fitness

Fascism and Body Image

Diane Harper

I’m not sure I can put my thoughts together coherently, but I recently listened to the CBCIdeas show What the Far Right is Borrowing from Fascism’s Aesthetics.

I followed that up with reading “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke. It’s a bizarre but compelling satire about a Tradwife influencer. Maintaining a certain image is central to the story of a far-right woman and her extended family, and how she copes (or doesn’t) when her carefully curated life collapses.

Both of these brought back memories of images in “The Handmaid’s Tale” – both the book and the television series.

I avoid the wellness influencers as much as possible on social media, even so, some of those posts creep into my feeds – promising my life will be better if only I do “this” exercise or eat “that” food or wear a certain style.

I’m all in favour of being the best I can be. But I also work hard to remember that there is no single standard of beauty or fitness. I loathe the ideals promoting conformity and body policing.

All that to say: go listen to the podcast or read one of the books and let me know what you think.

This image of an idealized white woman surrounded by smaller images of equally idealized white woman is uncredited. I suspect it was created using AI. I found it in this Medium.com article about fascism and the fashion and beauty industry.

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Published by Diane Harper

Diane Harper is a retired former public servant who lives and swims (and bikes) in Ottawa. In her hobby life, she is Siglinde Harfnerstochter, a 6th C Merovingian housewife from the city of Metz. Her primary interests are cooking, textile arts and bonecarving. Siglinde lives in the canton of Caldrithig, Barony of Skraeling Althing, Kingdom of Ealdormere.

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