01/01/2021
Eric Mones writing in the magazine for wheelchair users, New Mobility, takes a fine sword to the diet industry and public prejudice as she discusses how people – women in particular, are subject to unrealistic demands to exercise and achieve an anatomically unnatural thin body. Drawing from sociology, and psychology she discusses how disabled women are drawn into the demands of this industry of dieting and exercise, how diverse body shapes are pictured out of advertising and mainstream magazines, and how with the rise of Instagram, disabled people can be a lightning rod for the prejudice of the “thin” people, and able bodied gym fanatics. She notes how for some, failure to be unhealthily thin is even painted as a failure in morality. She concludes I find that diet culture and its not-quite-distant cousin, the health and fitness culture, are just extensions of the American myth of rugged individualism. That is to say that there is an unspoken contract that if we discipline our bodies through diet and exercise and maintain a culturally ideal (i.e., thin) body, we can achieve success and independence from disease and disability.”.
