The character Phoebe in Eve Eliot’s novel Insatiable: The Compelling Story of Four Teens, Food, and Its Powers gives us an intimate look at how women tie their looks to their expectations of men.
Self-described as overweight and dieting to change this, Phoebe exposes the male induced diet trauma she feels when a guy she likes, Daryl, tells her that she looks good. Having not established why dieting is to her benefit, Phoebe lapses into a head-storm of worry as she deliberates the significance of Daryl’s compliment:
“I felt I would have to start exercising more and eat even less and look even better, and then Daryl might ask me for a date, and then I would really faint, just from the anxiety of it all.”
It turns out that Daryl already had a girlfriend and she was fatter than Phoebe. Daryl was only interested in Phoebe’s advice on helping his girlfriend feel better about her extra weight.
Phoebe’s self-talk reveals the anxiety that women wait too long to address when dieting: What will others think of me? Like Daryl, men may not care about your weight loss, though other men may only notice you after you’ve lost weight. So how do you respond to all the new come-ons?
Will you change your self-image just because of a compliment?
Author Nikki Goldman admits in Success for the Diet Dropout that she reframed her view of “fat” because a friend told her that her “round and soft” body would attract men.
The responses of Phoebe and Nikki Goldman relate the awesome power a man can have on our actions. Additionally, their responses illustrate how easily our priorities shift when they are based on the views of others.
These anxieties arise from the unknown. We can’t do anything about what we don’t know. If dieting is your choice, you can keep your resolve whether or not anyone notices. Plus, comments won’t throw you into a frenzy of subservience in which you ponder what more you should do to get approval from others.
That is, you won’t sink to ingratiation dieting.
Bubbling anxiety can turn into an excuse to overeat or abandon your diet altogether. As authors Jane Hirshchmann and Carol Munter warn us in When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies, “… we go to food because we don’t know what else to do about our sexual anxiety or guilt.”
A woman must re-examine and understand her ties to men and the marketing world before she initiates a diet. She must have her priorities straight. If she does not, she will resent the diet and view it as a controlling agent.
Fear of the unknown is the glue that binds us to our known realities.
Doris Helge, Transforming Pain into Power