Recently, I had lunch with a woman whose capacity for packing away calories surpassed all expectation. This colleague is pin-thin, all jutting collarbones and hollow cheeks, with hands so bony, I feared they would fracture under the pressure of plastering butter onto her sourdough bread. “I’m just one of those people who can eat what they like,” she said, tucking into a gorgonzola tartlet with a side order of triple-cooked chips. “And I eat like a horse.” But can a woman in her mid-thirties really stay that slim without monitoring what goes in? I suspected that she was, in fact, suffering from a complaint one Hollywood publicist, Jeremy Walker, has dubbed Dipe: “documented instance of public eating”. A favourite among some celebrities, Dipe has simple rules: a sylphlike woman astounds her dining companions by consuming a meal that would satisfy a truck driver, in an effort to convince them that she doesn’t control what she eats. Of course, celebrities might just be among those lucky women who are naturally thin, but they are certainly keen to advertise their love of food. Take Cameron Diaz, for example, who declared that her biggest weakness is for burgers, adding that: “If you put a bowl of fries near me, then it’s over.”
Then there’s Victoria Beckham’s passion for crisps, and Beyoncé Knowles’s appetite for butter pecan ice cream. We’re not suggesting these celebs are dishonest about their eating habits, but their public love of food seems to have inspired the growth of Dipe everywhere from chic eateries to fast-food outlets. I have friends who are clearly verging into Dipe territory with their eating habits. One, in particular, exhibited such steely self-control about what was permitted to pass her lips that, for years, I left our coffee dates riddled with guilt about my lack of willpower. I would order my staple, an almond croissant and a latte, while she would pass, opting for an americano with no sugar or milk. Last time we met, her hip bones were still evident beneath her dress, yet she devoured a cheese and ham panino, claiming “life’s too short” to worry about the pounds.
Why do it? Why go to such lengths to disguise the fact that being thin takes effort, and that, for six days out of seven, it entails subsisting on a diet of little more than edamame beans and green tea? For most of us, of course, food dishonesty centres on lying sometimes (mostly to ourselves), not about how little we have eaten, but how much. It is difficult to conceive that some women choose to conceal their drastic calorie control in public with a seeming indifference towards their intake. Yet, increasingly, they do, says Dr Christy Fergusson, a food psychologist in Glasgow. She suspects the women who practise Dipe have woken up to the idea that strict dietary control is not an appealing image. “There are a lot of emotions tied into our behaviour with food,” Fergusson says. “Men like women to eat and women are threatened by other women who constantly diet. Eating normally in public sends the message that they are not uptight or self-obsessed.”
Dipe women are not bulimics who purge their intake later; rather, they are fuelled, Fergusson says, by the stigma attached to the size-zero stereotype. “Celebrities are criticised for being too thin, which is probably why there has been this backlash,” she says. “Serious dieting has become deeply unfashionable.” Bumble Ward, a British writer based in Los Angeles, who has worked as a publicist for Quentin Tarantino, says that actresses are under more pressure than ever to portray a wholesome image. “They’re so sure people assume they have an eating disorder that they are forced to wolf down caveman-like portions of comfort food in order to look normal,” she writes on her blog, Miss Whistle (misswhistle.blogspot.com). “Gone are the days of the black coffee and 10 Marlboro reds for lunch.”
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Dipe is about more than mere image protection; it is also a sign of the fiercest form of female competitiveness. A Dipe woman has the figure we all crave, and she knows it. By overeating in public, she is encouraging others to do the same, safe in the knowledge that she will undo the damage to her calorie balance in the days ahead. She wants us to think she looks that way by eating what she likes, when really she is lulling us into a false and thigh-threatening sense of security.
That’s the thing about Dipe women: they pretend they’re normal, but their eating habits are anything but. Their love of calories is temporary, ending as soon as you part company. They consume food to instil envy and to prompt you to fall off the dieting wagon. Don’t be deceived by this ruse.