My Eating Disorder Doesn’t Erase My Complicity with Diet Culture
I perpetuated fatphobia. I was part of the problem.
As I tenderly rinse out a glass jam jar — which this time I will not keep because I have an entire cupboard that contains leaning towers of metal lids and rows of glass vessels of various sizes and, if we’re honest, lingering smells — I think about a handful of things.
This first, of course, is “are we sure this one isn’t a keeper?”
The second is “I hope that glass is actually recycled as easily and often as I’ve been made to believe.”*
And the third is “it’s kind of wild that I didn’t eat jam for like a solid six years.”
It wasn’t just jam. There were long — like, really long — periods in my life where I didn’t eat butter (or a vegan butter alternative like this absolute GOAT) or peanut butter or most cheese or sandwiches made out of two pieces of bread, or nuts of any kind, or almost any sort of dessert unless it was really socially necessary. It was terrible. It made me miserable (and I mean that both as an adjective for me and for the way I was to be around).
And that is because of Diet Culture.
