Despite all the progress we’ve seemingly made over the years, “before” and “after” photos maintain their strong grip over our idea of what personal change looks like
Photo-Illustration: Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty Images I’ve spent most of my life obsessing over my body. The summer I turned 15, I lost a lot of weight. As part of my plan to keep it off, I subscribed to Men’s Health, hoping it held the secret to staying in shape. One section in particular stood out, “Weight-Loss Transformations,” which featured readers’ experiences of getting into shape with help from the magazine’s workout programs, complete with “before” and “after” photos.
“They promote this idea that one type of body is superior to another,” explains Alexis Conason, a psychologist and author of The Diet-Free Revolution, “and that the ‘before’ body is bad or not good enough, and the ‘after’ body is what we should all aspire to.” “Before” and “after” photos imply that “after” is the end, but in reality, this is rarely the case. Weight is hard to take off — and harder to keep off; about 80 percent of people who lose weight regain it within a year.
Conason recommends being deliberate about the accounts you follow, reporting those that encourage disordered eating. But maintaining control over your feed is immensely difficult. On Facebook, where the algorithm encourages interaction, if you comment on a video documenting weight loss — or even hover over one for too long — chances are Facebook will spam you with similar videos every time you log on.
Celebrity weight-loss and weight-gain narratives remain evergreen fixations — just ask Adele or Rebel Wilson or Oprah — and are becoming prominent in the sports world, in which basketball commentators have routinely mocked Zion Williamson and James Harden for putting on weight. Will Smith recently released a YouTube series called Best Shape of My Life, in which he attempts to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks.
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