December 5, 2012 • 35 mins
Kjiersten Gruys went a year without looking in a mirror to readjust how she looks at her body. So how does losing weight for health compare to losing weight to meet beauty standards? Is intentional weight loss a feminist choice or feminist fail?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today's topic came um from
the co host of Pop Stuff, one of our fellow
(00:23):
How Stuff Works podcast Tracy. She came up to me
one day and she said, Hey, I've got an idea
for stuff Mom Never Told you You and Caroline should
tackle whether or not dieting is anti feminist, because uh,
and I was like, that's a that's a good idea,
because the more I thought about it, the more complicated
(00:47):
the answer to that question quickly became. Yeah, everybody has
opinions on what you should do with your diet, right
because on on the one hand, um, you know, you
can argue from the choice perspective of feminism that, well,
if you choose to diet, And in terms of dieting,
we're talking about like the typical like caloric restriction in
(01:10):
order to lose weight and saying like, if that's your
choice and that should be fine, and then other camp
saying no, dieting should not be practiced because it only
I guess goes in like feeds upon there. It only
feeds the male gaze you're only getting thin for ultimately
(01:33):
paternalistic reasons, and then some people saying you shouldn't even
look in the mirror to begin with. You know, there's
a lot of and and in a good way. There
is a lot of um fat acceptance going around right now,
and that definitely needs to happen. But then, like it
just starts. It can be overwhelming though, if you just
(01:55):
want to answer that question of dieting right because when
Chris and I were talking about this topic, we were
emailing back and forth about it, and I told her,
I was like, I feel like I'm going down the
fat rabbit hole here because you start reading You're like, okay,
diets gender seems pretty straightforward, right, No, not not at all,
because yeah, you can read the statistics on you know,
(02:17):
who's dieting, how much are they dieting, Does it work,
does it fail? Um? But then you start getting into well,
if you diet, you're not a good woman, You're you're
being bad at being a woman. Basically, well, yeah, you're
buying into this system, the patriarchy. But then there's people
who say, well, I'm just gonna eat whatever I want
(02:37):
and I'm not going to let the doctor, weigh, weigh me,
weay myself, you know, at the doctor's office, because that's
body fascism. There's a lot of like extreme resistance to
the idea of diets. And while I could go on
a tangent about how I think diets are stupid and
if you want to take care of your body, you should,
and you should just make a lifestyle change, like a
(02:59):
lifestyle diet, the capital d diet of paying attention to
eating wholesome foods exactly. But I'm not going to tell
you that you should do that. I'm not going to
tell you that you should lose weight or not lose
weight based on whether you're a woman, a man, a
feminist and anti feminist, whether you're a child, someone who
lives in another country, whether you're a puppy. I don't know.
(03:22):
And it's not just like saying no to dieting, but
you know the type of weight loss program they want
to go to. But one thing I think that that
we can go ahead and establish is that there are
a lot of companies making a lot of money off
(03:42):
of a fat phobia of all of this diet marketing
um that goes on. For instance, uh, the US diet
and weight loss industry produced over sixty billion dollars in
revenue in two thousand eleven alone, so a lot of
us are buying into it. And then I mean, we
(04:02):
could just tailspin off into conversations about whether or not
processed diet food is really all that good for you.
But it's big. The marketing is mostly targeted to women.
I believe it was in two thousand eleven that weight
Watchers launched its first campaign toward men, and Sociological Images
(04:24):
a great blog you should totally check out if you
haven't before. H did a comparison of a typical weight
Watchers at targeted toward women. That's just like, oh, you know,
you're you're gonna look so good eat these small portions
of food and I'm not trying to diswait watch them.
I also know that plenty of people have had success
from that system, and that's totally fine. But then when
(04:46):
they had an ad for their men's launch, it was like,
you know, get on weight Watchers and like a man,
it was still very you know, there was obviously it
was obviously saying, know, hey, we know that dieting is
more this thing for for women, but look, you can
retain your masculinity and still do it. It's the same
(05:08):
reason why diet coke exists and has like a nice
font and a lot of times in the commercials that
is held by you know, a thin woman who's watching
a shirtless construction worker, and then coke zero exists in
black and aura. You know, why don't men ever? Why
aren't there ever men in yogurt commercials? Because they're all
(05:29):
eating man witches on their man diet. Yeah, there is
no Hungry Woman brand of frozen dinner, which maybe I
should start. Maybe I don't know why. That just made
me so sad. Hungry woman dinner. It's just yogurt, guys,
guess what now? And on the front there's like just
(05:50):
a cartoon picture of a woman like staring digit holding
a spoon, staring dejectedly into her bowl. It's just a
frozen yogurt and salad. It's no dressing, oh goodness, and
single cherry tomato. Well, let's get into some research because
the sad thing too about this whole uh the dieting
(06:11):
question is that there is a seed that is often
planted very early in little girls brains, especially that they
do need to change their shape. Yeah, we're so screwed. Um.
The aversion to foundness starts very young. This is a
(06:32):
study from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology that found
the existence of negative attitudes toward overweight people in kids
as young as three. Yeah, and that also that that
study also found that both boys and girls will adopt
this fat is bad mindset um. But at the same time,
(06:55):
overweight preschoolers also demonstrated stronger stigmatisms. It starts to compound
because they are aware of of this um fat phobia
in our culture. Yeah, and you know, playing off of that,
these whole these attitudes about weight can be passed down
from moms to daughters. This is a British Journal of
(07:15):
Clinical Psychology study from July that found that mothers of
high restraint girls basically that means high restraint means they
practice a lot of high restraint behaviors as far as
food goes and calories. So mothers of high restraint girls
reported more between meal snacking and fasting than comparison mothers.
They also rated their daughters attractiveness significantly lower than other mothers.
(07:40):
There are a lot of um like moving parts in
the study that they looked at like family dynamics when
the mother has food issues and the daughter ends up
inheriting those food issues from her mother, because it's kind
of a learned behavior. This happened. I mean, I don't
think that I have terrible food issues or anything, but
I watched my mother diet throughout my child hood. She
(08:00):
wasn't even big, but I watched. I mean, I went
to she'd take me to weight Watchers. I sat in
the lobby at the Nutril System building in the Strip mall. Like.
I went to a lot of diet related activities with her.
Do you think that that, as a result kind of
increased your version toward dieting, like seeing that endless cycle.
(08:22):
It could be, because it's not like she would go
to weight Watchers and come home and be like, you
know what, that was great. I feel really good about myself.
You know, I met a lot of women who were
also struggling, and I'm going to press forward or Okay,
I went to Neutral System and I picked up my
great meals. No, she would come home and complain about
the meetings, complain about how hard it was, complain about
how terrible the food was and cardboard and all that stuff.
(08:44):
So I was just like oh, why would you want
to do that. I'll have another cup of ice cream
plays thanks mom. Uh. Yeah, and I would also be
interested to see, um if they expanded that study population
from I mean, it makes a lot of sense to
look at that mother water relationship, but I am sure
that it can criss cross from fathers to children, uh
(09:07):
sons as well. Especially we're seeing that more and more
now with uh younger boys having similar kinds of body
image issues as we would typically associate with younger girls. Um.
And you mentioned the highly restrained activities like I eat,
lots of portion control going on and uh. In that
(09:27):
same issue of the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, there
was a study tracking the rise of dieting and childhood
childhood and at a lescence and it was looking at
nine year olds and fourteen year old girls. And yes,
they're they're dieting. And that's not to me, that's not
surprising at all, especially for the fourteen year olds. Yeah,
but it is sad to think, like, I'm trying to
(09:49):
think back to myself as a nine year old, and
I think to me that just now is of course
sounds so young, Like, oh my gosh, you're such a baby,
like go play on the sandbox or whatever. But I
remember being ten and writing in my diary like I'm fat,
I don't feel good about myself, you know, stuff like that.
So it is terrible to know that, like our cultural
(10:10):
prejudices are seeping into children's brains. Yeah, and those and
those girls who are dieting would express lower body esteem
and discontent with their body build. And they would have
certain already even at nine and fourteen, they would have
trouble spots that they would point out. And I remember
I remember similar things, you know, looking in uh A
(10:33):
Delia's catalog, and those girls thighs did not touch. My
thighs touched and I hated and I was yeah, and
it's that same age range. Yeah, well there's you know,
we we mentioned that there's also issues with boys. This
is not just contained two girls and their dieting problems.
Uh A record study found that similar to women and girls,
(10:56):
boys were more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies
when they were relatively heavy and have low self esteem. However,
while weight status is usually the primary predictor of girls
body dissatisfaction, there's more at play for boys. It's kind
of different. It appears that, according to the study, psychological
factors like self esteem may be more essential to boys
(11:19):
body perceptions, whereas typically all it takes is the girls
just looking in the mirror and looking at everything around
them and starting to mentally compare. Um. And, I mean
you also have to take into account when we're talking
about these kinds of gender differences, the beauty myth differences
in the and this is in big old air quotes
(11:42):
ideal body shape for a woman compared to an ideal
body shape for a man. A lot of times, Um,
you'll have more men can like complaining of being underweight
because they don't have that that muscular V shape that
is idealized in ascial and culture as opposed to you know,
(12:03):
the thin, whispy feminine shape. Although can't you really mean
I don't know that it would have been constitute feminine
at that point when you get you get so so
bonesy about it, right, Well, you know, you you talked
about the difference between what men and women want to
attain as far as that ideal body shape. Um, and
that just goes right along with an October two thousand
(12:25):
five study in the journal Sex Roles that found different
motivations behind are potentially health compromising to have behavior. So
we're not talking about like having a healthy routine at
the gym and a healthy like I'm going to eat
a salad with dinner kind of thing. We're talking about
health compromising having a hungry woman dinner, having a hungry
woman dinner, and just crying, I'm gonna drink tears with
(12:48):
dinner tonight, honey. Um. Yeah. They found that in their
sample of this study, the majority of men in the
study sample were overweight or obese, but they were more
likely than women to be satisfied with their bodies. What's
up with that? Well, I think it's it has to
do a little bit with um different psychologies that it
mentioned that uh, men don't consider they don't label eating
(13:13):
a lot of food at one time as binging in
the same way and then and they also have more
of an aversion to fur into something as as dieting.
You know, it's not it's not. It doesn't seem like
it's quite as uh, this is good food, this is
bad food. Yeah. Well, they also point out that, uh,
as far as the motives behind the unhealthy behavior, men
(13:35):
were more likely to engage in unhealthy like crash diet
stuff if they were heavier, so like, Okay, I'm heavier,
I'm gonna try to lose weight. Whereas women wanted to
look thinner, they wanted to look much thinner than even
the infrequent dieters did. So women it was more about appearance,
looking a certain way. Men were just like, I'm kind
(13:56):
of heavy, I should lose weight. Well, and this would
be a good to him to point out this this theory,
uh that was written about in Salon in April two
thleven by David Saroda, and he was talking about fat
guy privilege and essentially saying that there is a double
standard in the demand for physical perfection from women while
(14:21):
bigger dudes, yeah whatever, you're just a big guy. Hey, yeah,
and one that I think of all the time. Well,
because this is something I think about all the time.
But it is it's like you see in all these sitcoms,
like a guy like Kevin James paired with what's her name,
the teeny tiny lady who plays his wife on that show,
and but that's okay, like that's socially acceptable. Big funny guy,
(14:43):
big funny people whatever, paired with little teeny tiny women
won't even think about um John Goodman and Roseanne barr On.
Roseanne like John Goodman was you know, he's awesome and
he's hilarious, big guy. And then Roseanne always was getting
like body snarked for being a bigger woman and her,
(15:04):
you know, she was portrayed as more of you know,
an old crab, and it was related in a way.
I mean, it's partially just her her comedic style. Uh,
but I think it was a lot to do with that,
with that double standard, because we don't you know, it's
not as much of an okay, passable thing. Yeah, it's
not a liability for men, Yeah, to be really big
(15:26):
like Chris Farley. Obviously everybody loves Chris Farley, big guy,
whereas female comedians or female actresses don't get that same consideration.
It's like, oh, I just see your weight first. And
perhaps that's why, as Certa points out, of the commercial
weight loss industries, clients are female, and uh, probably weight
(15:47):
watchers waited so long to even target men because they
haven't seen them as a viable um demographic. But I
have a feeling though, we're going to see more of
that as the beauty industries. It has started pay far
more attention to getting stoking the fears of men. So
(16:11):
welcome to crazy town, fellas join us soon hungry man
dinners will be Justice said, Um, but yeah, so, you know,
we've touched on issues of like how it's more socially
acceptable for a guy to be big a woman should
be small, but somehow with ginormous boobs and hips and
all that stuff, unrealistic expectations. Yeah, so on that it
(16:32):
sounds like what we're saying now is with this question
of whether or not, uh, it's okay for a woman
to diet, and can she still be like a liberal minded,
pro woman, pro equality gal Um, No, right, you know
we we should just abandon all of that and not
(16:52):
buy into this culture. But then, but then, and it's
also I can tell you that I feel better, I
have more energy, I am friendlier in general when I am.
(17:12):
I'm not not dieting necessarily, but I'm eating well and
exercising and probably am slimmer than I am when I'm
not well. That is part of the Is it more
feminist to take care of yourself on a consistent, you know,
lifestyle basis, or is it more feminist to say screw you?
(17:36):
You guys are making me feel bad about my spare tire. Yeah,
and also like, uh, you know you don't want to
It's like your a cog and that giant machine and
you don't want to comply. So let's let's let's first
touch on some arguments out there, because some women certainly say, like,
the dieting is a huge feminist you because it has
(18:01):
to deal directly with our bodies and how we relate
to the world. Yeah. Well, Janna Ficken and Esther rothbloom
Inn had a great study, a great analysis that looked
at the prices that women pay as a result of
weight based discrimination. Basically that being overweight affects a lot
(18:22):
of aspects of women's lives, whereas men don't receive they're
not on the receiving end of that same type of discrimination,
which would probably go back to that quote unquote fat
guy privilege that I mentioned earlier. And so as a result,
and this was something that was initially um written about
in nineteen seventy eight by Susie Orbach in the book
(18:43):
Fat Is a Feminist Issue. They argue that because women
are held to higher standards of thin thinness and suffer
greater penalties if they don't meet that finness ideal, then yes,
this is a feminist issue and we need to nip
it in the bud. Right. They are also argue that
(19:04):
it's a feminist issue because it ties into the workplace. Uh.
They looked at several different studies about you know, a
fat woman wouldn't be hired whereas a fat man would
have no problem, or people express prejudice like well, I
don't really want to work with a fat woman, and
so this study about like people who don't want to
work with fat women. Um, they were rated negatively on
(19:28):
supervisory potential, self disciplined, professional appearance, personal hygiene, and ability
to perform a physically strenuous job. And that's crazy to
me because all these uh, these people in the study,
the raiders that they were rating written descriptions. It's not
like they were looking at someone in front of them
and judging whether that person could be a good boss.
But it just kind of blows my mind that you
(19:49):
would rate someone negatively on supervisory potential because they're overweight.
So that's a big argument that like, you know, if
people don't want to work for or with overweight women,
than that is a feminist issue. Yeah, there's also UM
an interesting sexual orientation tie in as well that was
written in the written about in the journal Sex Roles
(20:11):
in October two thousand eleven by Abigail Saggy and UM.
She talks about how UH, with fat activism like the
whole body acceptance campaigns, lesbians have been disproportionately active and
outspoken in the fat rights movement, and she quotes British
activist Charlotte Cooper UM talking about how while fat women
(20:35):
typically internalized quote social messages of being second class, fat
queers are quote a little bit more advanced and that
we are able better able to reject homophobia or question
assimilation UM and then going on to another essay in
the Fat Studies Reader from two thousand nine, there's an
(20:56):
essay by s Bear Bergman, whom I identifies as transgender,
UM and it's often perceived as a man two thirds
of the time, and Bergman is is larger and and
talks about how before UM identifying as transgender and UH
and dressing as a woman, there was so much humiliation
(21:20):
associated with being overweight, but being perceived as a big guy,
it's completely gone away. Yeah. Bergman was writing about how
when being perceived as a woman, she would be followed,
like people would be yelling at her. Even described an
instance where in a restaurant, you know, she would ask
for butter or something and they would be like nah,
(21:42):
they would conveniently forget to bring it. Whereas when identifying
as a man, he was treated like, hey, dude, you're
an awesome guy. You're funny, you're great, Like nobody looked
askance when he was shopping for clothes at the store,
Whereas as a big woman, people are like, oh my god,
look at that woman shopping for big clothes. So again,
(22:03):
it seems like things might be stacking up in favor
of saying no dieting. That's we're just buying into this
horrible system and we need to change that. Right, But
there's still, uh, there's still another side of that argument.
(22:23):
And Kirsten Grus knows about this firsthand. She is a sociologist,
and she's also writing a book that's coming out in
spring of two thousand thirteen called Mirror, Mirror, Off the
Wall that documents the three sixty five days she spent
not looking at herself in the mirror. And she wrote
(22:45):
a post for society Pages dot org talking about how
she is. She's a recovered anorexic and that process made
her a feminist, but now she wants to lose some weight,
and she is incredibly conflicted about it. Yeah, because the
(23:05):
whole thing is like, Okay, well, I found myself at
an uncomfortable weight for me personally, and you know, I'm
in I'm in kind of tricky territory because as of
recovering anorexic and someone who considers herself a feminist, like,
am I allowed to lose weight? Will people judge me?
Will it be dangerous? Will be bad for me? And
so she says, given the patriarchal, patriarchal bargain of weight loss,
(23:29):
being radically anti diet as a political stance doesn't always
fit comfortably as a personal stance, right because I guess
the way that it has been framed, Unfortunately, because of
all of the fat phobia and the thin privilege that
exists in our culture that we don't want to support
(23:50):
when it comes down to our personal choice of perhaps
wanting to lose weight, perhaps wanting to go on a diet.
Um For instance, Emily McCombs um, who is an editor
over at exo jain dot com or a post about how, um,
she diets because she has an unhealthy relationship with food
and she needs that kind of structure or else there
(24:12):
will be a tailspin. And that's simply how it's going
to have to be. It doesn't make her less of
a feminist, but for her, that's what works best. But
then other people say, don't use choice feminism as a
cop out, you know, just acknowledge call of spade to
spade and say, yeah, at some point, like we are
(24:33):
just buying in but you want to diet. Yeah, I mean,
there was the argument that just because you're a woman
and you're doing something doesn't make it feminist. But that's
okay because it's really not anybody else's business what you're
doing with your body or your weight, whether you're eating
right and exercising or not. Yeah, I just wonder if, um,
(24:54):
I don't know, if we're we're too I don't want
to say if we're like too concerned about it, because
obviously body image, having nine year old dieting that is
that is not a sign that we are in a
healthy place as like a collective um community. But if
if I am stressing out over you know, choosing to
(25:19):
be choosier about my food for a little while. Because
I put on more weight than I wanted to than
should I feel some kind of feminist guilt. I don't
know that that's a good sign of things either, you
know what I mean? That's why this Uh, like we
said the beginning of this podcast, answering this question was
perhaps more complicated than than we thought it would be. Yeah, well,
(25:42):
I mean it's an issue of control. Uh. Aerial Stallings
of an alternate dot Org wrote that when you buy
into the idea that thinking about food makes you a
victim of the patriarchy, there's a certain loss of control.
So there's a potential loss of control everywhere, because you're
gonna lose control as a feminist, or you're gonna lose
(26:03):
control as a thin person or as a fat person,
or as you know, someone who's worried about the patriarchy
and what society wants from us. It's like, oh, who
am I answering to today? Uh? So you know in
that regard, just like, just eat a sandwich or don't
eat a sandwich, but stop stressing me out about it, right?
(26:26):
Is that a cop out? No? I don't. I don't
think that. Um, I don't think that's a cop out
at all, because if we all right, so let's let's
take it one more time, like to the extreme other side,
saying like, absolutely, food is a feminist issue. This was
coming from Heather Lane Tally and she was writing about
the uh, the new U s d A guidelines that
(26:47):
instead of getting rid of the food pyramid and having
um my my plate, you know, the nice little plate
with it all portioned off showing you how many leafy
grains and such that you should eat, And she said that,
you know, nutrition is merely a trope that employs scientific
neutrality to disguise body fascism. She went to a doctor.
She refused to get on the scale. The doctor was
(27:10):
like what, and she was like, don't be a body fascist.
I don't. It's when we get into we swing into
that territory, that's when I say, Okay, that's I'm gonna
go ahead. And I'm fine saying that I, in my opinion,
that is too far because that you can't get away
from the relationship between nutrition and diet. And yes, like
(27:35):
I I think it's also difficult to make a blanket
statement about whether or not dieting is an appropriate choice
because you know, some people are gonna finger wag and
say like, you're only doing it to serve the male gays,
not you know, paying attention to the fact that everyone
has a little bit of a different relationship with food.
You know, some people are stretched eaters, some people are
(27:56):
emotional eaters, some people are stressed non eaters. I have
to pay in my experience, I have to pay more
attention to how much I'm eating if I'm stressing and
freaking out. Okay, so listen, we've been back and forth
about this about is it feminist to go on a diet?
Is it anti feminist to go on a diet? Is
(28:19):
this even a question we're asking or should we? As
Caroline said, just eat a sandwich. You just so much
to leave me alone. Well, as feminist writer and activist
Audrey Lord said, caring for myself is not a self indulgence.
It is self preservation, and that is an act of
political warfare. And I think Caroline may I speak for
(28:42):
the both of us and say that is where we
stand on this issue of dieting. I I want to
take care of myself, and I think you want to
take care of yourself. And you know what, I mean,
what's right for yourself. Be healthy, be happy, don't worry,
(29:04):
be happy, right, right, it's not where it's I think
you can say to that that dieting is not inherent
advocating um inherently advocating for a thinness ideal either. It's
more trying to look at it from a health perspective.
And maybe it's just also a call. It's just change
our collective definition of diet. Yeah, that's what we you know,
(29:28):
we're always on a diet. But yeah, and I don't
understand why the opposite of diet and thin privilege and
the idea of the ideal thin body, why does the
opposite of that have to be I'm gonna eat whatever
the whatever I want and not let anyone weigh me
and not weigh myself and not be conscious of what
I'm putting in my body? Like, isn't there a happy
middle ground? I think I definitely think so. So Yeah,
(29:53):
that's my confused two sense. Yeah, thank you, Tracy. It
pops up or asking us complicated question. But now it
is time to turn it over to our listeners because
I have a feeling that considering the vast number of
women who go on diets, there was also I didn't
(30:13):
throw the statistic out, but there was a survey. Granted
it was published by or commissioned by the Laughing Cow
Cheese Company, but it was reported on in the Telegraph
saying that the average woman will diet for thirty one
years of her life. And with that, that's that's who.
That's really a lot um. But for folks out there
(30:33):
who have grappled with this aspect of dieting, specifically for
weight loss, want to hear from you, let us know
your thoughts. Mom stuff at discovery dot com is where
you can send them, and of course you can also
head over to our Facebook and start a conversation over there.
And before we get to a couple of listening listener
(30:53):
letters that we have, we've got a quick message from
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(31:15):
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(31:38):
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to offer. And now back to our letters. I've got
one to kick things off from Jessica, and this is
in response to our episode a while ago on women
and NFL football. She writes, I've been a huge football
(32:00):
fan for most of my life, since I come from
a family of rabid New Orleans Saints fans Hohoda, and
I recently started my own small blog and Twitter account
to channel my obsession. At first, I was really excited
to find out that there were a number of other
female NFL bloggers out there, but with somewhat disappointed to
learn that most sites tend to emphasize the stereotypically gendered
(32:21):
topics of fashion, party planning, and off the field celebrity
aspects of football and players far more than the game itself.
On the one hand, I'm excited to see a game
I'm passionate about take hold with a growing audience of women,
including many of my own friends. But I also feel
like the pageantry that surrounds this kind of marketing signals
that women still need a safely gendered entry point into
(32:42):
football fandom. Of course, can you really blame them when
you look at how the NFL mainstream media operates in broadcasting,
female reporters are always relegated to the sideline scaring games
to talk about the personal interest side of the story,
injuries and coach players sound bites, while men always call
and analyze the actual game itself. I don't know that
I could even count on one hand the number of
women who write about football regularly from mainstream websites like
(33:04):
NFL dot com, dead Spin, and bleacher Report. For me
outside looking in, I'd say it's still incredibly tough for
smart women who know their football to break through this
arena without assuming sanctioned roles from the sidelines of a tailgate. Still,
I'm hopeful that the growing NFL female fan base produces
a ton of knowledgeable die hards in the long run.
Baby teas or not uh And you can visit Jessica's
(33:26):
NFL blog at Lady Blitz Football dot blog spot dot com.
And here's an email from Tracy about our child Caregiver's podcast,
she wanted to share her own personal experience with the issue.
She said that my brother and two sisters took care
of my mother. She suffered from heart and kidney disease
brought on by lupus. My parents divorced shortly before her
(33:47):
health declined and our father disappeared. My mother pulled myself
and my younger brother out of school at the ages
of twelve and thirteen to take care of her. My
sisters were just old enough to work full time, and
they paid for all the bills, working long hours to
do so. They would help out around the house as
best they could when they were off work. My brother
and I administered her medications, including giving her home dialysis,
(34:10):
cleaned her bedside, commode, bathed her, cooked and cleaned, and
took care of my sister's autistic son while she was
at work. We took care of her until her death
in two thousand one, when I was twenty three. It
was extremely difficult for all four of us. Thankfully we
had each other to lean on, and we're all still
very close. Despite the tremendous responsibilities we faced. With our
sister's support, my brother and I got our g e
(34:31):
d s and went to college. Thank you for doing
this podcast. I hope that with the support groups out there,
young caregivers have somewhere to turn for assistance. So thank you, Tracy,
and thanks to everyone who's written in to mom Stuff
at discovery dot com. And like I said, you can
head of her face to our Facebook page, like us
and start a conversation over there, and follow us on
(34:52):
Twitter as well. You can tweet us at mom Stuff
Podcast and you can also follow us on Tumbler. It's
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if you would like to learn more about healthy eating,
there are lots of articles about it at our website,
it's how stuff works dot com. For more on thiss
(35:13):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot
com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today's topic came um from
the co host of Pop Stuff, one of our fellow
(00:23):
How Stuff Works podcast Tracy. She came up to me
one day and she said, Hey, I've got an idea
for stuff Mom Never Told you You and Caroline should
tackle whether or not dieting is anti feminist, because uh,
and I was like, that's a that's a good idea,
because the more I thought about it, the more complicated
(00:47):
the answer to that question quickly became. Yeah, everybody has
opinions on what you should do with your diet, right
because on on the one hand, um, you know, you
can argue from the choice perspective of feminism that, well,
if you choose to diet, And in terms of dieting,
we're talking about like the typical like caloric restriction in
(01:10):
order to lose weight and saying like, if that's your
choice and that should be fine, and then other camp
saying no, dieting should not be practiced because it only
I guess goes in like feeds upon there. It only
feeds the male gaze you're only getting thin for ultimately
(01:33):
paternalistic reasons, and then some people saying you shouldn't even
look in the mirror to begin with. You know, there's
a lot of and and in a good way. There
is a lot of um fat acceptance going around right now,
and that definitely needs to happen. But then, like it
just starts. It can be overwhelming though, if you just
(01:55):
want to answer that question of dieting right because when
Chris and I were talking about this topic, we were
emailing back and forth about it, and I told her,
I was like, I feel like I'm going down the
fat rabbit hole here because you start reading You're like, okay,
diets gender seems pretty straightforward, right, No, not not at all,
because yeah, you can read the statistics on you know,
(02:17):
who's dieting, how much are they dieting, Does it work,
does it fail? Um? But then you start getting into well,
if you diet, you're not a good woman, You're you're
being bad at being a woman. Basically, well, yeah, you're
buying into this system, the patriarchy. But then there's people
who say, well, I'm just gonna eat whatever I want
(02:37):
and I'm not going to let the doctor, weigh, weigh me,
weay myself, you know, at the doctor's office, because that's
body fascism. There's a lot of like extreme resistance to
the idea of diets. And while I could go on
a tangent about how I think diets are stupid and
if you want to take care of your body, you should,
and you should just make a lifestyle change, like a
(02:59):
lifestyle diet, the capital d diet of paying attention to
eating wholesome foods exactly. But I'm not going to tell
you that you should do that. I'm not going to
tell you that you should lose weight or not lose
weight based on whether you're a woman, a man, a
feminist and anti feminist, whether you're a child, someone who
lives in another country, whether you're a puppy. I don't know.
(03:22):
And it's not just like saying no to dieting, but
you know the type of weight loss program they want
to go to. But one thing I think that that
we can go ahead and establish is that there are
a lot of companies making a lot of money off
(03:42):
of a fat phobia of all of this diet marketing
um that goes on. For instance, uh, the US diet
and weight loss industry produced over sixty billion dollars in
revenue in two thousand eleven alone, so a lot of
us are buying into it. And then I mean, we
(04:02):
could just tailspin off into conversations about whether or not
processed diet food is really all that good for you.
But it's big. The marketing is mostly targeted to women.
I believe it was in two thousand eleven that weight
Watchers launched its first campaign toward men, and Sociological Images
(04:24):
a great blog you should totally check out if you
haven't before. H did a comparison of a typical weight
Watchers at targeted toward women. That's just like, oh, you know,
you're you're gonna look so good eat these small portions
of food and I'm not trying to diswait watch them.
I also know that plenty of people have had success
from that system, and that's totally fine. But then when
(04:46):
they had an ad for their men's launch, it was like,
you know, get on weight Watchers and like a man,
it was still very you know, there was obviously it
was obviously saying, know, hey, we know that dieting is
more this thing for for women, but look, you can
retain your masculinity and still do it. It's the same
(05:08):
reason why diet coke exists and has like a nice
font and a lot of times in the commercials that
is held by you know, a thin woman who's watching
a shirtless construction worker, and then coke zero exists in
black and aura. You know, why don't men ever? Why
aren't there ever men in yogurt commercials? Because they're all
(05:29):
eating man witches on their man diet. Yeah, there is
no Hungry Woman brand of frozen dinner, which maybe I
should start. Maybe I don't know why. That just made
me so sad. Hungry woman dinner. It's just yogurt, guys,
guess what now? And on the front there's like just
(05:50):
a cartoon picture of a woman like staring digit holding
a spoon, staring dejectedly into her bowl. It's just a
frozen yogurt and salad. It's no dressing, oh goodness, and
single cherry tomato. Well, let's get into some research because
the sad thing too about this whole uh the dieting
(06:11):
question is that there is a seed that is often
planted very early in little girls brains, especially that they
do need to change their shape. Yeah, we're so screwed. Um.
The aversion to foundness starts very young. This is a
(06:32):
study from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology that found
the existence of negative attitudes toward overweight people in kids
as young as three. Yeah, and that also that that
study also found that both boys and girls will adopt
this fat is bad mindset um. But at the same time,
(06:55):
overweight preschoolers also demonstrated stronger stigmatisms. It starts to compound
because they are aware of of this um fat phobia
in our culture. Yeah, and you know, playing off of that,
these whole these attitudes about weight can be passed down
from moms to daughters. This is a British Journal of
(07:15):
Clinical Psychology study from July that found that mothers of
high restraint girls basically that means high restraint means they
practice a lot of high restraint behaviors as far as
food goes and calories. So mothers of high restraint girls
reported more between meal snacking and fasting than comparison mothers.
They also rated their daughters attractiveness significantly lower than other mothers.
(07:40):
There are a lot of um like moving parts in
the study that they looked at like family dynamics when
the mother has food issues and the daughter ends up
inheriting those food issues from her mother, because it's kind
of a learned behavior. This happened. I mean, I don't
think that I have terrible food issues or anything, but
I watched my mother diet throughout my child hood. She
(08:00):
wasn't even big, but I watched. I mean, I went
to she'd take me to weight Watchers. I sat in
the lobby at the Nutril System building in the Strip mall. Like.
I went to a lot of diet related activities with her.
Do you think that that, as a result kind of
increased your version toward dieting, like seeing that endless cycle.
(08:22):
It could be, because it's not like she would go
to weight Watchers and come home and be like, you
know what, that was great. I feel really good about myself.
You know, I met a lot of women who were
also struggling, and I'm going to press forward or Okay,
I went to Neutral System and I picked up my
great meals. No, she would come home and complain about
the meetings, complain about how hard it was, complain about
how terrible the food was and cardboard and all that stuff.
(08:44):
So I was just like oh, why would you want
to do that. I'll have another cup of ice cream
plays thanks mom. Uh. Yeah, and I would also be
interested to see, um if they expanded that study population
from I mean, it makes a lot of sense to
look at that mother water relationship, but I am sure
that it can criss cross from fathers to children, uh
(09:07):
sons as well. Especially we're seeing that more and more
now with uh younger boys having similar kinds of body
image issues as we would typically associate with younger girls. Um.
And you mentioned the highly restrained activities like I eat,
lots of portion control going on and uh. In that
(09:27):
same issue of the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, there
was a study tracking the rise of dieting and childhood
childhood and at a lescence and it was looking at
nine year olds and fourteen year old girls. And yes,
they're they're dieting. And that's not to me, that's not
surprising at all, especially for the fourteen year olds. Yeah,
but it is sad to think, like, I'm trying to
(09:49):
think back to myself as a nine year old, and
I think to me that just now is of course
sounds so young, Like, oh my gosh, you're such a baby,
like go play on the sandbox or whatever. But I
remember being ten and writing in my diary like I'm fat,
I don't feel good about myself, you know, stuff like that.
So it is terrible to know that, like our cultural
(10:10):
prejudices are seeping into children's brains. Yeah, and those and
those girls who are dieting would express lower body esteem
and discontent with their body build. And they would have
certain already even at nine and fourteen, they would have
trouble spots that they would point out. And I remember
I remember similar things, you know, looking in uh A
(10:33):
Delia's catalog, and those girls thighs did not touch. My
thighs touched and I hated and I was yeah, and
it's that same age range. Yeah, well there's you know,
we we mentioned that there's also issues with boys. This
is not just contained two girls and their dieting problems.
Uh A record study found that similar to women and girls,
(10:56):
boys were more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies
when they were relatively heavy and have low self esteem. However,
while weight status is usually the primary predictor of girls
body dissatisfaction, there's more at play for boys. It's kind
of different. It appears that, according to the study, psychological
factors like self esteem may be more essential to boys
(11:19):
body perceptions, whereas typically all it takes is the girls
just looking in the mirror and looking at everything around
them and starting to mentally compare. Um. And, I mean
you also have to take into account when we're talking
about these kinds of gender differences, the beauty myth differences
in the and this is in big old air quotes
(11:42):
ideal body shape for a woman compared to an ideal
body shape for a man. A lot of times, Um,
you'll have more men can like complaining of being underweight
because they don't have that that muscular V shape that
is idealized in ascial and culture as opposed to you know,
(12:03):
the thin, whispy feminine shape. Although can't you really mean
I don't know that it would have been constitute feminine
at that point when you get you get so so
bonesy about it, right, Well, you know, you you talked
about the difference between what men and women want to
attain as far as that ideal body shape. Um, and
that just goes right along with an October two thousand
(12:25):
five study in the journal Sex Roles that found different
motivations behind are potentially health compromising to have behavior. So
we're not talking about like having a healthy routine at
the gym and a healthy like I'm going to eat
a salad with dinner kind of thing. We're talking about
health compromising having a hungry woman dinner, having a hungry
woman dinner, and just crying, I'm gonna drink tears with
(12:48):
dinner tonight, honey. Um. Yeah. They found that in their
sample of this study, the majority of men in the
study sample were overweight or obese, but they were more
likely than women to be satisfied with their bodies. What's
up with that? Well, I think it's it has to
do a little bit with um different psychologies that it
mentioned that uh, men don't consider they don't label eating
(13:13):
a lot of food at one time as binging in
the same way and then and they also have more
of an aversion to fur into something as as dieting.
You know, it's not it's not. It doesn't seem like
it's quite as uh, this is good food, this is
bad food. Yeah. Well, they also point out that, uh,
as far as the motives behind the unhealthy behavior, men
(13:35):
were more likely to engage in unhealthy like crash diet
stuff if they were heavier, so like, Okay, I'm heavier,
I'm gonna try to lose weight. Whereas women wanted to
look thinner, they wanted to look much thinner than even
the infrequent dieters did. So women it was more about appearance,
looking a certain way. Men were just like, I'm kind
(13:56):
of heavy, I should lose weight. Well, and this would
be a good to him to point out this this theory,
uh that was written about in Salon in April two
thleven by David Saroda, and he was talking about fat
guy privilege and essentially saying that there is a double
standard in the demand for physical perfection from women while
(14:21):
bigger dudes, yeah whatever, you're just a big guy. Hey, yeah,
and one that I think of all the time. Well,
because this is something I think about all the time.
But it is it's like you see in all these sitcoms,
like a guy like Kevin James paired with what's her name,
the teeny tiny lady who plays his wife on that show,
and but that's okay, like that's socially acceptable. Big funny guy,
(14:43):
big funny people whatever, paired with little teeny tiny women
won't even think about um John Goodman and Roseanne barr On.
Roseanne like John Goodman was you know, he's awesome and
he's hilarious, big guy. And then Roseanne always was getting
like body snarked for being a bigger woman and her,
(15:04):
you know, she was portrayed as more of you know,
an old crab, and it was related in a way.
I mean, it's partially just her her comedic style. Uh,
but I think it was a lot to do with that,
with that double standard, because we don't you know, it's
not as much of an okay, passable thing. Yeah, it's
not a liability for men, Yeah, to be really big
(15:26):
like Chris Farley. Obviously everybody loves Chris Farley, big guy,
whereas female comedians or female actresses don't get that same consideration.
It's like, oh, I just see your weight first. And
perhaps that's why, as Certa points out, of the commercial
weight loss industries, clients are female, and uh, probably weight
(15:47):
watchers waited so long to even target men because they
haven't seen them as a viable um demographic. But I
have a feeling though, we're going to see more of
that as the beauty industries. It has started pay far
more attention to getting stoking the fears of men. So
(16:11):
welcome to crazy town, fellas join us soon hungry man
dinners will be Justice said, Um, but yeah, so, you know,
we've touched on issues of like how it's more socially
acceptable for a guy to be big a woman should
be small, but somehow with ginormous boobs and hips and
all that stuff, unrealistic expectations. Yeah, so on that it
(16:32):
sounds like what we're saying now is with this question
of whether or not, uh, it's okay for a woman
to diet, and can she still be like a liberal minded,
pro woman, pro equality gal Um, No, right, you know
we we should just abandon all of that and not
(16:52):
buy into this culture. But then, but then, and it's
also I can tell you that I feel better, I
have more energy, I am friendlier in general when I am.
(17:12):
I'm not not dieting necessarily, but I'm eating well and
exercising and probably am slimmer than I am when I'm
not well. That is part of the Is it more
feminist to take care of yourself on a consistent, you know,
lifestyle basis, or is it more feminist to say screw you?
(17:36):
You guys are making me feel bad about my spare tire. Yeah,
and also like, uh, you know you don't want to
It's like your a cog and that giant machine and
you don't want to comply. So let's let's let's first
touch on some arguments out there, because some women certainly say, like,
the dieting is a huge feminist you because it has
(18:01):
to deal directly with our bodies and how we relate
to the world. Yeah. Well, Janna Ficken and Esther rothbloom
Inn had a great study, a great analysis that looked
at the prices that women pay as a result of
weight based discrimination. Basically that being overweight affects a lot
(18:22):
of aspects of women's lives, whereas men don't receive they're
not on the receiving end of that same type of discrimination,
which would probably go back to that quote unquote fat
guy privilege that I mentioned earlier. And so as a result,
and this was something that was initially um written about
in nineteen seventy eight by Susie Orbach in the book
(18:43):
Fat Is a Feminist Issue. They argue that because women
are held to higher standards of thin thinness and suffer
greater penalties if they don't meet that finness ideal, then yes,
this is a feminist issue and we need to nip
it in the bud. Right. They are also argue that
(19:04):
it's a feminist issue because it ties into the workplace. Uh.
They looked at several different studies about you know, a
fat woman wouldn't be hired whereas a fat man would
have no problem, or people express prejudice like well, I
don't really want to work with a fat woman, and
so this study about like people who don't want to
work with fat women. Um, they were rated negatively on
(19:28):
supervisory potential, self disciplined, professional appearance, personal hygiene, and ability
to perform a physically strenuous job. And that's crazy to
me because all these uh, these people in the study,
the raiders that they were rating written descriptions. It's not
like they were looking at someone in front of them
and judging whether that person could be a good boss.
But it just kind of blows my mind that you
(19:49):
would rate someone negatively on supervisory potential because they're overweight.
So that's a big argument that like, you know, if
people don't want to work for or with overweight women,
than that is a feminist issue. Yeah, there's also UM
an interesting sexual orientation tie in as well that was
written in the written about in the journal Sex Roles
(20:11):
in October two thousand eleven by Abigail Saggy and UM.
She talks about how UH, with fat activism like the
whole body acceptance campaigns, lesbians have been disproportionately active and
outspoken in the fat rights movement, and she quotes British
activist Charlotte Cooper UM talking about how while fat women
(20:35):
typically internalized quote social messages of being second class, fat
queers are quote a little bit more advanced and that
we are able better able to reject homophobia or question
assimilation UM and then going on to another essay in
the Fat Studies Reader from two thousand nine, there's an
(20:56):
essay by s Bear Bergman, whom I identifies as transgender,
UM and it's often perceived as a man two thirds
of the time, and Bergman is is larger and and
talks about how before UM identifying as transgender and UH
and dressing as a woman, there was so much humiliation
(21:20):
associated with being overweight, but being perceived as a big guy,
it's completely gone away. Yeah. Bergman was writing about how
when being perceived as a woman, she would be followed,
like people would be yelling at her. Even described an
instance where in a restaurant, you know, she would ask
for butter or something and they would be like nah,
(21:42):
they would conveniently forget to bring it. Whereas when identifying
as a man, he was treated like, hey, dude, you're
an awesome guy. You're funny, you're great, Like nobody looked
askance when he was shopping for clothes at the store,
Whereas as a big woman, people are like, oh my god,
look at that woman shopping for big clothes. So again,
(22:03):
it seems like things might be stacking up in favor
of saying no dieting. That's we're just buying into this
horrible system and we need to change that. Right, But
there's still, uh, there's still another side of that argument.
(22:23):
And Kirsten Grus knows about this firsthand. She is a sociologist,
and she's also writing a book that's coming out in
spring of two thousand thirteen called Mirror, Mirror, Off the
Wall that documents the three sixty five days she spent
not looking at herself in the mirror. And she wrote
(22:45):
a post for society Pages dot org talking about how
she is. She's a recovered anorexic and that process made
her a feminist, but now she wants to lose some weight,
and she is incredibly conflicted about it. Yeah, because the
(23:05):
whole thing is like, Okay, well, I found myself at
an uncomfortable weight for me personally, and you know, I'm
in I'm in kind of tricky territory because as of
recovering anorexic and someone who considers herself a feminist, like,
am I allowed to lose weight? Will people judge me?
Will it be dangerous? Will be bad for me? And
so she says, given the patriarchal, patriarchal bargain of weight loss,
(23:29):
being radically anti diet as a political stance doesn't always
fit comfortably as a personal stance, right because I guess
the way that it has been framed, Unfortunately, because of
all of the fat phobia and the thin privilege that
exists in our culture that we don't want to support
(23:50):
when it comes down to our personal choice of perhaps
wanting to lose weight, perhaps wanting to go on a diet.
Um For instance, Emily McCombs um, who is an editor
over at exo jain dot com or a post about how, um,
she diets because she has an unhealthy relationship with food
and she needs that kind of structure or else there
(24:12):
will be a tailspin. And that's simply how it's going
to have to be. It doesn't make her less of
a feminist, but for her, that's what works best. But
then other people say, don't use choice feminism as a
cop out, you know, just acknowledge call of spade to
spade and say, yeah, at some point, like we are
(24:33):
just buying in but you want to diet. Yeah, I mean,
there was the argument that just because you're a woman
and you're doing something doesn't make it feminist. But that's
okay because it's really not anybody else's business what you're
doing with your body or your weight, whether you're eating
right and exercising or not. Yeah, I just wonder if, um,
(24:54):
I don't know, if we're we're too I don't want
to say if we're like too concerned about it, because
obviously body image, having nine year old dieting that is
that is not a sign that we are in a
healthy place as like a collective um community. But if
if I am stressing out over you know, choosing to
(25:19):
be choosier about my food for a little while. Because
I put on more weight than I wanted to than
should I feel some kind of feminist guilt. I don't
know that that's a good sign of things either, you
know what I mean? That's why this Uh, like we
said the beginning of this podcast, answering this question was
perhaps more complicated than than we thought it would be. Yeah, well,
(25:42):
I mean it's an issue of control. Uh. Aerial Stallings
of an alternate dot Org wrote that when you buy
into the idea that thinking about food makes you a
victim of the patriarchy, there's a certain loss of control.
So there's a potential loss of control everywhere, because you're
gonna lose control as a feminist, or you're gonna lose
(26:03):
control as a thin person or as a fat person,
or as you know, someone who's worried about the patriarchy
and what society wants from us. It's like, oh, who
am I answering to today? Uh? So you know in
that regard, just like, just eat a sandwich or don't
eat a sandwich, but stop stressing me out about it, right?
(26:26):
Is that a cop out? No? I don't. I don't
think that. Um, I don't think that's a cop out
at all, because if we all right, so let's let's
take it one more time, like to the extreme other side,
saying like, absolutely, food is a feminist issue. This was
coming from Heather Lane Tally and she was writing about
the uh, the new U s d A guidelines that
(26:47):
instead of getting rid of the food pyramid and having
um my my plate, you know, the nice little plate
with it all portioned off showing you how many leafy
grains and such that you should eat, And she said that,
you know, nutrition is merely a trope that employs scientific
neutrality to disguise body fascism. She went to a doctor.
She refused to get on the scale. The doctor was
(27:10):
like what, and she was like, don't be a body fascist.
I don't. It's when we get into we swing into
that territory, that's when I say, Okay, that's I'm gonna
go ahead. And I'm fine saying that I, in my opinion,
that is too far because that you can't get away
from the relationship between nutrition and diet. And yes, like
(27:35):
I I think it's also difficult to make a blanket
statement about whether or not dieting is an appropriate choice
because you know, some people are gonna finger wag and
say like, you're only doing it to serve the male gays,
not you know, paying attention to the fact that everyone
has a little bit of a different relationship with food.
You know, some people are stretched eaters, some people are
(27:56):
emotional eaters, some people are stressed non eaters. I have
to pay in my experience, I have to pay more
attention to how much I'm eating if I'm stressing and
freaking out. Okay, so listen, we've been back and forth
about this about is it feminist to go on a diet?
Is it anti feminist to go on a diet? Is
(28:19):
this even a question we're asking or should we? As
Caroline said, just eat a sandwich. You just so much
to leave me alone. Well, as feminist writer and activist
Audrey Lord said, caring for myself is not a self indulgence.
It is self preservation, and that is an act of
political warfare. And I think Caroline may I speak for
(28:42):
the both of us and say that is where we
stand on this issue of dieting. I I want to
take care of myself, and I think you want to
take care of yourself. And you know what, I mean,
what's right for yourself. Be healthy, be happy, don't worry,
(29:04):
be happy, right, right, it's not where it's I think
you can say to that that dieting is not inherent
advocating um inherently advocating for a thinness ideal either. It's
more trying to look at it from a health perspective.
And maybe it's just also a call. It's just change
our collective definition of diet. Yeah, that's what we you know,
(29:28):
we're always on a diet. But yeah, and I don't
understand why the opposite of diet and thin privilege and
the idea of the ideal thin body, why does the
opposite of that have to be I'm gonna eat whatever
the whatever I want and not let anyone weigh me
and not weigh myself and not be conscious of what
I'm putting in my body? Like, isn't there a happy
middle ground? I think I definitely think so. So Yeah,
(29:53):
that's my confused two sense. Yeah, thank you, Tracy. It
pops up or asking us complicated question. But now it
is time to turn it over to our listeners because
I have a feeling that considering the vast number of
women who go on diets, there was also I didn't
(30:13):
throw the statistic out, but there was a survey. Granted
it was published by or commissioned by the Laughing Cow
Cheese Company, but it was reported on in the Telegraph
saying that the average woman will diet for thirty one
years of her life. And with that, that's that's who.
That's really a lot um. But for folks out there
(30:33):
who have grappled with this aspect of dieting, specifically for
weight loss, want to hear from you, let us know
your thoughts. Mom stuff at discovery dot com is where
you can send them, and of course you can also
head over to our Facebook and start a conversation over there.
And before we get to a couple of listening listener
(30:53):
letters that we have, we've got a quick message from
our sponsor, and this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told
You is brought to you by our sponsor, Audible. If
you head over right now to audible podcast dot com
slash stuff Mom. That's right, that's Audible podcast dot com
(31:15):
slash stuff Mom, you get a free download, a free
download of what you ask well. Audible is an incredible
online library of a million bijillion titles that you should
check out. And we do have a recommendation for you
by author Jessica Valenti. Her book Why Have Kids A
New Mom explores the truth about parenting and happiness. So
(31:38):
go over to audible podcast dot com slash stuff Mom
and check out all of the great books they have
to offer. And now back to our letters. I've got
one to kick things off from Jessica, and this is
in response to our episode a while ago on women
and NFL football. She writes, I've been a huge football
(32:00):
fan for most of my life, since I come from
a family of rabid New Orleans Saints fans Hohoda, and
I recently started my own small blog and Twitter account
to channel my obsession. At first, I was really excited
to find out that there were a number of other
female NFL bloggers out there, but with somewhat disappointed to
learn that most sites tend to emphasize the stereotypically gendered
(32:21):
topics of fashion, party planning, and off the field celebrity
aspects of football and players far more than the game itself.
On the one hand, I'm excited to see a game
I'm passionate about take hold with a growing audience of women,
including many of my own friends. But I also feel
like the pageantry that surrounds this kind of marketing signals
that women still need a safely gendered entry point into
(32:42):
football fandom. Of course, can you really blame them when
you look at how the NFL mainstream media operates in broadcasting,
female reporters are always relegated to the sideline scaring games
to talk about the personal interest side of the story,
injuries and coach players sound bites, while men always call
and analyze the actual game itself. I don't know that
I could even count on one hand the number of
women who write about football regularly from mainstream websites like
(33:04):
NFL dot com, dead Spin, and bleacher Report. For me
outside looking in, I'd say it's still incredibly tough for
smart women who know their football to break through this
arena without assuming sanctioned roles from the sidelines of a tailgate. Still,
I'm hopeful that the growing NFL female fan base produces
a ton of knowledgeable die hards in the long run.
Baby teas or not uh And you can visit Jessica's
(33:26):
NFL blog at Lady Blitz Football dot blog spot dot com.
And here's an email from Tracy about our child Caregiver's podcast,
she wanted to share her own personal experience with the issue.
She said that my brother and two sisters took care
of my mother. She suffered from heart and kidney disease
brought on by lupus. My parents divorced shortly before her
(33:47):
health declined and our father disappeared. My mother pulled myself
and my younger brother out of school at the ages
of twelve and thirteen to take care of her. My
sisters were just old enough to work full time, and
they paid for all the bills, working long hours to
do so. They would help out around the house as
best they could when they were off work. My brother
and I administered her medications, including giving her home dialysis,
(34:10):
cleaned her bedside, commode, bathed her, cooked and cleaned, and
took care of my sister's autistic son while she was
at work. We took care of her until her death
in two thousand one, when I was twenty three. It
was extremely difficult for all four of us. Thankfully we
had each other to lean on, and we're all still
very close. Despite the tremendous responsibilities we faced. With our
sister's support, my brother and I got our g e
(34:31):
d s and went to college. Thank you for doing
this podcast. I hope that with the support groups out there,
young caregivers have somewhere to turn for assistance. So thank you, Tracy,
and thanks to everyone who's written in to mom Stuff
at discovery dot com. And like I said, you can
head of her face to our Facebook page, like us
and start a conversation over there, and follow us on
(34:52):
Twitter as well. You can tweet us at mom Stuff
Podcast and you can also follow us on Tumbler. It's
stuff Mo've Never told you dot tumbler dot com. And
if you would like to learn more about healthy eating,
there are lots of articles about it at our website,
it's how stuff works dot com. For more on thiss
(35:13):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot
com
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