Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman

0:01Jessica Grose:This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:15I'm Meher Ahmad, an editor in the New York Times opinion section. There's been a resurgence in explicit be-thin messaging and culture. With the ozempic boom, we see the body shaming of actresses like Sidney Sweeney and red carpets that were already filled with thin actresses becoming even thinner. On the right, there's been a focus on body size that's sort of been bundled up, not just with health and wellness, but with religion, morals, and politics. And so when everything is political and we're more divided than ever, should the size and shape of our bodies be any different? I'm here today with opinion writer Jessica Gross to understand why the right is obsessed with thinness and why that message is winning over women.

0:56Jess, I kind of wanted to start first by asking you what the messaging on diet and thinness coming from the Christian influencer spaces is. What do you see there?

1:06Jessica Grose:So it's really encapsulated by some things that the wellness influencer Alex Clark said at the Young Women's Leadership Summit. Look around this room. Let's just be honest. It's never been hotter to be a conservative. You are in this room and you are witnessing a cultural revolution. We've got the girls who lift weights, eat clean, have their hormones balanced, have their lives together. Less Prozac, more protein. Less burnout, more babies. Less feminism, more femininity. And by contrast, liberals are TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks, and a ring light. So it's really defining what is normal.

2:02Jessica Grose:I'm doing air quotes, which the listeners can't see. Normal as a very narrow ideal of womanhood. And it's all tied up with not just body size, but also behavior. I mean, even in that quote that you quoted, she's sort of describing a foil to what she describes as like a liberal body type. How much of this is like a reaction to like a left version of a body type? And what even is that? So I think it's a reaction to the body positivity movement, which I would say peaked about 10 years ago. And it was the idea that weight is not tied directly to health and that you can be healthy and not real thin.

2:46Jessica Grose:You would see models who were not modeled size on runway. It was never predominant. There was like one. And brands were more kind of bullied into making more size inclusive lines. So often if you are above a straight size, which depending on the brand, I think is, you know, 12, 14, it was very hard to find fashionable clothes. And so there was a movement to be more inclusive and recognize the fact that the average American woman is not a sample size. And so I would say that was never the only thing that was mainstream. I mean, I remember at the time, parents of teenage girls were like, yeah, the body positivity movement has not reached this middle school.

3:31Jessica Grose:So I don't ever think that it was dominant. And it wasn't just liberals, but I think it was liberal coded. And who are some of the big names specifically in the like Christian diet trend or conservative women diet trend? Who are the voices that you're seeing? So Alex Clark, who is a podcaster, wellness influencer, who we already mentioned. And then Liv Schmidt, who was associated with this term skinny talk. Skinny solutions for daily life is today's video while I get ready because being skinny is a lifestyle, not a diet. I don't think she talks about politics too much, but she has appeared in conservative magazines like Evie, which is a magazine geared towards conservative young women.

4:12Jessica Grose:And then folks like Ballerina Farm, who's a trad wife influencer. I am going to show you what my day looked like today. I wake up, nurse Laura Jo, then we get the kids fed and ready for school, which is in a little schoolhouse we have here on the farm. I know they sell products from their store that are emphasizing a meat-heavy lifestyle as healthy, which, you know, is all, again, it is part of mainstream culture. I mean, you can't throw a rock without hearing somebody talking about protein, which I've also written about before. But it's just putting the conservative gloss on it. What about the messaging is putting the conservative gloss?

4:55because I think, as you said, a lot of this feels familiar territory and, like, especially the fixation on protein. I mean, Khloe Kardashian came out with a protein popcorn, which, like, what is that? But I'm curious about how it overlaps with Christianity in particular and, like, what makes these influencers pair diet cultures with more of, like, a religious or moral tent.

5:19Jessica Grose:So, there's long been a history of, there's a whole sort of Christian publishing universe, right? And they've long tried to take things that are popular in the mainstream and put their own spin on it. And I went back and I read a book that was a bestseller about 10 years ago, written by the megachurch pastor Rick Warren. The book is called The Daniel Plan, and it features a blurb from Dr. Oz, so it's sort of tied in with our current administration. and the book includes things like Satan does not want you to live in 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.

6:13Jessica Grose:So there's a distinct idea that overeating or gluttony, which is, you know, one of the seven deadly sins, is immoral and if your body size is not whatever society thinks is an appropriate body size. That is a sin. And then there's a whole thing which really dovetails into the Maha movement about the purity of food. And that also can be secular. You know, you hear tons of people who are not religious talk about toxins and, you know, eating things that are bad for your body and how that is morally abhorrent. But I think that there's a sort of direct language of sort of sin, gluttony, And you see it all the time with creators on social media who directly talk about it that way, that overeating is sinful, gluttonous, bad, morally impure.

7:03Jessica Grose:No diet can give you the spirit of self-control. Only God can do that. And obviously, these ideas go back thousands of years. And the other fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 22 through 23 are joy, peace, faithfulness. We can have all of that in this fitness journey if we're doing it in God and through the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is my prayer for you today. These are very old ideas that are just consistently repackaged for a modern value system. I mean, that's one thing I'm interested in with these particular influencers is like the desire for, you know, the way that they look or how they like behave should be in line with certain values that are politically aligned with the conservative movement.

7:49How do you see the political aspect of it pairing with the way that these women are presenting themselves physically online and in the world?

7:56Jessica Grose:I mean, it's all traditional gender roles, right? I mean, that litany of things that Alex Clark listed, it's like marriage, babies, fitness, protein. It's all one very narrow image. And anyone who is not conforming to that image is sort of outside the circle. And it's also in a moment where we do see fewer female leaders across the board, I would say Democrats and Republicans. And so the idea that women should be physically smaller goes along with the idea that they're not going to be the ones out front taking up space. Yeah. I mean, you touched on this, but like in a lot of ways, the desire to be thin is just so ubiquitous in time and millennia, but also on all sides of the political spectrum.

8:45You know, I'm curious about how you see the left version of like aspiring to thinness, especially in this current moment, and how that compares to this more conservative value system. I'm like, are they unique in promoting thinness, these conservative influencers? Or are they just part of the general environment right now, which is kind of like okay with being unabashedly pro-skinny?

9:08Jessica Grose:Yeah, I mean, they're just co-opting what's already in the water. And I think what happened with the body positivity movement is it got co-opted by the wellness movement. And so people stopped using language like, oh, I'm doing this to be thin. I'm doing this to be healthy. Here is a glimpse into everything I ate today to just fuel my body and feel my best. As someone who loves to cook and eat healthy and all the good things. But also believes in balance and feeling good from the inside out. So let's just get into it. But healthy was always synonymous with thinness in the mainstream. And also, it's very white.

9:42Jessica Grose:I think that there's lots of cultures who are not so obsessed with thinness, but we're all sort of reacting to the mainstream dominant public messaging that we're all getting. And, you know, there's lots of studies that show, you know, people who are overweight and especially women who are overweight are discriminated against. They earn less money. They are treated more poorly in public. Like, it's not just a media creation fixation. It's like it has real world consequences. One thing that I noticed about a lot of these Christian diet influencers is that they sort of think that Ozempic is a cheater's way to lose weight, that the real true way to lose weight is by hard work and self-control.

10:21which is interesting because I think now as Ozempic has become more ubiquitous and accessible to a lot of people, there's more of an acceptance of taking it as a drug. But they almost are like counter to that mainstream idea that like taking Ozempic is like a normal thing, just like taking an antidepressant would be a normal thing. So I'm curious what you make of the fact that a lot of these Christian influencers kind of decry these drugs or think they're a sign of like moral failure almost.

10:48Jessica Grose:Well, I mean, I think it's ultimately they want people to be obsessed with these ideas and never stop thinking about them. And one thing that a lot of people on Ozempic say is that it gets rid of the food noise. So they're just not preoccupied by eating in the same way that they were before and that it gives them a great deal of freedom. So I think it is, again, about control. It's about preoccupation. It's about martyrdom. Unless you're punishing yourself, it's not worthy or worth it. Yeah. I mean, I find the religiosity of all of this really fascinating. One thing that might be relevant to this is that when I was a foreign correspondent, I was based in Pakistan, which is a predominantly Muslim country.

11:32And during the month of Ramadan, people fast. They don't drink water or eat or even like chew gum or anything like that between sunup to sundown. And I ended up reporting a piece when I was there about this phenomenon of Ramadan boot camps where women would like channel the like fasting religious kind of fervor of Ramadan and turn it into like a weight loss goal. So I did it. I did the boot camp and it was grueling. It was actually really, really tough because, first of all, I was in Karachi at this time, Ramadan, which moves with the lunar calendar. Back then it was in the summer, so it was like 110 degrees on an average day.

12:12We would do an hour-long HIIT workout right before we broke our fast. So that meant that I would do burpees and all this stuff and then not drink water afterwards, which was really difficult. But a lot of the boot camp's focus was on, like, self-restraint and, like, you know, the month of Ramadan, you're fasting because you're trying to access higher thoughts and you're thinking of people who don't have food. And there's all these, like, purpose kind of morals behind why you're doing this. And it's to develop empathy and, you know, feel closer to God. And they kind of took all of that and then applied it to weight loss.

12:47and I found it like both sad, but it also made sense to me that that would like of course happen, you know. But when I walked away from the experience, which by the way, the process of which I lost like an unhealthy amount of weight in a very short amount of time. I'm sure you did. When I walked away from that experience, I also found that the appeal of religion itself in a lot of ways is that it gives you a moral set of guidelines to navigate a very complicated world. And when I look at these Christian diet influencers, in a way, the appeal to me is like totally apparent because especially when it comes to, I mean, all things, but with food, American food culture is so confusing.

13:29There's so many options, what you're meant to eat or like what powders you should be taking, like changes day by day, week by week. And there's so much decision making that has to go into everything and like the guidance on what you should eat, especially with Maha, you know, becoming more part of our culture. There's an inherent like distrust of a lot of information. And having just like a clear set of guidelines based in something like religion almost feels like a relief. Like I like sometimes I'm envious. It's like I wish I I believed in something that just told me how to live my life. So it's interesting seeing how they pair food and food choices and weight loss with religion.

14:11But I'm curious how you see that playing out in American culture.

14:15Jessica Grose:I love that you just told that story. That's so fascinating. And I think I totally agree with you that it is really hard to know what to eat and why in this moment. And I think where it becomes coercive and controlling is when you're telling people your salvation is tied to the way that you are eating. And if you step off this path, that is, you know, akin to consorting with the devil. Like, I just don't think that that's morally fair to people, but I certainly understand the appeal. And, you know, I've written before about my obsession with orange theory, and I often joke that I'm in a cult. But part of the appeal of that high-intensity interval training workout is that you put your brain aside for the hour that you're there, and you're just listening to the coach tell you what to do.

15:12Jessica Grose:So again, it's all a spectrum of behavior and I'm not sitting here acting like I am not completely, you know, ruined by diet culture. Like it's almost, I always think it's just, it's too late for me. It's too late for me. I read too many magazines in the 90s and I saw too many pictures of Kate Moss in Wellies at Glastonbury. do not try those if you are under 5 '10". They make you look so stumpy, which I learned the hard way. So it's almost like I think I write about these issues and think about these issues so much. I want so badly for my daughters and the kids growing up today who are just inundated with images and visuals of extreme thinness all the time to be more skeptical of what they are seeing and figure out a healthier, better way.

16:12Yeah. Just to bring it back to kind of like the appeal of religion that lies just beneath the surface of this trend, I was wondering, especially because you've reported on religion in this country a fair bit, how you see the vision of like diet culture being fully formed versus the left version or the left's answer being sort of more of a chaotic like disarray of ideals. Like, I kind of see this across the political spectrum, not just when it comes to the aesthetics of what conservatism looks like, but conservatism to a lot of Americans is like, here's a vision of what this country is supposed to look like.

16:50It's supposed to be white picket fences. It's supposed to be a husband and wife and their kids. And the wife is thin. And the husband is this. And they go to church. And, like, this is what this country is meant to be. And for a lot of people, having a clear idea of what that vision is, is appealing because if the left feels like, I don't know what that even looks like, that that's harder for people to graft onto. Do you see that happening outside of just diet culture? Like, is that part of the thing that draws people into more religious, conservative political viewpoints?

17:21Jessica Grose:I think definitely conservative, less so religious, because religious also requires them to go to church and have this whole other set of beliefs and behaviors that younger generations are really not showing that they want in big numbers. I've written about this numerous times, but, you know, if you look at the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian and who go to church regularly, you know, it's just every generation silent on down is a lower percentage of people who are, even if they define themselves as Christian, attend church weekly. It's just they don't want to do it. So whether it is sort of as a cultural identity, certainly conservatives have an upper hand in terms of a very clear message of what to do, who to be, what to look like, what America means.

18:12Jessica Grose:And I think that they've been very savvy in the past couple of years about understanding that politics is downstream from culture. But if I have to have another conversation about who is the left's Joe Rogan, I am going to throw myself off a cliff. And so I think providing an alternative vision is going to be more about how we behave than how we look. Because I think that is more of a compelling message because there's such a nastiness right now to the rhetoric from conservatives and from conservative influencers. I don't know that the left is going to be able to compete on the clarity of vision, but they might be able to get somewhere with the clarity of behavior and morality.

19:03So if there's no Joe Rogan of the left, as you said, is there an Alex Clark of the left? Is there an alternative in that way, too?

19:10Jessica Grose:Well, I mean, we've seen Michelle Obama's podcast do incredibly well. Kylie Kelsey, who I love, also is an example of someone who actually has all the things that Alex Clark talks about, but is very open and welcoming and warm. I love her vibe personally. So I think that there's opportunities to have a version of wellness that isn't so intimately tied to body image and shaming. Well, this feels like a good place to end our conversation. Thanks, Jess, for being here. Thanks so much for having me.

20:12Jessica Grose:If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishak Adarba, Christina Samulewski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.