By Mia Goldberg, Third year, French and Spanish
When I was 15, the first Covid lockdown began. Looking back, I can observe that the pandemic was a deeply damaging, and scarily uncertain time for many. But at the time, I was excited. You see, I had spent years watching the seemingly endless variations of movies where teenage girls undergo mythic transformations like She’s All That and The Princess Diaries. For years I had imagined coming back to school in September a different person and was often disappointed to realise that wasn’t how life worked. But with a lockdown, surely it could be different?
I was a fifteen-year-old girl with body dysmorphia and a desire to be desired… this was surely my ‘Jenny Humphrey becomes lower east side royalty moment (Birmingham edition).’ I figured at my big age, with not a singular hour of therapy to my name, I was shaking off the last remnants of my disordered eating. I convinced myself that during lockdown I would take an interest in health, ‘wellness’ and exercising, simply to maintain my physical and mental health.
Over the past few years, I had been delving into the online ‘health’ world of fitness content and influencers. I was excited by the idea that there seemed to be an exact formula to attaining the body I wanted - and that it wasn’t starving yourself or throwing up, it was eating high protein meals, freaky protein powders and chewy, sugary protein bars. A global pandemic seemed to me like the perfect time to really ‘eat clean;’ if clean means protein. Alongside my ‘intuitive’ eating plan, I embarked on a rotation of Chloe Ting’s workout programmes, whilst my parents worked from home, raising my two sisters and checking in with my ninety-year-old nan who lived alone (none of which I remember noticing).
Ever since I could remember I had hated my body, trying various ridiculous diets (and now I have coeliac disease, so you have been warned) and running laps around the school playground during breaktimes, desperate to be old enough to go to the gym so the real transformation could begin. With the new era of workout videos and online programmes, restrictions like age fed my hungry pursuit for the ‘ideal’ body. I hid away in my attic room, jumping about like a crazed bunny in pursuit of a ‘two-week shred,’ or ‘hourglass’ body.
I was a child.
‘Nowadays, what may begin as an interest in health and fitness, can so easily be manipulated by algorithms to push young people, especially young men, towards a radicalised far right.’
It wasn’t and isn’t just me. Chloe Ting’s ‘Abs in Two Weeks’ video has 597 million views to date. A comment from five years ago asking, ‘how many people are doing this secretly in their room?’ has amassed 53,000 likes. Another comment asks, ‘Who else wishes they could hear their calories screaming as they burn them?’, with 760 likes. In a time of isolation, the rise in popularity of these workout videos signalled a much deeper problem. Young people have become increasingly isolated in the modern age, a sentiment weaponised by influencers like Andrew Tate, who push body ideals and strict approaches to diet and fitness among deeply misogynistic rhetoric. Nowadays, what may begin as an interest in health and fitness, can so easily be manipulated by algorithms to push young people, especially young men, towards a radicalised far right, the effects of which we can now see in Louis Theroux’s recent manosphere documentary.
The accessibility of at-home workout videos means that to some they are simply a valuable tool to free exercise. However, it also means that children who engage with them are likely to exercise in pursuit of whichever body is trendy at the time, rather than for its mental and physical benefits.
Since 2020, the continued popularity of workout videos demonstrates the ability of diet culture to continuously shapeshift. It has maintained its relevance, digging its claws into increasingly younger generations by normalising obsessive tendencies like body checking, progress pictures, and tracking of proteins, carbs and fats, instead of its old favourites, weigh-ins and calories.
Sonal Korlipara
In a society where some governments decide what we can or cannot do with our bodies and the media we consume subconsciously programs us to define ourselves by how much fat is on our bodies and where it is distributed, it might be wise to move away from online fitness content, and move our bodies in a way that allows us to socialise, and enjoy whatever range of motion and energy our bodies enjoy. If I could tell myself at 8, or at 16, or at the fast approaching 22 anything, it’s that tiramisu tastes better than skinny feels.
If you are struggling with an eating disorder or body image, resources are available at Beat, which offers a helpline and chatroom, and the NHS.
Featured image: Unsplash / Alex Tyson
Do you think the pandemic changed the way we think about health?
