the cheese drip onto my chin. Tonight, I will focus on the swirl of basil and tomato and garlic on my tongue. Tonight, my food has no moral character. It’s just pizza. And I don’t care if anyone is watching.
Katherine Smyrk (@KSmyrk) is the Deputy Editor of The Big Issue.
For help or information, call EDV’s Helpline on 1300 550 236 or visit eatingdisorders.org.au.
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