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Maria Wiegel
Food, Fatness, and Fitness
1
THE AMERICAN DREAM OF BEING ENOUGH: THE STORY OF JEAN NIDETCH,
A SLIM ENTREPRENEUR
In 1963, patriarchal social structures in the United States seemed to be getting stirred up by
female voices challenging the hegemonic imaginary woman, when Betty Friedan published her
seminal book The Feminine Mystique. That same year, Jean Nidetch started a company helping
women reduce their body weight: Weight Watchers, now called WW. By losing weight, Nidetch
“basically earned the American dream” (Meltzer, 2020: 8) and then sold it as a commodity, as
Marisa Meltzer argues in her book This is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed
the World (and Me) (2020). Meltzer explains that “Jean had a Cinderella story for the ages. She
was a maven and mogul who lost weight, spectacularly found her calling, and helped to create
a national pastime and obsession that endures today” (276). And indeed, in the 21st century,
losing weight is still a popular American pastime. It is important enough that it inspired Meltzer
to write half of her book on her own experiences with dieting and Weight Watchers. For her
book she even became a weight watcher herself, again. While calling Nidetch her role model,
Meltzer has also a critical view on the concept of Weight Watchers and its quantitative ideology
on weight.
The American Dream, Fat Housewives, and Slim Entrepreneurs
Nidetch’s success story – a story of the American dream becoming a woman’s reality – would
not be complete without a broader perspective. More than an individual’s development, her
story can be read as a model, even a prophecy, for future weight watchers, since “[d]iet culture
and weight loss are directly related to the Protestant work ethic in America” (Meltzer, 2020:
62-63). Through hard work and discipline, everyone is supposed to be able to make it from
‘rags to riches.’ According to Sarah Riley, Adrienne Evans and Martine Robson, containment
in consumption is linked to holiness in Puritan ideology, and especially women are expected
to exercise renunciation and to redeem their sex from the original sin. Nidetch’s example of a
“formerly fat housewife” and entrepreneur mirrors this Puritan ideal of female renunciation
when it comes to food. Her biography suggests that body shape and economic success are
codependent. After all, Nidetch proved a certain degree of discipline by losing the weight she
was struggling with for decades, and by gaining control over her addiction to Mallomars,
chocolate-covered marshmallow treats.
Maria Wiegel
Food, Fatness, and Fitness
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Working on one’s body has been conceived of a way for white middle class women to gain
control, at least over one part of life in a “society where an increasing emphasis is put on the
individual, on the exception, the carve-out, the workaround, the personal triumph” (Meltzer
2020: 267). Working on oneself, and on one’s own body in particular, is one way of
experiencing a “personal triumph.” It can as well mean subjecting oneself to structures of
discipline and surveillance, as Barry Glassner argued in 1989. Measuring tools like the BMI,
but also Weight Watchers’s food tracking techniques, and fitness tracking devices, make it
possible to track one’s caloric intake and consumption, and compare it to normative and
normalizing data. Women, therewith, put themselves under the surveillance of an ideal body
image and Weight Watchers has been playing an important part in this system by formulating
its own framing as “the authority.” As a commodity, fitness and dieting programs have become
a lifestyle serving predominantly the white middle classes. At the same time, they have enabled
women to produce their bodies according to normative standards. With all this said, Weight
Watchers is an institution of discipline and surveillance. This is achieved through weekly
weightings and strict nutrition plans. Weight Watchers focuses on numbers and quantity, rather
than quality. This quantitative aspect of dieting serves Meltzer’s argument, that, today, as
women, “we have so many internalized messages that we are not enough that we might spend
our whole lives coming to terms with them” (284).
Becoming “Enough”
In 1963, Betty Friedan identified the dieting industry as “a lucrative business in that futile battle
to take off the fat that cannot be turned into human energy [e.g. housework] by the American
housewife” (358). Back then, one major reason for white middle class women to start dieting
was society’s expectation for them to become housewives and mothers, and the suggested
correlation of thinness and successful marriages: losing weight was supposed to result in
gaining (and keeping) a husband (see also lifestyle guides from the 1960s, such as Helen Gurley
Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl from 1962). This ideal, however, was contested by Jean
Nidetch’s own divorce resulting from her diet, since her husband liked her “better when [she]
was fat” (Nidetch qtd. in Meltzer 166). Yet, she did not present her divorce as a defeat, nor did
Weight Watchers or the media. Rather, it was staged as a challenge for this self-made woman
and one can read about Nidetch transforming into an ideal woman with platinum blonde hair,
Maria Wiegel
Food, Fatness, and Fitness
3
living in Los Angeles and dating Fred Astaire. Being thin, Nidetch’s new lifestyle seemed to
suggest, provides women with the looks, the means, and the men.
The side effects of women’s subjectivation to this ideal body image, however, have been
manifold. Bulimia and excessive workouts, but also taking diet pills are not uncommon
disorders that result from an unhealthy relationship between the subject and food. Meltzer, for
instance, in her striving to become “enough,” took diet pills. She “wanted to be thin so bad that
the potential dangers didn’t even occur” to her (61). Nidetch’s and Meltzer’s examples show
how much the American Dream, for Nidetch, and the feeling of being “enough,” for Meltzer,
were related to size. Although, according to Meltzer, contemporary American society puts
emphasis on the individual, only the normative ones are acceptable when it comes to bodies.
This leaves an impression of uniformity for successful women. Meltzer thus fantasizes her
“body […] to be whatever size it is and for no one to see [her] as fat; for the social perception
of fatness to cease to exist” (198). However, this only works so far as one can ignore society’s
sanctions. “Maybe fat people,” she goes on, “are just made more aware [than thin people] of
the negative ways that the world views them because fat shaming is very acceptable in our
culture. And fat is visible” (113). Getting in shape or becoming thin, in the end, will not solve
all problems, or make a woman feel as if she is “enough.” Meltzer raises the question if in
Western society, with its emphasis on quantity, we are even capable of savoring quality.
Nidetch’s success as entrepreneur, in the end, only worked as long as she and her body were
useful for the company’s image. By the end of the 70s she was “cut out [from her company],
and there appeared to be a fair amount of sexism involved,” (198) showing that it was merely
her body that made her the face of Weight Watchers, and that otherwise she – who sold eggs in
her neighborhood to earn extra money and proved her qualities as a saleswoman way before
becoming a slim entrepreneur – was not “enough.” Meltzer’s book raises many questions about
America’s contemporary relationship to food, health, and bodies. One of the most important
questions is the question of when a woman is “enough.” The American Dream, for women, it
seems, is merely the dream of being “enough.” Whatever that may be.