The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - skinny ain't cheap: 100 years of dieting

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

The Ozempic epidemic started before you were born. How did thinness- a symbol of the lack of prosperity, abundance, slowly gain its association with health, self control, beauty, femininity, to ultimately- status?🎁 5 years of social media + marketing knowledge: ⁠https://tapx.it/unlimitedyou-challengeLearn & Grow with me.💖 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeunlimited/💜 TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@zoeunlimited🪭 All my outfits https://www.shopltk.com/explore/zoeunlimited👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/zoeunlimited🛒 Essentials https://www.amazon.com/shop/zoeunlimited📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail]//🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro2:17 Ozempic epidemic4:27 Where did dieting begin?6:53 100 years of diet culture7:02 1920s10:06 1930s12:54 1940s 13:49 1950s16:09 1960s19:32 1970s20:28 1980s21:20 1990s21:47 2000-2020s24:44 Concluding thoughts:

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Weighty problem. Quick, a box of willpower, new chicklets. An 8 ounce glass of fresco. No sugar. It satisfies me. 3,000 years ago, having fat on the body was seen as a goddess trait. 200 years ago, plumpness was a feminine trait that symbolized fertility and health. 150 years ago, fitness was associated with poverty and the weaknesses of disease and old age,

a spiritual poverty, and moral insufficiency. sufficiency. Having fat on the body was to show abundance and wealth. Yet today, something strange is happening. Ozenbik is becoming the urban legend of a skinny wonder drug, something that the rich, famous and powerful could afford, something that Oprah herself is endorsing. What really happened in the span of the last 100 years? And how to having curves went from being the symbol of beauty to something so unpleasant that's making drugs for thousands sold out. And how did thinness? A symbol of the lack of prosperity, abundance

slowly gain its association with health, self-control, beauty, femininity to ultimately status. Uh-oh, your calories are showing. Hello, I'm Lila Holiday, the actress. I don't dare let a dress get as tight as that. I have to watch my weight just as you do. Everyone? On to the skull.

Ragdoll down. Let us dive into the last 100 years of diet culture. The association between diet and class. The shift in the definition of femininity, rise of calorie counting, slimming oils, pills, weight watchers, juice cleanses, to now O-ZMPIC. Stop. And at the end of the day,

what good and harm did everything bring? Because dieting weight and body ideals are sensitive topics that might be triggering to some, if you do not feel comfortable, please feel free to skip this one. You can conquer it because if I did it, if Scott did it, if Billy did it, you can do it. I thank you very much. Thank you. Last year I made a video about OZempeg, a drug for diabetes, that many now use for weight loss as it makes them forget to eat. I said it will soon turn into a dangerous trend, much like the BBL epidemic.

And surely enough, it's becoming as normal as how two years ago, planes were full of women flying back from Atlanta and wheelchairs after their BBL. You just flew in from Miami. BBO. Of course, everyone's bodies are ultimately their business. But because of how prevalent this new diet trend is, to the point that some of my friends who I love and care about are now taking it, I want to dive into the implications of this direction that our culture is heading toward.

When you think about it, just like hundreds of years before, humans come in all sizes. Thinness and fatness on their own have no inherent meanings. If you tell toddler, you're fat, they will have no reaction to it. It's only when they learn to associate the term fat or skinny with the cultural context of it will they begin to react in a certain way. In other words, fat and skinny are merely descriptions. Just like how saying the sky is either blue or purple, the sky being blue itself does not inherently mean good or bad.

They only begin to gain meaning as we add our interpretations to these observations. And in order to understand how the modern interpretations of thinness and fatness came to this scale, it be necessary to dive into the last 100 years of diet culture. Of how thinness, a trait that used to know, poverty, disease, and insufficiency, begun its association with wellness, beauty, femininity, and status. And fatness, a trait for prosperity, abundance, wellness became demonized. What? When did you do not go to eat?

Pretty much all the food that we're eating is like a heart attack and a meal, but it's going to be so good. And then you've got to get back on your diet, though. Where did dieting begin? The word dieting is, neutral. It is the practice of eating food in a regulated way to maintain, decrease, or increase body weight. But the way cultures viewed weight has drastically changed within 100 years of time. But first, what happened before the 1920s? The association between thinness and wellness actually began as early as the ancient Greeks.

It was believed that if your body was as healthy and beautiful as a Greek god, that meant your mind was healthy too. being quote unquote fat was not only ugly, it was also a sign of mental imbalance. But we need to understand that fat here meant something completely different from the Ozambic ideal today. Greek goddess statues celebrated curvatures as signs of beauty and abundance. Venus de Milla would be 5'7 inches, 171 pounds, with measurements of 35 inch bust, 30 inch waist, and 40 inch hips. Then the association between thinness and discipline began. in the first few centuries after Christ. Many Christians believed that the physical body was the enemy of the soul,

and people sometimes starved themselves to be holy. Further associations between thinness and health was reinforced by the world's first ever diet book, which was believed to be written by an overweight Italian in 1555. He limited himself to 12 ounces of food a day and 14 ounces of wine, as a way of living lawn. Despite early positive associations with thinness, clumpness was not out of favor at all. In fact, diets of reduction were not at all popular

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Although dieting existed prior to the 1920s, it did not become part of the zeitgeist, until thinness and fatness gained new meanings starting in the 1920s. It involved goats milk and avocados. Right ankle eight. Left ankle eight. They smear it on your face, wrap a hot towel around your head and stick two straws of your nose. Right, Caffeele 11, left, calf, 11. So you can breathe, you know, if you're distrauss.

Then they put you on a boat and they row you out to sea. Right side 18. And they drop the anchor and you sit there for four hours. Left side 18 and a half. Then they row you back in. Hips 34. And they scrape you down. Waste 25.

Slap you in the face with old bananas. Bust 32. Charge you $75 and send you home. She thinks she looks 20, I think she looks the same. God, you are so proportional. How long have you been measuring yourself like this? Every day for 10 years. 100 years of bloom of diet culture.

1920s. Two major events contributed to the 1920s being a pivotal era for diet culture. The cultural impacts of the rise of the flapper and the publishing of Dr. Lulu Hunter Peter's calorie counting book, diet and health with key to the calories. The flappers of the Roaring 20s gave a new definition to womanhood. A new way of seeing femininity came into fashion. Zelda Fitzgerald, later the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, is often referred to as the first flapper. An aesthetic with chopped short bobs, replaced the notion that short hair is solely reserved for masculinity.

And the lack of curves and straight figures with small chest became the ideal body. This was unlike anything anyone had ever seen at this point in American. This quote-unquote boyish figure mirror the movement of women taking on more traditionally masculine roles. Women began entering the workforce and celebrated their newfound independence through historically scandalous activities such as smoking, drinking, and wearing short of fits that showed the ankle, replacing the soft lines of plumpness with more harsh lines of thinness. With any fashion trends, however, the admiration for a temporary aesthetic along, is not enough to give rise to the next 100 years of dieting.

Until, with the combination of Dr. Lulu Hunter Peter's book in 1918, that arguably changed the face of dieting for the next century. Well, frankly, I don't want to get fat, but I do want to feel good. New delicious flavor, just 9 teeny calories that taste like a million. Frequently cited as America's first best-selling diet book, The book sold 2 million copies, 800,000 in hardcover and was in continuous publication from 1918 to 1939. The top 10 non-fiction bestselling books from 1922 to 1926. Calorie counting became the new obsession.

225. Good tasting calories mixed with milk. Good work, girls. Not everyone embraced the new dieting culture in the 20s. Three young women of Smith College caution in the 1924. student editorial that quote, if preventative measures against strenuous dieting are not taken soon, Smith College will become notorious, not for the self-like forms, but for the haggard faces and dull, listless eyes of her students. But these minor voices of opposition did very little to mitigate the flooding cult of thinness. Quite important to keeping trim and slim. Oh really? By 1930, the year Peters died, the word calories seemed to roll off people's tongue.

and even some schoolchildren were fluent in calorie counting. In 1927, a home economist observed that, quote, in this country, the calorie is a familiar word in the vocabulary of practically every adult. And anyone who doubts a possibility of popularizing it should observe a group of 10-year-olds counting their calories. 1930s. Don't lose hope.

Lose weight. By the 1930s, newer dieting methods were on the rise. Of course, there was already Fletcherism, that was a craze in the United States and England around 1905 through the mid-1930s. Also known as the Chew Chew Calt, it is the method to quote, "...chew until the food is completely liquid or at least 100 times." Its originator, Horace Fletcher, an art dealer in San Francisco who became the self-taught nutritionist, claimed he lost 40 pounds by chewing every mouthful at least 32 times, took pride in the fact that

He only pooped twice every month and became a millionaire lifestyle influencer by telling people to chew as much as possible to lose weight. As absurd as it sounds to work your jaw to the extreme for one bite of anything. Many famous and intelligent people were actually Fletchers, including John D. Rockefeller, France Kafka, John Kellogg of Kellogg's cereals, and Henry James. The Great Depression that began in October 1929 was also changing Americans' relationships. with food. All of a sudden, people were going hungry. Overindulgence in food was seen as immoral and insensitive while others were starving. This all made dieting all the more justified. It was the era that the alkaline diet was born. In 1935, Dr. William Hay divided all foods

into alkaline, acid, or neutral. Carbohydrates and starch were alkaline, meats and other proteins were acid and others were neutral. You shouldn't combine acid and alkaline. You shouldn't combine acid and alkaline because your body is unable to digest them completely if you do. Oh no, there's actually nothing scientific about this, yet the diet still exists today. Moreover, the Hollywood Grapefruit Diet came out in the 30s, a precursor to the IU diet in 2010s. It is interesting that despite the economic downturn, all kinds of diet products were selling, such as Lamar's reducing soap, Slens fat reducing chewing gum, slimmer reducing brush, and less are slim figure bath oil. Over 50 million dollars were spent each year on laxatives,

which were used as an ingredient in quote-unquote reducing breads. The first diet drink named squirt also went on the market. In a time where many were forced to starve, dieting became the symbol for the rich. As only the well-off could not only afford food, but also the ridiculous products that make you look deprived of eating. Just like how In this era, abundance is measured by the leisure of time instead of nutrients, the rich now romanticized labor and will choose to live on a farm or make food from scratch. 1940s. If you consume more calories than you need, you gain weight. 1940s was the World War II era.

The slim boyish body went out of fashion and bus lines returned and stayed in fashion until around the 1960s. However, the rise of curves did not reduce the desire for thinness at the same time. It can put inches on the thin girl and fill her out. It can take inches off the fat girl and slim her down. It can reproportion the girl with the unsymmetrical figure so that her curves fall in the right places. Women's fashion was more structured and forgiving during the 40s with padded shoulders and managed tailoring that reflected the cut of military uniforms. But after the war in the 50s, there began a craze for an hourglass figure with a tiny waist.

It is worth noting that television replaced radio as the dominant broadcast medium by the 1950s. Sure, film was already a popular source of media, but to have the influence of media at home, open up a new can of warms. Instead of seeing the beauty ideals such as Marilyn Monroe on the big screen in the theater, 18-inch waste such as that of Liz Taylor, appeared in every medium-income household's living room. It's marvelous less fat too. Marvel has 90% less fat than these fat-filled instant milks for your calorie control diet. This change in consumer behavior only gets repeated again and again in the computer to now the phone dominant digital era.

The technological change also facilitated the widespread demonization of fatness. The ad for right crisp crackers summarized the sentiment to wear fatness in its harsh headline. Quote, no one loves a fat girl. And the pressure to stay thin was on men too. Elmer Wheeler's book titled The Fat Boys Book, How Elmer Lost 40 Pounds in 80 Days sold 112,000 copies. It is also worthy to note that with the growth of television as a medium, harmful caricatures such as the Mamie had been enlarged and portrayed in offensive manners.

sitcoms often intentionally portrayed in large people, often of color, in scornful manners, as a recurring pattern even in children's cartoons. At the same time, the Met Johnson Company introduced the Metricle. Metrikel isn't chicken and dumplings. It is a simple, safe way to lose weight without hunger. A liquid shake advertised as, quote, neither a drug nor food, that you can drink instead of eating a regular meal. Each can of liquid makes an individual meal.

Metrical helps you restrict calories while providing sound nutrition and appetite satisfaction. To lose weight, try MetraCal soon. Frozen or liquid. This marks the beginning of a whole slew of inventions that aim to replace food. With things that trick the body into thinking that it is not hungry. Which brings a bell to Ozenpic. To avoid being fat. A term that has become more and more derogatory. 1960s

They're the diet lunch that you can crunch out loud Figurie Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch In five ways First, baby boomers were moving into their teens and 20s The prom diet began appearing in magazines like 17, Glamour and Cosmos And the 1960s fashion called for a slim, boyish, androgynous body. Second, the urge to fit into a standard became increasingly intense, and is especially evident with the rise of celebrity culture.

Elvis Presley struggled with his way as he approached middle age. He tried the 1960s fat diet, the Sleeping Beauty diet, to take sleeping pills and not eat while you're in almost a coma state for the next few days. Third, more innovative diet foods are now available, including SICO, a meal replacement shake, with only 225 calories available in delicious flavors, such as chocolate, chocolate, coconut, vanilla, strawberry, banana. It's a complete 225 calorie meal for your diet plan. Tigo is the good tasting one that helps keep you slender. By 1961, there were more than 100 meal replacement products on the U.S. market,

a market that has now entered a $6 billion range. Moreover, this marked the beginning of substitution. With the rise of artificial sweeteners, Diet Coke will become a staple that gave rise to a whole new market of diet sodas. Actually, this individual size bottle has no more calories than half a grapefruit. Fourth, the medical community got involved. Diet pills, which contain epitomines and dynotrophinol to increase your metabolism rate, these drugs were already being widely prescribed for depression and have been widely abused for decades. and this is where the direct parallel with OZMPIC begins.

Neither drugs were meant for weight loss, but began to be seen as a newfound solution to the rising negative sentiment towards fatness. Amphetamines were not only quote unquote she, they were considered harmless and non-addictive. Neither was true. Dr. Max Jacobson, known as Dr. Feel Good, injected his patients with a combination of B vitamins,

hormones, and methamphetamine for energy and weight. weight control. Among his clients were President and Mrs. John Kennedy, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and members of the Rolling Stones, which further highlights something pivotal in diet culture. Thinness was no longer just the ideal of wellness. A trespass to the ideal beauty, thin wealth, and power. Although everyday people might be able to indulge a Diet Coke or Chocolate Sego to replace a meal, the emphatominy injections by Dr. Fields good could only be afforded by the rich and the powerful. While the rest who do not belong to this club do all they could to reach as close to the socially constructed good trait of

thinness. Thus, fifth, Weight Watchers had gone public in 1962, where within a year, 400 people lined up to join. Today, the organization has 5 million members and 25,000 employees. 1970s. As Washington Post columnist Alan Goodman put it, quote, eating has become the last bonifacin left in America. Despite all the diet books, weight loss products, pills, equipment, and low-calorie foods now available, the percent of obese adults climb from 11% to 17. All the while, women and men's fashion is not giving anybody a break. With bell bottoms that required slim, small hip body. For the women, however, thinness has become a little.

a stronger ideal. And thanks to the advertisements of cigarette companies, smoking, thinness, and empowerment have all been tied into one singular construct. Quote, these cigarettes are longer and slimmer than the fat ones men smoke. Despite more and more meaning added to the appeal of thinness, obesity skyrocketed in the 1980s, climbing from 17% in 1980 to 35% by 1989 and more extreme diets have refreshed people's notion of diets. Actress Elizabeth Taylor lost over 50 pounds on a 100 calorie diet. I'm literally screaming, just reading that. And on November 15, 1988, when Oprah Winfrey pulled a wagon full of 67 pounds of fat across the stage on her TV show to show the weight she lost on a liquid protein fast. She was wearing

size 10 jeans, but she later said they did not fit by the the following week when she started to eat real food again. I fasted without cheating for solid six weeks. If I did it, you can do it. And this is when anorexia or refusing to eat became a media fat that plagued into the 90s. According to Rudd Center, hiring against obese people was worse than the discrimination toward race, sexual orientation, or disabilities. Young girls told researchers in 1997 that they are more of a more of a more of.

afraid of being fat than they are of losing their parents, having cancer, or going through a nuclear war. Not only were over-glamarized meanings attached to thinness, negative meanings, and discrimination against fatness were not yet peaking. 2000s, starting with the Y2K aesthetic, thinness has now transformed into the norm, a beauty. From the Tumblr, Thinspo, to flat tummy teas held by the Kardashians, to slim shakes that need to give things, to their predecessors like Sego to juice cleanses that promise to reset your body in just 21 days and with of course no solid food. Diet culture is no longer diet culture. It is pulp culture.

And using juice cleanse as an example, thinness has never been more commodified. A one-day cleanse only costs $34.993, where a seven-day cleanse is just shy of $200. You can hand over $120 for four classes of Pilates and get that special Arawan organic kale at $20 per pound. Thinness moved beyond wellness and health. It is about separating people into two classes. The class that can afford to purchase all these somewhat beneficial, somewhat unnecessary commodities of thinness, the class that will fit into this aesthetic, versus the class that is rejected by this very exclusive ideal.

that to enter, you need to already look like one of them. Beyond just body shape, but the whole aesthetic, including branding, styles, and sometimes even race. Even during the BBL epidemic, where an unrealistic appeal to curves was a dream that led thousands of women go under the knife and risk their lives for the Kim K look, it was on the foundation that thinness was not to be compromised. While having insanely huge bust and butt, the waist needs to remain the same as the flapper era. Too much cultural association has been created between thinness and beauty, wellness, status, femininity, that it was now here to stay and in an unapologetic way. The good news was, thanks to the rise of body positivity starting in the 60s,

the damaging negative associations with fatness have been decreasing to remove the unfair stigmas and discriminations in the 2020s. Britain's most glamorous fatty. But the association between thinness and status can no longer be broken. The ozempic craze in the 2020s is only an extension of the emphatomines in the 60s, something that only some could afford. Oh, oh, oh while the diabetes patients whom the drug was intended for suffer from shortages as the wealthy buy the expensive drug to look proper

within their class, paying in money and potential heart, harmful side effects for a standard that over the last 100 years has been ingrained in our minds as a foundation of beauty, health, wealth, and even femininity. Concluding thoughts. With 100 years of dieting under review, we need another reminder that fat and skinny had no inherent cultural meaning until we shape them as they are. And both the over-obsession with thinness or extreme positivity, for fatness are unhealthy on a physical and emotional level. But at the end of the day, our diets quote unquote bad. Just like I said in the beginning, the diet is only the practice of eating food in a

regulated way. It is not inherently good or bad. For my view, there is only is it suitable or is it not? At the end of the day, what does the diet achieve? Whether if it's a diet that cuts out or add in a bunch of things, foods. If it makes someone more well off physically and emotionally, then objectively, that diet is good for them. The only issue with diet arises when collectively, we only focus on what the commodity of thinness symbolizes. Status, beauty, wellness, discipline, over whether if it strengthens or harms us.

And at the end of the day, we are the only ones who will enjoy the impact of what we choose to put into our bodies. and what we choose to not. And like all commodities in a consumeristic culture, no matter what the diet promises, beauty, wellness, status, staying on trend, the purchasing power is in our hands. So that concludes to dive into 100 years of the evolution of diet culture

and how thinness and fatness gain their newfound associations of meaning. And who knows, maybe in the next 100 years or less, we will have completely new associations with what being fat or thin means. But at the end of the day, the only body you will ever have is yours. So treat it with diligence. Be sure to like and share this video so more people can learn about the evolution of diet culture and how we have all been in one way or another impacted by it.

Subscribe for more video essays and I will see you next week.