Being part sixteen of the Live-Blogging Feminism For Real series. For the rest of the series, click on the series tag. For a full explanation of the series, see part one.
This week’s installment in Feminism For Real branches out into new territory for the anthology — the relationship of feminist theory and eating disorder treatment. ”To me, the notion of being a feminist with an eating disorder seemed contradictory,” writes Cassandra Polyzou (127). Polyzou recounts her experience as a self-identified feminist who also struggles with disordered eating, calling on feminists to move beyond theoretical analysis of beauty standards toward a “more caring attitude” toward individuals who suffer from eating disorders and often feel judged by feminists for being “weak” or “bad” feminists.
FEMINISM AND EATING DISORDERS: WISHFUL THINKING FOR A MORE CARING ATTITUDE by Cassandra Polyzou (pp. 127-133)
p. 127 – “It took me three years since fully recognizing my disorder to be able to consider myself a feminist again and to stop expecting the feminist ‘police’ to call me out as a fake.” I’m always fascinated by what individual people perceive to be personal experiences that disqualify them from feminist politics. While I draw a great deal of strength from feminist theory to oppose toxic beauty standards, it seems embedded in the feminist insight that “the personal is political” that we — feminists too! — are all in some measure shaped by the world around us in ways not completely in our conscious control. Just as people who suffer from depression are not in control of their brain chemistry and can’t just “feel better” when they want to, so too eating disorder suffers — and those of us with more low-level disordered eating — can’t just turn it off with a switch just because it’s irrational or unhealthy or makes us feel like crap. Why would these experiences disqualify us from embracing feminist politics? Yet almost every woman I know — feminist-identified or not — has a list of behaviors they believe will cause the “feminist police” to take their membership card away.
p. 128 – “I was not surprised to see that there is limited mention of feminism in eating disorder journals. Likewise, not very much is being written about eating disorders in feminist journals.” This really surprised me, actually, on both counts. Since virtually all my exposure to thinking about body issues and disordered eating has come in women’s studies and feminist texts and discussions (on and offline), I assumed — wrongly, I guess — that the field of eating disorder treatment would be filled with professionals who in some measure were influenced by feminist thinking.
p. 130 – “To be clear, not every feminist I know hates on anorexics, but I have lost count of the times I have heard disrespectful comments made about skinny women or about people who restrict their food, or jokes about pretty women puking up their dinner.” This makes me think of Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters (2007), in which she calls upon all of us to stop judging other peoples’ bodies as a major step forward in self-acceptance. In my experience, the pejorative comments that women make about each others’ appearance are passive-aggressively about their own body insecurities. Whether or not we excuse our judgyness by (mis)labeling it feminist criticism, it’s profoundly un-feminist in that it is assessing the women around us (and ourselves) by their relation to mainstream norms of beauty. I would argue that the most radical everyday practice a self-identified feminist could undertake as a way of changing herself (or himself) and the culture, is to as much as possible stop judging other peoples’ clothing choices, eating habits, grooming decisions, gender presentation, or supposed relative beauty. We can (and should) just step off onto a third rail and think about people along alternate vectors of worthiness, beginning with the fundamental assumption that everyone is beautiful and deserves to be supported as a body (of whatever ableness) in the world. In short:
p. 133 – “I would wish for … a kinder feminism. One that considers … individuals as unique, flawed, and beautiful, and takes a step out of the classroom and non-profit organization and into every person’s life.”
Harpies: What has your own experience been of the intersection between feminism and embodiment? Feminism and food choices? Feminism and beauty image? What (if any) feminist theory and practice has helped you grapple with the mainstream pressures that encourage disordered eating and narrow standards of bodily acceptability? What feminist theories or practices haven’t been so helpful (or even been detrimental)?
Join me next Tuesday for an excerpt from Peggy Cooke’s poem “My Secret” (pp. 135-136).
The bad first – I am someone who has sometimes feared herself disqualified as a feminist because of various personal experiences, and I think sometimes feminism can argue with itself from two extremes on weight – either that it shouldn’t matter at all on any level and anyone who possesses a set of scales must hate themselves completely, or else weight matters but it’s all about health; a good feminist respects herself and cares about her health, therefore she cares about her weight. Both these extremes are problematic, and exclude an awful lot of people.
Even some Fat Acceptance Feminism is troublesome when it transfers the focus on thinness as the ideal, to a focus on health. When health stops becoming a morally neutral subject, that’s just another group of us left out in the cold.
Whereas the good, well: “I would argue that the most radical everyday practice a self-identified feminist could undertake as a way of changing herself (or himself) and the culture, is to as much as possible stop judging other peoples’ clothing choices, eating habits, grooming decisions, gender presentation, or supposed relative beauty.”
That’s the sort of feminism that helps me move forward. A lot of your posts about Feminism for Real have discussed the juxtaposition between feminism in theory and practice, and when it comes to body image stuff, I think that it’s easier to *do* things which go against the grain of the dominant image-obsessed culture than it is to try and stop *feeling* all the messages we’ve picked up.
I think that it’s easier to *do* things which go against the grain of the dominant image-obsessed culture than it is to try and stop *feeling* all the messages we’ve picked up.
Well said! I think it’s virtually impossible to ignore/avoid all the negative messages we receive about our bodies/weight/attractiveness. You’d have to live under a rock out in the forest somewhere.
For me, doing things which go against the grain usually means calling out the egregiously stupid shit, like the marketing of non-food diet food or fat-shaming ad campaigns or idealization/glorification of one kind of body type. I like to point at them and loudly say “See this bullshit? This is some bullshit right here.” I feel like it helps innoculate me against the worst of the bullshit.
I also try to keep in mind something PhDork said when we first started this blog, which was that one of the most radical feminist things we can do is NOT snark on our own bodies or eating habits. This was so key for me because I come from families where one side has relentless bodysnarkers and the others has relentless foodsnarkers (“Oh, I don’t need this piece of pie, but I’m going to be naughty and eat it anyway.”) Once I started calling out those things and refusing to participate, I felt WAY better about my own body and eating.
@The Goldfish — I agree about some feminist fat acceptance being problematic. It’s like, all of a sudden, it’s okay to be fat — but only if you’re making “good” food choices. And I want to just throw something against the wall and yell, “NO! I am a fucking amazing person and a DAMN good feminist whether I’m eating a salad or a bacon burger!”
(And using “good” and “healthy” interchangeably is also problematic. And overly simplistic.)
@Becky — I definitely agree about the inoculation. I had never phrased it like that, but reading your comment helped clarify my own intentions. When I call out bullshit, I’m not only trying to spark dialogues with other people, I’m also trying to protect myself. It’s a survival strategy in a toxic culture.
This might simply be tangentially related, but I’m also tired of how beauty is regulated in the queer community. Last week, I was having a discussion about gender identity with several LGBTQ people. One lesbian, cisgender woman was discussing gender presentation and said, “Why is it that some lesbians feel like they have to be either hot or butch?” I interrupted her to say, “Can I just point out that butch *can* be hot, and that’s a false dichotomy?”
I’m on Tumblr a lot, and I used to follow a Tumblr blog called something like “FuckYeahConsent!” that showcased photos of people engaged in consensual sex. I unfollowed after a couple of days because I realised I was feeling really shitty about my body after viewing 20 or so images of pencil-thin, model-esque people. It was supposed to be an empowering blog to highlight consent and pushback against the taboo of women owning our sexuality. Instead, it became something oppressive to me. =\
On a GOOD note, however:
The Museum of Fat Love.
When I’m feeling particularly down, I like to go through these pictures (and the accompanying stories).
“Staircase Wit” video by Joy Nash.
Watching this YouTube video gives me a +10 buff to my body image.
While I wouldn’t say that beauty standards caused my eating disorder, they certainly contributed to it. Basically I felt worthless inside, so I took drastic measures to try to make myself appear to be “worth” something on the outside. Since the relentless message girls and women receive is that your worth is determined by how you measure up to the predominant beauty standard, which includes being thin, I was hellbent on trying to measure up. Since I wasn’t conventionally attractive, I felt that being skinny was my only option.
Feminist theory helped me see through some of the bullshit. It gave me a language to use to discuss the relationship between my thoughts, feelings, behavior, and oppressive societal messages. I’ve never felt like a bad feminist for having had an eating disorder. I just felt like a woman doing things that, unfortunately, our fucked up society perpetuates. It’s almost impossible to not drink at least some of the kool aid; I apparently took a huge gulp. Feminism has helped the detox process.
As for nasty comments about skinny women, or women who restrict food… On the one hand, I understand that often comes from a desire to push back against oppressive gender expectations, and from a feeling that some women are reinforcing the damaging tropes with their behavior. However, judging someone based on their body type doesn’t move us any further beyond measuring worth by looks. And judging someone who may in fact have a very real and dangerous problem that is much deeper and more complicated than a quest to be “pretty” is fucked up. Thus, I personally try to never comment on anyone’s body at all.
Did you read Mindy Kaling’s piece in the New Yorker this week? She has a section called “The Skinny Woman Who Is Beautiful and Toned but Also Gluttonous and Disgusting.” I see this character in movies and television shows all the time and I always see women trying to emulate it. Also, it’s good to know that my family isn’t the only one who has a combination of bodysnarkers and foodsnarkers!