COOKIE PIECES HAVE NO CALORIES:… DIET HUMOR AS RESISTANCE TO DIET CULTURE

The present article focuses on women's humor about dieting in a culture where women are expected to diet. Participant observation in an Israeli Weight Watchers group, interviews with female dieters and qualitative text analysis were used to generate four main themes relating to the variety of ways in which diet culture affects women's lives: 1) Diet culture ideology; 2) Diet culture, food and social interaction; 3) Diet culture’s rules of practice; 4) Diet culture and consumer culture. 

The appearance of diet humor is viewed as resistance to the power diet culture exerts over women. Findings show that resistance is weakest in regard to the basic ideological concepts of diet culture and its expression through consumer culture. Resistance is strongest when diet culture conflicts with the dieter’s social network, and attempts to change eating habits and exercise patterns.

The findings show that diet culture does not have unlimited power over women. It affects many of their beliefs and consumer choices, but has far less impact on their everyday behavior. Women would rather have their cake (be slim) and eat it too. Since they can’t have it both ways, diet humor enables women to eat the cake and joke about it. To the full article