Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!
It’s time for your April Extra Butter! This month we’re answering a thorny mix of listener questions:
Do we ever get tempted to buy back into diet culture?
Is weight-loss surgery (and meds) not “doing it the old-fashioned way?”
And what should you say when your daughter’s pants don’t fit—and she hates all her other clothes?
Both of these letters bring up a lot of complicated issues. CW for discussions of intentional weight loss, anti-fat rhetoric and weight loss surgery.
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Extra Butter Episode 6 Transcript
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Are Weight Loss Surgery Survivors Just “New Money Thin?”
I listen to your podcasts, read your essays as well as your book Fat Talk and I feel that I am completely done with diet culture and the way I get lured by the promise of thinness to give you a better life and all the layers and complexities that come along with dieting/body image. I love what Sonya Renee Taylor said about just stepping off of the ladder and removing yourself from this type of social hierarchy we place on each other, ourselves and our lives.
BUT THEN....
I see news reports of Oprah having lost weight and looking skinny and I find myself feeling a panic that 'I need to get back on that ladder (or treadmill).'
Do you ever get tempted to buy into all of this again? And if so, what do you do?
Also, what is your opinion on weight loss surgery? Just today I met two people who have recently had it. I feel all kinds of things. On one hand, I feel sympathetic towards them. I don't want to judge anyone for how they deal with living in an anti-fat world. I know one of them has had health issues as well as body image issues for the majority of her life. I want to feel happy for her that she ***will*** (?) find some "peace" now. But then there's the bitchy side of me that thinks it is an easy way out
The bitchiest thoughts are using the awful judgements like the concept of 'old money' and 'new money' and seeing her as only a newly thin person (it even hurts to write this out) OR .....if I want to lose weight, I will just do it the old fashioned way not through this magic surgery.
The more loving/mature side of me thinks that the surgery is just another way to give into the type of thing- anti fatness, fat shaming, diet culture- we should all just change.
Thoughts?
Thank you,
Diane.
