The Hypocrisy of Zoe Limited: A Feminist Influencer Under Scrutiny
This article examines the content of Zoe Limited, a YouTube creator who presents herself as a feminist commentator and lifestyle influencer. While seemingly offering woke feminist commentary that criticizes diet culture and patriarchal beauty standards, a closer inspection reveals a stark contrast: Zoe Limited also promotes diet advice and weight loss strategies, creating a confusing and potentially harmful message for her audience.
The Conflicting Messages: Wokeness vs. Weight Loss
Zoe Limited's channel features videos with titles like "Women aren't allowed to be fat" and "Your body is not a trend," seemingly promoting body positivity and challenging societal beauty standards. However, interspersed within this content are videos offering diet advice, such as "10 things skinny girls don't do" and tips for achieving a "smaller waist in a week."
The creator even uses quotation marks around the word "skinny" in some titles, seemingly in an attempt to mitigate the fat-phobic undertones of her diet-focused content. This juxtaposition creates a jarring disconnect, as she simultaneously criticizes diet culture while actively participating in it. Her channel includes what appears to be a "virtual weight loss boot camp," further highlighting the contradiction.
The "Wokification" and Shifting Views
The shift towards more feminist-leaning content appears to have occurred around a year ago, coinciding with a decline in views on her diet videos and a surge in popularity for her videos addressing beauty standards. While it would be acceptable for someone to evolve and change their content over time, Zoe Limited continues to post diet videos even after adopting a feminist persona.
This results in a confusing mix of ideologies that are "forcefully stitched together." The creator has even referred to her pre-weight loss self as "fat and ugly" in all caps, further highlighting her problematic views on body image. She profits from both sides of the diet culture conversation, criticizing it while simultaneously dispensing weight loss advice.
Intermittent Fasting: Diet or Not?
Zoe Limited also attempts to distance herself from diet culture by claiming that intermittent fasting is "not a diet" and has "nothing to do with calorie restriction." She argues that simply restricting when you eat doesn't qualify as a diet.
However, this argument ignores the widely accepted definition of a diet as eating and drinking sparingly or according to prescribed rules. Insisting that intermittent fasting is not a diet appears to be an attempt to erase the discrepancy between her feminist ideals and her continued engagement in diet culture.
Hypocrisy and the "Not Like Other Girls" Persona
Zoe Limited's perceived hypocrisy extends beyond diet culture and into broader feminist issues. She criticizes "pick me girls" and "I'm not like other girls" tropes, yet her content often displays similar behaviors. For example, she criticizes girls who post "what I eat in a day" videos on TikTok, but creates similar content herself, highlighting the perceived difference between her eating habits and an "orthorexic diet".
She promotes the idea that she eats "as much as my heart pleases," but also shares protein-crazed diet tips. Her channel creates the impression that her current weight is not where her body naturally rests. It is a result of restriction, intermittent fasting, and other extreme behaviors. She comes off as someone that wants to appear as someone that is effortlessly thin.
Unearned Pretentiousness and Lack of Insight
Beyond the hypocrisy, the creator's content is often perceived as pretentious and lacking in genuine insight. She throws around buzzwords like "male gaze" without demonstrating a thorough understanding of feminist theories. She criticizes various types of women, reinforcing the very behaviors she claims to oppose.
For example, she criticizes Blackpink for wearing revealing clothes to appeal to the "male gaze," while simultaneously wearing revealing clothes herself. This demonstrates a failure to recognize her own complicity in perpetuating patriarchal beauty standards.
Concerns About Disordered Eating and Triggering Content
Some viewers have expressed concern about Zoe Limited's health and eating habits, with comments gently challenging her claims. Some Reddit users have also noted that her videos are triggering to those struggling with eating disorders, due to her consistent body checking and glorification of weight loss.
While it is not the intention to accuse the creator of having an eating disorder, the connection between her content and individuals struggling with disordered eating is concerning. This suggests that her videos could be harmful to vulnerable audiences.
Conclusion: A Call for Honesty and Self-Reflection
In conclusion, Zoe Limited's content presents a confusing and often contradictory message. While she criticizes diet culture and patriarchal beauty standards, she simultaneously promotes weight loss strategies and engages in behaviors that perpetuate these very issues. It's important for her to be honest with herself and her viewers about where she stands in terms of diet culture and misogyny. She would do well to examine her perspective.