Is this The Bad Place?
Do you watch The Good Place TV show?
If not, part of the basic premise is that there are multiple heavens (The Good Place) and multiple hells (The Bad Place), each kind of like it's own world, and each with an architect tasked with dreaming up ways of pleasuring or torturing its residents. It's a comedy. It's really entertaining.
I recently kicked off a new Intuitive Eating Mentorship Circle and as everyone introduced themselves I was reminded of how much trauma results from living in a world saturated by diet culture. Much of the work I do with people is helping them shift the anger they have been directing at their body or eating habits towards the real culprit: diet culture. I believe properly directed rage is essential for moving towards body acceptance and sovereignty.
Using the framework from The Good Place show I pointed out that if I were an architect of a bad place and I wanted to torture people I would replicate many parts of the world we live in. I then invited them to join in on designing a hellscape based on their reality. Here's what we collectively came up with:
Inundate people with unrealistic, manipulated images of often starved bodies and tell them if they just try hard enough they too can achieve this ideal
Normalize self-imposed food restriction and compulsive exercise
Shame normal eating
Make people mistrust their body and it's hunger cues
Design airplane seats and seatbelts to comfortably accommodate a very small percentage of the population.
Only offer clothing in brick and mortar stores in sizes that fit a small percentage of the population
Take an entire food group and tell people to avoid it. Then, once people are on board, switch it up and make a different macronutrient the hero/villain.
Tell women that after carrying and birthing a child they should return to their pre-pregnancy body, ideally, in a matter of weeks.
The Kardashians
It was actually fun to popcorn ideas and realize that we're not crazy. It's not us. It's not our bodies. It's diet culture. Diet culture is hell. (as is/related: capitalistic white heteronormative patriarchy)
Yes, it is depressing that our world is a hellscape in many ways, but it's also liberating. Kind of like being on to someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes. If it's just some torturous for-profit scheme to get us to think there is something wrong with our body...or carbs...or emotional eating then maybe we can opt-out more often. Maybe we can de-normalize, disrupt, and divest from this farce.