Is Anti-Diet Culture Eating Itself?
The capitalist impulse can make a cause start to curdle
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Three diet culture bubbles popped for me last week, from two corners of the substack/enlightened women’s media universe plus one client.
Exhibit A: Stop Trying to Make Protein Happen.
Pro-fat/anti-diet culture expert Virginia Sole-Smith is the woman who comes to mind when I think anti-diet culture.
In addition to her Burnt Toast substack and books, Sole-Smith and momfluencer expert Sara Peterson share a podcast called Cult of Perfect. They hit a favorite target last week: a trad-wife OG who goes by Ballerina Farm.
I know Ballerina Farm (let’s call her BF) only from trad wife takedown media. She’s extremely rich (hubby is a JetBlue heir)1, bland blonde-pretty, LDS and mother of many. Her videos in soothing rustic tones with down-home content belie the Scrooge McDuck money. And the appeal to a certain demo is obvious.
Disclosure: I’m not that demo. But she neither hooks nor triggers me. To me, her account is market data because it’s all a business (including the takedowns, but we’ll get to that later.)
What bubbled up last week was the response to BF’s latest offense: Adding protein to her diet with flaxseeds. The Cult of Perfect (ironic acronym: CoP) women claim any Protein Girlie2 choices signal even more diet culture thinking, plus excessive protein levels.
Note: BF’s 1-g-per-lb-of-weight is a pretty standard reco these days for women over 40 or those who work out.
The piece included bits like:
I sense <the protein intake> is more complicated than BF entering a beauty pageant, or BF sharing a birth video, but I need help untangling WHY.
(bold-face is mine, all caps is theirs)
Later:
You know Lauren Graham was probably dieting like mad to be shot next to a younger, thinner Alexis Bledel for seven seasons.
Hm. There’s internalized ageism, assumed disordered eating AND internalized misogny via female-vs-female competition here vs allyship. But go on….
This all got on my radar via a substacker named
in a piece called “Is it influencer critique, or is it misogyny?Virginia and Sara pick apart Hannah’s Instagram stories about her ~ protein journey ~ by baselessly suggesting that she’s pivoting to bodybuilding, that her efforts are connected to religious fanaticism (they quote some biblical passage about strong arms that Hannah has said nothing about), that she’s FORCING herself to eat enough protein.
To quote an expert quoted in one of Peterson’s old media pieces:
“Perhaps we feel a sense of gratification that we can take pleasure in deconstructing such patriarchal, white, wealthy, consumerist visions of motherhood.” — Elizabeth Nathanson, associate professor of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College
The perfectionism and performance go both ways. The CoP gals are starting to challenge anxieties that feel more manufactured than true for middle age or from what I see, Gen Z.
Are grown women really tormented by the “brave” act to wear birkenstocks with skinny jeans? Or a shirt in a color they don’t love? If so, come with me to the dog park for some free exposure therapy. I see much braver outfits every day.
Meanwhile, Peterson’s obsession with BF is approaching single white female levels.
Back in 2021, these were part of her early momfluencer piece in Bazaar:3
You wonder how many readers now follow BF and similar due to these pieces. It’s the only reason I’d have ever hit their feeds. Maybe their audiences are hate follows, maybe it’s more complicated. Escapism is needed, too.
Published recently on Peterson’s instagram feed, re: BF’s posts specifically:
1 - Why? Why do they have so much power over anyone? We are talking about posts of women making Coca-Cola from scratch for Pete’s sake. What could be more absurd?
2 - Do what I do. Look at social media only as your work.
The Culting of the Counter Voices
The timing of this diet culture double-down is, of course, atop Ozempic etc., bringing thin back in. Body neutrality is out! Lizzo is problematic! Butt implant removal is hot! So maybe there’s a feeling of having to go harder.
The day I published this post, the NYT happened to run a profile on Sole-Smith.
Sole-Smith has emerged as an inspirational, infuriating voice on the subject of bodies at a moment when there is no neutral zone. Since “Fat Talk” became a New York Times best seller last May, Burnt Toast has grown to nearly 50,000 subscribers — mostly white, straight, millennial mothers who have struggled with eating, body image, and weight. In Sole-Smith’s reader survey, about half of her audience identified as “fat.” On Burnt Toast no pro-weight-loss comments are allowed.
The NYT also mentions “Burnt Toast adherents.” The term is spot-on.
There is an all-or-nothing stridency to many sub-communities, diet culture or anti-perfectionism included. Followers must be all in, wherever the platform goes. Offer an opposing view or point of clarity and get savaged in the comments, sometimes by the authors themselves.
This person nailed it:
Yet amongst the audience of anti-Ballerina Farmers, I’m guessing there’s a decently sized overlap of both audiences: Burnt Toast or Momfluenced in the AM, Ballerina Farming by night.
Each can make you feel a little bad.
Thus is the Catch-22 of being female, and the occasional uncertainty of who you are actually hate following vs pleasure following at any given moment. Or why.
All Culture = Diet Culture?
Both Sole-Smith and Peterson are smart people and good writers. Yet any purpose can start to lose potency when any personal choice or healthy is framed as a capitulation to The Man. To whit:
Post-divorce Sole-Smith has posts positing “Is Heterosexual Marriage a Diet?” and “Is Not Shopping a Diet?” Apparently, if all you got is a a DQ spoon, everything’s a Blizzard?? <mmm… ice cream>
Yet I get it. After a while, the audience needs fresh meat (preferably marbled). When you run out of topics, you are forced to repeat yourself or grasp at straws (mmmm.. Blizzards again.)
Sole-Smith has also gotten pushback for being OK with ultra processed food for kids and for coming off as anti-exercise.
Women online are saying they feel called out for working out or eating how they want to eat—is this what we want?
We can be body shamed for not feeling body shame. And shamed for feeling body shame. Somehow it’s still all on women. We are the problem to be solved. We are doing it wrong. Other women are doing it wrong.
Why can’t women just feel however the hell they choose to? How is this helping?
Well, it pays. A lot.
Sole-Smith’s first book was about intuitive eating. The NYT called The Eating Instinct a quiet book" and it sold about 2,000 print copies.
By her own admission, her awakening about audience building meant getting more loud:
“I do think being more clear on a provocative argument, versus asking careful questions about it, is just more marketable,” she said, in retrospect.
She’s not wrong.
So many women build platforms these days by pointing fingers, primarily at other women and women-led businesses. (👉 Kind of me, here, right now4👈.) And it can work, because people love to watch women take down other women. Call it clickbait or call it engagement.
See: a famous OB/GYN’s 17+ posts ravaging GOOP. Girlfights and call outs get clicks. Jen Gunter would just be a clever doctor from Canada if not for Gwyneth.
So while influencers can be problematic, they are also essential grist for critics. Who are building audience.
To quote Samantha Irby‘s brilliant newsletter: Bitches Gotta Eat! There are money goals all around. 🙋♀️
Influencers often get called out for monetizing their platforms even though they do work that once took whole magazine or agency teams to pull off. Same job, just less help and self-employed.
Women-owned brands get dinged for “cashing in on systemic issues/women’s problems”—this happened to us at Wile—but is anyone else addressing many of them?
The same critics often talk about women’s unpaid labor but.. nevermind.
Et tu, substackers & authors?
To put it bluntly: Thought leaders sell books, subscriptions and maybe podcast ads. They charge $10,000-$20,000 per speaking gig. They get consulting jobs and run workshops. About diet culture, beauty culture, household inequity, etc. Which, good for them! But also still capitalism.
Here is Peterson calling out women building audiences to monetize while she promotes and builds paid channels devoted to monetizing the critique of women building audiences to monetize.
The call is coming from inside the house, but hey that’s late stage capitalism.
It’s supposed to be about women’s agency, right?
As a lifelong critic of the patriarchy, it’s weird to feel like I’m defending trad wives and BeautyTok. It’s bizarre to look like I’m on the side of a woman’s right to demurely churn butter or performatively count calories while I’m critiquing the CoP women whom I’m fundamentally more aligned with.
Like Sole-Smith, mine is a goldfish cracker household where ice cream is served in full fat and full dairy to my kid, alongside berries and pears. I don’t think that’s revolutionary but for some, it is.
Founding a perimenopause brand gave me massive empathy for where women are at. We don’t need more lectures or weirdo confines. It is possible to live the examined life and still decide you want to be a way. The secret is deciding you are the ultimate judge. That’s the real trap: Most of us are conditioned out of this.
We should all be pushing for self-acceptance and challenging any limiting system. But that’s hard. Doing a Reel on whether it’s anti-feminist to drink oat milk is easier.
Ideally, we could critique the culture without going at each other quite so hard or so personally. Because that is also the female trap in culture.
Exhibit B: Swole Woman Calls Out a PR Pitch
Capitalists, it’s true! We are in tricky waters, but they are navigable.
More nuance is seen from Casey Johnston, once “Ask a Swole Woman” columnist who now writes under She’s a Beast. She’s a weightlifter and common sense health voice that just tore up a smoothie company for claiming anti-diet culture in an influencer pitch to her:
Overall, Johnston has a vibe that feels closer to actual consumers and humans. She touts a macro tracking app because gains. She recommends products in writeups like this one:
This feels and sounds like women I know and thousands I’ve heard from in research, reviews and comments.
This is marketing: “I do have to look at it every day” was something we dug into long and hard at Wile. Women like things. And that’s OK!
What’s a Brand to Do?
Again, Johnston calls out the relative fear experienced in modern brands who are genuinely trying to have an impact or meaningful community. Judging by the clickbait takedowns, some fear is natural.
Result: milquetoast.
Yet I ran a poll two weeks ago on my feed and the majority of respondents said Dove should continue the 20-year old Real Beauty Campaign.
The audience is still there.
Brands: It Takes Clarity, Authenticity & Nuance
You can’t get the required nuance from the legacy thinkers or AI, it’s too biz-as-usual.
Case in point, I got this comment from a (white) (male) agency owner re: DEI.
The please end this soon got me. The worst era just make me giggle. I mean:
Automatically conflating values+politics or reducing the efforts of purpose-driven without regard to what’s been unaddressed for eons—this is where the milquetoast is served particularly dry and cold.
Suddenly, CoP didn’t seem so bad. And Casey Johnston nailed the fear companies feel about really getting real. Many execs want to project the right image but will then police anything too risky. Any purpose-related dialogue is often reduced to weak attempts that feel pandering or “cause of the week.” Participation must be earned and intentional.
And the influencer you feel great about today could wildly veer their platform next week or start spon-conning something that does not align. The wild west, algo-driven media model we’re living in means we NEED to hold our own conversations not end it now. Own it. With care.
P.S. 50% of Gen Z say they will not work at a place that does reflect their values.
Exhibit C: The Talk I Had This Week
To be clear: If your brand doesn’t require power tools, never use the word “dismantling.” But that doesn’t mean hide. Just don’t pander or forget your audience.
This week I was talking to a client wanting to make anti-diet culture as core element of their brand platform.
Issue: The product is a very low-calorie food.
Issue: The category is often used in detox diets and weight loss.
This is what the founders want to push against. Yet….
Issue: Many of their customers either aren’t seeing the link or are likely kind of ok with it, even if it is framed as wellness culture. They may use it for weight control. Shame-as-empowering and call-out-as-championing will create a situation.
Answer: This can be a small, strategic part of content strategy. But more critically, combat diet culture in what you affirm and uplift—not just what you negate. Don’t start an anti-anti-anti-anti movement, even if you can.
Be PRO the joy of good food, of flavor, of eating. Which is more powerful than not not eating. And put it through a founder’s voice or as a topic for the community. Trust must be earned, the audience needs to guide.
Work on accepting who really you are, who others are and how you need to show up to be the most of your highest value. In brand, in life :)
The Economist is noting “The Rise of the Remote Husband,” as high earning men WFH and wives head to the office. Supposedly this will benefit women.
Want to act like a young guy and place bets against that?
Real Housewives used to be a place to launch a career, now it’s a place to revive them, especially in style brands.
First our friend Jenna Lyons, now Rebecca Minkoff will be in the cast.
Note: the last 2 Minkoff bags I got had bad hardware. She’s cool though. Some are wound up about her Scientology.
Founder Gregg Renfrew is buying back Beauty Counter out of foreclosure. She sold in 2021 and it’s been in free fall. It will relaunch in 2 weeks.
Naomi Watts did the same for her brand Stripes this winter, buying it for $500K.
Wellness residences like The Well kind of sound like what WeWork wanted to pull off, but more woo/spa and less tech bro. Full spa, spiritual cleansing, latest in well/beauty tech and good design.
If you have to ask, your chakras aren’t clear enough.
Not the only money in the game. Sole-Smith is an heir to H.D. Smith, a pharmaceutical wholesaler acquired in 2018 for $815M. “It is not a privilege I earned, and it is an enormous privilege.”
Not my words, this term is a thing
NOTE: This piece championed influencers turning away from traditional topics and to social activism. Surprise: The ones cited are back to posting house remodels, pretty kids, and workouts. Probably because clicks.
But I swear just on this piece! I’m fair and balanced!
Diet culture is exhausting and robs us of emotional energy. Anti-diet culture is also exhausting and robs us of emotional energy. Conclusion: I am tired.
Thanks for posting this!
Thank you for saying out loud what I've been afraid to acknowledge publicly. (What if the anti-diet culture people come for me for.. not being sufficiently anti-diet culture!?). I had to step away when budgeting was deemed the same as diet culture and when posting a workout selfie was called an expression of ableism.