Food is great. Food is awesome. Food is smart. Food is kind. Food is important. It gives you nutrients so you don’t collapse in the middle of the day and keeps you running and singing and writing Political Theory essays and all those lovely things we do throughout the day. Blah Blah Blah, you get the general idea. Bottom line: Food does not suck.
You know what does suck though? Our f***ed up relationship with food.
What do I mean by that, you ask? Actually, you’re not asking. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You have grown up and currently partake in this relationship yourself. I’m talking about the sick, twisted view women have towards food that has been carefully cultivated by time and male marketing executives.
It’s the fact that we don’t see food as food. Because to girls, food isn’t something we eat, it is something we debate (excessively). We talk about food in terms of “deserving” or “not deserving” it.
It’s when we’re told to feel “guilty” about eating chocolate or cake, or something that isn’t a carrot. It’s when we say stupid things like, “I think I can eat this pizza because I just jogged 10 miles and I think I deserve it,” or “I can’t eat this piece of cake because, somehow, magically, this piece of cake will make me gain 10 pounds and prevent me from fitting into my $50 cocktail dress.”
It’s when we believe we have to “jog off” or “exercise” to make up for whatever it is we just ate.
It’s being bombarded by food comercials like this Yoplait commercial. Or this Subway commercial. Can’t forget this Special K commercial.
It’s when this College Humor video basically summarizes every food commercial marketed towards women ever. It’s when Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines take advantage of this and write articles with titles like “How to shake off those 20 pounds you gained during the holiday season” or “Feeling guilty about that Christmas dinner? Try these five fat burning exercises!”
And do you know what? This is STUPID!
This is the most ingenious and massively effective marketing propagandas directed towards women with just about the stupidest message directed towards women ever: feel guilty about what you eat.
Feel “guilty”? For starters, this is what guilty means: “Having committed an offense, violation, or wrong, especially against a penal or moral law.”
Guilt is something we’re supposed to feel when we cheat on our boyfriends or commit murder or rob a bank or disappoint the people we love or do something that is genuinely BAD. I’m not very pious, but I’m pretty sure even the strictest 17th century monk would probably scratch his head at the idea that people are feeling guilty over eating candy or cake or something.
Heck, I wish this were just stupid. I can shrug off stupid things. Stupid isn’t bad.
But it’s not just stupid, it’s sad.
It’s sad because these ideas directed towards women about how women should feel about food and about their bodies aren’t even created by women because women make up only 3% of advertising executives.
It’s sad that women don’t feel like they can eat food during the holiday season without worrying about how much they weigh.
It’s sad because no matter how much we learn about Photoshop or eating disorders or body image issues, we still think it’s okay to bash our bodies and hate ourselves for eating food because we think it’s okay or normal for us to have this kind of relationship with food.
It’s sad because I have this relationship with my food and I know that on Christmas morning, the first thing I’m going to do is crank out a workout mat and find some 45 minute cardio workout on YouTube I can do so I can eat Christmas turkey without hating myself.
I don’t want to live like this. Nobody should want to live like this. I don’t want to be 40 years old and see a bunch of five year old girls who think it’s okay to live like this.
So, let’s change this. Little by little. Let’s make our choices on food based on whether or not we feel hungry. Let’s write to Yoplait and all those other companies and tell them these ads are wrong. Let’s stop buying into these stupid ideas and eat cupcakes or cookies or carrots or whatever else we want to eat because we want to.
Start exercising because it can be fun or challenging or to test your strength, rather than because you feel you have to because of whatever you ate. Start building a healthy relationship toward food by trying and eating new things, experimenting with fruits and veggies in a kitchen, and separating “guilt” or self-esteem from food. To cut to the chase, let’s slowly but surely make a better healthier world built on healthy relationships with food, our bodies, and ourselves.
Enjoy the Holidays. Enjoy Holiday dinners and family and all the wonderful things about this time of year, and never let a bad commercial or advertising executive tell you how to feel about the food you put in your mouth or the way your body looks.
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