Hello and Happy Tuesday DCD,
I hope you’re ok today.
So…if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that it can get super confusing when all of these different words are flying around the internet…
“Diet culture”
“Anti-diet culture”
“Fat-phobic”
“Beauty standards”
“Unrealistic beauty standards”
And so on and so on and soooooooo onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn…
It can be a lot, especially when you’re new to it.
I used to feel bamboozled by this kind of language when people would use it and I would mentally clock out, out of fear and embarrassment that I didn’t understand.
And whats worse is how sometimes people are made to feel that they need to know everything straight away if they want in on the conversation, which is not fair.
It’s not productive and it helps no one, we are all learning, we are all at a different part of our learning journey and it’s not perfection that matters, it’s PROGRESS!
Today I thought I would talk a little about beauty-standards and how beauty standards link directly to diet culture.
“Beauty standards” and feminine beauty “ideals” are the socially constructed notions that:
-Physical attractiveness is one of a women’s most important assets.
– All women should strive to achieve and maintain this supposed “ideal standard” of physical attractiveness to be deemed worthy.
– We must fulfil certain distorted and unattainable expectations to be labelled beautiful.
Societal pressure and conditioning make it very hard to step out of autopiolet mode and see it from a new perspective, meaing unless something happens which causes us to question it, we are most likely subconsiously conforming to and judging others by these heterormornative rooted ideals.
Pressure to conform to these often unrealistic and un-natural expectations can have psychological effects starting from a young age and grow with us into adulthood.
It’s not surprising either when we’re conitioned to dislike perfectly natural things about ourselves, such as our body shape, bare face, body hair, functions and skin colour.
In the same way diet cultre has managed to convince us that carbs and fat are BAD, beauty standards have managed to convince us to be ashamed of pretty much anything normal and natural about ourselves.
Armpit hair? YUCK!
An unpainted face? EMBARRESING!
Is that a nipple? THE AUDACITY!!!!!!!!!!!
Beauty standards are there (set by the patriarchal rich, white, male powers that be) to make us feel like we need fixing, they convince us to hate ourselves, to feel like we’re not good enough and then what do you know, suddenly they have the perfect solution for our problems (which they created) and cash in on our insecurites.
It doesn’t stop there though, because eventually everyone would have tried their “solution” and upon realising it doesn’t work, that would be that.
NO…instead they keep on moving the goalpost, because with brand new “decisions made”, new goals set for what beauty is…comes a whole new batch of insecure women to profit from.
And diet culture is a shape shifter, adapting and evolving with whatever the current beauty standards are, offering you a purchasable solution, ever changing and unachievable…KER F*CKING CHING.
And so forth and so forth…the end is an illusion, because the game is rigged.
Anyhow you get the point I’m sure…
So today I would like to invite you to put aside 14 mins of your day to watch this YouTube video which I found very interesting, talking through how womens beauty standards have changed over the past 100 years and more interestignly how they started.
Showing how and why the mainstream media pumps our brains with constant images of what the supposed “perfect body shape” looks like and how it’s completely pointless to subscribe to it if you EVER want to feel any sence of ENOUGHNESS within your already SO UNBELIVEBALY ENOUGH self.
Having my eyes opened to these kind of things is what set me on my feminist path to empowerment and gave me a whole boat load on understanding in my own behaviours, thoughts and judgements, making my unsubscribing from diet culture easier and easier …so I would LOVE to hear your thoughts too.
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY9BxTuYtcY
Jordan ❤️✨#dietculturedropout
Self Love Club 