Food Psych #230: Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Permission to Break Free from Diet Culture with Maggie Frank-Hsu

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Marketing strategist and copywriter Maggie Frank-Hsu joins us to discuss her eating-disorder experience and recovery, how pregnancy and parenthood changed her relationship with food and her body, how contradicting societal ideals oppress women and femmes, working at a food magazine while struggling with disordered eating, giving yourself permission to live in your truth, and so much more. Plus, Christy answers a listener question about how to reconcile the idea of having “thin privilege” when you’ve been criticized about your weight by an abusive parent. 

Maggie is an email marketing strategist and copywriter who works with moms who are online entrepreneurs. She specializes in helping moms reclaim their identities separate from their children. Clients hire her when they want to increase their revenue from selling online courses and programs, and step away from having to charge by the hour for their services.

Maggie has spent her entire career seizing audiences' attention and moving them to action via the written word. She received her masters from the Columbia School of Journalism and worked in magazines in New York before transitioning to online marketing. She lives in San Diego with her husband, her two young sons, and her cantankerous Brussels griffon, Toby. Find her online at MaggieFrankHsu.com.

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We Discuss:

  • How Maggie’s parents’ relationship with food and body affected her own

  • How her first diet quickly became an eating disorder

  • Barriers to the diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders, and Maggie’s and Christy’s experiences with this issue

  • Maggie’s first steps toward recovery from her eating disorder

  • How taking pleasure in food can protect against eating disorders and aid in recovery

  • Maggie’s and Christy’s experiences working at Gourmet, and how it affected their eating-disorder recovery

  • The stereotypical “New York look”

  • How society is starting to move away from striving toward a single body ideal

  • Pregnancy and motherhood, and how it affected Maggie’s sense of identity and her relationship with food and body

  • Her introduction to intuitive eating

  • Societal ideals, and how expectations often contradict each other

  • The many ways in which women and femmes are oppressed

  • Choosing to live according to your own values, as opposed to societal expectations

  • Giving ourselves permission to live in and express our truth

  • What led Maggie to do the work that she does today

  • The unrealistic pressure on moms to make motherhood their whole life

  • Taking risks to stand for the things we truly believe

Resources Mentioned

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Listener Question of the Week

What are some of the nuances when it comes to defining thin privilege, and other forms of privilege? Does a person still have thin privilege when they have been abused for being in a smaller body? What are the three levels of fatphobia? Can people with thin privilege still experience fatphobia? Can a person have thin privilege even if they don’t “feel” thin? What are some other examples of unearned privileges in the context of social justice?

Resources Mentioned: 

 
Christy HarrisonEating disorders, eating-disorder recovery, pleasure, ideals, privilege, pregnancy, motherhood, feminism, patriarchy, diet culture, oppression, intuitive eating, permission, truth, risk, thin privilege, fatphobia, anti-diet, S720