Sustainability & Birth Control: The Class Implications of Our Environmental Food Trends -- Dalin

I’ve recently seen a social movement, largely on social media, that shames women off

birth control. Activists assert, arguably oversimply, that the medication is detrimental to the

health of anyone with a uterus, and when doctors prescribe it to patients as a health solution – for

heavy or painful periods, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and the like – they are merely putting a

Band-Aid on the larger underlying hormonal issue. The movement contends that people with

uteruses, instead, should turn to lifestyle changes to cure their issues and concerns. They should

do things like “cycle sync” their workouts, plan their schedules around the different phases of

their menstrual cycle, and employ “clean eating” habits. This abstract sort of “wholistic living” is

a supposedly natural solution that will effectively fix hormone imbalances – or so I hear. And

while I certainly agree that doctors have a reputation for dismissively overprescribing birth

control rather than listening to their patients, and female healthcare is severely under researched,

I find this new movement to be very elitist and unattainable for many. It foregoes the financial

stability required for a healthy diet, a flexible work schedule and budget, and even the resources

necessary for these habits, like access to unprocessed foods and workout spaces – not to mention

the mental capacity for each of these adjustments. The lifestyle is a recipe for disaster for those

with eating disorders and would only welcome even more health issues. Since the birth of this

movement, I’ve been interested in the class implications of eating habits and trends, and how

new movements are often restrictive toward certain groups who may want to participate but

cannot. Jade Aguilar’s research in “Food Choices and Voluntary Simplicity in Intentional

Communities: What’s Race and Class Got to Do with It?” finds that, as I expected, different food

trends and movements perpetuate values that are only attainable for privileged groups and

exclude those who don’t belong, largely restricting sustainability – and feminism – to the elite.

Aguilar researched three communities – Twin Oaks, Acorn, and Emma Goldman

Finishing School – and found that each group’s respective food habits “reflect their values and

serve as a way of linking together a host of social issues and movements that are important to

them, such as anticapitalism, labor politics, and animal rights” (80). The anti-birth control

movement is, of course, another example that enforces a certain lifestyle to form a community –

in this case, one that values supposedly natural health solutions. Aguilar learned that “those

values are themselves based on dominant race and class ideologies and how their application in

the communities (which are composed of largely white and middle-class members) has

unintended and negative consequences for racial minorities and members from lower-class

backgrounds” (80). In her research, individuals able to restrict meat and dairy were able to show

off a “commitment to nonviolence,” while those unable faced social exclusion and internal

conflict over not being able to preserve wildlife like others (80). These findings show that we

seem to care more about the social perceptions we gain from our participation in social

movements and the elitist communities we form from them than about the movements’

underlying goals and objectives, like sustainability or health advocacy.

Aguilar also cites Mary Rizzo’s research, which “reveals that various groups’ ideological

beliefs about what constitutes a ‘proper’ diet were directly linked to group members’ class

standing” (80). This conclusion suggests that many food-related social movements are

constructed with arbitrary, rather than scientific, reasoning and results, which further perpetuates

our elitist desires, outweighing the actual health benefits of food trends. Rizzo found that

“counterculturalists of the time ‘disciplined their bodies and tamed their food desires in order to

conform to their ideological and philosophical goals’ and that these goals were shaped in part by

their social class” (80). Aguilar also asserts later that “shift[s] in diet [are] greater for those from

lower-class backgrounds, [so] the sacrifice … is also greater,” thus further “exclud[ing] and

marginaliz[ing] those from lower-class backgrounds” (91). Many movements disguise

themselves as a return to natural habits, but here, we see that most actually require that we

conform and change our bodies, which is often entirely unnatural, and again, unattainable for

those who have poor relationships with food. This, again, exposes the exclusion that often

defines our dietary trends, leaving them largely ineffective, in terms of environmental impact or

widespread healthcare reform, for example.

“Race and class analyses of communal food choices rarely occur in the literature on

intentional communities, perhaps because communities have tended to be homogeneously white

and middle class,” writes Aguilar (81). This observation of our skewed samples reveals how

privileged groups are the default audience and participants in food trends. Aguilar also finds that

“the communities in this study strongly promote their commitment to race and class diversity

among their membership in their public image … yet … remain largely white and middle class in

their actual membership” (86). This connotes the performative sense of inclusion involved in

sustainable food trends. Aguilar writes that “community members justify this discrepancy

between the diversity they desire and the homogeneity they actually have by citing a lack of

interest in membership on the part of racial minorities and lower-class folks as well as assuming

that members of these groups would be unwilling to adhere to their dietary requirements” (86-

87). This elitism only strengthens the race and class divide in environmentalism and health care,

and in turn, leads to misrepresented and misconstrued perceptions and results of movements’

efficacy. Of course, the “insert-any-fad-diet-here” has shown effective because its participants

were financially, physically, and socially able to sustain the prescribed habits, and those

assessing the diet for themselves have been provided the same sufficient resources, so it earns

their approval. I’m sure sustainable eating and hormone balancing diets would have more

inclusive, wide-ranging perceptions and results if they appealed to more diverse audiences with

different attainability capacities.

The extensive findings in Aguilar’s research overwhelmingly point to the ignored social

implications of “living simply” (97). Many trends turn to this abstract notion of natural living,

but we forget that successfully attaining such a lifestyle is far from simple and requires privilege

in virtually all social spheres. And when we blindly promote these lifestyles, we unconsciously

exclude large sectors of our population. Even well-intentioned movements that seek to promote

sustainability or well-being often do more harm than good. They reinforce our systemic classism,

making environmental opportunity even more elitist. True change will only occur when we can

all help equally, so we must promote more inclusive food trends and movements – and

preferably, of course, ones that don’t further stigmatize birth control and reproductive healthcare.