CW: discussion of weight, weight loss and fat phobia.
Weight Watchers filed for bankruptcy this month. It’s trying to manage a $1 billion debt after pivoting to a telehealth-focused service that combines its food plans with GLP-1 weight loss drugs and an app to manage eating and weight loss.
This model is a dramatic change from the Weight Watchers founded by Jean Nidetch in 1963. It offered an eating plan, advice about physical activity, and (most important for its members) meetings where people would share their experiences and get support around their weight goals.
Let me say right now that I’m not advocating for Weight Watchers here; quite the opposite. But humor me for a minute while I remind us of what Weight Watchers did and what it has meant (and still means) to some folks.
This 2010 newspaper article about Weight Watchers meetings in Jacksonville, Florida paints a clear picture of the power of Weight Watchers. Meetings feature so-called inspirational talks by women who’ve lost weight (and yes, they include before-pictures; sigh). They also offer nutritional and physical activity tips. All this happens after the initial weigh-in. Yep, they still do that.
Lots of women love this setup. They are angry and disappointed about the mass closings of WW meetings all over the US and beyond. You can read comments at the bottom of this article to get a sense of how important regular in-person contact with others has been. Many women are what’s called Lifetime Members (having reached their goal weight and fulfilled other requirements). The main perk of the lifetime members is free access to WW meetings. It is this perk that’s ending, or rather switching to virtual or app-based. An app is not what these women want. They want support and connection with others.
A New York Times opinion piece this week praised WW for providing a “third space” for women to gather, connect, support each other despite their social differences. It waxes wistfully about the democratizing effects of WW meetings:
In recent years WeightWatchers meetings became one of the all-too-rare places in America where conservatives and progressives found themselves sitting side by side, commiserating about the same plateaus or the same frustrations or the same annoyance that the powers that be had changed the point value of avocados, again.
Okay, it’s now criticism time. Yes, WW provided a space for women to come together and share their feelings about their bodies. But instead of telling them that they were just fine as they were, it (literally) sold them the idea that their lives would change for the better if only they kept focusing their energies and spending their time on reducing the size of their bodies. And, of course, paying for the WW plan.
Weight Watchers didn’t invent fat phobia, but it’s certainly profited handsomely off it for decades. Weight Watchers doesn’t support misogyny in its corporate charter, but it embodies it by pulling in mostly women (this article estimates that 90% of its members are women) and uniting them with the message that they are not acceptable as they are, that they will be happier if they can just lose enough weight to get to some distant goal. They deputize other women to tell stories of their success, not mentioning that in studies, the average weight loss at one year is very small, and regain of weight happens over time in almost all cases.
The 2015 obituary of Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers, is a vivid example of how fat phobia follows women throughout their lives, and (in this case) beyond the grave. The writer made sure to publish her weight when she died, pointing out that she weighed the same as she did after her weight loss in the 1960s.
The piece is filled with body-shaming terms: pumpkin-shaped (yep, it’s in there), overweight (seven times), chubby, and gluttonous (I’m really not making this up).
Yes, it’s 10 years old. And Weight Watchers itself has become more circumspect about weight loss, marketing itself as a health-focused plan. But we know, and all its members know, that it’s all about the weight– the weight of women. It needs to be watched, all the time, for a lifetime. That’s the message that Weight Watchers is trying to hang onto amidst its restructuring and pivot to GLP-1 drugs. New technology, same fat phobia.
