Hadley Freeman: Detox is a Thin Disguise

Nobody is on a diet any more. In the late 80s, the phrase "going on a diet" came as easily to the lips as a piece of Ryvita. But the word has become tacky, as laughably anachronistic as a prawn cocktail (and, of course, we'd never eat a Ryvita - way too high in carbohydrates.)

How did dieting become so unfashionable? After the handwringing in the 90s about the dangers of too-thin models, to say you were dieting risked incurring accusations of setting a bad example. Far from being an indicator of sophistication, it looked more like you were a victim of media fascism. The fact that Peter Foster once touted "diet pills" makes Cherie Blair look even more gullible. Property scams we can understand. But diet pills, Cherie? Come on!

Perhaps most importantly, however, the word "diet" now seems redolent of failure. Television programmes such as Diet Another Day and Whatever Happened to the Slimmers of the Year? hinge on our collective awareness that diets don't work: see people talk about being a size 22; watch as they complain about hunger pains and reach for the Hob Nobs; smirk as they return to their normal weight, and then some!

But people still want to be thin. Which is why this month, according to every glossy magazine, we should have been detoxing.

A detox is not just a diet with an holistic hat on, but with a very hypocritical one, too. Anyone who says they are doing Pilates to improve their posture is likely to be kidding themselves, just like many of those who claim to have wheat, dairy and glucose intolerances. (And yes, I realise there are people who need to straighten their spines or can't digest milk, but these unfortunate few would probably concede they were not the people one celebrity magazine was thinking of when it recently described the organic food store Fresh and Wild as "the best place in town to star-spot the most beautiful and trendy celebs".)

Detoxing has become a cheater's way round dieting's problematic image. It is as though, being denied our food-obsessive inclinations, we've had to find a different way to vent them. Last week, I came across a detox plan (price £35) in which you had to substitute two meals a day with a sugary drink. Now, if anyone can explain to me how this differs from a Slim-Fast Plan (price approximately £6.49), please do explain.

There is nothing wrong with saying that you want to lose a little weight. But to deny that this is the whole point of your new detox plan, as opposed to just a fortunate side-effect, normalises the pursuit of weight loss to an extent that even Jane Fonda never accomplished.

Contrary to what its name suggests, detoxing, as we know it now, is a lifestyle, not just a temporary measure. Some restaurants in New York have stopped even bothering with the bread basket because the sudden outbreak of "carb-intolerance" among their patrons has rendered it, in the words of one maître d', "irrelevant to our business".

Detoxing also has a snob element that a diet doesn't: it costs money to cleanse your system, whereas just cutting out chocolate and buying a bucket of cabbage soup does not. To have a loaf of gluten-free bread (average price, £2.15, small size) and a packet of wheat-free pasta (£2.95) in your cupboard is as much a statement of personal wealth and self-love as having Versace in your wardrobe and your manicurist on speed dial.

But most of all, detoxing suggests something far more extreme than mere dieting, and has more aspirational poster girls. If the figurehead for dieting was Rosemary Conley in her leotard doing some gentle stretches, then detoxing has an anaemic-looking Gwyneth Paltrow toting her macrobiotic food around Kilburn.

When Fonda started interrupting her hi-impact aerobic lessons to stick her head down the toilet and models began passing out on fashion shoots with a little too much regularity, the media started to shy away from promoting diets too fiercely. It all looked a bit too maniacal, a bit too weirdly masochistic. But instead we have turned to something with precisely the same motivations behind it, but which is far more hypocritical and evangelical. Not for the first time, the diet industry has shown that, with its inclination towards extremes, we end up working against ourselves.

Somehow it seems unlikely that barking on about a wheat allergy while rushing between ashtanga yoga classes and shuddering away from the bread basket was quite the freedom from body fascism that we once envisaged.

· Hadley Freeman is the Guardian's assistant fashion editor