The following article is a written adaptation of an episode of Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism, Slate’s new podcast about corporations within the information and the way they acquired there.
In 2018, Weight Watchers modified its identify to WW, two letters hooked up to the tagline “wellness that works.” It was transferring away from the factor that it appeared like the corporate was all about—weight-reduction plan. But Erika Nicole Kendall, a nutritionist, private coach, and writer, wasn’t satisfied.
“When I noticed the advert and I noticed the brand and it simply form of utterly eliminates the phrase weight altogether, it’s like, did you suppose that that was going to imply that we weren’t going to appreciate that the WW nonetheless stands for Weight Watchers?” she says. “You thought that eradicating the phrase weight was simply going to be this mind-blowing factor for all of us, and we have been simply going to really feel otherwise about this model? No. No, it’s nonetheless the identical factor. But my second thought was, lastly, the physique acceptance motion acquired a win.”
Today, the entire thought of weight-reduction plan and dropping pounds is more and more seen as unhealthy and typically misogynistic and actually simply uncool. The cult of thinness hasn’t disappeared, however the physique positivity motion has begun to chip away at it. And so WW, an organization constructed to monetize the need to shrink your bodily self by proscribing your caloric consumption, has needed to make just a few changes. “The local weather is altering,” Kendall says. “The tradition for girls is altering. The house for girls to be comfy with themselves is altering. And if you wish to proceed to choose up shoppers, it’s a must to change.”
For almost six many years, Weight Watchers has satisfied thousands and thousands of individuals it could actually assist them drop extra pounds. Unlike different diets that let you know precisely what you may and might’t eat, Weight Watchers tells you you may eat no matter you want, so long as you keep throughout the boundaries of their level system. It appears at your peak, weight, gender, and weight reduction aim, and it says this quantity—that’s what number of factors it’s best to eat in a day.
You may even drink as many zero-point objects as you want. That means just about limitless apples and celery and cups of black espresso, however it’s a must to price range for all the things else. If you need a packet of sugar in that espresso, add some extent. If you need the sugar and a splash of milk, add 2 factors. If you wish to eat a Big Mac alongside it, at 17 factors, effectively, that’s most of your allotment for the day. And if you wish to speak about why you retain ordering Big Macs and blowing by way of your allowance of factors, there are Weight Watchers franchises in cities world wide the place you may weigh in, commiserate, and share recipes and suggestions with different dieters—or at the least you possibly can earlier than the pandemic. Now they’ve gone on-line.
The science behind all of the factors and numbers has modified rather a lot through the years—the purpose system didn’t even exist when Weight Watchers was based—however the firm offered its signature mixture of flexibility, promised success, and built-in neighborhood rather well. Until it didn’t.
By the mid-2000s, lots of people have been getting uninterested in food plan tradition. They have been realizing that skipping meals would possibly assist make you skinny, however it definitely wouldn’t make you wholesome. Virginia Sole-Smith, now a contributor to the New York Times’ parenting part, used to put in writing lots of weight-reduction plan tales for teen and girls’s magazines. But she was “more and more feeling like this doesn’t add as much as a message that feels useful to individuals, largely as a result of our readers have been by no means discovering magical unicorn thinness. They have been nonetheless struggling.”
No matter what it offered, Weight Watchers was nonetheless saddled to the phrase weight.
Meanwhile, a brand new mind-set about meals was turning into mainstream, one which targeted on consuming unprocessed meals and shopping for from native farmers. “Organic meals was getting actually stylish, farmers markets,” Sole-Smith says. “There was this complete tradition solidifying round wellness.” To individuals who had spent their lives weight-reduction plan, so-called clear consuming seemed rather a lot higher than what they’d been placing their our bodies by way of. “That was a really seductive thought as a result of individuals have been sick of the maths of counting factors and counting energy. So you had what began as an environmental justice motion now turn out to be a public well being motion, however actually about making ourselves skinny.”
Weight Watchers actually suffered in these years as wellness tradition began to take form. By the autumn of 2015, the corporate had reported 10 straight quarters of declining gross sales. They knew they needed to pivot. If solely there have been one thing that would change the messaging, somebody who might convey that placing your self on a food plan was at its core about feeling and looking your greatest; it was actually about loving your self …
Enter Oprah. Toward the top of 2015, Oprah Winfrey purchased a ten % stake in Weight Watchers for $43 million. She additionally grew to become its spokesperson, proudly declaring, “I love bread.” “She makes use of physique positivity rhetoric on a regular basis when she justifies her involvement with Weight Watchers and her involvement within the food plan trade normally,” Sole-Smith says. “She all the time filters it by way of the language of self-love and being your greatest self, and she or he is saying to you, I’m wonderful, however I may very well be extra wonderful if I used to be thinner.”
Oprah was Weight Watchers’ savior. After years of declining gross sales and share costs, membership lastly grew. Around that point, the corporate unveiled a program referred to as “Beyond the Scale,” with extra holistic messaging and strategies rooted in cognitive behavioral remedy that appeared extra on pattern. But it doesn’t matter what it offered, it doesn’t matter what hoops it jumped by way of to persuade folks that it wasn’t nonetheless hyperfocused on physique measurement, Weight Watchers was nonetheless saddled to the phrase weight.
So in 2018, Weight Watchers’ new CEO, Mindy Grossman, went on the Today present and introduced that her firm was henceforth to be often called WW. The firm mentioned these two letters honored the legacy of Weight Watchers however didn’t actually stand for something particularly.
Virginia Sole-Smith didn’t purchase it. “I feel I laughed out loud as a result of it felt like such an apparent transfer, but additionally such a determined transfer,” she says. “I imply, it was each very good of Weight Watchers to say, ‘Oh, let’s model as a wellness plan, as a result of that’s what individuals actually need, and it will get us away from this complete weight reduction factor that’s gotten so controversial,’ however it was additionally unattainable. You can’t drop weight from Weight Watchers. It’s WW. Everybody who writes about it, at any time when I report on it, would say, ‘WW, the corporate previously often called Weight Watchers,’ as a result of they’re by no means going to lose that from the model.”
By the best way, this was additionally across the time Dunkin Donuts grew to become simply Dunkin. It didn’t cease promoting the doughnuts; it simply didn’t need them so entrance and middle. And that’s what WW, previously Weight Watchers, was doing right here too. It was nonetheless a food plan, however with some additional wellness bells and whistles.
“Weight Watchers isn’t promising to forestall my little one from creating diabetes. It’s promising to not have my little one be chubby.”
— Erika Nicole Kendall
Despite skepticism, the rebranding was initially successful. 2018 introduced a rally in inventory costs and substantial subscriber development. But by the next yr, all the things plummeted again to earth. And in 2020, there was extra dangerous luck exacerbated by the pandemic. There have been many canceled memberships, and the corporate introduced it needed to reduce prices. By late spring, there have been studies of mass firings over Zoom. And by way of its wellness choices, WW has thrown virtually all the things on the wall. It’s partnered with Headspace, the mindfulness meditation app. Some variations of its present plan have considerably expanded the listing of zero-point meals to incorporate issues like lean proteins and even complete grains. Its app gives on-demand health courses. It lately launched what it calls its most holistic program ever, the brand new “myWW+,” which guarantees to assist customers, sure, with their weight, but additionally with their bodily exercise, psychological well being, and sleep. And it’s tried to talk on to the pandemic by providing an internet neighborhood of coaches and fellow members on-line.
But it’s additionally completed some issues that contradict this holistic, caring picture. For occasion, it nonetheless requires periodic weigh-ins, and in the event you don’t personal a scale, it’ll promote you one. There was additionally the matter of the controversial Kurbo by WW, a color-coded weight reduction app designed for dieters ages 8 to 17 within the fashion of a visitors gentle system—inexperienced gentle for all the time OK, yellow gentle for proceed with warning, and crimson gentle for meals that ought to be eaten by your little one sparingly. “It blew up massive,” Sole-Smith says. “There was a really quick and highly effective backlash on-line from dietitians, from medical doctors, from dad and mom, from consuming dysfunction advocates, all saying that we don’t should be promoting a food plan to youngsters.”
Erika Nicole Kendall says that this advertising effort has much less to do with wholesome life for youngsters and extra to do with the anxieties of their mothers and dads: “They’re not focusing on youngsters. They’re focusing on the dad and mom. They’re focusing on us. We’re listening to, ‘Heart illness is instantly linked to weight problems, and diabetes is instantly linked to weight problems.’ And it’s like, Weight Watchers isn’t promising to forestall my little one from creating diabetes. It’s promising to not have my little one be chubby.”
You would possibly say that WW dropping the phrase weight from its identify is an indication of one thing altering for the higher, an indication that we’re studying to inform the distinction between being wholesome and being skinny. But are we actually? Every individual within the story, myself included, has skilled a lifetime of actually difficult messaging about meals and physique picture. We’ve inherited it from our households, from the food plan adverts we noticed once we have been youngsters, from the best way we’ve been handled as our our bodies have modified at totally different factors in our lives. Some of us have been placed on diets once we have been younger, earlier than we actually understood any of this, and it could actually actually screw you up. And so long as we nonetheless reside in a society that prefers individuals to be skinny, whether or not or not it all the time says so explicitly, there’ll nonetheless be enterprise for WW. But if the corporate really needs to make its clients more healthy, it’s going to should do greater than change its identify.
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