Thursday, May 9, 2019

Dear Betty Crocker: How About Skipping the Size Shaming With your Soup and Salad Suggestions?


So, I get the Betty Crocker newsletter and I appreciate the helpful suggestions for people like me who are in a time crunch and don't have a lot of money. Recently, I discovered a cool page with tasty soup and salad pairings.
Well, it was almost a cool page. But it screwed that up from the giddyup with the size shaming bold as brass just below the initial picture.
"Fend off winter weight gain with these deliciously light soup and salad pairings."
You know what, Betty? I used to worry about that kind of shit. So, over the course of 33 years, I went on diet after diet. If there was a new diet, I tried it. I lost a lot of weight over the years. It always returned with friends. I had to stop dieting so I wouldn't get any heavier. Lo and behold, my weight stabilized. 
If I eat soup and salad, it's because I want to eat soup and salad, not because I give a flea fart in a category five hurricane about "winter weight gain."
I left this comment on the page:
I prefer my food suggestions without the side order of size shaming. It would have been easy enough to suggest soup and salad pairings without dragging terms like "winter weight gain" into it. Interestingly enough, there are links to dessert or cake-like bread recipes at the top of the page. Which, I suppose, one is supposed to have a nibble of and then throw the rest away due to the fear of "winter weight gain."
Making everything about weight and shaming larger people leads to bullying and eating disorders. That is a side dish I can do without.
It seems to me that the content writers over at the Betty Crocker website need a good dose of the Fuck It Diet. Or, as I like to call it, the last diet you'll ever need.
I only wish I had known about the Fuck It Diet back when I was a bulimic teenager. I also wish there had been big, beautiful role models like Adele, Beth Ditto and Tess Holliday back in the 1970s and 1980s. There might have been fewer vulnerable young women ending up with eating disorders if we had been able to see women of all sizes looking confident and fashionable.

~Cie~


2 comments:

  1. I began the Fuck It Diet when you recommended it about a month ago. It's been an interesting experience. Not feeling guilty for eating takes practice.

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    1. I still struggle with it and my Never Say Diet Again day was nine years ago. I had a brief sojourn with the Atkins diet when I was first diagnosed with diabetes. It was as horrible as it had been the first time I did it. I felt like I was going to pass out all the time. I would literally rather inject insulin than be on the Atkins (or any other) diet. Diets don't work.

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