Thoughts on Weight Watchers’ Rebrand from a Former Preteen Member
The trouble with a leading diet company’s new image — and the climate that prompted it
I was in middle school when I attended my first Weight Watchers meeting. At the tender age of 11, I had already attended kids’ weight loss programs and fat day camps as well as kept food diaries and counted calories. I had honed my skill at eyeballing portions of food, readily spotting the difference between a one-third cup and a one-half cup of blueberries.
But despite my best efforts, my stubborn body clung to its fat. So I was at Weight Watchers.
I descended the steps of a neighborhood community center, entering a shadowy basement with low ceiling tiles and long fluorescent lights. I stood in line while a “Success Story” weighed each attendee individually, marking our weekly weight in a ledger before ushering us into the meeting room.
I was an outlier — a chubby, pink-cheeked preteen in a room full of fortysomething women. I paid close attention as they spoke, listening not only for their successes and failures but for how adult women talked about their lives. This was a coming-of-age moment. I was being ushered into womanhood through one of its most enduring aspects: the unending, thankless quest to lose weight.
