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to Issue #7I was happy to see the full-page articcle by Holly Keyes focusing on Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and specifically on anorexia and bulimia. She clearly did a lot of research for the article, as it was informative and well-written. I wish not to critique her work, only to add to it.
Truly, anorexia and bulimia are direct products of our patriarchal Western fat-phobic culture. Aside from personal expreiences of mental, physical and sexual abuse, all women in our culture are affected by the fear and hatred of fat, evident in all popular media. It is inescapable, surrounding us externally and being subsequently internalised by us all.
It is socially acceptable to hate fat, and by extension to hate fat people.
"Fat" is still used as a general pejorative, and is still a source of cruel jokes and discrimination. This discrimination against 'fat' people is institutionalised; women who are not size 3-12 have to go to 'specialty' stores to buy clothing, and have to pay a lot more for our clothing than do thin people.
This centering of thinness acts to normalise a certain socially constructed size range, which is not only limited but also virtually unattainable for many of us.
In fact, 40 per cent of women in B.C. are a size 16 or above. This points to the fallacy of 'normal' sizes -- in fact, it is more 'normal' for a woman to be on the large end of the size scale.
However, the marginalising of these sizes into specialty stores, which are few and (geographically) far between, act to further center unrealistic body types.
Keyes is correct in her assertion that anorexia is characterised by "an obsessiveness about avoiding food and losing weight. Obsessing about food and the avoidance of consuming it ... counting calories and worrying ... (and) a distorted body image." However, most women in our culture exhibit these characteristics in relation to food. Virtually no woman in our culture has never worried about food/weight, and all of us are warned about the perils of gaining weight. Weight reducing diets are the common diet of many women who are not 'overweight' by our culture's standards, and I consider any diet that denies a person food when they are hungry to be a disorder. Thus, Weight Watchers is on one end of the eating disorder continuum, anorexia on the other.
Finally, while it is true that women with eating disorders must deal with emotional issues, and learn to love themselves the way they are, we must all work to end this institutionalised fat-phobia. Women do not learn to hate themselves in a vacuum.
We learn it every time we can't buy clothing that fits us, every time we watch TV, and virtually every time we leave the house. Every time someone buys a 'diet' food product, the fat-phobic diet industry is supported in its oppression of women. While I have done extensive emotional work over the past few years to unlearn my intense self-hatred because of my size, I am reminded that I am not 'acceptable' every time I leave the house. I have internalised the fat-phobic values of my culture, but these do not exist only in my head -- they are very real and prevalent. Family members remind me of my 'unacceptable' body size, advertisements urge me to conform to unrealistic body types, and even feminists oppress me by refusing to unlearn their own intense fear and hatred of fat. Notice that most of the workshops on eating disorders, and most of the media about eating disorders, are represented by women who are thin. This tells me that having an eating disorder is socially unacceptable, but being fat is more so.
Finally, (really!) I must remind the reader that not all fat people have eating disorders, nor do we all eat 'excessively.' I am fat, and I no longer have an eating disorder. I made a choice between bulimia and fatness; I am glad I chose fatness. My relationship with food is much healthier than many thin people's that I know. I don't binge or purge, like most people on weight reducing diets routinely do (since not eating when you are hungry is a type of purging, and being 'on a diet' necessarily denotes a time when you will be off that diet,) and I eat much healthier than I did as a thin teenager. And although I have done all this personal work around food and body image, the fight continues every day. We all need to battle the institutionalisation of fat-phobia that is a part of our patriarchal Western culture. Until all of us are free of oppression, none of us are.
Jill Beamish