Anna Joliff 2/1/21 Anna Joliff 2/1/21

Food Issues: Telling a Truer Story About Our Relationships with Food

Take a moment to think of the last time you saw “food issues” portrayed on television or film. No, I’m not talking about the most recent season of the Great British Baking Show. (Although I’m certainly open to talking about it.) When I say “food issues,” picture a character with an emotionally laden relationship to food. Someone for whom a slice of cake is not just a slice of cake.

Think back. If you can remember a time at all, I’m guessing food issues looked one of two ways: Perhaps it was someone who refused to eat. Alternatively, perhaps it was someone who ate with abandon. Either way, I bet she was young, I bet she was straight, I bet she was white – and I bet she was a she. I bet she was either very thin or very large, and nowhere in between.

If you yourself have food issues, or if you have friends and family members who do, you already know that this picture isn’t quite right. In reality, the presentation of food issues varies as much as the people they afflict. The question for storytellers is this: How can food issues on-screen look like those in real life? How can we get it right?

What are food issues?

Food issues are not eating disorders. (Eating disorders have quite strict diagnostic criteria.) That being said, food issues are similar to eating disorders in that they may include cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components. Food issues frequently develop during adolescence, when greater cognizance of social, cultural, and familial pressures collides with the reality of changing bodies. In the scientific literature (this article, for example), food issues are sometimes defined by behaviors - things like fasting or eating very little, skipping meals, vomiting, abusing laxatives, or over-exercising. But there are also cognitive and emotional components: guilt, preoccupation, dissatisfaction. There’s the process of second (and third, and fourth) guessing before putting something in your mouth. (Am I really hungry? Maybe I’m just bored! Or thirsty!) Often, there’s hunger – hunger that’s more emotional than physical, hunger that results from not just days but years of distrusting one’s own appetite. Those are food issues, and each component – behavioral, cognitive, and emotional – belongs on-screen.

Actionable Insights

Here are three ways storytellers can more accurately depict food issues.

Show diversity and intersectionality. While the portrayal of food issues on television might suggest otherwise, food issues do not predominantly affect white, straight, young, cisgender women. Although food issues often develop in adolescence, they are also common in postmenopausal women. Further, research suggests that food issues disproportionately affect historically marginalized groups, such as sexual, gender, and racial minorities. Although cisgender men are affected at lower rates, their odds increase as they age. Building intersectional portrayals of food issues will not only improve the accuracy and relatability of your characters but may further empower diverse audiences to examine their own food-related thoughts, feelings, behaviors.
Show what food issues actually look like. Evidence suggests that food issues will be supremely relatable to your audience. Seventy-five percent of women endorse the idea that their weight or shape directly impacts their happiness. About half of US adults dieted in the last year (including over 25% of those who are at a “normal” or below-normal weight), and at least 30% of people resort to unhealthy methods of weight loss, such as fasting and purging through an array of compensatory behaviors.
However, food issues don’t often get a fair cameo. They don’t have to involve sneak-eating in the middle of the night or disappearing to the bathroom after a meal. Rather, perhaps your characters simply feel shame around their appetite (no surprise, when the diet industrial complex uses words like “guilty” or “sinful” to describe food). Perhaps your characters are “good” throughout the week, in order to “afford” a “cheat meal” or “cheat day” on the weekend. Perhaps they have internalized the toxic idea that a good meal is something one must “earn” or “budget for” through tracking steps or counting calories. Perhaps they turn down social invitations simply because the proposed restaurant doesn’t have low-carb options or hasn’t posted their nutrition information online. These are examples of realistic and nuanced ways to portray food issues.
Show that “not bad enough” is bad enough. Food issues need not progress into a full-blown eating disorder in order to suck the joy, spontaneity, and inspiration from life. Take it from me: About two years ago, I tried my hand at “intermittent fasting,” or the practice of eating all of one’s daily calories in a relatively short window of time. A podcast or two had claimed that intermittent fasting would “heal my gut” by giving my organs a “rest” – but of course, I was unconsciously hoping for weight loss, too. Nearly every day for nine months, I spent the workday hungry. I got winded on the stairs to my office. In afternoon meetings, I worried whether I’d be too hungry to think. When anyone (a friend, a partner) offered me food outside my allotted eating window, I made up a lackluster excuse to avoid it.

In short: while I didn’t qualify for any specific eating disorder, food issues rendered my life in grayscale. To appease my food issues, I was quite literally sacrificing my performance in the two areas that mattered most to me: work and relationships. Portraying a more subtly problematic relationship with food can convey an important message to your audience: “not bad enough” is plenty bad enough. “Not bad enough” still takes our freedom away.

Why get it right?

As a storyteller, you might be asking yourself this: If food issues aren’t real eating disorders, and if food issues really are as common as this article states, do they really deserve their own storyline? Why bother with these painstaking and nuanced portrayals? Aren’t there more important things to do?

Only you can answer that question. Perhaps there are better uses of your time. For me, there aren’t. As a storyteller myself, I have found immense relief and gratification in telling real stories (often my own story) about food issues. I have heard from readers, friends, and fellows in diet recovery that the stereotypical eating disorder narrative just doesn’t cut it; more often than not, it leaves them feeling ignored, unseen, or needlessly triggered.

I have also experienced it from the other side. That is, I have experienced the transformative power in hearing my own food issues told by someone else. For example, when I learned that my two favorite authors - the late Caroline Knapp, and the bestselling author Glennon Doyle – have themselves struggled with food and body, I was forced to face a key question: How much freer would these women be if they’d made peace with food? And more importantly: How much more free will I be when I do the same?

Give your audience the gift of this question.

Anna Joliff, she/her/hers, MS Counseling Psychology

Research Specialist for the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT)

Vicki Harrison, MSW and Adrianna Ruggiero 5/30/19 Vicki Harrison, MSW and Adrianna Ruggiero 5/30/19

More Realistic Physical Representations in Media Will Support Youth Mental Health

HIGHLIGHTS

• A CSS study found that the majority of human characters in children’s television in the US and Canada, especially females, were portrayed as thin or very thin.

• Studies show young women have a significantly more negative view of their body

• Exposure to sexualizing media leads to self-objectification in both men and women.

For many years, parents, child advocates, and mental health professionals have expressed their concerns about the influence of mass media on children and adolescents’ perceptions of body image, body satisfaction, and self-esteem. Over the past decade, with the rise of digital media and young people’s nearly constant engagement with media and technology, there has been an increasing alarm. Sadly, the media is filled with unrealistic representations of what our bodies should look like and do not accurately reflect the range of body shapes we see within our society—female characters and models often have bodies that are smaller and thinner than average, and males are often shown as physically strong and muscular. On top of this, these characters are often portrayed as being successful, accepted, sexually desirable, and happy while overweight characters are commonly used as comic relief, are often ridiculed in social situations and regarded as unattractive.

A recent report looking at children’s television in both the US and Canada showed that the majority of human characters in children’s television, especially females, were portrayed as thin or very thin. In addition, female characters were nearly twice as likely to be sexualized in the US based on factors such as revealing or flattering clothing, long eyelashes, and sensual lips.

While many things can contribute to one’s body satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) and self-esteem, several research studies have established that children and youth are indeed vulnerable to mass media images and messages that encourage and reinforce distorted body images and unhealthy perceptions about dietary health.

In one striking example, a landmark study over the period that television was introduced to a community in Fiji demonstrated the dramatic effect these images had on young adolescent girls, showing how they internalized the Western images of beauty, resulting in disordered eating habits and patterns. Moreover, a meta-analysis of 25 experimental studies examined the immediate effect of exposure to a variety of images and found that body image, especially for females younger than 19, was significantly more negative after seeing thin media characters than after seeing average or plus-size media characters or inanimate objects.

Exposure to hundreds and thousands of these inaccurate and unrealistic images over time sends the message that they are common and normal within society, when in fact, they are difficult if not impossible for most people to achieve. In fact, these images are almost always digitally manipulated, modified and enhanced to achieve this ‘ideal’ body image, creating an even larger gap between reality and what we see in the media. The impact of not being able to look like these characters in the media is associated with decreased self-esteem, body satisfaction, depression, and eating disorders.

Moreover, exposure to sexualizing media leads to self-objectification in both men and women – which feeds a destructive cycle of measuring self-esteem by physical appearance. At a time when rates of anxiety, depression and suicide are on a steep rise, especially among young women and girls, putting a stop to these distorted media representations is long overdue and more important than ever.

While the problem remains significant, we have seen some positive improvements in advertising and marketing campaigns in recent years. For example, Aerie, the lingerie retailer, created a campaign, #AerieREAL, which intends to promote body positivity by using raw, un-retouched images that feature models of different racial backgrounds and body types and more recently, models with disabilities and other medical issues. Similarly, Dove’s Girls Self Esteem campaign has a similar mission. Many popular retail brands, such as Target, Old Navy, Nike, and Forever 21, have followed suit by incorporating a diversity of body types and/or scaling back on re-touching photos in their advertising.

In TV and film, avoiding these distorted physical stereotypes is still the exception, not the rule. There are a handful of shows making a solid effort to promote more “body positivity” through inclusion of a variety of body types and characters, but they are unfortunately few and far between. We need to see much more of this – and urgently – especially for any hope of stemming the tide of rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicide among our youth.

Inclusive and realistic portrayals can promote body acceptance and reinforce self-esteem – and wellness should be prioritized over ratings. If done well, the ensuing culture shift should open the door for a new era of creative, representative content that viewers can relate to and embrace.

To contribute to positive body diversity in media, here are some actionable insights for content creators:

Offer more realistic cultural standards of beauty through a diversity of body types and experiences.
Avoid characters fixating on weight loss and beauty.
Create characters who model body positivity and acceptance.
Deviate from cultural norms of women needing to be slender and men, strong and muscular.
Offer an alternative narrative to one featuring women and girls as sexual objects and men as fixated on female physical characteristics above all others.
Show characters who deviate from the cultural norms of beauty as romantically desirable and socially accepted, not just as sidekicks or comic relief.