Well, this strikes me as the most irritating non-story I’ve read in a long fucking time. I suppose I’m supposed to be shocked and mildly distressed at the release of a study (conducted by Nutrisystem) that shows that half of American women would “give up sex” rather than gain 10 pounds. But I find the whole thing too suspect to take seriously. And it’s not because, or at least just because, of what Tracy Clark-Flory pointed out, which is that 66% of survey respondents felt like they have to lose weight to feel sexy, which is a sad result of the widespread fat-shaming in our culture. (The survey suggested the average amount that had to be lost to reach that goal was 23 pounds, which is such an abstract number as to be meaningless. Is that a number that includes all the women that feel they’re 5 pounds away from getting into a size four averaged with people who want to lose 100 pounds, or is it just a lot of people who feel they need to lose 23 pounds? No idea.) But it’s because they poisoned the well to make sure they got the results they wanted.
See, they didn’t ask if people would give up sex rather than gain weight. They asked if you’d give up sex for the summer rather than gain weight. Considering that’s only 3 months, I’m surprised more people didn’t say yes. A lot of Americans go 3 month stretches without getting laid all the time, often even if they’re in relationships. I’m sure people who’ve had 3 month dry spells outnumber people who haven’t many times over. It’s not a super fun idea to go 3 months without sex, but most of us have plenty of assurance we’d survive. (Unless they’re rolling masturbation into their definition of “sex”, which I’m almost positive they aren’t.)
But what really pissed me off about this survey was that it’s indicative of the entire problem with the American diet industry, which is basically built to encourage yo-you dieting. You’ve heard the statistic that 95% of diets don’t work? That’s because they’re designed not to. The entire pitch of diet programs is, “Deprive yourself of pleasure for short periods of time, and then, when you reach a goal, go right back to your old habits. In a few years, when you’ve gained it all back, come back and we’ll do it all over again.” There’s no natural reason to connect sexual deprivation with weight control—-on the contrary, I’d guess frequent sex actually burns a fair number of calories—-but the diet industry’s logic is just this. The whole notion is that you “earn” pleasure by being skinny enough to deserve it, and the only way to earn it is to lose weight.
Silvana has a really long, interesting post on the way that getting married can provoke body anxiety in even the most stalwart opponents of that kind of crap, and she mentions something that has always bothered me, too.
As a fat chick, I am well aware of the MUSTLOSEWEIGHTBEFOREWEDDING cultural imperative. I was aware of this before I ever knew what Fat Acceptance was. And I knew before I ever got engaged that I would be doing no such thing. Frankly, I wasn’t even tempted. I know people who have gone on serious diets in the year or so before they get married, women who have attended “boot camp,” and companies who have made a lot of money off of fueling those anxieties. I wanted no part of it.