Maintenance Phase - “French Women Don't Get Fat”

00:00:00.000 this is a very play the hits one it's one of the few episodes we've done lately that people want

00:00:16.160 to hear as opposed to us forcing it upon them quote attributed to the guy who brought you

00:00:22.940 worm wars yeah the uh the numbers on the worming episode are in they are not good

00:00:28.780 listen i'm thinking about a twinkie defense part two don't worry about it

00:00:34.320 uh what do you have what do you have for la tagline the tagline this week is just

00:00:42.100 liberté egalité garbage it feels like we're gonna get real french and there's gonna be

00:00:49.000 some real trash i don't know for sure i don't know this book it's gonna be problematique well

00:00:53.960 i'm aubrey gordon i am michael hobbs if you would like to support the show you can do that at

00:00:58.800 patreon.com slash maintenance phase or you can get t-shirts mugs totes at t public both of those are

00:01:06.180 linked for you in the show notes and if you would like to keep listening we would love to have you 0.92

00:01:09.880 hello hello so what do you know about this book french women don't get fat i've just heard the

00:01:15.400 title a bunch of times and sort of rolled my eyes at it I've never picked it up I don't have it in

00:01:20.080 the diet book collection okay I became aware of it at a time in like the 2000s 90s ish there were

00:01:29.420 just a lot of white liberals who were like Europe really has things figured out yes so there was

00:01:35.320 like a big sort of Europe worship thing happening that I think was mostly about parental leave

00:01:41.820 you know, vacation time and about fair wages and about sort of like workplace kind of stuff 0.81

00:01:47.180 and social services kind of stuff, which is not wrong. But that got painted with a very broad

00:01:52.600 brush of like, Europe is better than us in every way. I mean, this, this was published the year

00:01:58.820 that I moved to Europe. So I think I was one of those people. I'm like, oh, the bike lanes.

00:02:05.020 I want to go where the bikes are. So that's my relationship to it is just sort of I'm broadly

00:02:10.260 aware of it. It smells fishy to me. It smells like an old reblochon that has been kept in the

00:02:16.200 closet. The closet. That's the last one. That's the last one. I'm sorry. You're really out 0.98

00:02:21.420 crocodile dundeeing yourself. I wanted to do like an all purpose. Like it's not quite a content

00:02:29.320 note, but it's more just like I'm going to mispronounce everything this episode. I should

00:02:34.120 also give like an actual content warning that like this book is really a how to guide to have

00:02:38.340 like a pretty worrying eating disorder take care i went to like the national eating disorders

00:02:43.400 website and looked at like the warning signs and like numerous things that she prescribes are

00:02:47.780 actual like clinical guidelines for like something something's up yeah so if that stuff is triggering

00:02:53.680 for you or like you just don't want to hear it very understandable go listen to the warm wars

00:02:58.140 episode be the first one so the author of this book is named marie giuliano she is in her 50s

00:03:06.440 when the book is published she grows up in rural france she starts studying english in high school

00:03:11.960 she kind of falls in love with the language she ends up studying abroad in massachusetts

00:03:16.040 she moves back to france goes to the sorbonne becomes a un translator oh and moves to new york

00:03:23.740 where she meets her husband who's american and she somehow gets a job at a sort of a champagne

00:03:30.640 trade publication this was back when like journalism was a functioning industry and

00:03:35.360 people could get jobs like a publication about champagne about like the champagne industry

00:03:40.120 whoa all right it appears that's very short-lived though she she becomes the first employee of are

00:03:46.280 you familiar with the brand veuve cliquot it's like a champagne brand it's a super high-end

00:03:52.260 brand that's owned by louis vuitton whoa she ends up working her way up to the ceo so at the time

00:03:59.300 that she writes this book she is the ceo of this champagne high-end champagne company what a weird

00:04:04.080 turn you can already tell that we're going to get a lot of like kind of out of touch advice

00:04:07.700 from like a rich lady yeah for sure it's kind of been wiped from our memories now but you know this

00:04:14.180 this book comes out in 2004 and it's like a huge sensation yeah this book sold three million copies

00:04:19.460 she was featured on oprah of course she was on good morning america she did like a huge like

00:04:24.700 year-long press tour for this and like the number of think pieces about this book and like actually

00:04:29.820 fairly positive reviews of it that i was able to find is really remarkable like this this was not

00:04:34.600 a controversial book when it came out the the discourse around this issue was so different back

00:04:40.020 then and it was just like here's some tips from this french lady and like how to be french it's

00:04:44.640 fascinating to me that in the 90s we had this very overt and very concerned conversation about the

00:04:52.400 prevalence of eating disorders and then in the 2000s all these diet books came out that were

00:04:57.100 just like full how-to guides on eating disorders it's fascinating i know like the wildest most

00:05:02.200 extreme diets followed this period of just like oh no it's gone too far but i think the oh no it's

00:05:08.820 gone too far got pinned to like magazines and models more than like the diet industry or

00:05:14.160 anything else yeah so like a lot of garbage crept through in that in that time i also think so much

00:05:20.180 of this comes back to tying eating disorders to a particular way of looking and like a particular

00:05:25.620 their outcome absolutely even on this like warning signs of eating disorder stuff that i was reading

00:05:29.880 the last couple weeks a lot of it is like you weigh less than you know 100 pounds or something

00:05:34.980 yeah it wasn't really focused on like behaviors like fat people can also have really worrying

00:05:39.620 eating disorders and like really worrying like physical symptoms right but not be 85 pounds

00:05:45.520 yeah at the height of my eating disorder i would say i lost about 80 pounds maybe more but in order

00:05:51.540 to qualify for having anorexia nervosa, you have to have an underweight BMI. Right. Right. Like I

00:05:58.340 had to be like a fraction, a fraction of a fraction of my former self. Right. In order to

00:06:03.780 like be seen as having an eating disorder. Yeah. Nobody's concerned about fat people not getting

00:06:08.060 enough food. I also I don't know if you remember this, but I remember the wave of similar books

00:06:12.600 that came out after this. So after this became a massive bestseller, there was Japanese women

00:06:18.340 don't get old or fat ah fuck you france there was there's also one called mediterranean women stay 0.98

00:06:25.740 slim too which is just a bad hey guys don't forget about us just we're here we're also thin that 1.00

00:06:31.780 feels like the no pigeons to the no scrubs of french women don't get fat that's all i could

00:06:37.740 think about estonian women eat in moderation a lot of people making a lot of claims about a lot

00:06:43.460 of nationalities ladies i don't know okay so i am going to send you the first two paragraphs of the

00:06:49.820 book oh we're just going in on the intro huh i feel like it's good to get like some flavor

00:06:54.560 like what what kind of book like how does it feel to read this book whatever the state of

00:06:59.060 franco-american relations admittedly a bit frayed from time to time we should not lose sight of the

00:07:04.520 singular achievements of french civilization i know until now i humbly submit one glorious

00:07:10.800 triumph has remained largely unacknowledged, yet it's a basic and familiar anthropological truth. 1.00

00:07:16.640 French women don't get fat. I am no physician, physiologist, psychologist, nutritionist,

00:07:21.920 or any manner of ist who helps or studies people professionally. I was, however, born and raised

00:07:28.040 in France, and with two good eyes, I've been observing the French for a lifetime. One can

00:07:33.560 find exceptions, as with any rule, but overwhelmingly, French women do as I do. 0.99

00:07:37.940 they eat as they like and don't get fat pourquoi so this sets the stage for a number of patterns

00:07:44.740 that we're going to see throughout this book the writing is kind of weird like it's not it's not

00:07:49.120 all that like well written or like clear what she's saying she uses a lot of like parenthetical

00:07:53.480 phrases and she just kind of like rambles sometimes and she also uses an unbelievable

00:08:00.260 amount of like french phrases in this book for like no particular reason but mike pourquoi

00:08:07.400 it feels like there was some sort of contractual arrangement where it's like you have to remind

00:08:12.580 them that you're french once per paragraph so she'll be she'll be like when i was studying in

00:08:16.940 college i would often do some french phrase and then in parentheses it'd be like walk down the

00:08:21.140 sidewalk why why would you not just say what so what do you think generally about this i mean i

00:08:26.220 hate it already well listen the second paragraph is not really doing her any favors like i'm not

00:08:32.080 a doctor i'm just a person with eyes yeah yeah ma'am she's she's very open about the fact that

00:08:38.780 like this book is just like based on her wow i read this extremely shady feature story on her

00:08:45.440 that was published in new york times after this became a bestseller it says the book is a

00:08:49.580 confection that she whipped up over summer and fall weekends it's very easy she said there was

00:08:54.800 no research we know marae we know there was no research wow the number of diet books that have

00:09:03.180 like zero citations i know meanwhile if you write a book about anything to do with like maybe dieting

00:09:10.820 isn't the best maybe fat people are okay and we should be nice to them like you got to be cited 0.59

00:09:16.000 to the hilt you have to prove the shit out of your case and i just find this really fascinating to 0.95

00:09:21.980 know that this like massive bestseller was just like nope not researching not didn't read stuff 0.86

00:09:27.020 didn't learn anything first she also is like weirdly open about the fact that like this is a

00:09:32.960 book for like fellow rich people really this is all from the intro she says while my stories and

00:09:39.340 lessons can be of benefit to anyone this book is intended primarily for women being based solely

00:09:44.240 on my experience as a woman it's not only for americans but for women throughout the developed

00:09:48.620 world who face career pressures, personal stress, globalization, and all the traps of 21st century

00:09:54.280 society. And it is not for those whose weight is an immediate health risk or who require a

00:09:58.900 medically prescribed diet. I speak specifically to women who need to lose up to 30 pounds,

00:10:03.700 which is a great proportion of the population. I mean, I think like this feels very similar.

00:10:07.940 I'm getting big Karl Lagerfeld diet vibes. I was thinking that too. Right. Which is just like,

00:10:12.640 this is for rich thin people to become even thinner. Yeah. On the one hand, I appreciate

00:10:17.860 the candor and directness and sort of directiveness to the audience in the book on the other I think

00:10:24.000 that a book like this carries a cultural impact that is way greater than the people who read it

00:10:29.860 with care and comprehend and sort of take in every sentence right so I appreciate that there's like

00:10:35.660 a directness in there that's like this isn't for fat people but on the flip side like it then gets

00:10:40.560 out into the world and a bajillion people see it or hear about it and then recommend it to fat 0.87

00:10:45.740 people or use it as a way to be shitty to fat people or whatever I mean I guess it's better 0.85

00:10:50.720 to be direct about this stuff but also that feels weird and icky another thing that she is honest

00:10:55.720 about in ways I also feel weird about is she does not mention health in this book at all there's no

00:11:01.560 mention of diabetes there's no mention of heart disease like all the sort of stuff like that

00:11:06.280 paragraph that you get in every fucking book that mentions fatness of like the cost to the health 1.00

00:11:11.120 care system she doesn't care hang on you know why she doesn't care she doesn't care because 1.00

00:11:15.960 she should have written a book called french women get universal health care you know she's 0.82

00:11:22.840 very open in this book as carl lagerfeld was in his book that like this is about being attractive

00:11:27.920 yeah that's it and and and you hear this from from accounts of fat people in france as well

00:11:33.060 that it's just like oh well you're not attractive to me and they don't even really like people don't

00:11:36.920 even really bother couching it and like oh i'm concerned about your heart health or whatever

00:11:40.620 it's just like oh i don't like looking at you in the same feature story where she talks about how

00:11:46.280 she's like i'm a wealthy lady and like i didn't do any research for this book it says there is a

00:11:51.160 steely discipline behind her pleasure-loving approach one of the main goals of staying slim 1.00

00:11:56.220 is to remain appealing to men and this is hard work a frenchman wants his wife to be very elegant 0.64

00:12:01.140 very thin she said it's never said except in the silence there is pressure a woman works on herself

00:12:07.320 she's just saying it it's like this is to be hot for men and she also talks elsewhere about like

00:12:13.340 to advance in my career i needed to be thin not untrue unfortunately not untrue so again it's like

00:12:20.140 these mixed feelings where it's like yeah that is that's what we're talking about in like 95 percent

00:12:25.200 of conversations about fatness we were talking about looks right people people want to look a

00:12:28.880 certain way yeah i'm having my own like moment with this which is that any time someone comes

00:12:35.220 to me with the sort of like faux concern or sincere concern based in bullshit, it is always

00:12:41.360 my hope in that moment that they would just be honest with me and themselves and just be like, 0.97

00:12:46.360 I don't like looking at you. Right. And then I could say, why do you need to say that to me?

00:12:49.940 Yeah, that's a you problem. That's not a me problem. Totally. At the same time,

00:12:54.100 what we have here is someone who is just copping to that and going, and I don't care. Right. I'm

00:12:59.780 just like having a moment of reflection on like, is that really what I wish for? Right. Because

00:13:04.020 like what i want them to what i really want for them to do is go oh wait i'm saying and doing this

00:13:08.800 thing and i don't want to be that kind of person right that's what i'm actually aiming for and a

00:13:13.620 necessary precondition for that is for them to own their own weird bigotry on this stuff well it's

00:13:18.480 also what's amazing to me is is she doesn't remark upon any of these pressures in any kind of

00:13:23.900 normative way she's just descriptive it's like oh you you have to be thin to work in corporate

00:13:28.460 america which like yeah you i mean on some level yes you do like those are real pressures and it

00:13:33.060 be weird to deny that they exist and i'm sure that there are people who are like just eyes wide open

00:13:38.880 are like i need to be thin to be an executive at this company right i'm sure that there are people

00:13:42.980 like that but also like i would respect people who do that much more if they were like and it's 0.63

00:13:48.520 bullshit yes and also she is a ceo i know that's another thing yes she has a board yes she has like 0.68

00:13:55.100 public image to keep up yes she has whatever else but i'm also like you are everybody's boss so 0.99

00:13:59.760 there is a version of this book that she could have written that was like you know what there's

00:14:03.600 all these pressures and like i worked my way to the top and then here's everything i did to like

00:14:08.140 dismantle those pressures and make sure they didn't exist anymore at least in my company

00:14:11.780 right this is the thing that i find so fascinating about diet books in general is that there's always

00:14:17.840 some level of acknowledgement of anti-fatness right and there is never any comment on like

00:14:24.240 and here's what we could do to fix those broken systems it's just always like so you got to get

00:14:29.660 on the treadmill and stay on the treadmill right no it's not it's fine we already have weird

00:14:35.200 thoughts more on like page seven so this is the final paragraph of the first chapter this is

00:14:43.160 a little proto version of of course the discourse that is now dominant in diet books of like this

00:14:48.200 isn't a diet yeah it's not a diet it's a lifestyle change it's a detox it's a cleanse it's a

00:14:53.080 the answer is never dieting in the american sense but rather little alterations made

00:14:59.440 steadily over time so when we do lose the excess weight not only does the effort seem painless the

00:15:04.980 results are much more likely to last if my fellow americans could adopt even a fraction of the

00:15:10.000 french attitude about food and life don't worry you don't have to sign on to the politics too

00:15:13.920 managing weight would cease to be a terror an obsession and reveal its true nature as part of

00:15:20.240 the art of living oh my god your body will equalize to its natural to its natural proportions i know

00:15:27.120 i mean yeah this is like king it's not a diet it's a lifestyle change yeah and also this is

00:15:36.060 the clearest articulation of the like it's easy yeah all we're talking about is we're reconnecting

00:15:40.900 our relationship with food it's gonna turn out to be great you're gonna lose all this weight and

00:15:44.740 you're gonna have like a kind of a more holistic life you know you're gonna you're gonna rediscover

00:15:49.540 like quality ingredients and stuff it's she presents it as a win-win right you're gonna live

00:15:55.300 in a set of a food network show exactly you'll just be surrounded by produce and like freshly

00:16:01.440 like magically pre-risen bread and all that kind of stuff yes so now that we've gotten the thesis

00:16:06.940 i want to take a brief detour to just talk about the fact that the premise of this book is wrong

00:16:11.480 i feel like we should at least discuss it yeah acknowledge the existence of fat french people

00:16:17.580 yeah so so i looked this up so at at the time of the publication of this book 55 percent of 0.97

00:16:24.160 americans on the bmi scale which is bullshit all the normal caveats apply 55 percent of americans

00:16:29.860 were overweight or obese and 35 percent of french people so 55 percent in america 35 percent in 0.88

00:16:35.900 france is that nothing like no that's a pretty significant difference but also it's not 100

00:16:41.240 in america and zero percent in france right like we're talking about the same phenomenon but just

00:16:45.380 at different scales basically right and the publisher's not going to stand for a title

00:16:49.260 that's like two-thirds of french women don't get that like that's not really takes the wind out of

00:16:54.860 its sails okay so now we're gonna dive back into the book chapter one is called the beginning i am 0.97

00:17:02.000 overweight what red flag we're already in red flag territory i don't love it she grows up in

00:17:08.300 france in the 1960s it doesn't appear that she was a fat kid at all but when she moves to america

00:17:16.960 on exchange, when she's 16, she starts gaining weight. And so I am going to send you a excerpt.

00:17:26.020 Okay. For all the priceless new friends and experiences I was embracing, something else

00:17:30.740 altogether, something sinister, was slowly taking shape, Jesus. Almost before I could notice,

00:17:37.220 it had turned into 15 pounds, more or less, and quite probably more. It was August,

00:17:42.600 my last month before the return voyage to france i was in nantucket with one of my adoptive families

00:17:49.220 when i suffered the first blow i caught a reflection of myself in a bathing suit

00:17:54.460 my american mother who had perhaps been through something like this before with another daughter

00:17:59.160 instinctively registered my distress a good seamstress she bought a bolt of the most lovely 0.82

00:18:05.280 linen and made me a summer shift it seemed to solve the problem but really only bought me a

00:18:10.380 little time what do you think wow something sinister this does seem like the sort of the

00:18:15.060 the major trauma of her childhood another way to say this is oh i didn't realize i was gaining

00:18:20.900 weight and i learned i was gaining weight yeah that's that's what happens in this passage that's

00:18:25.280 another way of saying that yeah i would like a moment of recognizing like that last passage

00:18:30.240 is this author talking exclusively about her own body and also projecting really intensely

00:18:37.540 powerful messages about what it means to gain weight or to become a fat person right yeah like

00:18:44.360 describing this as like a monster or like the shark in jaws right something else altogether

00:18:52.120 something sinister was slowly taking shape like that is some wild language to use to describe like

00:18:59.300 a very normal human experience of weight fluctuation super normal that's a thing that

00:19:04.780 lots and lots and lots of people experience. So when you're talking about your own experience,

00:19:08.600 and you talk about it in this kind of way, like, there's something lurking in the shadows coming

00:19:14.900 for you. That also sends a message to your readers about how they're supposed to think

00:19:19.420 about their own bodies, or how you might also be thinking about their bodies, right? It's like,

00:19:24.460 this just feels like one of those real powerful moments where I'm like, technically, this has

00:19:29.560 been written in a way so as to be like, unassailable, right? Like, I'm just talking about

00:19:33.780 my own experience and also the language that's being used here is so powerful so moralizing and

00:19:39.680 so yeah icky wait wait wait till you see how much worse it gets oh no oh no the messages i feel like

00:19:46.780 i'm going classic like wasting my outrage too early i know i know this is save your energy

00:19:51.820 okay get a protein bar uh so because it's the 60s she takes a boat back to france and she talks

00:20:01.420 about on this journey she's like worried what her french friends are going to say to her when she

00:20:07.660 gets back and they see that she's gained weight and she says she's been writing them letters but

00:20:11.980 she hasn't said anything about the weight gain and she says she deliberately only sent them photos

00:20:16.240 of her face so that her friends wouldn't see how much weight she's gained and then she gets to

00:20:23.880 france and her father meets her like at the pier or whatever when the boat pulls up so this is

00:20:30.360 another excerpt okay since he had not seen me for a whole year i expected my father who always wore

00:20:37.160 his heart on his face would embarrass me bounding up the gangway for the first hug and kiss but when

00:20:43.620 i spied the diminutive french man in his familiar beret he looked stunned as i approached now a

00:20:50.140 little hesitantly he just stared at me and as we came near after a few seconds that seemed endless

00:20:55.280 there in front of my brother and my american shipmate all he could manage to say to his

00:21:00.100 cherished little girl come home was you look like a sack of potatoes so another way to say that one 1.00

00:21:06.860 is my dad was a real dick about it it sucks like that's fucking awful it sucks and also holy shit 1.00

00:21:12.960 imagine if he had an actually fat daughter the way that these books normalize like really terrible 1.00

00:21:19.380 treatment of children yeah it's really worrying to me because she she presents this as almost like

00:21:24.420 a come to jesus moment like this was this was the thing that like broke her out of her complacency

00:21:30.220 she says she spends like the next three days crying she feels terrible she's mad of the

00:21:35.420 family's doing this like trip to paris together and she basically can't enjoy herself she she

00:21:39.820 kind of downplays it she's like oh he didn't mean it to be mean like he was never all that tactful

00:21:43.960 he was just you know he was just surprised and he was expressing his surprise you're sending a

00:21:49.000 message of like oh you know sometimes people say stuff like this to their kids and like

00:21:53.680 no it's really not okay under any circumstances to speak to your kid this way it's terrible and

00:21:58.260 i think it's really fascinating to me that all of this stuff is offered up in this book

00:22:02.620 as then you just need to diet not then you need to talk to your dad about how he talks to you and

00:22:08.400 reconsider what your relationship looks like right now or then you write a passage in the book about

00:22:14.100 like this is a totally unacceptable way to talk to your kids and i wish it hadn't had this effect

00:22:18.260 on me but it did and blah blah blah blah yeah there are so many ways to slice this and diet

00:22:24.680 books when they present moments like this pick the single way that will result in no accountability

00:22:31.620 for the person or people who are like saying these awful things to people and passing judgment on

00:22:38.540 other folks bodies and so on and so forth like it's gross and no like reflection no reflection

00:22:43.500 no cause to be like hmm should i say this to a child yeah no no then she ends up moving to paris

00:22:51.100 eventually she graduates from high school moves to paris starts attending the sorbonne and she 0.73

00:22:56.360 keeps gaining weight after she moves to paris by herself she says at five foot three i was now

00:23:01.960 overweight by any standard and nothing i owned fit not even my american mother's summer shift

00:23:07.280 i had two flannel ones same design but roomier made to cover up my lumpiness i told the dress

00:23:13.420 maker to hurry and hated myself every minute of the day more and more my father's faux pas

00:23:18.600 seemed justified jesus christ so it's like she's clearly internalizing all this like weight shame

00:23:25.720 because like she lives in a really fat phobic society and her dad is really mean and so it's

00:23:30.640 Like, she's just feeling kind of, like, increasingly desperate.

00:23:34.140 And her parents eventually somehow link her up with a doctor in Paris who is going to help her lose the weight.

00:23:43.000 She doesn't give the doctor's real name, but she calls him Dr. Miracle.

00:23:46.320 And the rest of the book is basically, like, his plan for her.

00:23:51.840 She says, like, he relinked me to my essential Frenchness or something.

00:23:56.600 but it's essentially just like the diet plan that this doctor put her on when she was 16.

00:24:01.400 This is very Karl Lagerfeld diet.

00:24:03.520 It is. It's like, I mean, I think that there's something really interesting about how many of

00:24:07.020 these books are written by people who were thin their whole lives and then gained a pretty small

00:24:12.940 amount of weight temporarily and then lost it. And then like immediately to spend the rest of

00:24:18.040 their lives, like this is a woman in her fifties, right? Giving people advice on how they should 0.84

00:24:22.080 do it too yeah but that's not the universal experience of fat people like a lot of people

00:24:27.280 are just fat their whole lives right you're how you lost the freshman 15 is not gonna make me

00:24:33.700 into a thin person right you and i have talked about sort of this phenomenon of like formerly

00:24:37.860 fat people like having the capacity to be extremely anti-fat as strong or stronger are thin people who

00:24:46.220 were once fatter than they wanted to be yeah yeah for a brief period of time like a very brief

00:24:51.540 period some of the most arrogant and incurious weight loss advice i get is from people who are

00:24:57.880 like once i weighed 10 pounds more than this and i took it right off there are a lot of people who

00:25:02.360 are like yeah like i i went on vacation for two weeks and i gained 10 pounds and then i came home

00:25:07.440 and i lost it and here's how and you're like that's not right it's just like i started going

00:25:11.160 back to the gym and ate the way i was before vacation right it's like i just went back to

00:25:14.800 my previous lifestyle yeah totally sure okay so are you are you ready to hear dr miracles plan

00:25:22.100 oh god step one of this plan is for the next three weeks she is supposed to write down everything she

00:25:29.580 eats oh okay her doctor doesn't say that she has to change anything but just keep a log hey teen

00:25:37.380 with crushing self-esteem issues related to your body don't change anything just write down what

00:25:42.940 you eat she also this is one of the first little like little tiny clues that this is going to get

00:25:48.280 weirder as we go along she says to know how much you're eating to know what to write down in this

00:25:54.120 food diary you should start weighing all of your food on a kitchen scale yeah this is some old

00:26:00.020 school weight watchers nonsense exactly get out your little scale so that's step one step two

00:26:06.180 is to jumpstart your weight loss the way you do that is a weekend of eating nothing but leak

00:26:15.100 soup 48 hours this is wild so far we've gotten sort of weight watchers stuff we've gotten a

00:26:22.640 little dash of cabbage soup diet just a little short crash cabbage soup diet but this time with

00:26:28.140 leaks so it feels vaguely different it's very funny in the section of the book earlier where

00:26:32.420 she talks about like fad diets don't work she specifically mentions like the cabbage soup diet

00:26:36.240 like can you believe women in the 70s were eating cabbage soup and it's like chapter turn page it 0.97

00:26:42.620 should have been leek soup we all know that so okay let me send you this fucking leek soup because 0.96

00:26:49.060 it sounds absolutely miserable really this is the recipe i love a good vegetable soup and it seems 0.92

00:26:54.760 like a thing that would not be hard to make delicious no look aubrey aubrey click on the jpeg

00:27:01.480 click on the JPEG. Serves one for the weekend. For the weekend.

00:27:07.440 So you clean the leeks and then you put the leeks in a large pot and cover with water,

00:27:13.160 bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 20 to 30 minutes.

00:27:16.880 Pour off the liquid and reserve. Place the leeks in a... What? That's the whole recipe.

00:27:21.080 So you're just drinking leek water? It's a tea. She's making tea out of leeks.

00:27:27.280 look at the ingredients two pounds leeks no salt no butter or olive oil to like saute the leeks

00:27:33.760 beforehand no garlic even no spices wow you're drinking like boiled leeks it's not i mean this

00:27:41.900 is not even like meaningfully soup this is every meme about a crash diet and every meme about white

00:27:48.140 people food all at the same time all she could do is be like garnish it with mayonnaise and then it

00:27:54.800 would be like the ultimate white people food like this is unreal i listened to a podcast called by

00:28:03.220 the book where both of the co-hosts tried this diet both of them were crying by the end of the

00:28:10.220 first day yeah it's it's quite a good episode actually i'll link it in the show notes so you're

00:28:15.120 essentially just not eating for 48 hours so like you can't really function and all of the book here

00:28:22.320 let me let me send you the section of the text after this oh cripes pity those who don't love

00:28:29.680 the sweet taste and delicate texture of leeks eventually you probably will probably this is 0.98

00:28:36.200 like a fucking kidnapper the juice is to be drunk reheated or at room temperature to taste 0.96

00:28:41.400 every two to three hours one cup at a time this will be your nourishment for both days until 1.00

00:28:48.380 sunday dinner when you can have a small piece of meat or fish four to six ounces don't lose that

00:28:54.620 scale yet with two vegetables steamed with a bit of butter or olive oil and a piece of fruit

00:29:00.300 both versions are so good and such an adventure for most palates that you will have a hard time 0.98

00:29:06.040 seeing them as prison rations what the fuck who's what so it's like this is just fully deranged 0.99

00:29:13.360 like it's just a weekend where you feel like absolute shit also there's no such thing as 0.99

00:29:17.420 jump-starting weight loss any doctor any diet plan any anything that tells you about kick-starting 0.95

00:29:23.040 weight loss or like get hit the ground running or something this is not how bodies work all that

00:29:28.540 happens in this weekend where you're eating nothing but leek soup the both of the co-hosts

00:29:33.220 of this podcast lost i think one of them lost three pounds one of them lost four and a half

00:29:36.820 pounds like yeah you you lose weight when you don't eat anything you know this from when you

00:29:40.940 can't keep food down exactly so this is not any any magic going on here but you gain 100

00:29:47.180 percent of the weight back within like another two days as soon as you return to eating normally

00:29:51.260 like a lot of that is water weight that just like comes right back on this is not meaningful weight

00:29:55.340 loss so all you're doing is you're setting yourself up for failure there's no there's no point in

00:29:59.180 doing this yeah so then after you've done this the goal of the next three months this is called

00:30:06.480 recasting is to relentlessly go through your food diary and to look at all of the little

00:30:15.060 cuts that you can make for her it was that she was walking to school and she often didn't have time

00:30:20.940 in the mornings to make breakfast so she would grab like a pastry on the way to school and then

00:30:24.820 she would grab like a pastry on the way home from school so for her it was like okay those are like

00:30:29.680 the cuts that i can make i'm eating these unhealthy pastries i should start making breakfast at home

00:30:33.460 yeah so she starts out as like okay the the chocolate that you're eating at midnight like

00:30:37.140 cut that out whatever this is like fairly standard advice in these kinds of books yes but then she

00:30:41.520 also says that when you find things that you want to keep in your life things that really do bring

00:30:46.680 you pleasure that aren't extraneous or that you don't feel bad about the next day she says what

00:30:51.340 you should do is start reducing them incrementally so she says like if you're drinking juice you know

00:30:57.060 juice has calories in it so you should start diluting it with water so that's sort of like

00:31:01.280 her her metaphor for like cut out the things that aren't really giving you pleasure and then the

00:31:06.960 things that are giving you pleasure just kind of make them worse yeah totally make them less 0.98

00:31:12.120 pleasurable yeah she says over time you'll discover what is obvious to french women there can be an 0.52

00:31:18.280 almost ecstatic enjoyment in a single piece of fine dark chocolate that a dozen snickers bars

00:31:23.700 can never give you on that subject please also eliminate all chocolate loaded with cornstarch

00:31:28.860 corn syrup artificial flavoring artificial coloring and too much sugar so again she's just basically

00:31:34.440 telling you to like eat less right it's like if you enjoy chocolate did you know that you can

00:31:39.360 actually just eat one square of dark chocolate this is the oprah i love bread ad everything in

00:31:45.900 moderation blah blah blah but it's like it sounds reasonable at first that it's like okay we're

00:31:49.520 going to cut your life down to things that really give you pleasure it's like it's like a marie

00:31:52.600 condo thing right like this this brings me joy right we we want to reconnect ourselves with the

00:31:57.440 joy of food and then it's like a couple paragraphs later she's like but even the things that bring

00:32:02.320 you joy, you should just eat less. Then get rid of those two. Yeah, right. You're reducing

00:32:06.900 everything to as little as possible. Yeah. Like, I don't think this is like the way that French

00:32:10.860 people eat, right? The marketing of the book is like, we're reconnecting with food. How can I eat

00:32:15.400 like butter and pastries and all this stuff and like still lose weight. But then once you actually

00:32:20.160 get into the meat of the book, she's like, eat less of this, eat half the pastry. Yeah. And then

00:32:24.860 eat less than that. And then eat less than that. Yeah. There is this sort of concept of eating

00:32:29.240 disorders that is just like one day a person usually a young white woman wakes up and is just

00:32:35.080 consumed with the desire to be thin and will do anything to become as thin as possible i'm sure

00:32:40.620 that is some folks experience that it's just like something happens it's like a bolt of lightning

00:32:44.760 they're all in for me it was absolutely a slow slide like this that was like oh i cannot eat

00:32:53.720 until 11 a.m what if i could make it until 1 p.m what if i could make it until 4 p.m what if i could

00:32:59.080 make it until 7pm. Right? Like, this kind of like, gamifying and narrowing and narrowing and

00:33:05.500 narrowing was the nature of my eating disorder. Right. So to see someone spell all of that out

00:33:12.040 as recommendations is really intense to be like, then you should do this. And I'm like, I did that

00:33:18.160 and it was bad. So I mean, this is this is what's incredible to me is that the rest of this chapter

00:33:22.220 is basically just a list of varying degrees of eating disorder behavior. So she says that her

00:33:28.380 doctor's first tip for her was because she's eating these pastries to and from school he told

00:33:34.520 her to not bring enough money with her to buy pastries at school so it's like only bring enough

00:33:41.520 with you for the train ride and like maybe a cup of coffee at school which is like this is an era

00:33:46.780 you know before credit cards and stuff so it's like she literally just like doesn't have money

00:33:50.880 when she's at school all day he also says that she should walk a different route to school every

00:33:56.380 day so that she's not tempted right because she's smelling the pastries so then she wants to go in

00:34:00.780 and buy one he says that she should only go to the store and do shopping for like one to two days

00:34:06.760 which i don't know i mean i kind of do that but that's mostly out of laziness yeah but he says

00:34:12.560 that she should only buy what she needs for like a couple days basically so that she doesn't have

00:34:16.200 any food in the house he tells her to give up processed foods because she doesn't know what

00:34:21.340 the portions are right it's it's harder to weigh something at a restaurant whereas you can weigh it

00:34:25.120 at home sure and then she has this whole thing throughout the book of using different plates

00:34:32.240 so it's like if you're having like chicken and cauliflower you shouldn't have the two foods on

00:34:37.620 the plate at the same time you should eat the chicken on a plate what and then you should go

00:34:42.540 and get a new plate serve up the cauliflower in like a nice presentation way and then eat the

00:34:47.840 cauliflower you shouldn't be eating two things at the same time why she literally has a section 0.88

00:34:52.840 called ritual eating it's just like one of the signs of an eating disorder oh god it says eat

00:34:59.260 only at the table only sitting down never eat out of the cartons use real plates and decent

00:35:04.140 napkins if you have them to emphasize the seriousness of the activity eat slowly chew

00:35:09.020 properly do not watch television or read the paper think only about what you are eating smelling and

00:35:14.580 savoring every bite jeez she has a whole thing on portion control she says as a rule half a pound of

00:35:20.740 anything and one sitting is too much cut back gently especially if your problem is too much 0.67

00:35:25.080 of a good thing salmon is wonderful health food but if you need to have half a pound to feel

00:35:29.700 content you need too much keep the scale handy and reduce ounce by ounce until four to six ounces

00:35:35.560 seems like a satisfying amount to you dang so like you're ritualizing you're eating you're

00:35:42.620 monitoring your own eating you're thinking about food all the time right i can't walk to school

00:35:49.420 the same way i walked there yesterday so i don't get a pastry and when i'm at school i'm probably

00:35:53.960 fucking starving because i don't have any food that i can buy like i only have this thing that

00:35:58.260 i weighed out meticulously that i can eat it's just like this amount of fixation on food is like 0.97

00:36:03.920 really worrying yeah we're in full eating disorder territory and then she she ends the chapter with

00:36:10.780 a recipe there's a lot of recipes in this book most of which kind of look okay on the surface

00:36:15.920 So the recipe that she ends the chapter with is like a crustless apple tart, which like whatever.

00:36:23.240 An apple tart with a crust, like I make quiche with a crust all the time because the crust is like the pain in the ass of making quiche is the crust.

00:36:29.640 Yeah, it's just scrambled eggs in a pan.

00:36:31.280 It's great.

00:36:31.840 It whips.

00:36:32.320 Yes.

00:36:32.780 So she wants you to like cut up four apples, right, and put them in like a tart pan.

00:36:36.860 Normal.

00:36:37.320 Fine.

00:36:38.180 Four apples. 0.96

00:36:39.160 She uses one tablespoon of sugar. 1.00

00:36:42.120 Huh. 0.83

00:36:42.400 This tart serves four.

00:36:43.660 It's got one tablespoon of sugar.

00:36:45.920 she also tells you i cannot believe this she tells you to serve it on cabbage leaves

00:36:51.820 instead of the crust what kind of dystopian nightmare she says they're like that you don't

00:36:58.340 have to eat them if you don't want to and they're like they're for decoration what sounds like it 0.98

00:37:04.620 would like look like shit these like burnt cabbage leaves watch top chef ma'am inedible 1.00

00:37:10.640 garnish is not welcome i know now i feel much clearer on this she's just on a mission to ruin 1.00

00:37:16.140 food that's the thing what if food was bad but you can have as much of it as you want so the next

00:37:22.100 this is this is the first three months this is like the recasting right and then we get to the

00:37:27.360 the maintenance phase the sort of for the rest of your life rules basically i'm guessing they're

00:37:32.500 reasonable followable and scientifically proven so again it's the same sort of thing where it's

00:37:39.240 basically just like relentless restriction one of her like main things that she goes back to is 0.94

00:37:45.100 always eating three square meals a day like only like never have a snack she says never be hungry

00:37:52.160 i mean that's absurd because obviously you're hungry because you're like you've already cut

00:37:56.940 things back yeah what are you talking about but like what she means by this is like never skip

00:38:00.260 meals because then you're just gonna end up eating more the next meal she also has a whole thing where 0.86

00:38:05.280 she's like, it's okay to have a cheat day, right?

00:38:07.220 If you're out with friends, you know, don't be a weirdo.

00:38:10.020 You can like eat what everybody else is eating.

00:38:12.080 But then she immediately says like,

00:38:14.020 because you're going to compensate for it tomorrow.

00:38:16.540 She says, it's simply a matter of taking from Peter to pay Paul.

00:38:20.220 When you add an indulgence, make a corresponding reduction to compensate.

00:38:23.820 Add another half hour of walking the next day.

00:38:25.760 Skip the cocktail.

00:38:27.060 Pass the bread basket.

00:38:28.400 Just as you become attuned to where your greatest pleasures come from,

00:38:31.240 you will also have to come to know which compensations work best for you.

00:38:34.540 jesus christmas so you're eating normally around your friends and then the next day you're like

00:38:40.880 ruthlessly restricting yourself to compensate so like you're kind of hiding your disorder from

00:38:46.380 your friends is basically what that amounts to which is part of having an eating disorder for

00:38:50.880 a lot of people is like hiding it or like going out walking for like hours the next day to burn 1.00

00:38:56.520 it off and like feeling guilty about it right lord this sucks this fucking sucks dude breaking 0.99

00:39:03.780 a real radical conclusion on maintenance phase this is bad and people shouldn't do it don't 0.98

00:39:09.620 read this book so the only saving grace of this book so this book is 273 pages long the copy that

00:39:16.960 i have lord at this point in the book we are on page 71 right we've gotten her personal story

00:39:23.740 we've gotten her tips for the first three months her tips for maintaining this for the rest of your

00:39:27.640 life the rest of the book is filler like there is nothing else we are like a quarter of the way

00:39:38.580 into the book oh my god the rest of the book is like there's chapter titles but it's basically

00:39:43.760 just like how to do food like a french person wow she has this whole thing about like how to shop at

00:39:49.900 the market and she tells this abysmally boring anecdote about she wants to surprise her husband 0.97

00:39:55.660 because he's flying in from paris but she has to work the next day and she doesn't have time to

00:39:59.300 cook and she wants to get him his like favorite breakfast so she goes to the market and she's

00:40:03.460 like looking at melons and then she's like talking to the melon person about ripeness

00:40:07.660 and then she buys a melon when it's not ripe but then two days later when he arrives it is ripe

00:40:14.580 and it's the perfect breakfast and it's like yeah i i know how like ripeness of food works

00:40:22.740 i don't know why you're telling me about this mike last week i got an avocado and it was like

00:40:28.240 hard as a rock and then i just left it on the counter for a couple of days and then it was

00:40:32.440 perfect good story aubrey beginning middle and riveting i was tempted to like read you a bunch 0.78

00:40:41.580 of excerpts from this because like i cannot convey to you how fucking boring like three 0.66

00:40:47.280 quarters of this book is it's not even like eating disorder or like diet tips it's literally she has 0.84

00:40:52.220 a whole thing on spices and she's like cinnamon is good in desserts but also they use it in like

00:40:56.700 moroccan cooking for main courses and you're like right that's are you you're just telling me about

00:41:01.180 spices now this is just a wikipedia entry on cinnamon cardamom's real good if you put it in

00:41:07.380 the pie crust you're never gonna eat again you know what interesting cool facts she has a whole 1.00

00:41:12.640 fucking chapter where she explains the concept of soup she's like it can be a starter or it can be 0.90

00:41:18.440 part of the main or it can be a side for like a meat dish right marae i've had soups i'm familiar 1.00

00:41:24.980 with the concept of soups i feel like i get how soup works lady it's so weird and then she has a

00:41:32.000 lot of recipes and i don't i mean i don't think editors like test these recipes most of the 0.81

00:41:37.560 recipes are fucking trash my god mike we're entering my favorite part of every diet book 0.96

00:41:44.880 which is absolute garbage recipes it's incredible i love them so much give me your wildest listen 1.00

00:41:55.140 to this fucking ratatouille recipe okay so first of all it's ratatouille that serves 12 which is 0.99

00:42:00.140 like just a lot of fucking ratatouille that's a lot of slicing it's three pounds tomatoes 0.99

00:42:05.060 three pounds zucchini three pounds eggplant two tablespoons of olive oil 0.98

00:42:11.480 for nine pounds of vegetables eggplant i know famously the most absorbent vegetable exactly 0.98

00:42:23.020 like you could use that shit as paper towels if you ran out so this is just like dry vegetables 0.97

00:42:28.480 she basically says put all nine pounds of this like chop it up put it in a pan and then just 0.99

00:42:33.920 put it on low heat for two and a half hours i think it's baby food i think we're in baby food

00:42:39.180 territory it's just gonna be much so she basically says that like it comes out like a soup she also

00:42:44.260 says you shouldn't put salt on your food because it like makes you retain water and like look fatter 0.98

00:42:48.100 even if you aren't fatter so like we can't have that so you're not even salting these fucking 0.92

00:42:51.980 vegetables it just sounds really awful and again you're basically eating vegetable water you're 0.97

00:42:57.540 not adding fat or salt or sugar for reasons that she has explained but she hasn't explained why 0.96

00:43:02.800 there's no spices in anything why would you not put just a fucking pinch of cinnamon in that apple 0.91

00:43:09.740 tart so now you're also just opposed to flavor because if it's flavorful then you'll want to 0.99

00:43:14.780 eat it and you shouldn't want to eat it this whole section is just completely deranged she 1.00

00:43:18.720 has stuff about like you should laugh more she has a lesson on yawning but like it's important

00:43:24.020 to yawn what like i mean it's it's not instructions for an eating disorder so i'm like you know what 1.00

00:43:29.660 marae fine sure man people should yawn i don't know great she fucking she's obsessed with yogurt 0.99

00:43:35.880 and she says you have to make your own yogurt because all the brands that you buy at the store 0.99

00:43:39.660 have a bunch of additives in them which is not true but whatever like i'm sure homemade yogurt

00:43:43.820 is better than the store-bought stuff i bet it tastes delicious yeah yeah i'm sure it's great

00:43:47.620 she has she has like detailed instructions on how to make your own yogurt with or without a yogurt

00:43:52.680 maker which is fairly impressive she's also she's the ceo of a champagne brand so obviously she has

00:43:58.000 like 40 pages of like how champagne is like the special thing that like makes you happier and 0.99

00:44:03.580 like friendships whatever it's like her extolling the virtues of fucking champagne for like page 0.64

00:44:09.280 upon page it's very weird to me i read a lot of reviews of this book like very few people 0.86

00:44:15.480 mention the fact that it's like at least three quarters just nothing it's just like it's the

00:44:20.900 experience of like going over to your friend's house for the holidays or something and you sit

00:44:24.180 next to their like weird aunt and she just has like ideas about stuff and like a bunch of weird

00:44:28.760 advice to give you and like most of it's fairly harmless and you're just like okay i'm just gonna

00:44:33.440 like listen to this person like babble on mike at this point you're just describing me it's like a

00:44:39.040 weird aunt who's like around i want to make a podcast with this woman yeah at one point she

00:44:44.620 lists the restaurants that she goes to in paris she's like i love oysters when i'm in paris i go

00:44:50.700 to like le oyster le oyster is not the name nailed it it really feels like this book was not edited

00:44:58.340 and it really has yeah it does have the sense of like i wrote this on the weekends of just like

00:45:03.440 i think soup is really great this these are my favorite kinds of soups i like the soups with no

00:45:08.440 flavor or ingredients right oh my god but then i mean in between the lines what you're getting 0.63

00:45:16.740 is this is a woman who can basically sit down on a weekend and write 140 pages about food 0.99

00:45:22.400 and wine and the places she likes to eat and the farmer like specific farmers markets in

00:45:26.820 provence that she likes going to but then all of her actual advice is this way to like deny

00:45:33.000 herself pleasure it seems that she's spent her life constantly thinking about this yeah in in

00:45:39.220 some ways i do wonder about this whole diet book being like a letter to her dad oh i did it look

00:45:46.200 how much i did it i did it so much do you know what i mean like that stuff stays with people

00:45:51.280 those experiences of body policing and unwanted comments and like judgments yeah i often wonder

00:45:58.440 this when i'm reading diet books is like how much of this is you continuing to differentiate yourself

00:46:05.020 from right either fat people which is like all of them are that and or from some past bad experience

00:46:12.820 of feeling like someone else was judging your body to be like no I did it the most I'm the best at

00:46:18.860 being thin right I'm the best at avoiding these judgments and you can't get me now because I did

00:46:23.900 it perfectly right right I have a lot of compassion for it and that unleashes a whole new wave of

00:46:29.540 garbage people doing garbage things right what I was really struck by reading this was how like

00:46:35.020 how desperate people are for this stuff that somebody can basically spend decades of their 0.99

00:46:39.700 life denying themselves one of their primary pleasures just so that they can stay thin that's

00:46:45.320 how much of a hold this stuff has on our society that like an individual would do this and would

00:46:50.200 effectively just live with deprivation yeah she talks about you have to make yogurt the night 0.80

00:46:54.720 before she makes sure to drink a huge glass of water 30 minutes before she eats every time 0.80

00:46:59.860 she goes for a walk before breakfast she lives on the 15th floor of some building in new york and

00:47:05.320 she often takes the stairs up. She talks about like making her own copies so that she has an

00:47:09.880 excuse to get up and walk around during the day. She's thought about this every single day for her

00:47:14.400 whole life. And she's essentially prescribing this as like, this is this is what you should do.

00:47:20.140 Yeah, this is how you should live your life.

00:47:22.280 Right. Once you really get down to it, it's just this is a calorie restriction diet that you're

00:47:26.960 on for the rest of your life.

00:47:27.840 Right. She's not counting calories, but it is very intensely about restricting calories by

00:47:33.720 restricting high calorie foods and by restricting kind of all foods just eat that leak water and

00:47:39.020 staying thin should almost become this like part-time job that you have right it's this

00:47:43.160 thing that like occupies so much of your time she says like you should only eat out on special

00:47:47.580 occasions you should always eat in i mean i could list 50 more of these it's just like

00:47:51.880 the ways that she has adjusted her life to remain thin if you're not eating out and you're only

00:47:57.880 eating in like eating out is often a social activity right that may also mean for her that

00:48:03.340 she's like restricting her social opportunities or that that's what she's recommending to other

00:48:07.620 people or that that's how other people are taking it. Right. Right. It's like you can't be around 0.97

00:48:12.280 other people when food is present, which is many of the times that we gather together as humans,

00:48:17.660 there is food present. Right. This is calling for not just a reorganization of the foods that you

00:48:23.900 eat, but a reorganization of your life and your connections to other people. Right. And it just

00:48:30.500 is so bizarre to market this level of restriction and judgment and everything else as like easy

00:48:39.620 breezy you're gonna love the food it's all the leak water you can eat yeah and just like

00:48:44.980 soggy apples with like no butter or sugar on them it's just like hot apples so the conclusion of

00:48:52.240 the book the the the final chapter there's more and more of this stuff she has a whole chapter on

00:48:57.240 like parenting advice which i was ready for that to get real bad but it's actually not that bad

00:49:02.240 oh the only thing that i liked about the argument that she makes through the book is that like

00:49:07.400 americans have kind of a toxic relationship with food and especially the way that we talk about

00:49:13.180 food she says that like americans have this thing where everyone's constantly talking about the diet

00:49:17.060 that they're on i hate my body i shouldn't have eaten that i feel bad about it like the connection

00:49:23.200 between like sin and consumption is something that just runs through every conversation in

00:49:28.560 american life and she's like it's weird to talk about food this way like food is food is good

00:49:32.900 right talk about food freely and openly and joyfully and then eat in a restricted joyless

00:49:40.040 exactly she doesn't live by this rule at all no it doesn't sound like it so that's basically the

00:49:47.900 book is just like 70 pages of like how to have an eating disorder and then 150 pages of just like

00:49:54.640 here's what food in France is like here's where cinnamon comes from great wow it's such a bummer

00:50:03.760 that this was such a huge hit I do think it's actually worth talking about like the reception

00:50:08.340 to the book and the kind of aftermath of the book yeah after it became a really big deal there were

00:50:13.540 some interesting rebuttals to the book so there was one in the new york times in 2005 where the

00:50:20.920 author says when i was a college student in france for a year i also picked up a bad habit a pack of

00:50:26.640 cigarettes a day that's what you do in paris sit in cafes drinking coffee and smoking i acquired a

00:50:32.060 newly svelte figure not from chewing slowly through four-course dinners supping on oysters or setting

00:50:36.880 out fine china at every meal the regime francais i learned was cigarettes and it took me 15 years

00:50:42.880 to quit. Merci beaucoup. Wow. The rates of smoking between America and France are not that different. 0.66

00:50:49.260 French people like 5% higher smoking rates. What's interesting about France is that smoking habits 0.97

00:50:54.560 run through the economic ladder. So in America, it's mostly poor people who smoke, whereas in

00:51:00.700 France, it's everybody. And so the argument that they make in this piece is basically that like,

00:51:06.580 yeah the the thin rich women with like nice scarves that you see in paris are not thin because 0.66

00:51:13.020 they're following this advice they're thin because they're smoking there's also been a huge backlash 0.95

00:51:17.900 to this kind of eat like a french person thing in the form of like pointing out that france is

00:51:23.360 extremely fat phobic yeah in 2017 there was a memoir called you're not born fat by a writer

00:51:29.840 named gabrielle dedier she talks about how i mean there's there's still this practice in france

00:51:35.000 where when you apply for jobs you send in a photo of yourself what yeah this is something that i've

00:51:41.500 seen in when i lived in denmark this was normal in germany this is normal like this is fairly

00:51:45.520 standard practice across much of europe it's something that like when i talk to europeans 0.85

00:51:50.460 about it i want to tear my fucking hair up because they're all like well why wouldn't you send a 0.97

00:51:53.540 photo and like the only reason to send a photo would be to like rule out people with headscarves 0.99

00:51:59.980 people that are not white people who are fat like yeah what other purpose is there for this

00:52:04.920 I mean, to my mind, this is just like open the floodgates for racism in particular. 0.93

00:52:10.940 Yeah.

00:52:11.200 And along the way, no fatties. 0.85

00:52:14.160 The problem with this is that size-based discrimination is actually illegal in France, 0.76

00:52:17.900 which is good. 0.99

00:52:19.000 But because you have to send in your photo with your fucking job application, 0.99

00:52:22.680 you don't get to the interview stage. 1.00

00:52:24.120 Right, totally.

00:52:24.700 Gabrielle Didier, the woman who wrote this memoir, 0.52

00:52:26.860 she got a job at a preschool.

00:52:28.000 She was teaching autistic kids.

00:52:29.580 And the first day at school, she had a really fat phobic boss.

00:52:34.040 and there were six kids in the class and when she showed up her boss said oh we have seven

00:52:40.440 handicapped people with us today wow right and she was eventually fired from this job for quote

00:52:46.660 unquote failing at her job duties her job duty being to lose the weight because her boss wanted

00:52:51.620 her to be thinner so she loses the job and the interview with her in the guardian takes place at 0.93

00:52:56.740 a fucking youth hostel because she lost her job and she can't afford her apartment anymore so she 0.98

00:53:01.240 has to move into a youth hospital. I mean, this is all awful. And it also feels like such a weird 0.99

00:53:05.960 it's really interesting to me that when folks marginalize fat people, the things that they

00:53:11.960 reach for one of the key things that they reach for is like, considering them to be disabled.

00:53:17.020 Yeah, that's really interesting. It's a fascinating and truly garbage tactic that 1.00

00:53:21.060 both leaves fat people feeling like shit and also invites people into weird shitty ableist 0.99

00:53:26.440 arguments yeah about like no i'm not for these reasons rather than being like okay how about you 0.99

00:53:32.600 just be more chill to like disabled people what right what else did we learn from gabrielle well

00:53:36.880 also just i mean like everybody else who talks about this i read a bunch of articles about her

00:53:41.580 and they all they're like fat discrimination against fat people is like a very well documented

00:53:46.100 problem in france but also obesity is linked to heart disease and blah blah blah and like all the 0.98

00:53:51.140 boring health shit and it's just like that's not that's not really what she's saying that's not

00:53:55.300 really the issue that we're talking about here like no one is losing their job because they're 0.99

00:53:59.280 fucking ldl cholesterol levels it really feels like people think it's like bloody mary where 0.78

00:54:05.480 like you say it three times and she will appear right or something right if you just say like 0.99

00:54:10.340 hey man be nice to fat people and you don't also say also it's terrible it's a bad thing to be it's

00:54:16.460 really bad for you it's bad for our country it's bad for the world somehow a bunch of people are 1.00

00:54:21.140 magically going to get super fat out of nowhere yeah it's it's the same thing we see with trans 0.98

00:54:25.740 people where it's like what if we're too nice to trans people let's dial it back and you look at 0.81

00:54:30.160 like any statistics and it's like we're not that nice to trans people as a society it's the same

00:54:35.960 thing of like isn't this too much grace to show to fat people like yeah totally it's bad that she

00:54:42.280 lost her job and she's like now living in a youth hostel everything but what is her resting heart

00:54:46.600 rate let's talk about the downsides of human dignity why are we doing this what if we could 0.96

00:54:54.240 have a conversation about shitty behavior targeting fat people and just let that be a conversation 0.85

00:54:59.580 about shitty behavior without going right well but also it's really bad for you right and what 0.96

00:55:04.020 if we could talk about conditions in other countries without boiling it down to these 0.89

00:55:08.180 one-dimensional individual behaviors yeah like we keep getting these books french women don't get

00:55:13.520 fat and japanese women don't get old and albanian women don't get fine lines and wrinkles and it's

00:55:20.120 like every single time people really want to draw out these like lifestyle things from it it's like

00:55:25.440 oh you should you should eat more olive oil or like oh you should bike to work or whatever it is

00:55:29.180 and like it would be really easy to make the case that french people are healthier than americans

00:55:35.640 yeah like french people have longer lifespans they have lower infant mortality rates you could

00:55:40.480 easily make that case but then whenever somebody tries to make that case it's like and that's why

00:55:46.380 you should eat salads yes or like these really silly life hacky one weird trick kinds of tips

00:55:53.760 and it's like no if we're interested in the reasons why some populations are more healthy

00:55:58.380 than others it's gonna come down to stuff like health care access and inequality and stress

00:56:05.340 but it's like are we interested in health or are we only interested in our own health yeah and like

00:56:13.520 what would it look like to do that kind of more global thinking no no no we don't do that we just

00:56:19.180 get right back down to individual level stuff in part because those are all the messages we're

00:56:24.420 being fed all the time right in part because that's how media covers it in part because that's

00:56:27.940 how diets market themselves it is a really frustrating thing to be like we could be having

00:56:33.300 a much more nuanced and fruitful and productive conversation and we are refusing that at every

00:56:40.800 turn wait wait i have one i have one i have a zinger i have a zinger oh tell me a zinger i can

00:56:45.700 hear the theme music in the background i have to i have to go fast uh we think we're getting

00:56:50.560 intellectual debate but in fact all we're getting is leak water it's totally leak water right

00:57:03.300 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - August 09, 2022

“French Women Don't Get Fat”

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