GUILT FREE - Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss

 

In 2021, Demi Lovato posted on her story calling out the frozen yogurt restaurant, The Big Chill, for offering diet foods before ordering the yogurt. The Big Chill responded by saying that these options are actually for diabetics, celiacs, and vegans. The whole internet turned against Demi, saying that she was being crazy and insensitive to people with diabetes and celiac disease, pushing her to apologize publicly. After apologizing, Demi backtracked and posted a photo of the packaging, claiming that the business was gaslighting her for saying it was not about diet culture. The second photo shows the label reading, “EAT ME GUILT FREE.” The packaging clearly shows, to me, that these options were not in fact about providing food for people with food restrictions, but rather marketing for diet culture. The words “guilt-free” implicate that eating sugar should make you feel guilty while resisting sugar will leave you without guilt. If this was actually for people with food restrictions, then the packaging would read “sugar-free” or “gluten-free” instead of “guilt free.”

In her work, Purity and Danger, Douglas discusses the fear surrounding hygiene and the social order that comes from it. Douglas suggests that hygiene, rather than fear, is more conducive to understanding primitive religions and, more broadly, society. Hygiene involves organizing conditions by eliminating disorder, or what Douglas calls “dirt.” This is not driven solely by fear of disease but by an effort to create order. Rituals of purity and impurity create unity and meaning for people furthering order. In contrast to purity, pollution also constructs and strengthens societal norms. Douglas suggests that pollution operates at two societal levels - instrumental and expressive. Instrumentally, they influence people’s behavior which reinforces social norms. Expressively, they symbolize broader social orders, such as hierarchy, rather than reflecting literal dangers.

Using Douglas’s understanding of purity and pollution, it is clear the mechanisms used to perpetuate diet culture. While advertising one’s products as guilt-free, it pollutes the ingredients excluded from the food, like sugar. The advertising makes clear that a food like sugar is dirty and by excluding it from your diet you can become pure. Often times in a capitalistic society, advertizing products takes advantage of people’s insecurities in order to create a profit. Restricting intake of sugar can be tied to weight loss and clearer skin, two things that companies often capitlize on. These ideas of purity and pollution control society by controlling people’s consumption habits. The dirtiness of foods like sugar manipulates people’s beliefs and consumption habits.

Douglas, Mary “Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.” Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved April 4, 2024 (https://www.routledge.com/Purity-and-Danger-An-Analysis-of-Concepts-of-Pollution-and-Taboo/Douglas/p/book/9780415289955).

Lowe, Lindsay. April 19, 2021. “Demi Lovato apologizes after calling out fro-yo shop for promoting 'diet culture'.” Today. April, 4, 2024. https://www.today.com/tmrw/demi-lovato-calls-out-fro-yo-shop-promoting-diet-culture-t215480.

        Wagstaff, Eve. April 21, 2021. “SORRY NOT SORRY! Demi Lovato mocked by frozen yogurt shop as they list ‘fat-free options’ after she slammed them over ‘diet culture.’” The Sun. April, 4, 2024. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/celebrities/14725758/demi-lovato-mocked-rozen-yogurt-shop-diet-culture/