As we’ve settled into January, it’s become clear why it’s dubbed ‘diet month’. Newspapers and magazines are full of the ‘New Year, New You, New Body’ clichés. The solution to an improved, ‘more healthy’ you is a lifestyle change that involves losing weight. Looking at the poster girls for ‘healthiness’, ‘health’ looks like a defined pair of biceps, a chiselled set of abs, and a keyhole thigh-gap flanked by solid quads. In other words: an absence of body fat. Is that really ‘healthy’? ‘Health’ should not just be about physical wellbeing.

Discussions of mental health, particularly with regards to body image, and eating disorders are extremely important. There’s an awful lot we don’t know about eating disorders. Evidence suggests that 1.6m people in the UK suffer from them and that 89 per cent of those people are female (National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence). Fashion magazines have long been criticised for an unhealthy emphasis on one’s appearance, and in 2012 a coroner even blamed the fashion industry for the suicide of a schoolgirl who had been suffering from bulimia. Conversely, health and lifestyle magazines have rarely been condemned for promoting negative mental wellbeing because this would be utterly paradoxical. But just because they champion that simple five-letter word in their titles, does that mean they are actually endorsing it? 

The virtual world of social media is also revealing. If you type #thinspo into Instagram’s search engine, it’ll yield no results. If, however, you type in #fitspo, you’ll find over 15 million. ‘Thinspiration’ is the online glorification of thinness and eating disorders. ‘Fitspiration’ is apparently the ‘healthy’ version. But the fact that the demise of the former and the rise of the latter was simultaneous suggests that we are dealing with a Lernaean Hydra which is not something that can be easily censored. Fitspo perpetuates the same trends as thinspo because of its excessively meritocratic mentality. Supposedly, if you can work hard enough, then you’re entitled to feel good. If you can’t, you deserve to feel like a failure. In comparison to thinspo, it’s argued that fitspo encourages a healthier body image because it doesn’t focus on low BMIs. But by placing excessive emphasis on having low body fat and eating ‘clean’ foods, fitspo can encourage similar unhealthy thoughts and behaviours as thinspo.

A disorder has recently been identified by the chair of the British Dietetics Association, Ursula Philpot known as ‘orthorexia’ – the unhealthy obsession with eating only ‘clean’ foods. Essentially, the disorder does not necessarily cause the sufferer to be physically malnourished because they don’t obsess about controlling food quantity but rather food quality.  Researchers have shown that social problems and mental rigidity are more obvious dilemmas. If orthorexia were a recognised disorder like anorexia, fitspo would probably be censored like thinspo. But it isn’t, because ‘healthiness’ is terminologically imbued with positivity. It seems though that ‘healthiness’ has taken on a far too narrow definition because it has been constructed against an equally narrow conception of ‘unhealthiness’. We cannot deny that obesity is a problem in the UK; 23.1 per cent of the population is obese. However, cultural anxiety over this issue has fostered  perception of health into dichotomous categories of ‘fat’/’thin’, ’guilty pleasures’/‘clean foods’ and ‘unhealthy’/’healthy’.

We now have a discourse of health which has lost one of its oldest adages, the ‘healthy balance’. Essentially, the ‘healthy’ ideal presented in the media is aesthetically attractive by today’s beauty standards, and wrongly conflates ‘healthy’ with ‘thin’. This aesthetic is created and primarily driven by the beauty and fashion industries so that ‘healthy’ is synonymous with ‘skinny’. If, however, health was perceived more broadly as a spectrum rather than black and white categories, which incorporated mental as well as physical wellbeing, we might be able to shift the construction of the healthy ideal into a more achievable place. There should not be a definitive depiction of health. Humans come in all different shapes and sizes and we need to celebrate diversity and broaden our perception of health.

Whilst some may have used the vac to detox on debauchery, mine instead pleasantly supplied a collection of disasters which aided me in my constant journey closer to becoming a parody. This involves interpreting the whole ‘sitting by the fire’ Christmas vibe in a hip and nouveau way by accidentally managing to set alight two items of my clothing at a party, with a single tea light.

Constantly running from those damned dignity police, I am thus happy to head back to Oxford. But first, I have a deadline. Because, yep. You are subjected to me once again, and all the pain that comes with it. I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not. At least you don’t have to BE me. And so I begin to discuss my last week. Must. Appear. Cool. And. Edgy.

The problem? In my last week or so, the friends who haven’t already moved on from Base-Camp to cooler places, stream back to their respective unis. I wave my handkerchief sadly, and return to my posh and non-edgy work establishment. To the burn of 8am-until-finish shifts and a boss who hates me (though, on requesting work for January, I am told, “We would LOVE to have you back, sweetie.” The email gives off  such strong undertones of sickly bullshit that I throw up a little in my mouth.)

The objective and unquestionable hate began sadly on my first shift last April. On learning that I am at Oxford, she turns her head sharply away. It turns out she was at Brookes. I learn too that her husband left her for her best friend (do I look like her best friend??). The psychoanalysis is exhausting. Fellow workers laugh in bemusement at the way she treats me, demanding me to unveil the grand reason why. I woefully sigh. If only I knew.

But finally – my last shift. My mind is kind and nudges me. I remember that I’m not delving into hell for the, err, hell of it. I’m getting money! I imagine $$$ swirling like snowflakes (admittedly, it’d be more useful if they were £££, but that wouldn’t be so cool, bae). The week’s payslips arrive. Work Friend nervously sifts through the envelope, and then bites her lip. “I don’t think you’ve been put back on the payroll.” I wade on. As the shift draws to a close she hands me a discarded £6.20. “She may eventually pay you, but you’ll never get your tips.” I clutch the money tightly in my hand. When I unclench, an angry 20p-induced dent remains.

Having reviewed a few bars by this point, I wanted to start the term off with a bang and so I decided to review the most frequented of all: Balliol. Balliol is in many ways the college bar to which every other is compared and every Crazy Tuesday it’s completely full.  With this in mind, I took my college daughter on a Tuesday so she could experience this rite of passage.

The first thing I must say about Balliol is that it isn’t particularly well-designed. The ceiling is too low, there aren’t enough toilets, it’s kind of grotty, and if you didn’t manage to nab that table early, there’s no hope of sitting down. The drawings on the wall of famous Balliolites are kind of take-them-or-leave them (I leave them) and the pool table is a nice touch but if it’s a busy night then it’s unlikely you’ll be able to play. It kind of seems like Balliol designed the bar for significantly fewer people and then became a victim of its own success when the crowds started showing up en masse.

However, the signature drinks are still fun (even if they do run out of the Balliol Blue all the time) and it is a fun place to be. The selection of alcohol is very impressive and it’s of course very very cheap here too. My beer was well-pulled and the bartenders are nice, if a little overworked and everybody seems to be in a relatively good mood. I’ve never been to Balliol bar and had a truly shitty time. The fact that it’s so central means bar-hopping is easy and if you’re there with someone who’s dull as fuck you can always ditch them easily.

But then other people can be slightly standoffish and people don’t chat unless they’re wasted which can make it an oddly lonely experience, especially if you’re relatively sober (as I was that night). The most social place to be is often smoking outside but unfortunately no one here is that sociable either, and everyone seems to be smoking alone (where’s the fun in that?).

In my mind, going to Balliol bar is as much an ‘Oxford Moment’ as matriculation or punting and this means it’s incredibly difficult to really give this bar a rating. It has its issues (overcrowding, claustrophobic-ness) but in the end it manages to get a very good blend of location, price, and atmosphere. So, to be honest, it is fair enough that this is the college bar to which every other bar is compared, but that still doesn’t mean that it’s the best bar in Oxford. My feeling about Balliol bar is that it attempts to be a typical student bar in a place which doesn’t really offer the typical student experience which is why it has become so successful. Unfortunately this has meant that it’s become slightly clichéd and slightly uncool. I personally feel that this really has become a place which is just for freshers, which was fine for my daughter but I really felt too old.

★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

In case you didn’t know, this comic-book themed diner offers you a free burger on your birthday, provided that you prove it with ID. Since it was my birthday I begrudgingly allowed my friend to talk me into having my birthday party here. Neither a fan of burgers nor comics, I had never been enticed to go in until I found out about this deal, especially given its slightly tacky exterior.

I was more than happy to see that the menu was varied (down to what you want your burger to be made out of, and whether you’d like malt added to your milkshake). They served us with smiles on their faces and in their voices, and spread around the good cheer. When we showed up on the night, we were immediately welcomed and shown to our table at the back of the room, below the TV screen that was showing old music videos on loop. Stepping inside, you feel like you’ve entered a cartoon world – even our table was bright and multi-coloured. Drinks followed shortly afterwards (apart from the one that they had overlooked), in milk bottles and they were creamy, frothy, cold, and bursting with flavour. Adding malt is free, so a friend and I had malted shakes for the same price as my other friends who had normal shakes (i.e. £3.25).

As for the burgers, the clean plates said it all. Juicy meat, with a light burger bun that was crucially not greasy (though they were prepared and gave us extra napkins), with generous fillings. To give you an idea of the prices, they range from £8.25 to £10.95 and you can “go Atomic” with any of the burgers, i.e. double their size. The sides were superb too – crispy thin fries, potato or sweet potato came with the burger. You can also order onion rings, extra toppings on your fries, and salads.

Understandably, by the time we got to the dessert, even though we were only sharing, our extended bellies meant that we weren’t really in the mood for it. Sadly, the Wookie Cookie Sundae (£5.95, inside are oreos and a chocolate butterscotch sauce) did little to change that, but it was upstaged and partially melted by the flame from the portable ‘campfire’ we had to roast marshmallows in. I was particularly impressed by their investment in these burners, which you could use at the table for the ‘Roasty Toasty Marshmallows’ (£3.95), having not expected much (I was half expecting them to be roasted before being brought to the table) because of the dessert’s low low price.

Atomic Burger is a great place to eat with your friends, serving delicious food with good humour and in a fabulous environment. It took my friends and I on a trip down memory lane, and we felt like children again, sitting around the campfire, which was nice since I was feeling particularly old that day. This is my new restaurant of choice for an informal evening out, and should be highly  recommended for any upcoming birthday celebrants.