SECOND BITE: “Ladies Eat Salad, Men Eat Steak and Burgers” - Exploring Gendered Eating Tropes with Dr. Emily Contois

Second Bite: We're bringing back one of our most popular episodes of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp! As part of our Second Bite series, we're revisiting some of our favourite conversations from the archives. This episode was originally released on an earlier date, but the discussion is just as relevant today! In this episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, I will be talking to Dr Emily Contois, an Associate Professor at the University of Tulsa specializing in how identities are formed at the vital intersection of food, the body, and ideas about health. She is the author of “Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture” and co-editor of “Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation”. Today we will be diving into the intersection of gender norms and food choices. We will discuss how women are socialized to choose light dainty foods like salad whereas men are encouraged to eat hearty meals like steak and potatoes. We will be discussing the sneaky ways that diet culture and the food industry plays to these norms (ie. how foods are marketed to women vs men). We’re gonna talk about the “cool girl” story arc in TV and film (think Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls) and how that can be really damaging to young women’s relationship with food and their body. And I’m going to leave you with some actionable tips on how to reject these gendered food expectations which may specifically come in handy during the holidays when food judgement is at an all time high. Check in with today’s amazing guest: Dr Emily Contois, Associate Professor at the University of Tulsa. Follow ⁠@emilycontois ⁠ Website: ⁠https://emilycontois.com/⁠ Diners Dudes and Diets: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Diners-Dudes-Diets-Collide-Culture/dp/1469660741⁠ Food Instagram: ⁠https://www.amazon.ca/Food-Instagram-Identity-Influence-Negotiation-ebook/dp/B09YDNDK87⁠ 👩🏼‍💻 RESEARCH LINKS: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/11/2240⁠ ⁠https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-0022-5⁠ ⁠https://19thnews.org/2022/09/poll-healthcare-lgbtq-medical-discrimination/⁠ ⁠https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15534510.2015.1008037⁠ ⁠https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879107000437⁠ — DISCLAIMER:The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. — 📚 GRAB MY BOOK: The Hunger Crushing Combo Method ⤵️ Learn how to reach your healthiest weight without dieting using evidence based nutrition strategies. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306836793?tag=hacboogrosit-20 More purchase options: https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo/ 🎙 LISTEN TO BITE BACK WITH ABBEY SHARP ⤵️ Real conversations about nutrition, wellness, diet culture, parenting, and the biggest food debates. https://lnk.to/Bite-Back?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social ⭐ Enjoying the podcast? Follow Bite Back on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're enjoying the show, leaving a rating or review really helps support it! ✉️ SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER https://abbeyskitchen.myflodesk.com/kd6ijl0y3e 🥞 FREE Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo/ 💪 FREE Protein 101 Guide https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/protein-intake-recommendations/ 📖 MY FIRST COOKBOOK: The Mindful Glow Cookbook Amazon: https://amzn.to/2nev0lf 👩🏼‍💻 COACHING: 🍽️ Feeding Kids Without Diet Culture Webinar Raise confident eaters without food battles, guilt, or diet culture. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/coaching/ 📈 Business Coaching Build and grow your online brand with proven social media and business strategies. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/coaching/ 🤝 Personalized One-on-One Coaching Tailored support for content creation, business growth, podcasting, AI, brand partnerships, and more. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/coaching/ 📱 FOLLOW ME @AbbeysKitchen Instagram: www.instagram.com/AbbeysKitchen TikTok: www.tiktok.com/AbbeysKitchen Facebook: www.facebook.com/AbbeysKitchen Pinterest: https://ca.pinterest.com/AbbeysKitchen 🌐 VISIT MY WEBSITE Healthy recipes, nutrition resources, parenting advice, and evidence based articles. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com 💬 If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a comment below with your thoughts and let me know what you'd like to see next! With Science & Sass, Xoxo Abbey 🌸 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:57Abbey Sharp?

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• 1:28Speaker 00

  This goes back to the patriarchy. Something as small as you should control your appetite and you should be thin and you should eat in a particular way, maps onto those exact same dynamics of power when we think about how women fit into, right? The various societies that they're a part of.

• 1:45Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good.

• 1:58Abbey Sharp?

  Now, heads up to everybody, this is our last episode of the season. And after today, I'm going to be taking two weeks off for the holidays. So I hope you can all take some time to just like really enjoy the season, maybe catch up on some of our episodes, do whatever feels good to you. But I am so excited about today's episode because we are going to be talking about a very special interest of mine, gender and food.

• 2:32Abbey Sharp?

  So I don't know if you guys know this about me, but here's a little fun factoid. In my previous life, I was awarded a full grad school scholarship all the way through PhD that I bravely dropped out of to pursue this career in nutrition communications. And honestly, I am so grateful that I did because I love my job. But my proposed research was actually looking at gendered food choices, which is exactly what my guest today, Dr. Emily Kontwa, is an expert in. Emily is an associate professor at the University of Tulsa specializing in how identities are formed at the vital intersection of food, the body, and ideas about health.

• 3:13Abbey Sharp?

  She's the author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, and the co-editor of food Instagram, Identity, Influence, and Negotiation. In today's episode, we're going to be discussing how we as women versus men are socialized to choose salad versus steak respectively. We're also going to be talking about the sneaky ways that diet culture and the food industry plays into these norms. We're going to be talking about the cool girl trope in TV and film and how that can be really damaging to young women's relationship with food and their body. And I'm going to leave you guys all with some actionable tips on how to reject these

• 3:54Abbey Sharp?

  gendered food expectations, which may specifically come in handy during the holidays when, let's be real, food judgment be raging. Now, quick disclaimers, we're going to be briefly talking about eating disorders in today's episode, and also my general reminder that this information in this episode is never a replacement for personalized healthcare. Also, I would love if you would follow or subscribe to the podcast and also leave me a quick little review as this is a new podcast and it really, really, really does help me out.

• 4:32Abbey Sharp?

  Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Emily, for joining me. I am so excited to jump into this learning because this is just such a special interest of mine. So thank you for joining me.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  You're still welcome. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

• 4:44Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah. Okay, so just to kind of catch folks up to speed here, you know, because 15 years ago in my grad school sociology courses, it was drilled into my brain that gender is a social construction. And, you know, as philosopher Judith Butler suggested, it's not something that we necessarily are, but something that we do and perform. Can you kind of give listeners some examples of the ways that we are taught to kind of perform gender from a very young age?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Think about the kind of baby clothes we put a boy in versus a girl, the kind of messaging and colors that they have. Think about how we tell boys to be rowdy and to get dirty, right? While we encourage little girls to be prim and proper, to be dainty, to be motherly towards their baby dolls, right? There are tons of things from childhood on up where we instill these ideas about this binary understanding of gender as masculine and feminine. But our food lives are also a really powerful way that these ideas about gender come to us, things like flavors supposedly mapping onto gender, right? Think of men challenging themselves to eat something really spicy as sort of a challenge and defense of their masculinity versus the idea of sweetness, right?

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Being mapped on to femininity and to women. The steak salad dichotomy, we can go on and on and on. So flavors, foods, ways of eating, ways we think about our body, they're all tied up in these ideas of how we perform gender and the way that we're taught to by institutions, media, our family, so many different aspects of our lives all around us.

• 6:20Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, so like, let's talk a little bit more specifically about how that kind of performance specifically looks for for food and our food choices. Can you kind of give more examples? You alluded to the the kind of salad steak, that kind of thing. Can we talk a little bit more about that?

• 6:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So thinking about when a man and a woman go on their first date, right? Of like the pressure some women feel to order in a particular way. And then some women totally buck that, right? And order the steak anyway to be able to say, yes, I have an appetite and I like to eat and maybe I have an appetite for things more than just what's at the table. That that effort to control women's appetites and women's bodies, right? Is really interrelated. But these, lots of different ways, right? That femininity is this expectation for pursuing lack, for not having a big appetite, for thinking about thinness, for calorie control, that that's instilled in so many different messages, whether it's for girls, for teens, for women, that a lot of it is about that restraint.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  So I had one paper that I wrote where I was comparing like, how does media talk about salads differently to men and women? And so for women, we see sad salads, right? It's like, let's make these as calorically not dense as possible, right? To make these just-

• 7:34Abbey Sharp?

  Just iceberg lettuce.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Yes, just right, the negative calorie lore kind of meals where, you know, we're just chewing air and a little bit of water and like pretending that we're full and happy. Well, for men, right? Salads are about adding in protein, adding in healthy fats, adding in, you know, little bits of texture and crunch, that we see a totally different discourse when we think about masculinity and eating well, as being fulfilling and meeting your appetite where it is, instead of trying to control and deny it. So sometimes you can see those differences between how we talk about masculinity and femininity in food when you compare them side by side.

• 8:09Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, so fascinating because, yeah, I mean, and this is really, you know, part of my food philosophy is about fullness and feeling that satisfaction. And and like, women are not fucking rabbits. Like, we need and deserve to feel full too. And we need fiber, we need protein, we need healthy fats and all that stuff in our salads. And obviously, the socialization begins so early, especially, you know, even with the food. Like you mentioned that the clothing and the shows and the toys were allowed to use, but with food too. And I'm sure folks who are listening, who maybe grew up with a sibling or cousins of the opposite sex, may recount family members treating kids differently at meal times,

• 8:51Abbey Sharp?

  where, you know, boys might be encouraged to have that second helping and third portion and praise for having this good hearty appetite, whereas the girls maybe serve lighter portions or smaller meals or encouraged to eat more vegetables. And it's crazy, like, when we look at the cross-cultural studies, we can see that kids are aware of their quote-unquote gender roles by like two or three and like very, very young. And I'm sure a lot of families who are listening right now, who are victims of diet culture, generational diet culture, may be trying to push back against some of that. But it's just so hard when, you know, kids go to school and daycare and the playground and it's just reinforced there. Do you have any kind of tips for parents with young kids who are trying to kind of

• 9:36Abbey Sharp?

  push back against some of those those gender norms?

• 9:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the first thing is trying really hard, right, to treat all of our children, regardless of their gender, the same and how we think about what foods we're giving them, the way we encourage them to try lots of different foods and then to listen to their own tummies, right, to learn how to listen to their bodies of like, I've had enough, or I like this, or I don't, and to let your children have agency in that process so that they, regardless of whether they're a boy or a girl, feel that same sense of power and autonomy, that they're a part of the family and they get to have some input on their food choices. A lot of us grew up with, you know, finish your plate, right? And, you know, there are starving people elsewhere, that letting children listen to their own appetites can be really powerful. It can be really meaningful for girls, especially

• 10:23Speaker 00

  given the other messages that they're getting throughout culture and media.

• 10:26Abbey Sharp?

  Such an important reminder. Now, aside from like the obvious problem with these gendered messages around food, which, you know, to me, as a dietitian, is ultimately that it just often leads women to kind of chronically not eat enough or fear fatness and therefore be at heightened risk of eating disorders, et cetera. What are like the big picture dangers for women here that kind of can be traced back to a lot of these gendered eating expectations?

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Absolutely. This goes back to the patriarchy. This is about being able to control women's rights, women's roles, women's opportunities, women's belief in themselves to achieve, right, any level in society or any job or any possibility. That something as small as you should control your appetite and you should be thin and you should eat a particular way maps onto those exact same dynamics of power when we think about how women fit into, right, the various societies that they're a part of. So it isn't some small silly thing, right, that women are worrying about on their own in their personal lives. This is about women's power writ large across national scales and on an international one as well.

• 11:33Abbey Sharp?

  Right. And, you know, I spoke about this on another episode I did about diet culture in the workplace and the intersection between diet culture and hustle culture and, you know, the ways in which for women, their bodies are still very much their business card, whereas we don't see those same expectations, you know, of male CEOs to be rail thin. You know, and obviously I don't want to dismiss the dangers of this for men too, even though it does present in many different ways. And you've got a whole book on this, Diners, Dudes and Diets. So if you can kind of give us a little bit of insight, what's happening to the men in our life with these gendered messages?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what I say is that patriarchy screws all of us, right? Not equally, right? Like women and non-binary people, we're still, right, subordinated and have more problems under this system and experience more oppression. But men suffer under it too, right? The ideal of, you know, a real man who's tall and muscular and has a six-pack and a big chest and giant biceps, right? Like, you can't change your height in the same way that we can't really change our breast shape or how long our legs are, right? Like, men are trapped in similar, right, physical ideals that they see held up in media or see, you know, other men sort of try to force on each other that this is what they're supposed to look like. So we have both media studies and psychological studies

• 12:59Speaker 00

  that men experience really similar amounts of discontent with their bodies, whether they're high school, college age, and all through the life course. It's not to the same extent that women feel it. In the 1980s, there's a trio of women psychologists who coined the term normative discontent, that it's literally just a condition of womanhood, right, to be dissatisfied with your body, to not think it's enough, that's a part of being a woman under patriarchy. But for men, it's starting to look really similar. And so there is a little bit more flexibility, right? There are more bodies that are considered quote-unquote "good bodies" for men versus for women, but a lot of these pressures are truly intersecting and overlapping. And so when my book came out, some of my favorite conversations were with, you know, like feminist men's groups, where they wanted to figure

• 13:44Speaker 00

  out, how do we have peace with our bodies and good relationships with food and to be good allies for the women in our lives who we know, right, face these pressures in a far different and more extreme way than we do.

• 13:56Abbey Sharp?

  Right. And, you know, obviously historically, we've treated eating disorders as a quote-unquote like female problem. But in the last 40 years, the number of men with EDs has actually grown faster than the number of women. And, you know, I often think that, you know, that it's very likely the part of the reason for the discrepancy in eating disorder diagnosis rates between women and men is because there's gendered stigma around eating disorders still being this kind of woman-only issue or female issue. So the problem is probably there. It's just that men may not actually be getting the recognition and help that they need for it. Not that women are also not really getting the help that they need for it, because so

• 14:38Abbey Sharp?

  much of these behaviors are normalized by our culture, but there's still that discrepancy there.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Absolutely. That for men, like part of masculinity, right, is to be individualistic, to not need help, to not seek it out. And this is a problem for so many different health behaviors, right, not just eating disorders. But the fact that men often suffer and can suffer from different kinds of eating disorders, whether it's, you know, protoirexia, where we're just drinking protein shakes, right, like it might present differently. And similarly with steroid use, right, this another destructive sort of behavior to try and achieve what's held up as this good body, this attractive body that men are supposed to have. And that there isn't a lot of discourse about, you know, how many men in Hollywood, for example, have these incredible physiques for these superhero roles or other, you know, positions that they're playing in films, that it's not just working out hard in the gym, it's more than that.

• 15:29Abbey Sharp?

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 15:44Abbey Sharp?

  And, you know, diet culture obviously takes advantage of a lot of these gendered expectations in, you know, how it attempts to just rope us in and like sell us something. Can you give us an example of how the diet industry exploits these ideals?

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So one of, I mean, I say it's one of my favorite papers that I wrote, but it's also like so infuriating, that back when Weight Watchers Online comes out with a version just for men in kind of the mid to late 2000s, they had these like, how does it work videos for Weight Watchers, which was like default for women, and then Weight Watchers for men. And so side by side, you see them talk about the exact same tools that help you count your points and use recipes and understand what's in the grocery store, but they talk about it totally differently, right? For women, there's this expectation that we're going to internalize the rules of dieting, that we're going to change our behaviors, going to eat nothing but low-calorie, healthy food, and that we are going to transform ourselves, right, into this better mother, better daughter, better person, right, who

• 16:44Speaker 00

  has this whole trajectory ahead of her, because she's finally lost weight and become who she's supposed to be. For men, the promise is like, you're just gonna eat dude food, right? You're gonna eat tacos and beer and hot dogs and you're just gonna track the weight and it's gonna fall off and you're gonna be this better athlete and then you're gonna be more successful at work, right? Like, it's a very different kind of promise, but very different in kinds of foods that we talk about, the expectations for behavior change, or thinking about, you know, food or eating or your body in a different way. For men, there is no expectation for any of that. So a lot of the destructive diet culture messaging is very different when it's being targeted to men.

• 17:21Abbey Sharp?

  Right. There isn't that kind of restrict, restrict, denial, denial, active willpower, like that kind of narrative going on, yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  No, your appetite deserves to be satisfied, right? And you're gonna eat plenty of delicious food and the weight's just gonna fall off.

• 17:37Abbey Sharp?

  Such a sham. In my next life, I want to be a man.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Right? For so many reasons.

• 17:44Abbey Sharp?

  And like, it's obviously not just diets. Like, the food industry reinforces and plays into this as well. So can you give us an example or examples of foods that are virtually the same but have been tweaked or the marketing's been tweaked to just kind of reinforce some of these gendered eating tropes?

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. So one of the favorite chapters that I got to write in Diners, Dudes and Diets looked at diet sodas and yogurts, right? And how would those two foods, in American culture, right, conceived as feminine and feminizing? And so when they wanted to target men, what do they do? What are the strategies that they employ? And so Coca-Cola, right, goes back to the lab to develop Coke Zero. They come up with a different artificial sweetener that they call Ace K, which sounds like a winning quarterback or like a Bond villain or something. And so they, part of it is like this assumption, right, that like men aren't gonna drink something that has that acrid aftertaste that saccharin does, right, or aspartame, right, these, you know, artificial sweeteners that women have been

• 18:44Speaker 00

  eating, you know, and drinking for that point of 50 or 60 years for the history of diet soda. So for men, we literally, right, go back and create a better tasting sweetener that tastes more like real sugar. It has that like lovely round mouth feel to it. And so Coke Zero does really well, because women are also buying it because it tastes better. But they also eventually launch it in a black can. They have totally different, you know, font choices. Think about how, you know, the diet on Diet Coke is that, you know, sort of cursive font, right? And then it's come to be understood as really girly. So Coke Zero tried to establish itself in all these different material culture, semiotic, taste-based ways. And then in their advertising campaigns as well, that this is for men,

• 19:26Speaker 00

  right, and that you can drink this diet soda. And then similarly with yogurt, right, to go from something like, I don't know if you remember Yoplait, right, like all the dessert-flavored, you know, 100-calorie ridiculous little yogurts?

• 19:39Speaker 00

  For actual cake or actual Boston cream pie. And so then Greek yogurt, right, starts to become more popular in the United States. I remember when I studied abroad in Italy, right, and had like a Greek yogurt for the first time. It's like, what is this marvelous substance? And so it finally breaks into the market here. But because it's higher in protein, there's this opportunity to latch on to that sort of athletic fitness based trend that lots of people cared about, but specifically men, right? To say this is yogurt for men that packs this protein punch. It can also be low in fat. And so it can be this, you know, perfect fitness sort of partner for your diet life. And so again, there are crazy brands like powerful yogurt comes out. It's a gigantic size. It's like eight ounces.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  It's like this really, really big yogurt for an individual serving size. But it literally has six pack abs chiseled into the side of the cup that is made with a much heavier weight plastic compared to like Tivia that like collapses in your hand. So again, the plastics, the shapes, the color being black. There's, you know, a bull's horns or a part of the iconography, right? Like this is how we sell yogurt to men versus to women, right? Then it's about sweetness and low calories and being thin and having this instead of desserts. Well, for men, it's protein and manliness and owning the world, right? It's these very different messages. To go back to our earlier point, it's not just about flavor or nutrients or thinness or muscularity. It's about power, right?

• 21:04Speaker 00

  And taking up space and giving, you know, honoring your appetite and what you want to do in the world.

• 21:10Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah. And isn't there like an Oikos or like a, like a, there was with the NFL is just like their whole logos on there. I mean, obviously they're speaking to a different demographic than the like zero percent, no sugar, no fat, no flavor bullshit that we've had to consume as women. So it's so interesting.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  And Oikos triple zero like did have all those zeros, right? But like they talk about zero in a very different way for men, right? It's the on diet diet for men, but it also like infuses it with like value and power. And the idea that this is something extra and special and that you should be consuming. Well, for women, it's always like, this isn't there, this isn't there. So you won't be there. So everything will be okay.

• 21:55Abbey Sharp?

  Oh my gosh. Yeah. The front of label packaging is so interesting to me because I, you see it over and over and again, the women, foods marketed to women are always calling out the calories and it's light or it's guilt free. And then for men, like you say, it's, it's the protein is displayed front and center. And it's the words like power and fuel. Apparently women don't need fuel, I guess. Uh, is that what we're being taught here? But the, you know, I always think of like a hundred calorie packs when those were really popular back in like my eating disorder days. And they were like, we're paying, we're, we're going to make you pay more money to get fewer cookies in the bag.

• 22:32Abbey Sharp?

  And that's how we get, that's how we get, that's, that's what we get as women. We just have to pay more money for less. And when you think about it, it's crazy.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And it's one of those again, like the side by side comparison. Like I teach it with my students, I'm like, let's look at a lean cuisine and put it next to a Hungry Man dinner, right? The way we photograph the food, the way, I mean, they don't do it anymore, but like Hungry Man used to be like XXL. Like it was a gigantic, you know, jersey size. And you see like one and a half pounds of food, right? Like it was about weight, it was about volume, it was about like, this is going to satisfy you. Versus right, very different messaging to women.

• 23:06Abbey Sharp?

  Totally.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  And so you still see that, right? The grocery store, like you could be an anthropologist every single time you go shopping, right? Of like, how is my world trying to construct gender and masculinity and femininity at me?

• 23:16Abbey Sharp?

  I hope people, when they go to the grocery store, they start to, it start to kind of realize these things. Cause it is actually quite fascinating. But let's talk about TV and film because I'm a millennial and my teen year, teen years were really defined by the toxic 2000s diet culture, which played into these tropes quite heavily. Do you have any like media, strong media examples of gender diet and food behaviors that immediately come to mind?

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Yes, I think one that I always think of is Sex and the City, right? It was like so transformative for so many women, like in positive ways. I have so many friends that I made, right? By like watching them on DVD together. But at the same time, like even though it's a show that shows these women eating together, they have so many brunches and dinners and gatherings. But like, everybody is super thin and always super thin and no one talks about it. Like Charlotte and Miranda have their own sort of fitness practices that seem empowering and make them happy. But we have no idea, right? How Carrie looks the way that she does. Maybe the same way we don't understand how Sarah Jessica Parker, right? Has looked that way, you know, even on to, you know, this recent reboot of the show where the women are significantly older, where finally we have a little bit of conversation in some of those newer episodes.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  There's an episode where Charlotte's character, right? Talks about how she can't, you know, just lose weight like that when she wants to for a particular event or something. That's harder as you age. But again, it's a frustration with her body's ability to be thin, not with wanting to shirk those ridiculous ideals, which sometimes as women age, right, they feel more of a freedom. I remember my mom, when she turned 50, she's like, I want to give you this feeling, right? She would never use this language of like giving no fucks anymore, but it was just, she felt that finally, right? I don't have to feel all of this or to feel like I'm not measuring up to it. I wish I could give this to you at a younger age so you could live your life that way.

• 25:05Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah. I mean, that's amazing that you were able to, that your, your mom kind of came to that realization. That's so, so powerful. But like you mentioned earlier with the women in Sex and the City, I think it's very rare for women to talk about the struggle of being or staying or wanting to be thin out loud. And it's, I always, I think of that, you know, I think about the Barbie movie. And when America Ferrera in her like epic womanhood monologue, she says, you have to be thin, but you can never say that you want to be thin. And you have to, you want to be healthy, but you still have to be thin. And, and I think that even though in Hollywood, like thinness is basically a prerequisite, it has to appear to be effortless and unspoken of.

• 25:49Abbey Sharp?

  And this always reminds me of this like quote unquote, like cool girl trope, which, you know, basically portrays women as being just one of the guys and how they dress or how they eat or their interests and hobbies. But they're simultaneously like smoking hot and effortlessly thin. So I often think of like Rory and Lorelai on The Gilmore Girls, for example, where a huge part of their story arc is around them having these like massive appetites. And they even call themselves like competitive eaters, basically for all this like quote unquote unhealthy food, while obviously staying thin. And we love this, we love this kind of cute little fun quirk about them. But I often think about how differently that behavior would be interpreted if they weren't thin.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Then it would be slothful, then it would be sinful, then it would be wrapped up, right? And all the fat bias and stigma that our society exerts in a really strong way. As much as the body positivity movement, right, has opened up different kinds of conversations. As much as we see brands, right, starting to have different size models and different bodies in their clothes. We still, right, live in a country where fatness is feared and fat people, right, are stigmatized in significant ways.

• 27:03Abbey Sharp?

  Totally. And you know, why, how do you feel or why do you feel that this kind of seemingly impossible expectation that women can eat the burgers and fries, but they don't gain weight? And we don't kind of like see that happen because it's behind the scenes. Why do you feel that that expectation can be so dangerous for women?

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Some people are just really thin.

• 27:22Abbey Sharp?

  Of course.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Right? And like they can eat, you know, whatever, lots of different reasons. But there are also plenty of people in the media's eye who are out there all the time or influencers, who are in that body that people think is this ideal. And when you don't talk about how this is really hard, it makes it seem like there's something wrong with the rest of us. And that like, not only are our bodies not good, but all of our habits and everything we might be trying to do if we have goals, that we're all doing it wrong. And so like to go back to men, I think this is actually one of the interesting parts that like, the men will not tell us about their steroid use, which like we know is happening. But they will talk about how all I get to eat is chicken and broccoli for like this four months before this movie.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  And this is my workout routine and it's grueling and like, you know, I think like the Gladiator two coming out, right? Like people talked about sort of the effort they had to put in to create these bodies. Or going back to Tarzan, like Skarsgård was one of the first to really talk about how he felt so much pressure to achieve the body of that character. And like men's health really does, right? Like they just, you know, get these abs, right? Like all you have to do is follow this routine. It's like, no, it's for some of us just not possible, no matter how hard you try. And that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with you.

• 28:39Abbey Sharp?

  Hundred percent. Yeah, no. And I often think about, because I live brief social media, and this is a lot of what my, my kind of daily analysis comes down to is like, and you talk about this in, in kind of Food Instagram, which is, is the book that you co-edited, co-edited, but where you're studying kind of social media influencers in the wellness space. And in the book, you wrote about how women influencers kind of conveyed an effortless, but clearly rigid attitude toward, towards their food preparation ingredients and portion size that again concealed the extensive, likely extensive invisible labor that the followers don't see. Whereas the men that you were analyzing kind of emphasized flexibility in portion sizes

• 29:24Abbey Sharp?

  and breaking the rules and things like that. So again, I see this as that cool girl trope that apparently men don't have to engage in. But can you talk a little bit about what you observed in the content that you analyzed?

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think you're speaking of one of the awesome chapters in our book that are from, you know, some contributors coming out of the University of, at Stetson University. And so for them, they were looking at influencers of various different scales. So that's also something that's interesting, right? People who have small but loyal followings, then going up to these mega, mega influencers who have millions of followers and thinking about the various ways that they talk about their expertise and how they connect with their audiences. But this idea that it can be so effortless maps on to actually the logics of Food Instagram more broadly, right? That we're showing life as more curated, more beautiful, more successful than it ever really is, right? When you think about all the different social media platforms,

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Instagram is perhaps the most guilty, right, of this sort of a representation. And that's quite false, right, to something that would be perceived as authentic or showing, right? Sort of behind the scenes of like how difficult things can be. But also of this idea of food labor, another sociological term, right? Of like all the effort that goes into finding recipes that your family will eat and shopping the grocery sales and going to the different stores and bringing it all home and putting it in the pantry, managing the pantry in your head, knowing that you've picked recipes that every picky eater at your table will eat, trying to manage the food waste, trying to make sure it's healthy enough that everyone's getting something, but yummy enough that people aren't going to complain, right? Like all this labor, right? And then you have to clean up and then you have to put it in the

• 31:02Speaker 00

  fridge and try not to waste the leftovers, right? It goes on and on and on. And it's so different than saying, you know, you do dinner tonight, just go pick up a pizza, right? Like mostly women in our society are taking on all that food labor. And so for that to be invisible, for that to never be talked about, is to not honor, right, this gigantic effort that women put into this. Mostly women, right, in our country, there are definitely awesome feminist dads who take some of this labor on, but all of our sociological data shows women still do more of this labor, even in the most equitable marriages and families. And so the fact that this labor isn't compensated, you know, with industrial capitalism, we only

• 31:43Speaker 00

  have wage labor outside of the home. So all this stuff that if we hired other people to do for us, right, to shop and cook and put it all away, it's incredible value, right, that's being generated into the home by women and we don't talk about it. It doesn't acknowledge all that effort, all that contribution and the political power of it.

• 32:02Abbey Sharp?

  For sure. No, I mean, I talk a lot about on my channel, kind of the what I eat in a day videos that we see so popular on, on, on social media. And they are obviously performative. Like everything you see, I always try to remind people, like what you see on social media is not life. It's a highlight reel, it's a snippet, you have no idea how much work goes into styling that or setting it up. Like, I always joke, like, when, when influencers share their, like, day in the life, it's like, do you think that they just woke up and the camera starts rolling? Like, no, they had to wake up, get themselves looking good, set up the camera, put the lighting, get themselves mic'd and then, whoa, like pretend to wake up in their bed. Like, that's

• 32:45Abbey Sharp?

  not real life. And so, yeah, I just think it's very interesting. Like, there was, there was a point in the analysis that said something like, you know, influencers would say something like, don't let anyone tell you that you can't have the food you want. But then they would proceed to share, you know, what, describe why their vegan, gluten-free, vegetable-based cookie that they're promoting is, you know, healthier than all the others. And it's just so confusing to the average viewer to get those competing messages. But again, that's kind of like playing into that cool girl trope that like, yeah, we can eat what we want, like this is intuitive eating, this is like fuel in my body because it feels good. But then like, there's actually all these like restrictive rules coming, coming afterwards.

• 33:25Abbey Sharp?

  And I see this often with the kind of other extreme, which is the mukbang eating challenge that we're often seeing a lot online, which I'm always kind of like, oh my gosh, this is just glorified binge eating, folks. But if a thin person posts a mukbang, the comments are all like, oh yeah, get it, girl. Like, this looks delicious, so fun. But if a larger body creator eats so much as like a sandwich, never mind a mukbang, the comment section rips them apart, calling them disgusting, like you're killing yourself, you're like, you know, why aren't you taking care of your body? So I just think that, that, that economy

• 34:05Abbey Sharp?

  is just so toxic. And back to the kind of Lorelai, kind of, you know, example, like we wouldn't, we wouldn't, we wouldn't see those things as quirky and fun if those girls were in larger bodies.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  No, unfortunately, no. It's so frustrating that like we're still in that place. It's like, how do we have a culture that is far more equitable and inclusive when we think about body size?

• 34:28Abbey Sharp?

  Totally.

• 34:43Abbey Sharp?

  Now, so much of what I'm kind of trying to do here at Bite Back is really pointing to the dangers of social media and, you know, how healthy eating and nutrition messages are portrayed and spread on mass, especially those that are grounded in pseudoscience. What is your kind of biggest fear as we move into the next phase of social media, whatever that looks like? And, and is there anything you can recommend that we do to resist it?

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think what I'm most frightened about is how all these platforms were created, which was based on the logics of an attention economy. And so the things at the extreme that arouse offense or disgust or strong emotions are the things that the algorithms have literally been created to amplify and to spread. And so those are things that could be regulated, right? Like there could be a sort of social conscious way of thinking about what kind of content do we want to amplify, what kind of cultures and communities and possibilities, maybe even like radical, welcoming, wonderful communities, do we want

• 35:52Speaker 00

  to try and build on social media? And that's not what we've seen happen, right? That outrage and rage and all these other negative emotions, right? That's what draws eyeballs, gets clicks and makes money. And that's the end game of all these platforms. And so, like, I would love to see thoughtful regulation. I don't see the United States government being proactive enough to actually bring about something like that. And so that puts an unfair expectation on individual users to shape their experience, to make sure that it's a healthy one. And so I disagree with that. I think that there should be regulation, there should be structural change around these. But until we have that, all we can do is guide our own use and put

• 36:35Speaker 00

  those guardrails on and shape the communities that we want to be a part of to step away from it when we don't want to be a part of it. I teach an intro to media studies course here as a professor. And so my students do a media diet. They analyze all these different aspects, not just their digital sort of consumption with social media, but everything that they consume. And this semester I added in these media wellness days where it was like, see what it feels like to step away, you know, for this hour that we should have been in class, right? Step away from your phone and don't look at it at all. Or watch a film and don't multitask. Really sink into it. Enjoy everything, right? Don't be on your phone and on your, right? Just like, watch it, right? Sink into it. Like truly be, you know,

• 37:18Speaker 00

  closely, you know, watching and reading and paying attention. What does it feel like to read a book that's made of paper, right? Like go find a magazine and flip through it. Like, what does it feel to read the newspaper in newsprint, to connect with your material world, or to do anything with somebody else? But I think social media has incredible potential to bring us together, but it still isn't the same as in real life and all together. And so I think some of the things that I'm so honored to do in my role here as faculty in residence is inviting students over for dinner, right? And we all get to sit around this beautiful 10-person table and eat meals together. And so one of the food studies concepts, it's my favorite, it's commonality. These social bonds that we form that are totally

• 38:02Speaker 00

  different when we sit together, whether it's over coffee or tea or a full meal or just a little treat, that we literally connect with one another differently. When we're breaking bread and sharing that vulnerability and that specialness and that wonderfulness of food and drink with one another as we have a conversation and form those bonds. And so those are some of the little pieces of wisdom that I would try and share.

• 38:25Abbey Sharp?

  That's so helpful. And I mean, it's like, we, we all know that we need to do these things, but you know, as a professor and obviously kind of a role model to so many of your students, I think that's so powerful to kind of be like, this is your assignment. Get off your phone, kids. And, and, and yeah, the idea of those, those, those kind of shared meals, you know, back to what we were talking about earlier with for parents, like so important to make time for those, those kind of shared family meals. We've got ample evidence of, of the benefits of that.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  And I have friends who've done amazing research. They were like, it does not have to be cooked from scratch. It does not have to be a perfect meal. You do not have to eat it off of your best china, like.

• 39:08Abbey Sharp?

  What matters is that you gather together and you eat and that it's as nutritious as it can be. Like, that's what you're aiming for. So don't put those unreasonable pressures on yourself and your family. Hundred percent. A family meal together, you know, sitting at the table with order or ordering pizzas is far better than like everybody sitting at their phone with like a three course, super healthy meal, like, you know, scrolling or watching a show but not actually interacting. So I think that's a really great reminder. So, thank you so much, Emily. That was so fascinating. I literally could talk to you all day. And I'm going to be leaving some links in the show notes to your books, Diners, Dudes & Diets, and Food Instagram. So, very amazing, insightful read. So, thank you so much.

• 39:52Abbey Sharp?

  Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

• 39:59Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, my gosh. I loved that conversation. I honestly had so many things I could have talked to Emily about. So, we might have to hop her on for like a part two at some point. But I really feel that this conversation is so important to just understanding why diet culture and fatphobia are able to continue to thrive. Because in a lot of ways, you know, diet culture functions as a tool to regulate femininity and sexuality, where ultimately women's bodies are expected to conform to this narrowly defined standard of beauty that is obviously often thin, toned, and petite. And as Emily touched on earlier, there is a historical context to this control. So, women's bodies have often been used as

• 40:44Abbey Sharp?

  sites of moral and social policing, where thinness is often used as a proxy for self-control, virtue, and social conformity. And yes, of course, men are subject to their own body pressures. But research consistently shows that women bear the disproportionate brunt of the discriminatory practices associated with fatphobia. So, for example, women report experiencing weight discrimination at much lower BMIs or weights than men do. So, in other words, men can afford to be much larger than women before society kind of turns on

• 41:23Abbey Sharp?

  them. Women are also twice as likely to describe experiencing weight discrimination in healthcare and 16 times more likely to experience weight discrimination in the workplace. At the end of the day, gendered expectations around food choices purposefully prevent women from achieving equality in all aspects of our lives. It also prevents women from achieving true food freedom, and not just like the performative, cool-girl version that we've just described. Resisting these restrictive gender norms is essential to getting in touch with our own true needs. So, I want to share some tips here on how to help shift the culture for long-term positive change. And these may specifically come in handy during the

• 42:07Abbey Sharp?

  holidays when we tend to be gathering even more than normal around food. So, number one, challenge others when they use moralizing language to describe food. As Emily and I discussed, gendered eating norms get consistently reinforced by language that's used to describe feminine and masculine foods. While food marketed towards men tend to carry more positive connotations like powerful, fuel, and energy, we are generally stuck with morally charged terms like guilty pleasure, sinful, guilt-free, light, and cheating, all of which add judgment to our food choices and by extension, to us. Try flipping the switch when you're describing

• 42:49Abbey Sharp?

  food choices by using words like satisfying, energizing, nourishing, and fulfilling. And if you hear a friend or family member call their meal like a sinful cheat, maybe say something like, "Uh, it's literally just food." Like, it's pretty silly to compare a cupcake to infidelity or a legitimate crime. Number two, when in public, eat in a way that honors your hunger and cravings with confidence and pride. Diet culture and the patriarchy that informs it teaches women that our hunger is to be controlled and suppressed, rather than naturally responded to like our male counterparts. As a result, women hold

• 43:30Abbey Sharp?

  a lot of shame and embarrassment about their appetite and often feel uncomfortable eating anything more than rabbit food in public. It also breeds comparison, often resulting in an unspoken competition about who will eat less. Eating unapologetically in public based on your natural appetite and preferences and not some kind of like gendered expectation for them, sets boundaries around diet culture and creates an environment where women feel empowered to honor their true needs. Number three, avoid commenting on other people's plates, especially if it challenges typical gender norms. It takes a lot of bravery to reject diet culture and gendered norms, never mind both at the same time. And one of the

• 44:15Abbey Sharp?

  reasons for that is out of fear of public criticism or judgment. Even if you think a comment is like well-meaning or a compliment, just consider for a moment the possibility that it could do real harm. So, if a male friend is ordering a salad, don't tease him for eating like a bird or being on a diet. And if your female friend opts for a burger and fries, don't ask her if it's like a cheat day or comment that she's quote-quote "splurging." Also, a quick reminder that if you are on the receiving end of these comments, it says a lot more about the commentator's relationship with food than any food choice you could ever make. Finally, resist matching your food choices to others. Research has consistently

• 44:59Abbey Sharp?

  shown that what and how much we eat is hugely influenced by those around us. So, when our girlfriends are ordering salad, we tend to eat salad. And when they announce that it's a cheat day and they dive into the nachos, we follow suit. Not surprisingly, women are much more susceptible to this influence than men. So, if you find yourself craving a burger but changing your mind at the last minute when you hear all your friends ordering a few light apps, make the point to be the first to order. Another great tactic that I use when we're going out that I find particularly helpful when dining with men and women is to order a wide range of foods for the table to enjoy communal style, so that you can

• 45:41Abbey Sharp?

  basically build your plate dynamically without being judged for any particular choice. So, this would allow women to feel confident eating the steak and fries and also empower our men to enjoy the greens that they may crave. When we really dig down to analyze the intersection between fatphobia and sexism, we can see how societal norms reinforce control, value judgments, and expectations around femininity, masculinity, and everything in between. Breaking down these biases and recognizing our unique nutrition needs helps in challenging fatphobia for all and ultimately helps us foster a healthier relationship

• 46:21Abbey Sharp?

  with our own body and food choices. And that's all that I have for you guys today. I hope this episode was as interesting for you as it was for me. Like, I totally geeked out here and I just loved, loved every bit of the research. But a big thank you again to Emily Cantwell for helping me fight back against diet culture. Also, don't forget to please follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It really, really, really does help me out as a new pod. Signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 47:13Speaker 00

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