episode 148: this is why you have body image issues
If you get my weekly newsletter then you know that Ben and I have been watching Friends together since the spring.
I knew he’d love the physical comedy, Joey’s silliness and the New York backdrop.
What I forgot about was the intense body shaming, “fat” Monica and how the show idealized small, thin bodies at the expense of bigger bodies.
I watched Friends from the age of 14-24 and seeing it now, 20 years later, it is blatantly obvious how detrimental it was to my body confidence and self esteem.
We continue to underestimate the way media influences how we feel about our bodies. And now, with social media in our faces nearly every waking hour, the opportunities to compare and idealize only continue to get worse.
In today’s episode I’m talking about why it’s essential to understand the source of our negative body image and what we can do about it.
Listen to episodes 134 and 131 for more resources and support around body image issues and how to improve negative body image.
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Welcome to the Diet Diaries, a podcast where we have candid, heartfelt conversations that will help you figure out what, why and how to eat so you can feel amazing in your body. Because it's time to break the all or nothing mindset of yo-yo dieting, food obsession and feeling ruled by the scale. I'm your host body image and nutrition coach, jordana Edelstein. I'm so happy you're here, hey everyone.
Speaker 2
00:31
It's episode 148. Yup 148 of the Diet Diaries. Thanks for being here, thanks for listening. So today's episode last week's episode, was like a little off the beaten path, so to speak. This week's episode is maybe a little similar, but probably a little closer in to things I normally talk about. And if you're on my email list, you know or maybe you remember, about three months ago in early July, I sent an email out talking about the fact that Ben and I are watching friends together. We're still watching. So, in case you're curious, back in July I just reread my email we were on season two. Now we're on season seven.
01:15
It takes a long time to get through 23 to 25 episodes a season, like they used to do like on old school network television. And I sent that email back in July just talking about how I had kind of forgotten about the quote fat Monica storyline and as soon as it started coming on, I'm like, oh my God, like I need to like talk about this with Ben. And so every time these jokes come up, I'm constantly like reminding him that like it's never okay to comment on someone else's body and what they look like, and that your value and worthiness as a human is not predicated on the size of your body. Right now, as a boy, we typically think that boys don't have to deal with this as much. I actually think that that's not as true as we think it is. But also in his relationships, whether they be friendships or romantic relationships. Whatever ends up happening with Ben with girls, right, he needs to understand that, like it's okay for girls bodies to look different, different sizes and different shapes, and so it's as much about like his own education for himself as it is also for how he like sees other people around him in the world. But what I really wanted to talk about today was, like as I've continued to watch it with him and it is so much fun to watch. It is so funny. We hysterically laugh. It's really nice to have like a show like that to watch together. I'm gonna be really sad when it's over 10 seasons is like also a lot of TV and it's just. It's just really nice like total sidebar.
02:59
If you have a kid, I feel like watching shows with your kids is something that like doesn't happen that much anymore because of the way that we watch TV. Like I used to watch sitcoms with my parents like almost every night, like back in the 80s, I watched Alf and growing pains and family ties and family matters and step by step and all of that stuff. And then when I got older, we would watch stuff together too, like because there aren't a ton of shows on like that as much anymore and so much is streaming and on demand. It's just very different. And so, yeah, this is obviously like on demand, but we watch like pretty frequently. It depends. We go through phases, right, we're, we'll go a week and we'll be able to watch one or two episodes a night, and then we'll go for a week and we'll only watch once or twice.
03:46
But anyway, just sharing that it's actually a really nice way to spend time together. I think that we used to think that spending, used to think that watching TV wasn't spending time together, but it actually is. We talk about stuff, we laugh or together. No one's on their phones, like phones are not in the room, so we're both like really present for it and that feels really nice. So that's my parenting tip that you didn't ask for, anyway.
04:09
So really, what I wanted to talk about was just the awareness that I've continued to have watching this show now, for we've been watching Republic. I think we started it in May or June, so it's been a long time and what it has continued to drive home for me and even though we know this logically but to watch a show that I watched from the ages of 14 to the ages of 24 and from 18 to 24 were some of the hardest years of my life in terms of my body still was hard after that. This early twenties was. I think I don't want to say it was the worst. It was really bad. I was in college and then I was moving to the city and working and finding my place and meeting people and all of that that. We, these beliefs, are learned. They're not innate. We are not born thinking these things, we are taught them.
05:08
And when I watch that show and watch them talk about Monica and then show what she actually looked like. There's a lot of flashback episodes where they show quote fat Monica and let me just say that she looks to be about like a size 14 or 16. And they, the way they talk about her body and talk about her experience, it's like being fat is the worst possible thing you could be. They make so many insulting, cruel jokes around her body, size and in terms of like what a large body could do to something which is like not even real. No matter like how big your body is, but making jokes about like oh yeah, she broke the chair at a wedding and you know like the camera adds 10 pounds, and well, how many cameras are on you and just joke after joke after joke and what you take away from that at 17, 18, 19, 20, without even realizing it is that being fat is bad. Being fat and not only is being fat bad, but being fat is anything that doesn't look like Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox. So basically, if you are not a size two or a four, you're fat and that is bad. That's what it comes down to.
06:30
I idolized Jennifer Aniston for years. I still love her. I will watch anything that she is in. I don't, I don't know what it is. I have just always liked her and I realize now that part of it is probably because I was watching friends just kind of became obsessed. She was always the person in my head. I've talked about this little on email. I don't think I've talked about it on the podcast at all and this is like pretty personal, but I'm always happy to share this stuff. She was always the person in my head that I wanted to look like. I wanted to have her body and I think now, looking back, I realize now that I think it's because of friends and my body is never gonna look like Jennifer Aniston's body and that is okay. I have only really learned that in the past five years maybe, that all bodies are not meant to look the same, that there is not one body that looks exactly how we believe it should look or needs to look. It's just. It's really interesting to me now. I've learned so much from rewatching this show.
07:46
There's so the narrative around this show is that you are not accepted, you are not liked unless you are thin. The whole thing is like Monica was fat. No one liked her. She knew Chandler. Chandler was Ross's best friend, so she knew Chandler when she was fat and now and she knew Richard the Tom Selleck role when she was fat and he sees her again for the first time and he's like oh my God, you look amazing because you lost so much weight, right, and they fall in love now because she's thin, and everything is like life is bad and crappy when you're fat and life is good and wonderful when you are thin. So if you are fat, bad, crappy things will happen to you and if you are thin, the good things will happen to you.
08:27
Now I realize that people in big fat bodies and I say fat as just a neutral descriptor term do, are marginalized and have a lot of struggles, and life absolutely can and is harder for them, and shows like this perpetuate that and create that. Also to say that, yes, people in thin bodies and smaller bodies do have privilege. But I will say that you aren't automatically happy because you are thin. So there's a lot of nuance to this. But it's just the before and after of, like Monica was fat and no one liked her and she wasn't pretty and then she lost weight and now she's thin and wonderful and successful and dates lots of guys and has lots of sex and you know, all of these wonderful things happen to her. It's such a before and after and as a as a human being, watching this in the late nineties and early two thousands, when this is the message everywhere I'm gonna talk about another movie that had a really big impact on me. You internalize that and you carry that shit with you forever Until you do the work to like unlearn it, and I'm so grateful to be watching this with Ben one to continue that on learning process for myself, because it never ends, and to to be able to use it as a way to like educate him.
09:55
I don't think that there's really any shows on network or streaming or cable whatever TV platforms are out there now that would make these kinds of jokes anymore. They're just like cruel and unkind and Very unaware. But the stuff is still out there, right, and friends is still, I think, a great show. Danny hates that he never watched it. I still think it's a great show, like I can. It's both and right, there's some bad things about. There's amazing things about it. But around the same time I think I was a junior in college Bridget Jones's diary came out and so I don't know. I've listeners of all different ages, so you may or may not know this movie or have seen this movie.
10:35
It's a good movie on a book and Renee Zell Walker playing the main character, and in the book and in the movie she is I don't remember the words they use the ball clueless, like Cute, weird little words because it was, like you know, they were British, so it's definitely vernacular for things she was considered to be fat and there was all this publicity. Renee Zell Walker is very as a very small body, size two. She gained a lot of weight to play this role and when you watch the movie she's probably around like a size 12. I am a size 12. Size 12 slash 14. I was a size 12 in college. I basically been a size 12 since I was like 17.
11:15
And I remember watching that and seeing her and she wears this like bunny costume, which basically it's like a corset, like a leotard, basically we really see her body and people make fun of her in the movie like her character for the way her body looks, and just the media around this was like oh my god, about how Renee Zell Walker got fat and she's a size 12 and I'm a size 12. And it's like I don't have to draw the connections there for you around how damaging that is and how she's unloved and men don't like her because of her body it is. It blows my mind the way I'm like losing my words over this about how insidious it is, how we have been taught these things over, and these are just two examples. There are countless more. Over and over and over and over again. And then we wonder and here's the thing, this is really why I wanted to talk about this. We wonder why we are so unhappy with how we look. This is a big reason why the media and what has been portrayed in movies over time has been hugely problematic. It continues to be problematic.
12:33
I think there's a little bit of a tide turn, a little bit, right, you're starting to see plus size models on runways for like major, just like it just finished, like New York fashion week and there were some models and bigger bodies on the runways Walking and I'm modeling clothes. And you're seeing a little bit more in some magazines. Obviously on social media, right, because anyone can put themselves out there. If you're following people, there are so many wonderful accounts to follow, not for just plus size models, but just influencers, right, who are, you know, using this platform to talk about how to Live your life in a body that doesn't look the way that we were told our bodies had to look growing up. Yeah, clearer will chewing рок back to the C statue, and so I just think it's important to know why.
13:22
Where does this come from?
13:23
Why is it? We're not born with this. Little girls do not, are not born thinking this. We are taught it from a very young, very young age We'll talk about, like, the Disney princess thing. All Disney princesses are like tiny, tiny ways, hourglass figure. You've never seen a bigger-bodied Disney princess. The villains are often always in the bigger bodies. You know, there's just always been such a distorted view of the reality and diversity of human bodies. Right, one body type has always been idealized and it was just everyone is supposed to look like that. It just doesn't there's no logic behind that, right, we have different color hair and different colored eyes and different colored skins and we're different heights and so, of course, therefore, body sizes and shapes are going to be different and we've just lost sight of that and it's so and this is a big reason why.
14:23
So I guess I just really wanted to kind of talk about, like, my experience watching this and also to help you realize where some of your thoughts come from and why this work is so hard. Because, yes, while there is more content out there that does reflect and represent more body types and diversity, the mainstream right, mainstream Hollywood movies, actresses still are being pushed towards and look very similar, and it's sometimes helpful to know why we think the things that we think and when we're surrounded by these things all the time, it's hard to do this work. It's really hard, I'm not going to lie, because you're constantly and insidiously if that's a word faced with this messaging. You don't even realize it. It pops up everywhere, in places that you don't expect it.
15:21
I've talked about you know little anecdotes unrelated to even media, just other people I follow on Instagram who will talk about losing weight or eating or food and what not. Constantly you're talking about their bodies and places you don't expect it to see, and it's constantly reinforced. And so to be doing the opposite, work to unlearn it and to learn how to have that comfort and that ease in your own skin and to speak kindly to yourself and to work on self acceptance, which again doesn't mean loving everything about yourself. It means accepting the things that you can't control, and taking action on the things that you can is not easy. And so when we can call out and when we can notice this stuff happening, that's important, right? So I'm calling this out so that it helps all of us bring more, so that when you're watching a show or a movie or whatever, you can call it out to yourself and say oh, look like there it is.
16:14
Again, there's someone making an assumption or a comment about body types and sizes and what that means for like, who you are as a human. I think that is a big part of this work. So, yeah, that's really what I want to talk about today. Next week, if all goes according to plan, I'm going to be I'm talking with a former client super excited. This is only the second client episode and we work together for over a year and I'm super excited to have her come on and share her experience and her challenges and what's been happening since we finished working together, because I think I can talk a lot about all this and, yes, I've been through it. So it's not I'm just talking about as a coach. I'm talking about as a person who lived it. I know you guys know that, but I think it's also really helpful to hear from other people who are going through this work, who have started in a place where they thought that none of this change was possible, and that is absolutely part of the story that you're going to hear.
17:19
So, thanks for listening. Tune in next week and I will talk to you guys soon.
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