I will give you a fair warning now, I will use some harsh cursing in this post.
I appreciate the message of Marni Grossman's 2010 piece "Beating Anorexia and Gaining Feminism" but it made me want to scream a little, too. First off, the title pisses me off. I don't know why, but the particular word "beat" implies that there is a fight, which eating disorders are, but I don't think anyone wins.. ever. Kind of like 'once and addict always an addict'? My sister once told me in reference to eating disorders, "Pick a number. Stick to it. After long enough, you will be completely crazy. And you never come back from that." I think each day of recovery can be a small victory, but I don't think anyone ever fully "beats" their eating disorder. Okay, so anyway. There are lines and chunks and passages in this essay that I adore and think she hit right on the spot, like, "Brains are irrelevant. Beauty reigns supreme. The patriarchy depends on our acceptance of this myth." Beautifully stated, short and powerful. And then there are things like, "Because when you are anorexic, you're always failing." Wow, really? Eff you, too. Doesn't that support the EXACT statement I quoted before? If you have a MENTAL DISORDER that is manifested through the body, then you're a failure, period. You can't achieve shit if you're actively battling an eating disorder? Rereading it, I think I get that she didn't mean it that way; she meant, "when you're anorexic, YOU THINK you're always failing." But that's not what she wrote, and it's confusing, and it really pissed me off.
In reference to the chapter's section on Eating Disorders in general, I think a lot of things need to be made more clear, but oh well, that's just.. my opinion. One thing I think is particularly important is the point that just as overeating and purposely becoming fat can and has been used to avoid sexuality, as a kind of, "stop looking at me" thing, starving yourself into amenorrhea is sometimes done to achieve the exact same effect. Take oneself back to prepubescence, back to a childlike state, where control is not something you have. I hate this bullshit that eating disorders are all about culture and the media and teenagers' only way of having control. All of that can be true while simultaneously NONE of that can be true. Culture and media do not genetically predispose anyone (of any gender) to eating disorders - biology does that. Yes, society encourages it. Yes, the media is society's tool in encouraging it. But no, they are not culprits, they are not causes. They are enablers and justifiers and horrible, horrible reinforcers, but they are not solely responsible for eating disorders. And fuck the notion of "beating" an eating disorder as being the most political statement someone can make. Maybe it is for some people. Good for them, I'm really, honestly happy for them. Maybe some people want to recover because they just simply don't want to die. Maybe the thought, "screw you, society - I'm going to recover!" never crosses their minds. AND (last thing, I promise) the oh-so-profound theory that focusing on controlling our bodies to distract ourselves from real economic and political concerns... I will return to my response about anorexia meaning always failing. Yeah, okay. So someone who is ill, DISABLED, with an eating disorder cannot achieve anything meaningful, nor can they care or partake in real social issues? So, if you're anorexic, can you not be a feminist? That's pretty much what I'm gathering, and that's a bunch of b.s. Binaries, binaries. Everything's gotta be a black-and-white, right? Eating disorders are white privileged women's problems, and politics are white privileged men's area, right? Screw that. I do not agree, I will never agree.
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