Women's Inhumanity to Women

In our #MeToo age misogyny is alive and well. But then, there’s misogyny and there’s misogyny. There’s the misogyny that patriarchal males, especially leftist media stars, visit on young women. And then there’s the misogyny that young women inflict on themselves.

About the latter, we have read very little. It is stealth misogyny. It is practiced by women in their everyday lives. Its rules and parameters are passed around in Instagram sites. It encourages what is called “clean food,” food that is supposedly healthy and wholesome. It is supposed to cleanse the female body and to sculpt it into aesthetic perfection. In truth, Eve Simmons explains in an article in the Sun, it produces eating disorders, especially anorexia.

So, we have the most liberated generation of women in human history. They have fought long and hard for liberation. They are free to do as they please when they please with whom they please. And yet, how does it happen that they are obsessed about their weight? How does it happen that they are so vigilant, even obsessively, about what they allow into their bodies? Why might it be that young women who think nothing about hooking up with strangers are harming their bodies by restricting themselves to eating clean food?

Eve Simmons explains how it happened to her. She was working in the girly world of fashion magazines, where no man ever dares to tread. What do the girls talk about when they are alone, when they do not have to attract the dread male gaze?

You guessed it: clean food… that is, fad diets:

I was 23 when I became obsessed with eating “healthy” foods and calorie counting, which eventually led to a diagnosis of anorexia.

I’d never been worried about my body before, but when I got my first job at a fashion magazine I became increasingly aware of how slim all the women around me were – and how little they ate.

Chatter in the office was all centered around food, with my peers constantly discussing their weight, diets and “clean eating” recipes.

Simmons jumped on the bandwagon:

They’d always be trying out recipes and bringing in impressive lunches from health blogger Melissa Hemsley or Madeleine Shaw, covered in kale, quinoa and linseed.

As a young and impressionable journalist, I looked up to these women — so I’d go home and make the exact same thing for the next day. I wanted to be part of the “clean-eating club,” just like them.

Soon I was looking up recipes and following bloggers on Instagram myself. The more I read about “healthy” eating habits the more obsessed I got.

I started making what Instagram told me were “healthier choices,” swapping dairy milk for almond milk and trying to eat less starchy carbs.

I was so obsessed with these health bloggers I did exactly what they all said — and suddenly it was like a domino effect.

I stopped eating breakfast because fasting was good for the metabolism.

Then I stopped eating bread because gluten was the spawn of the devil.

A month later I decided to go vegan and gave up all dairy – Milk, butter, cheese, yogurt and eggs.

She soon discovered that she was severely malnourished, to the point of needing to be hospitalized for anorexia:

Being vegan made it easy to turn down cake at a family party or refuse to eat mom’s cheesy pasta bake and pretending to be gluten intolerant to my friends meant I didn’t have the pressure of eating pizza with them at social occasions.

I was surviving on a diet of kale and cauliflower rice, I was malnourished and my weight began to plummet.

Within just six months, I’d gone from a healthy size 8-10 to a tiny size four — and I was the same weight as the average 11-year-old. I wasn’t getting any of the vitamins or minerals that I needed.

My mom took me to the doctors and I was admitted to hospital and diagnosed with anorexia.

It’s all about the malnourishment. Simmons continues:

Following a clean-eating diet doesn’t mean you get all the nutrients you need.

We are literally going to end up with a generation of women with osteoporosis because they didn’t get enough calcium to keep their bones strong while following a diet which deprives them of dairy and essential amino acids by cutting out vital food groups.