Body Liberation: Dismantling Diet Culture & Systems of Oppression
Chrissy King's book is a must-read, y'all.
In 11th grade, I took the ACT. The ACT is an outdated form of standardized testing used before 2016 to determine college acceptance in Michigan. Hundreds of my fellow students and I, armed with sharpened number 2 pencils, filled a massive high school cafeteria on a frigid winter Saturday morning to take this three-hour test. Because I am autistic, I never did well on standardized tests. Between the crowded testing site, the fluorescent lights, the social overwhelm, the ticking time clock, and the pressure to get into college, I could barely focus enough to comprehend the questions, let alone use the critical thinking skills necessary to answer correctly. To get by, I would pretend to concentrate on each question for a few minutes and then fill in the scantron bubble sheet based on shot-in-the-dark guesses. The whole experience felt torturous.
Unsurprisingly, I scored a measly 17 out of 36 on the test. By getting less than 50% of the questions right, my chances of getting into college were slim. So, my parents purchased an ACT study guidebook and sent me to the library a few times a week in preparation for a retake.
The only problem was that I never actually opened the ACT study guidebook. Instead, because I had already developed a complicated relationship with food and exercise, I spent hours perusing the library shelves for eating disorder books. Tirelessly and obsessively, I hunted for connection to other humans who resonated with body hatred. It was 2005. Smartphones and constant internet access didn’t exist. Books were the only place I could find a morsel of solace.
Since then, I have read every eating disorder book in existence. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. It might be more accurate to say I’ve consumed roughly 90-95% of them. Either way, I have hyper-fixated on these sacred texts for 20 years, hoping to figure out what is “wrong” with me. And finally, just last week, after two decades of searching, I found the holy grail of eating disorder books.
The Body Liberation Project, written by Chrissy King, is a must-read for everyone. King is the first to explain the intersection and correlation between racism, white supremacy, privilege, patriarchal norms, and fatphobia. One of my favorite concepts in this book is the idea of respectability politics. King defines respectability politics as: “Conformity to prescribed mainstream appearance and behavior, protecting a person who is part of a marginalized group.”
Although I did grow up with an excessive amount of white privilege, living in a queer female body meant I was still part of a marginalized and oppressed group. I might not have done well on standardized tests, but I was still intelligent enough to recognize that misogyny, homophobia, and fatphobia are everywhere, especially within traditional white culture.
By the time my senior year began, I was drowning in academic inferiority. The answer, I thought, was to hit the gym at 5:00 a.m. every morning before school. Extreme discipline, calorie restriction, and an intense workout regimen provided a compensatory sense of moral superiority. Respectability politics was my North Star. Ignoring my body’s natural desires and hunger cues led to constant praise. I was on a mission to prove my worthiness, even if that meant starving off my authentic self.
King’s book helped me realize that I didn’t just develop an eating disorder in high school, but I also became addicted to upholding white privilege. White privilege promised a “good life,” but only if I was thin, pretty, blonde, and submissive enough. White privilege taught me that I needed to eradicate my sexuality, be a disciple of diet culture, and appeal to men if I wanted to survive. By striving for white privileged ideals, I developed so much internalized misogyny, homophobia, and fatphobia that it almost killed me.
The second time I took the ACT, I did even worse and scored a 16. After that, panic set in. I knew my neurodivergent brain could not handle the neurotypical path to a white-picket, picture-perfect life. Somehow, I did get into college, only to become a full-time student of bulimia, failing out after just three semesters. Instead of showing up for class, I dove deeper into the comfort of my eating disorder, believing thin and pretty privilege would be enough to sustain me.
Despite my ACT score and supposed lack of intellect, I always had an inherent sense of knowing that the world was not a safe place for an imperfect, female, queer body. If Chrissy King’s book had existed twenty years ago, I would have learned that striving for a white privileged life via respectability politics was never the answer. I would have learned that there was never anything “wrong” with me or my ever-changing body. I would have learned, instead, that there are deep, generational curses and traumas infecting the culture I was born into.
Unlearning internalized misogyny, homophobia, and fatphobia is hard work. Lately, I have been raging against and struggling to accept the fact that those with the most power, status, and money, especially at work, are often the ones who uphold the very principles that made me sick. Just because I finally understand the harmful nature of white supremacy doesn’t mean everyone else is up to speed.
Luckily, after twenty years of searching, I finally have The Body Liberation Project to lean on each time I feel triggered while navigating an extraordinarily toxic society.
“When we free ourselves from the confines of diet culture and body obsession, we open the floodgates for others to do the same. We seek liberation for ourselves, but ultimately, the goal is to take that newfound energy - the energy that we had previously spent obsessing about our bodies - and use it to dismantle not only diet culture but all systems of oppression.” -Chrissy King
Progress.