It would be a Christmas miracle if we can stop talking about this |
’Tis the season. The season I’m rolling my eyes so much I’m going to strain them.
Press releases about how to enjoy a “guilt-free” Christmas are dropping into my inbox, as welcome as low-cal, fat-free puddings. Then there are all the articles about getting through the silly season without gaining weight, as well as the ones about the naughty foods that will derail your diet this festive season.
The Christmas tradition we could do without? All the guilt.Credit: Getty Images
What’s on my naughty list? This trashy Christmas tradition.
It’s probably my eye strain, but I keep looking over my shoulder to check the ghost of Jenny Craig isn’t hovering. It is all just diet culture-speak dressed up as turkey.
I know it’s well-intended – and a well-trodden path. Our obsession with weight and bodies has been brewing since at least the Paleolithic era. The most famous early image of a human, carved from limestone in Austria around 28,000 BCE, was mockingly named “Venus” because she was overweight.
The Venus of Willendorf, according to one description, is a sculpture with a “large stomach that overhangs” her pubic area: “A roll of fat extends around her........