The Shit We Don't Talk About
The second-biggest risk group for eating disorders after adolescents is people in menopause. People in a menopausal transition are very vulnerable to developing, continuing with, or relapsing into eating disorders. That has an awful lot to do with, as dietician and eating disorders specialist Erica Leon says, the fact that diet culture preys upon people in menopause. There’s pressure to maintain a “youthful appearance” and not to look like you’re in menopause. Menopause is also outside our control, so the desire to try and control what we can, like eating, can be strong.
Disordered eating — and much dieting would be considered such — presents a number of health risks. Some of those risks are already increased in perimenopause or postmenopause. Disordered eating can impact every system of the body, including the endocrine system. It increases already elevated risks of heart attack, stroke, and bone loss and can make us more likely to develop diabetes, thyroid disorders, and bacterial infections. Eating disorders don’t play nice with other kinds of mental illness. The majority of death that occurs due to anorexia occurs to older, not younger, people.
“Accepting our bodies in menopause is vital to our well-being in and throughout this, but diet culture makes that really, really difficult.”
Chronic dieting is associated with a host of ills, including some, like bone loss, stress, high blood pressure, or decreased insulin resistance, that menopause and aging already increase our risks of. People may, knowingly or unknowingly, give us positive affirmation for any visible weight loss that happens because of disordered eating, a particularly seductive reward if we’re hungry for validation about our appearance as so many people are during and around menopause. They may congratulate us on our self-discipline or backside instead of expressing concern and offering help. It’s all too easy to have an eating disorder in midlife in plain sight.
Accepting our bodies in menopause is vital to our well-being in and throughout this, but diet culture makes that really, really difficult.
Diet culture is the worst smoothie ever, made of religious asceticism (especially the Christian temperance movement), white supremacy, fatphobia, capitalism, manufacturing, the fashion industry, healthism and medicalization, economic class division, sexism, and exceptionalism. It makes being thinner and eating less, or eating “right,” better and more virtuous, and, as Christy Harrison adds, “disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health.” Dieting does everyone harm because it requires that we believe that one kind of body is superior — including morally superior — to another kind of body, a belief that is the basis of eugenics, racism, misogyny, and all manner of other horrible cultural ills and harms.
“When diet culture and menopause collide, it’s easy to get the idea that thinness will equal a better menopause, that fatness will equal a harder one, and even that a shitty menopause is just what you get for being or getting fat.”
So far, it nets a $70 billion annual profit in the United States alone, and, as Rebecca Scritchfield points out, the level and intensity of belief many people have in it and all of its claims are near-religious.
When diet culture and menopause collide, it’s easy to get the idea that thinness will equal a better menopause, that fatness will equal a harder one, and even that a shitty menopause is just what you get for being or getting fat. The thing is, even though it sure feels like it, institutions, doctors, celebrities, relatives, and other people don’t determine the appropriate weight for us. Our own bodies mostly decide what our appropriate weight range is. Our bodies know best.
It’s generally understood and accepted in weight-literate circles that we all have a weight setpoint our bodies can comfortably and healthfully maintain, usually ranging between about ten and twenty pounds. That setpoint is primarily determined by our genetics, our hypothalamus, and how the latter reads and interprets the conditions and environment of our body.
There is a lot of fatphobia, misogyny, sexism, ableism, white supremacy, and trans-phobia, not to mention a host of other ills, when it comes to how appearance changes because of menopause, aging, or both are presented. In some resources or places where people are talking about it, it truly is a rough ride.
“We get to feel however we feel about all that, but none of this is about our failing or our bodies’ betrayal: it’s just about us being lucky enough to live long enough for our bodies to do this at all. They’re not betraying us by changing. It’s what they’re supposed to do.”
It’s also potentially going to be a rough ride if you’re seeking out some arenas of healthcare or other kinds of help that are mired in normalized body and beauty toxicity during this. You may encounter assumptions about and assignments of what you want, are okay with, and believe: you might hear that of course you don’t want to “look old,” or of course you’d be willing to try a diet, or of course your body was “better” when you were younger, and of course you’d do just about anything to get it back.
Our bodies are ultimately the result of our genetics, our lives to date, and whatever our current conditions are. They’ve all done some hard work to get us this far. All they’re doing when it comes to menopause and aging is reacting and adapting and carrying on as best they can, which is, ultimately, their principal job description. We get to feel however we feel about all that, but none of this is about our failing or our bodies’ betrayal: it’s just about us being lucky enough to live long enough for our bodies to do this at all. They’re not betraying us by changing. It’s what they’re supposed to do.
Heather Corinna is a dedicated queer feminist activist, author, educator, artist, teacher, organizer and innovator. They are the founder and director of Scarleteen (www.scarleteen.com), the first inclusive and comprehensive sex, sexuality and relationships education online clearinghouse for young people, founded in 1998. Heather is also the author of S.E.X: The All-You-Need-To-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties, now in its second edition, Wait, What? A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies and Growing Up with Isabella Rotman, and was a contributing editor for the last edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Their award-winning work in sex and health education has received acclaim from The Woodhull Foundation, Ms. Magazine, BUST, Bitch, On Our Backs, The New York Times, The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and the ACLU, and has appeared in publications ranging from Teen Vogue to Rewire News Group to The Guardian. Heather is navigating middle age with as much grace as they can muster (spoiler: not much), and currently lives and works in their hometown of Chicago.