My efforts to drop pounds made me feel like I was dropping the ball on women’s rights as well. Then the epiphany: What’s wrong with wanting to be healthy and look hot?
Is Dieting Anti-Feminist?
By Ariel M. Stallings

I grew up without a scale in the house. My mother threw it away when I was 8 years old because she didn’t want me to become a slave to it like she had as a teen. I also didn’t have any Barbies growing up because my mom didn’t want me to have a distorted body image. Hey, makes sense to me: I got My Little Ponies instead … they have stumpy legs and plump bubble butts and are probably a much better body model for little girls. As a result, I grew up with a solid, healthy body image and a body to match: I’m totally average — thick, but not fat; strong, not skinny.

However, six-plus years of working as a writer/sedentary lump accelerated my metabolism’s natural decline. Despite a daily yoga practice, I’ve never been an especially active person and having a sit-in-a-chair career is without a doubt my biggest health liability.

I eat healthy foods. My diet is mostly vegetarian (I eat fish a few times a week), and I eat a lot of vegan food (thanks to a strict-vegan husband). I rarely touch fast food, rarely drink alcohol/soda/Starbucks, and my main vices have been sweets, nuts, and oily ethnic foods like Thai and Indian. My diet is infinitely healthier than the Standard American Diet of deep fried everything with a bucket-sized side of carbonated sugar. Despite all that, though, I’d steadily gained weight for the last five years … three or four pounds a year. I wasn’t terribly overweight, but I could already see how my lifestyle and eating habits had become the most unhealthy part of my life. And, well, my chin was starting to disappear into my neck.

I started wrestling with myself: I felt unhealthy — and then felt guilty for feeling that way. Was I a victim of the patriarchal societal pressures my mother tried so hard to shield me from? Then again, does fighting the patriarchy mean stuffing myself? Was I buying into some clucky NOT ME style national weight obsession by feeling like I wasn’t eating right? Then again, since when is eating healthier a national obsession? Americans eat terribly!

I knew that I was eating more food than I needed to, but the mere idea of portion control brought up an enormous set of issues for me. As the feminist daughter of a feminist mother, I’ve always felt like it was my duty not to think about food. Not only a duty — it was something I owed to my best friend who’d suffered through anorexia and bulimia in high school, complete with a month of hospitalization. It was my job to be the one who held down the fort of healthy eating, setting a good example for women who were crushed under the thumb of eating disorders and weight issues.

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