Perpetual waiting: Analyzing dieters’ time in WW’s Instagram posts

ABSTRACT

WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers) is one of the biggest and most successful diet companies in the world, and its social media presence, showcasing the company’s mostly female clientele, is saturated with messages regarding time and temporality. Unlike many descriptions of dieters’ experiences from their own points of view, this article examines WW’s corporate perception of dieters’ time as evidenced in its Instagram publications. We argue that WW presents to its online audience a dual conception of dieters’ time, in which the present is both missing and at the same time present in hyperfocus. It is missing in that the fat body is seen as an obstruction to a life of fulfillment and happiness, as merely a step on the way to unlocking one’s true potential via thinness; it is present in hyperfocus in that the monitoring and disciplining of the body through the program’s point system requires constant vigilance and preoccupation with food and eating. Since, as the research indicates, the promise that dieting will result in a thin body is rarely realized, dieters are thus left in a cycle of dissatisfaction, an existence taken over by calculations, and a perpetual state of expectation and waiting.

KEYWORDS:

• Weight Watchers
• WW
• diet
• temporality
• Instagram

Acknowledgments

We thank our reviewrs for their insightful recommendations. We also thank Marie F. Deer, Dr. Sharon Ringel and Dr. Cat Pausé for their helpful comments given during the writing of this article.

This research was performed at the University of Haifa as part of the fulfilment of requirements for achieving a master’s degree.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Research and Markets, 2019, “The U.S. Weight Loss & Diet Control Market.” Accessed November 12 2019. https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/qm2gts/the_72_billion?w=4.

2. WW International, Inc., 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, p. 4. Accessed September 27 2020. https://corporate.ww.com/Investors/financial-investor-information/annual-reports/default.aspx.

3. “Weight Watchers Becomes WW, Reinforcing Its Mission to Focus on Overall Health and Wellbeing,” WW UK. Accessed December 18 2019. https://www.weightwatchers.com/uk/article/weight-watchers-becomes-ww-reinforcing-its-mission-focus-overall-health-and-wellbeing.

4. “U.S. News & World Report: #1 Best Diet for Weight Loss 10 Years in a Row!,” WW USA. Accessed October 4 2019. https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/best-diet-us-news-world-report.

5. “Everything You Need to Know about SmartPoints,” WW USA. Accessed August 24 2020. https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/how-it-works/smartpoints.

6. “Everything You Need to Know about SmartPoints,” WW USA. Accessed August 24 2020. https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/how-it-works/smartpoints.

7. “All about myWW™,” WW USA. Accessed August 24 2020. https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/blog/weight-loss/myww.

8. “All about myWW™,” WW USA. Accessed August 24 2020. https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/blog/weight-loss/myww.

9. “About WW,” WW USA. Accessed October 4 2019. https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/about-WW.

10. WW International, Inc., 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, p. 46. Accessed September 27 2020. https://corporate.ww.com/Investors/financial-investor-information/annual-reports/default.aspx.

11. WW International, Inc., 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, p. 47. Accessed September 27 2020. https://corporate.ww.com/Investors/financial-investor-information/annual-reports/default.aspx.

12. WW International, Inc., 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, p. 4. Accessed September 27 2020. https://corporate.ww.com/Investors/financial-investor-information/annual-reports/default.aspx.

13. WW, Instagram. Accessed September 27 2020. https://www.instagram.com/ww/.

14. Weight Watchers, 2018 Media Kit, p. 4, https://nkmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Weight-Watchers-Media-Kit-2018-1.pdf.

15. Original posts containing member information are on file with the authors.

16. WW, “[raising hand emoji] Raise your hand if this is you!” Instagram post, December 20, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B6TNERihi_A/.

17. WW, “How true?!,” Instagram post, November 24, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B5QJ5YfgasQ/.

18. WW, “[checkmark emoji] All of the above [hugs emoji],” Instagram post, November 28, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B5adGHZAZay/.

19. WW, “Because there’s nothing quite like a brand new SmartPoint Budget,” Instagram post, August 31, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B11EmC7gopd/.

20. WW, “Hey, fast eaters: [raised hand emoji] if this sounds about right!” Instagram post, July 25, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B0V6DOBFQIe/.

21. WW, “[raised hand emoji] if you ‘retrotrack’ all the time!” Instagram post, August 29, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B1v6xliATTs/.

22. WW, “[hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil emoji] TIP: Assume one B.L.T. = 1 SmartPoints value, and track it accordingly,” Instagram post, June 17, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/By0C29Qhe9v/.

23. WW, “About last night … ,” Instagram post, August 25, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B1l1XmfhpBH/.

24. WW, “#Preach. You got this!,” Instagram post, December 18, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B6N8-e_ggUa/.

25. WW, “Your next bite could be your next success,” Instagram post, August 16, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B1OcUz_A7gL/.

26. WW International, Inc., 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, p. 4. Accessed September 27 2020. https://corporate.ww.com/Investors/financial-investor-information/annual-reports/default.aspx.

27. WW, “So. True.,” Instagram post, November 13, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B4z1J7cg3_T/.

28. WW, “The time is now!,” Instagram post, August 7, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B03YCYHDmqQ/.

29. WW, “Swimsuit season, here we come!,” Instagram post, June 18, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/By2oMOkhraA/.

30. On the body positivity movement that challenges standard ideals of beauty and weight in traditional and social media, see Cohen et al. (2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation under grant No. 328/19.

Notes on contributors

Or Glicklich

Or Glicklich recently graduated from the Cultural Studies Master’s program at The University of Haifa, where she wrote her thesis on temporality and diets under the supervision of Dr. Sara Cohen Shabot. She was granted with the University’s Graduate Studies Authority scholarship for excellence in studies.

Sara Cohen Shabot

Sara Cohen Shabot is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Haifa. She has specialized in phenomenology, feminist philosophy, and philosophies of the body. Her present research and publications address feminist philosophical perspectives on childbirth and the maternal embodied subject.