Dieting in the Long Sixties: Constructing the Identity of the Modern American Dieter

Abstract

The gender narrative of the 1960s frequently focuses on the reemergence of feminism, yet a growing diet culture provides an alternate entry point for investigating the era and its gendered foodways. The growth of both movements also provides a new perspective on the consumer landscape and ideals regarding female dieting behaviors. To that end, this article interrogates advertisements for the popular appetite suppressant Ayds, the first to use before-and-after photography and a first-person narrative to detail a woman's weight-loss journey. Using Erving Goffman's frame analysis theory to examine gender while applying a feminist-inspired lens to the text, a female identity emerges. Called the Modern American Dieter, she was a woman trapped between a traditional past and the promise of a new, feminist-inspired future. Both worlds were shaped by the era's marketers, who created a modern dieting narrative (using commodity scientism and female empowerment) that still exists today to sell weight loss.