“”In our culture, food is sin, as is taking pleasure from it. When you pour that onto this [Protestant] environment that is already so cruel to bodies, disembodiment is encouraged, and women are constantly surveilling their own body to see how it is perceived by this male gaze, and trying to anticipate that, making it simultaneously attractive yet steering way clear of being sexy, because that’s to be sinful. It creates this impossible double bind.”
If you grew up in the early 2000s, you might remember the American push for True Love Waits, abstinence only-sex education, and purity rings being sported by celebrities like Jessica Simpson or the Jonas Brothers. Known as Purity Culture, this Protestant evangelical movement emphasizes sexual purity through abstinence… but beyond sex, how has the culture shaped how women understand their bodies, experiences with food, or informed the broader American diet culture?
My guest this week is Rebecca Wolfe, who is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at UCSF. She is interested in the intersection of race, class, gender, religion, embodiment and eating disoders. Her current work is focused on the impact of the Protestant, Evangelical movement known as “Purity Culture” on the development and manifestation of eating disorders in people assigned female at birth and raised within the movement.
Learn More About Rebecca: