Patriachal capitalism and the weight lose experience of woman

Abstract

This was a qualitative study on weight loss experiences of women in patriarchal capitalism. The purposes were to reflect on how woman with weight loss experiences were oppressed and exploited under patriarchal capitalism and to find the influences of patriarchal capitalism on the women’s life structures, their causes, forms, and the methods of weight loss and weight loss failure. This study was conducted in Bangkok through in-depth interviews with 10 women aged between 22-30 years, who worked in the service industry and had had weight loss experiences. Data collected was analysed using Content Analysis through the perspective of Socialist Feminism.

            The results showed that patriarchal capitalism oppressed and caused injustice towards women; 1) The women were pressured to lose weight through life structures such as work, patriarchal sexuality, beauty ideals, as presented by media or fashion trends, and both physical and mental violence. 2) The women’s forms and methods of weight loss were both dependent on and exploited by the capitalist system including going on diet, clean eating, using supplementary weight loss medication, going to gyms and going to aesthetic medicine clinics. 3) The women failed to lose weight and would never succeed in doing so as the weight loss products and services for women were too expensive. Media and fashion trends also created beauty ideals that could never be met in reality. Moreover, the patriarchal sexuality, pressured women to eventually stop losing weight, and having to work under the patriarchal capitalism, the women were also oppressed so much that they could not lose weight successfully. Whatever the forms of weight loss they sought, they could not be free from the oppression of patriarchal capitalism.

            The suggestions for the study were that society should never brand women’s weight as a problem and that oppression and injustice affecting weight loss experiences in women should be eliminated as well.