Mean Girls and the Early 2000s Pop Culture Crucifixion of Carbs
The Early 2000s were a rough PR time for Carbohydrates - here's why you still need them.
Last month, I released a short essay on language and food, and how both can impact our food choices. I realized very quickly that carbs needed their own piece.
Somehow, carbohydrates have become the scapegoat for weight gain, and the first thing suggested to cut when trying to lose weight.
This feels insane from a nutritional science perspective seeing as carbohydrates are our body’s main energy source.
However, as I look back at my own upbringing I remember having negative thoughts around bread and rice, and all the other very helpful carbohydrates that fuel us.
One these memories stemming from Mean Girls (2004). The cult-classic quintessential early 2000s cheeky rom-com.
As I was only 8 years old when it came out, most of the jokes went over my head, HOWEVER as a cultural touch point for early 2000s culture - it is clear it infiltrated all of our little brains.
This will NOT be an essay on the ills of this movie, which I’m sure have been deeply explored, but rather a callback to how pop culture shapes our food choices even when we don’t realize it.
Kalteen bars, Teen Weight Loss, and Body Shaming
A pivotal point in Mean Girls to ruin Regina George’s “bod” is the introduction of the Kalteen bar. A bar used by her mother while living in Africa to help undernourished children gain weight. (Do they even say which country? An essay on the erasure of Africa as a continent for another day…)
The way Cady, Janice Ian, and Damian decide the best way to destroy her is to prey on her insecurities. Cady claims the bar can “burn carbs”, which once again…. is not the weight loss hack many people think it is, but alas it works!
For the full scene I’m referencing go here.
What I find fascinating about this, as I watch this almost 21 years after it’s release, is that this way of thinking is STILL happening.
The shame around weight gain, the shame around eating carbohydrates, and even the willingness to try something unregulated to lose weight.
**hint, hint the growth of GLP-1 prescriptions in populations that they were not made for***
What’s even more sad is when you come to the realization that these girls are supposed to be teenagers. Your body is still growing, and we are pushing the narrative that we should be only focused on “losing 3 lbs”….? Nope. Not it.
Carbohydrates are literally the way, the truth and the light for your body. It simply cannot exist sustainably without them. So, let’s discuss what they do for you.
Carbohydrates:
are body and brain’s main source of energy
help maintain blood sugar levels
help with digestive health (i.e. fiber)
And for more on carbs, see this old Substack article I wrote last year.
CARBOHYDRATES WHERE IS YOUR PR TEAM??? YOU ARE SO IMPORTANT AND MUST BE CELEBRATED!!!
The Resurgence of Diet Culture as Pop Culture and Carbohydrate fear
Movies are an excellent way to take a purview into the past, and Mean Girls is a perfect time capsule for diet culture and body politics of the early 2000s. The scariest thing that I’ve begun to realize is how within not even 25 years, this type of body shaming is back into popular culture. (…but did it ever really leave?)
We had some brief moments in the 2010s of body positivity, Health at Every Size (HAES), and of course the growth of body modifications like BBLs, but diet culture never seems to die, it reinvents itself.
Enter Skinny-Tok, Ozempic, Quick Mass Celebrity Weight Loss, Protein Only diets… etc.
And with all of these growing weight loss trends, what is the first to go…. carbs. Generic carbs. Rarely do I see anyone differentiate or explain the different types of carbs, how quality of carbs can change depending on the food, or how carbohydrates are ESSENTIAL MACRONUTRIENTS.
The funniest trick is that weight loss will never be successful or maintained when you deprive yourself of macronutrients - let alone the one that gives you energy. Diet culture wants to see you stuck in these patterns of shame and confusion.
Protein. will. not. save. you.
Eat your carbohydrates and take care of yourself. Ignore the “mean girls” of 2004 and the current mean girls of the internet who tell you otherwise.