There were a lot of notable quotes from the recent Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas, Texas. But this one stood out to our Jessica Grose.
“You are in this room, and you are witnessing a cultural revolution. Less Prozac, more protein.”
It was uttered by wellness influencer Alex Clark, who is one of many conservative voices online wooing young women to the MAGAverse.
But, to Grose, it signaled something else: The return of diet culture — this time, with a conservative Christian bent. Grose is an opinion writer for the New York Times, who recently wrote about the movement.
The Show spoke with her more about it — and how influencers like Clark are characterizing their liberal counterparts.
Full conversation
JESSICA GROSE: What really stuck out of me was “five shades of autism” is her description of liberal people – liberal women, specifically. And basically conservative women have their lives together, and having your life together includes eating protein and being in shape and being married and having babies and just ticking all of these boxes. This is the quote about liberals: “Tik-Tok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks, and a ring light.”
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so you're zeroing in here on this idea that diet culture, which has been around forever, is now once again kind of tied to Christianity. Though it certainly hasn't always been that way. Like you talk about Kate Moss and like when being skinny was definitely coded as leftist, right? What are some of the moments where we've really seen the opposite?
GROSE: So diet culture is just universal, right? I feel like there are very few subcultures in the United States where being fit or being slim is not valorized. So based on what's trending in the culture, it shapeshifts. And so right now, because we have a conservative running the country and that's the trends that we're talking about right now, the shape is a conservative shape.
And so there's been many previous moments where that has happened before. And so a recent one was about 12 years ago when the megachurch pastor Rick Warren co-wrote a diet book called “The Daniel Plan.” It was a super bestseller, millions of copies sold.
And it included lines like: “God isn't going to evaluate on the basis of the bodies he gave to other people, but he will judge what you did with what you have been given. Satan does not want you living a healthy life because that honors God, and why should God heal you of an obesity-related illness if you have no intention of changing the choices that led to it.”
So that is sort of a typical framework, which is being overweight is gluttonous, and it is your personal responsibility and your sort of moral responsibility to be slender or be a healthy weight.
I think where it becomes really problematic is online, because it's not just about eating healthy or exercising. It becomes extreme, like everything online, which is a valorization of extreme thinness that is not healthy for most people.
GILGER: So you're talking about this connection between morality and thinness and self-control, right? So I have to ask about Ozempic and the way that has changed the conversation around obesity in general. How much has that changed this conversation when it comes to sort of the Christian moral side of it?
GROSE: Well, I think some people, and again, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but there is a faction that believes that Ozempic is taking the easy way out. And it is not having control over yourself.
Kelsey McGinnis, who is a writer for Christianity Today — and she's working on a book about Christian diet culture — told me that she heard from a former Christian wellness influencer who told her that there is this backlash brewing to Ozempic because it doesn't require you to bear any self-control, which is the fruit of the spirit.
But what we know now about the science behind obesity is that overeating isn't about willpower. These drugs have taught us that there is a biological function that is blunting people's ability to know when they're full. So it isn't just, “Oh, you don't have willpower.” Our understanding has really evolved.
GILGER: That's interesting. So the Make America Healthy Again movement, I'm sure is part of this conversation today as well, And RFK Jr., etc. How is misinformation that surrounds that playing into this as well?
GROSE: So RFK, as far as I know, is also not a big fan of Ozempic, but I see a sort of similar desire for purity in that movement. A lot of what they want to do, I agree with, in terms of making our food supply healthy and getting chemicals out of our air and water. But a lot of the ways that they go about solving those problems are not the way that I would go about solving those problems.
GILGER: That’s interesting. You really say, though, that this isn't about thinness or fatness really at all. Like it's about controlling women's bodies, from your point of view, and kind of keeping us occupied with that?
GROSE: So, I think while there are other pressures on men in terms of their body shape, I think that there's a lot of pressure on them to have big muscles and, you know, have abs and look a certain way. So I don't want to suggest that men have no pressure to look a certain way.
But for women, the ideal is always ever smaller. It's to take up no space. And when you are not fueling your body, you don't really have that much energy. And when you're not taking up much physical space in the world, you don't tend to have a lot of power. So, I think it is related. It's all sort of tied together.
GILGER: Yeah. So this is about more than just taking up physical space. This is about sort of women's roles in society and the ideal from the Christian point of view right now?
GROSE: Right. But I mean, again, the ideal is perpetual. Whoever is pushing it and whatever justification they give for pushing it changes over time and changes based on whatever trend. But that ideal, I mean, especially sort of in the predominant white culture, because I think other cultures have more leeway and have a greater diversity of body shape that they admire.
But yeah, I think it's right now we're seeing the way that it is interpreted through the lens of a country that has been moving in a more conservative direction in the past couple of years.
