My measure of any form of media, is whether it continues to please, alarm or haunt me days after viewing it. Dietland did that for me! After viewing the first episode on AMC this past Monday night, I couldn’t quit thinking about how mixed are the messages we receive as females growing up in a world that tells us to love ourselves while critiquing us at every turn.
Part of me learned about being fat from watching those around me struggle with dieting and self-hate their whole lives. The other part learned about it on a much more personal level in the past few years, as I joined the legions of women starving themselves constantly for “the cause.” But perhaps all of us can relate to some extent to how beauty-focused advertising teaches young girls that we don’t deserve joy. We should instead strive toward “perfection,” no matter how self-destructive that path may become.
“Dietland doesn’t merely argue that beauty culture is violent, but also asks the unsettling question of whether the violence that women spend inflicting on themselves is actually a coy display of anger, not at ourselves, but a deeply misogynistic culture.” — Arielle Bernstein, “Killer Looks, How Dietland Confronts The Violence of Beauty Culture.”
A few things I learned while watching Dietland were disturbing at best. For example, this line by the star “Plum Kettle” about being fat and attracting men: “Men screw women like me, but marry women like my boss,” played by Julianna Marguiles below.
Since I didn’t grow up dieting, I never quite understood the fantasy of those women who have been taught that their lives will be completely transformed as soon as they lose just the right amount of weight. The self-hate is everywhere in this show, and in our cultural bias created by advertising.
“Dietland allows fat women, women like me, who have fallen off too many treadmills and gone to bed so hungry it hurts, the chance to explore a righteous anger; it connects our pain to the bigger issues of a world that hates women.” — Laura Bogart, “I see myself in Dietland”
I really don’t know how we got so driven as a culture, but I do have a few tips on how to give yourself a break from all of that internalized pressure: Take days off from your ‘normal’ life where you can truly do whatever YOU want to do. No rules. No guilt. Be lazy. Watch trashy TV. Eat mac and cheese. No food shaming either. Try really hard not to judge yourself or others for just a few hours. Celebrate having the time to just be yourself!
Adventures of the NEW Old Farts 