White Girls Really Are to Blame for Gluten Free Diets
There’s no question that white girl stereotyping is on the rise.
People mock white girls for being basic, wasted, shallow, and obsessed with pumpkin spice lattes. And we all pretend it’s hilarious and woke, rather than just as sexist and lazy as the blonde jokes that proliferated in the 90s.
We white girls can’t really be mad, though. Most of the time, we do it to ourselves by acting basic and out-of-touch with real problems. Plus, if you search “white girl” on Twitter, you’ll see we’re the ones using the phrase most, in a misguided and frankly embarrassing effort to be self-deprecating and show that we’re in on the joke.
Hey, you guys: it’s not working. It just makes us look even more annoying and privileged.
Still, sadly, generalizations are generally true. So it’s not that surprising that a recent study found that young white women are the most likely demographic to impose medically unnecessary gluten-free diets on themselves.
Yes, researchers from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys found that there are three times as many people on gluten-free diets as there are people who actually have celiac disease, the O.G. reason for going on a gluten-free diet.
And now for the kicker:
Going gluten-free was especially popular among three groups who did not have a medical need for the diet: younger adults ages 20 to 39, females, and non-Hispanic whites, Kim said.
Now, naysayers will scoff at this and say it’s just an example of white girls blindly following whatever Gwyneth Paltrow tells them.
And it could be that people go gluten-free just because they’re following a trend. Not to mention white girls are one of the only demographics that’s privileged enough to cut out entire food groups because they make us “feel puffy,” or whatever.
But I think white girls are just early adopters when it comes to switching up our nutrition, and it’s because society puts so much pressure on us to maintain a low body weight. We are bombarded with images of hotter, skinnier versions of ourselves day in and day out, and taught from a young age not to get too fat. So why wouldn’t we be more likely than other demographics to experiment with dieting and weight loss?
Despite that, people don’t like seeing our weight loss efforts. If you admit that you’re watching your weight or trying to eat healthy, the same people who expect you to be thin as a whip will dismiss you as shallow or vapid. It’s like when you go out on a first date and a guy rolls his eyes at you for ordering a salad, but he wouldn’t even have taken you out if you were fat. The world expects women to be perfect but never admit that they’re trying, and that’s why everyone hates the girls who eat gluten-free.
So maybe white girls just dietary trendsetters because we’re under so much pressure to be thin and perfect and we’ll try anything. And maybe everyone hates us for trying. The struggle is shallow and pointless in the grand scheme of things, but it’s definitely real.
By the way, young women are also the ones who set trends in vocal patterns — and we get shit on for that, too.
Anyway, all I’m trying to say is let us eat gluten-free cake. We’re not hurting anyone and maybe it does make us feel better and more energetic and, yeah, less puffy.
But most of all, please, everyone, but especially my fellow white girls: stop with the white girl jokes. They aren’t cute.
