Food Psych #200: How Diet Culture Harms the Gay Community with Jeff Iovannone
Activist and scholar Jeff Iovannone joins us to discuss diet culture and harmful body standards in the gay community, how oppression and the AIDS crisis shaped the “normate gay” aesthetic, why every body is a Pride body, how to create a gay men’s body-liberation movement, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about fatphobia in eating-disorder treatment programs.
Jeff Iovannone is an activist-scholar, writer, and researcher from Buffalo, New York who specializes in gender and LGBTQ studies. He is the creator of the blog Queer History for the People, writes a bi-weekly column--entitled Talk Queerly--on LGBTQ culture and politics for the web magazine Th-Ink Queerly, and is a founding member of Body Liberated Buffalo, a volunteer-run activist and advocacy organization that works for body liberation in Western New York. Find him online at medium.com/@jeffry.iovannone.
We Discuss:
Jeff’s relationship with food growing up, including being stigmatized for his weight at a young age
The mixed messages he received about food growing up in an Italian-American family where food was love but fatphobia was rampant
Why coming out as gay and finding gay community didn’t lead to the acceptance he was hoping for
How the gay community has its own hierarchy of bodies
Body standards and ideals as they relate to gay culture, and the concept of “gay-fat”
How diet culture influences the oppression of the gay community
How the historical oppression of gay people helped shape gay culture’s body ideals
How the AIDS epidemic further influenced the aesthetic in the gay community
The development of what Jeff calls the “normate gay”
The morality of being gay as it relates to the morality of control, appetite, and food
How femininity and masculinity affect the way we experience diet culture
How diet culture prevents the gay community from working together towards liberation
Why desire is a social and political issue
The manifestation of toxic masculinity in gay culture, and how it’s related to diet culture
Why Jeff started moving away from diet culture and The Wellness Diet
How capitalism and marketing techniques target the gay community via diet culture
How to change Pride month so it doesn’t center corporate Pride celebrations
Why every body is a Pride body
Resources Mentioned
Some of the links below are affiliate links. Affiliates or not, we only recommend products and services that align with our values.
Submit your questions for a chance to have them answered on the podcast!
My book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating
Help spread the anti-diet message by subscribing to the podcast
Article where Jeff discusses the problem with gym selfies
Article where Jeff writes about why Pete Buttigieg is not the gay candidate he wants
Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Research that compares body image satisfaction of gay men and heterosexual women
Body Positive Power by Megan Crabbe
Jeff’s article about pride bodies
Listener Question of the Week
People make eating disorder recovery sound so easy, so why can’t I recover after three years of consistent treatment? Is my fatphobic treatment team slowing down my recovery? Why do eating disorder providers treat people in larger bodies differently than those in smaller bodies? Is fatphobic eating disorder treatment common? Are there any Health at Every Size treatment options for people that need a higher level of care?
Resources Mentioned:
Shira Rosenbluth’s blog post (CW: Descriptions of eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and treatment inequality)
Opal: Food+Body Wisdom in Seattle
Center for Discovery Eating Disorder Treatment