The Diet-Culture Detox

Season four of Unladylike podcast kicks off with a subject that is every January on many people's (especially women’s ) minds: dieting. But, sticking to their mission of investigating “how sisters are doin' it for themselves in spite of all those unwritten but all-too-real bullsh*t expectations of how we should live our lives”, hosts Caroline Ervin and Cristen Conger don’t deliver advice on how best to lose weight or whatnot. Instead, they offer a round of diet-culture detox and suggest we “start losing a different kind of weight. The waiting for our lives to begin once we look a certain way”. 

Joy Nash, guest of this episode and leading actress in TV series Dietland, talks about growing up with a mother who was always dieting and berating her for not doing the same. Interestingly, not trying obsessively to lose weight was Joy’s way of rebelling against her mother, and later on against our very body-shaming culture. She talks about being fat, having no weight loss goals and how angry people get when they hear of such a thing, about landing a leading role though she doesn’t really fit the Hollywood standard for it. 

The second part of "How to Leave Dietland" deals with the role our mothers play in shaping what we see in the mirror and with the mother–daughter bonding value of body issues.