Celebrity

I feel like I have literally grown up watching the same people (mostly women) lose and gain weight on television.  Kirste Alley.  Fergie, Duchess of York.  Oprah, though she has finally come to her own revelations about diet and size (more on her later).

All these women have something in common.  They are in the public eye, are very accomplished in their own right, and they all have failed at diets, blaming their problems on the fact they can't get their emotions in control.  It's their fault, they eat their feelings, they eat their energies, they just eat for whatever reason.

So instead of trying to fix the feelings, the boredom, the insanity, they still insist on needing to fix their diet.

Ladies, how is that working for you?

I know I sound harsh, but here is the reality:  These are women who may not be thin naturally.  Or they may be, but the yo-yo dieting and insistence on trying a new diet fad has more than likely left their metabolism and mind so off kilter, they don't know what's right anymore.  Their bodies go into the natural state of feast or famine.

As I write this, I am in no position to judge.  I navigate this world with messaging that slim and fit is the healthy and only way to live. Famous women not only receive these messages, but they are by default the famous and responsible carriers of this messaging.  And they are by default up against more powerful messages, bullying and pressures that I can't even imagine.  For that, I can't lay blame with them at all.  I mean, hell, I developed an eating disorder partially in response to these messages and other factors in my life, so I definitely can't lay blame. 

I can lay blame with how crazy our society is about diet and body type.  It's so crazy, we are literally seeing women (and men, and children too) in the public eye go through these battles, fail these supposed diet tests and suffer before our very eyes.  Most of all, the joke is on us, because as much as we sit here and judge them, or congratulate them, the story always ends the same way.  The weight piles back on, the bullying continues and we are left feeling more confused than ever.  Even worse, we've seemingly all been there ourselves.

I mention Oprah because she has recently come to her own piece about her body.  If you're like me, have an ED or ED tendencies, you notice when women in the public eye gain and lose weight.  Heck, we are the most secret watch dogs of all.  So here is one thing I have noticed about Oprah - she has been the same weight for quite some time now, and she seems pretty content.  Not knowing her, this might be a misjudgment on my part, but I can tell there is something different when I see her on TV or in the magazines.  If nothing else, the stories of how she lost weight have shifted off the covers of the tabloids and onto someone else's body.  She has stopped the diet/binge cycle, and the public for the most part has accepted that.  Better yet, when people talk about Oprah, they speak of her hugely successful life and they are no longer trying to bring that success down by reducing her to a number on the scale.

What I am getting at with all this is we so often look to our diets as a fix for everything in our lives.  It is the sexiest coping mechanism, after all.  If we are eating our emotions, it's the food's fault, and our fault for not controlling the food.  How can this make sense?  If we are driving carefully in snow storm and we crash our car, where do we lay blame?  Is it with the snow which was tough to drive in, or the car (and us as drivers?) for not being good enough, for not being careful enough, even if we took all the precautions?  If we catch a cold or the flu despite living a healthy life, despite getting flu vaccines and washing our hands all the time, are we to blame, or is it the cold/flu that was just going to get us anyway?  This is what happens when we diet.  We follow the diet to a T, fail at it and blame ourselves, when really, our own bodies are meant to take starvation only when it's life threatening, and the diet is just going against human nature.  It is not our fault when we restrict to lose weight and binge later because our human nature tells us with actual real hunger signals to eat, because, you know, you might die if you don't.  If you sleep when you are tired, scratch when you have an itch, and drink when you are thirsty, you should eat when you are hungry.

So yes, I am getting tired of seeing the celebrity yo-yo dieters being brought back for a television appearance when they lost weight, and condemned to the tabloids when they gain it back.  I'm tired of "it will work this time" mantras when clearly it won't.  But I am not tired of them - for trying, for feeling like they have no place in this world unless they are a certain size.  I'm tired of the media and culture that perpetuates the idea that these women are nothing unless they win at the impossible game of being one size fits all.