What do Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Monica and Dameon Shephard, Rosenda Strong, Alyssa McLemore, Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter Valeria, Carlos Hernández Vásquez, an unidentified Asian family and many other victims of systemic racism have to do with ending diet culture and weight stigma?
A lot.
Ending diet culture will not happen until we end systemic racism. Fighting for racial justice is intrinsically linked with fighting for body liberation.
If just one body is not free then systematically we have created a hierarchy where some bodies are deemed superior to others. The more we resemble the targeted body, the more inferior we are thought to be. This does not just affect the one without freedom. In essence it traps us all because our treatment in society will be based on our association and resemblance of the inferior body. Even if we are in the most privileged of bodies we are still not free because we are constantly preoccupied with maintaining our privileged and superior body and fearful to be our authentic selves.
This can even be seen in our choice of bodies that we think we are attracted to. As relationship and intimacy coach, Dawn Serra, mentioned on Christy Harrison’s MPH, RD, CDN Food Psych podcast Episode 239,¹ “Often when we think we prefer a certain kind of body, what we are really preferring is the access, or the privilege that comes with being around someone in a certain kind of body.” Let that sink in!
In our culture, black, brown, indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, LGBTQ+, disabled, older, poor, sick, larger, female, uneducated, child, and gender nonconforming bodies are not liberated.
If a black man cannot run down the street without fearing for his life then his body is not free. If a black woman who's been saving people’s lives during this Covid-19 pandemic has to fear for her life while sleeping, then her body is not free. If a black high school senior playing video games rushes to a knock at the door thinking someone needs help, and finds a mob of armed white men at his door, his body is not free. If an indigenous woman’s younger sister looks her in the eye and says, “I love you, I'll be back okay?” And her remains are found over a year later in a freezer with no lead on who committed her murder, their bodies are not free. If an indigenous woman's last words are pleading for help on a 911 call before the call gets cut and over 10 years later there are still no answers to what happened, her body is not free. If the Salvadoran father and daughter’s lives get swept away by the Rio Grande as the mother waits for her moment to cross because there is no safe way to enter the USA as an undocumented person then their bodies are not free. If a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy has to make his way North for a better life and to help his brother with special needs, unaccompanied by his parents, only to die in border patrol custody, his body is not free. If an Asian family shopping at Sam's Club, including two children, two and six years old, we're stabbed by a man who later claimed he was trying to murder them because he thought they were Chinese and infecting people with the Coronavirus, their bodies are not free.
How can we have body liberation when some bodies are still targeted?
Body liberation and ending weight stigma cannot be separated from racial justice and ending racism. They are intersectional like the wires of the birdcage, and they do not act alone. As Marilyn Frye taught me in her essay Oppression,² if we just focus on an individual wire, then we have a hard time understanding why the bird doesn't just fly around it and free itself. It's when we look at the wholeness of the birdcage that we see how each individual wire intersects with all the other individual wires to keep the bird trapped. Racism is intersecting with sexism, ageism, ableism and more to help weight stigma and fat phobia keep us trapped in diet culture. In fact, it would not survive without them. Diet culture and racism depend on each other and the other oppressions to maintain themselves and they also depend on us not seeing the connection. Therein lies our freedom.
Connection.
Connection, eats birdcage wires for lunch and it's not afraid to take up space. Really, there's no other way for it to be. Connection requires the vulnerability of seeing ourselves in others and sharing ourselves with others. If we are not willing to stretch out and inhabit our body we will not be able to know and share ourselves. We will not be able to know another's pain and joy. Connection is not on a diet, it is infinitely expansive.
Separation, on the other hand, is perpetually on a diet, and infinitely restrictive. Separation requires avoiding vulnerability and seeing ourselves as completely different than others. It does not require sharing and taking up space in our bodies.
As Pema Chodron shares in her book, The Places That Scare You,³ “Traditionally it is said that the root of aggression and suffering is ignorance. But what is it that we are ignoring?…what we ignore is our kinship with others… to recognize our interconnectedness—to grow in understanding that when we harm another we are harming ourselves.”
If I, as a white person, am working to dismantle diet culture and at the same time culturally appropriating black culture without giving credit and paying debts to the creators of my appropriation, then I am actually strengthening the wires to hold diet culture in place.
If I, as a white person, am working to dismantle diet culture and joining with indigenous women to raise awareness of the rate and impunity with which they are murdered and go missing, then I am loosening the wires that hold diet culture in place.
Even if I am not directly working to dismantle diet culture, by working to dismantle racism I cannot help but weaken diet culture if I am willing to see clearly how connected they are. If I am working to dismantle racism and engaging in body shaming people, I will be strengthening the wires holding racism in place.
While there is only so much we can do in one day, if we are allowing ourselves to connect, expand and be vulnerable to see things clearly as they are, we will not be able to avoid the intersections of oppressions that create and uphold diet culture. We will know in our body that we must deeply look at and address these intersections of oppressions if we want to dismantle diet culture. Because we recognize our interconnectedness we will know that every action we take we have the opportunity to do healing or do harm. If I am unwilling to be vulnerable and see clearly, not only will I be harming others, I will be harming myself.
To be clear, and to remind myself, this is not about perfectionism. We will not always be willing to be vulnerable, expand and see clearly. Our body can only go at the speed that it can go (that's the vulnerability part). This is okay because we will not be ending diet culture and racism in one day. Also, when we slow down, we allow ourselves to see more and clearly. And if we are pushing ourselves based off of the belief that we are not doing enough, then we are actually engaging in a subtle aggression against ourselves which can end up doing harm to us and others.
In closing, I will have Martin Luther King Jr take it home: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
We will not end diet culture and eradicate eating disorders until we end the brutal oppression of people of color in this country and around the world.
References
Serra, D. (Guest). (2020, May 11). Food Psych [Audio Podcast]. https://christyharrison.com/foodpsych/7/pandemic-stress-and-your-relationship-with-food-plus-desirability-politics-and-diet-culture-with-dawn-serra
Frye, M. (2004). Opression. In S.M. Shaw's & J. Lee's, Women's Voices, Feminist Visions (pp.80-82). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Chödrön, P. (2002). The places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. (pp.41). Boston: Shambhala Publications.
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