An old rule, when there were fish

Or, how Moana can help us navigate our diet-obsessed families this holiday season

Heading into the December holiday season, I wish you two things:

First, that somehow, some way, even without the contributions of Lin-Manuel Miranda (a tall order!) the recently released Moana 2 brings your family all same the joy of past Disney classics this holiday season.

And second, if you are spending the holidays with diet-oriented relatives this year, I wish you the patience and strength you’ll need to protect your own peace while still offering your family grace for the life circumstances that likely contributed to their diet mentalities in the first place.

I’ve seen the OG Moana more times than I can count. And as with all of Disney’s best movies—which I think we can all agree are written for adults just as much as they are for children—every time I see it, I gain even more from the storyline.

I think most of us would agree that OG Moana’s message is about creating space for individuality and family obligations to exist together.

But watching it again with my girls in anticipation of Moana 2, I began to recognize a more subtle theme. Like most Disney princesses (and teenagers, for that matter) Moana is a girl who dreams of adventure in the great wide open. But long gone are the days of Disney princesses who marry a prince and jump ship on their families of origin, thankfully. Throughout the film we see her dedication to her family and her culture, even despite her family’s insistence that she quench her personal desires for the benefit of the community.

In the movie’s final scene, Moana returns to her (still alive, yay!) parents, having successfully defied them and pursued the adventure she’s always desired while simultaneously demonstrating an unshakable commitment to her family’s well-being.

I think the reason we find the film so heartwarming and cathartic is that Moana manages to achieve what most adult women I know want so desperately, but find so difficult to navigate.

She tells her parents, her father in this case, right to his face, that the rules he’s been so dedicated to following throughout the course of his leadership are no longer serving their family and community.

Moana: What if... we fished beyond the reef?
Chief Tui: No one goes beyond the reef.
Moana: I know. But if there are no fish in the lagoon...
Chief Tui: Moana...
Moana: And there's a whole ocean...
Chief Tui: We have one rule.
Moana: An old rule, when there were fish!
Chief Tui: A rule that keeps us safe!
Moana: But Dad!
Chief Tui: Instead of endangering our people so you can run right back to the water! Every time I think you're past this. No one goes beyond the reef!

Shortly after, she takes off on her own, following her heart’s desire while proving that her leadership instincts were right all along: What was best for the success of the village was going beyond the reef.

How many of you reading would love to state with conviction to your parents, “Dieting doesn’t work! Your obsession with food and bodies harmed me, it’s harming the entire world, and I won’t let it harm my kids!” How great would it be to go off and raise your kids in the way you believe to be best, knowing that all food is good food, accepting and loving whatever body they’re destined to be in, watching them thrive in a way you never did…

…And to return home to your parents accepting, understanding, loving arms?

I know that so many of you are actively doing the part about teaching that all foods and all bodies are good.

It’s the bit about your parents understanding your choices, even recognizing that, indeed, you’ve been right all along that seems like a fantasy reserved for film.

I don’t have any advice on helping your family members come around, unfortunately. In the real world, when people spend so much of their lives committed to certain rules and ways of being, the introspection it would take to evaluate whether it’s all been in vain is just too painful for most people to handle, and I hold a lot of space for that.

But what I can offer is hopefully some understanding of where your parents are coming from. After Moana’s father storms off, we see a conversation with her mother:

Moana: I didn't say "go beyond the reef" because I want to be on the ocean.
Sina: But you still do. He's hard on you, because...
Moana: Because he doesn't get me.
Sina: Because he was you. Drawn to the ocean. Down by the shore. He took a canoe, Moana. He crossed the reef and found an unforgiving sea. Waves like mountains. His best friend begged to be on that boat. He couldn't save him. He's hoping he can save you.

It’s not that your family members “don’t get you” (although that’s probably also true) It’s that the human drive for safety—both for ourselves, but perhaps more importantly, for our children—is an undercurrent that informs every choice we make.

We see Chief Tui constantly plucking Moana away from the ocean not because he wants to stifle the joy and freedom she sees in it, but because he has firsthand experience in how badly it could harm her.

What kind of village chief, or father for that matter, would he be if he cannot stop her from making choices he knows firsthand could cause her harm?

He does the best he can with what he has. His commitment to keeping his villagers from going beyond the reef stems from the exact same drive Moana has to sail beyond it—providing for the village’s needs and keeping everyone safe.

[Cheif Tui’s] commitment to keeping his villagers from going beyond the reef stems from the exact same drive Moana has to sail beyond it.

While it’s likely not front-of-mind for most of us, our entire society is structured around thinness and health (along with whiteness, heterosexuality, able-bodiedness, etc.) equating to safety.

sylviaduckworth

A post shared by @sylviaduckworth

Many of our mothers learned they’d never find a husband without the tireless pursuit of beauty and thinness. They learned that a fat body indicated an insatiable appetite, an individual who could not or would not conform to the patriarchal standards of sacrifice and submission necessary to secure safety under a man’s care. If your family is white, they learned that fatness erodes our privilege (read: safety) and if they’re BIPOC they learned that the pursuit of thinness is one of the few seemingly attainable ways to achieve greater power and status.

Times have changed a bit (we can get our own credit cards and mortgages now, whoop whoop) but it was true then and remains true today that the larger our bodies, the less likely we are to have our health concerns taken seriously, to advance in the workplace or to escape social isolation. We are more likely to experience bullying, harassment and assault in larger bodies and we are indeed more likely to experience poor health outcomes, not necessarily because of the weight itself but because of the documented health consequences of existing in a world so hostile to fatness.

Though they rarely vocalize it in such direct terms, thinness and “healthy” eating (or at least the performance of it) is safety to the generation that raised us. I doubt it’s front-of-mind to any of our relatives prodding about when we’ll lose the baby weight or side-eying our child’s second helping of dessert, but deep down I think these statements are rooted in the belief of, “I just want you to be safe.”

And I don’t blame any individual for that. Blame the societal structures that got us here, absolutely, but per Maslow’s Hierarchy, on an individual level safety is just one notch above food, water and air in terms of how we prioritize our needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy, via SimplePsychology.org

I’m not saying we should give our relatives’ diet talk a pass just because times were different for them. Draw boundaries to protect your peace and call out oppressive statements for what they truly are when you hear them, absolutely.

But let’s remember that as far as they’re concerned, the pursuit of the thin ideal worked. Well, it definitely never worked, but it “worked” so long as we ignored the chronic distress and documented health consequences of a disordered relationship with food, so long as we kept the prevalence of eating disorders hush-hush, so long as we could maintain the façade that fatness was a direct path to poor health, so long as the masses remained unaware that our preference for thin bodies is a direct expression of anti-blackness and furthers the oppression of social groups with the fewest resources.

But now, with more and more people recognizing the racism and oppression inherent to diet culture...we’ve realized that there aren’t any fish. Well, a lot of people certainly think there are still fish, or that even in the clear absence of fish, that there must exist some other solution to provide sustenance without going beyond the reef...somehow having our thin ideal while rejecting diet culture and its harms, too.

Spoiler alert...that’s not a thing. But we want it so badly to be a thing because forging a completely new path (“into the unknown,” if you will 😉) is scary as hell. And most of our parents—and plenty of people in younger generations, too—just don’t have the resources to do it.

After Moana’s mother shares where Chief Tui is coming from in the hopes of offering Moana solace, she shares one more insight:

Sina: Sometimes, who we wish we were, what we wish we can do is just not meant to be.

This is too early in the movie to be read as truth, of course. With this being the last line before Moana launches into the movie’s requisite “I Want” song, “How Far I’ll Go” and takes off beyond the reef, this dialogue sets up exactly what Moana’s journey will challenge and disprove.

I hear my own mother’s laments in Sina’s statement. I hear, “This world was not built for us (women) to safely pursue our desires and true well-being. I’ve sacrificed to keep myself and my family safe, and while you may not understand it now, soon you will make peace with this reality too.”

But that wouldn’t make for a very inspiring movie, and it certainly wouldn’t pass Disney’s modern-day empowerment sniff test. As Moana sets off across the ocean, we see that despite their constant warnings, Sina and Chief Tui didn’t actually raise a daughter who would accept Sina’s lament as fact.

My favorite line from the movie is in the reprise of the “I Want” song. Right before the film’s climax, Moana realizes she hasn’t been called to explore the world beyond the reef by some alluring, external force that exists beyond her family’s wisdom and traditions:

“The call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me, just like the tide always falling and rising.”

May you have faith this holiday season that whether they know it or not, your parents positioned you to break the cycle of food and body shame they inherited, to “go beyond the reef” and explore a world where you are not constrained by the size of your body or the nature of your appetite. They did their best with the circumstances and culture they were born into, but however your parents raised you, if you are reading this essay, if you are following the work of anti-diet creators and questioning whether you want your children to experience the same tumultuous relationship with food and body that you’ve had…

You, my friend, have something in common with modern-day Disney heroines. You’re a cycle breaker. You are about to burst out into your own “I Want” song. May you seek and find all the fulfillment that lies beyond a life of food and body shame, both for yourself and your kids. And may you offer your parents and anyone else in your life who’s not ready to burst into song right along with you compassion rooted in the knowledge that you’re both after the same goals—safety, belonging—you just have a very different idea of how to get there.

I do wish they’d meet your attempts with understanding, loving arms, a la Disney’s happy ending. Maybe a few of them will, having finally realized there’s no sustenance, no true belonging, no self-actualization in a world that prioritizes certain bodies over others.

Most won’t, I’m afraid. But don’t let it stop you from embarking on your own journey. Just tell ‘em to keep their food and body comments to themselves this year.

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