Is Diet Culture a Cult? Beauty, Patriarchy, and the Worship of Thinness with Paula Atkinson

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Paula Atkinson is a psychotherapist and Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker who has spent decades working with people around trauma, disordered eating, body image, internalized weight stigma, anxiety, grief, and relationships. For ten years, she was also a professor of Weight & Society at George Washington University, where she taught about our culture’s obsession with thinness, the history and politics of body ideals, and the oppression of larger bodies.

Listen for more on:

Paula’s experience growing up in a fat body, developing an eating disorder, and discovering how differently people treated her when her body became smaller

Why Paula thinks of thinness as a cult, and what makes its promises so difficult to walk away from

The relationship between beauty, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the policing of bodies

How attractiveness became tied to women’s survival, and why beauty standards shift alongside social and political power

Thinness as a moral hierarchy, and the promises of purity, superiority, and belonging

GLP-1s, starvation, and the normalization of suppressing our bodies’ most basic needs

Why understanding body hatred as a systemic issue can change the way we approach recovery

The grief of letting go of the promises attached to thinness, even when we know they aren't real

What to do when you know the body hierarchy is b******t but still struggle with your own body (hint: seething feminist rage)

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