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I’d heard of Angie Jackson, the Florida mother who’s been making the news rounds since she live-tweeted her abortion last month, but it wasn’t until I saw this Slate story on Jackson’s bizarre, evangelical fundamentalist upbringing that I took the time to read further into it all.  Religious cults?  End-of-days extremists? Demonic energy purging and faith-healing?   Even the National Enquirer couldn’t make up stuff this juicy.

Aside from the obvious connection between abortion and this blog’s focus on feminism, it seems that Jackson also has some experiences with the other two F-words discussed here.  First some background:   Jackson was raised  in a conservative, evangelical household that would make Rick Warren look like a lefty liberal by comparison.  Her grandmother, a fringe Christian leader and author of Christian apocalyptic thrillers, acted as a “spiritual midwife” in “Zion home births” conducted without medicine or medical intervention (which she considered to be “pagan religion”).  In her mid-20s, Jackson googled her grandmother’s name and discovered a trail of deaths and tragedies that occurred as result of her grandmother’s extremist teachings and shortly after began an antithetical blog, Angie the Antitheist, where she writes frequently about atheism and the abuses of faith healing.  It was on her blog that Jackson, the mother of a four-year-old special-needs son, announced her decision to terminate her second pregnancy after her birth control (she was on three different forms) failed.  Read more of Jackson’s background in her own words here.

In an interview with The Frisky, Jackson said that she initially thought that people might be more accepting of her decision to have a non-surgical abortion in her first trimester because of the serious health risks a full-term pregnancy would hold for her (it still didn’t stop the death threats lobbed at her and her family by good “Christian” folk).  She suffered from such severe sexual abuse as a child that she was told beginning at the age of 8 that she would never be able to have children, but got pregnant at 22 and went on to deliver her son after a grueling 98-hour delivery.  Yes, you read that right — a 98-hour delivery.  Yikes!  On her blog, Jackson details some of the serious health problems she suffered from at the time of her first pregnancy, including anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphia and self-harm (cutting) — all of which she says is closely linked to her cult upbringing.  She writes:

I was told, over and over and over, in the repetative indoctrination style of a cult, that I was a burden, that I had too many needs, and that I was no good. I tried to cut away my flesh (my “Adam nature” or sinfulness) with a razor blade. I tried to make my physical body as small as possible, thinking maybe then I wouldn’t take up too much space or be so in the way. I starved and I ran. When my hip went out, I couldn’t run anymore so I went back to throwing up. I once carved the word “FAT” into my left thigh, and the scars are still there.

And from an excerpt in her forthcoming book (trigger warning for glamorizations of eating disorders):

My grandmother taught that there were worlds or realms – the spirit realm and the flesh realm. Flesh was always bad. I can’t help feeling like that has to mean something in the origin of my eating disorder. Starving was a way of making myself less about my body – that evil, human, sinful natured, Adam and Eve descended, recently molested and victimized body – and more about my thoughts, and the voices in my head. After all, that’s what I was taught to do.

So, given her history, Jackson just assumed her missed periods to be amenorrhea caused by a “particularly bad bout of anorexia.”  In fact, she only found out that she was pregnant because her weight loss had plateaued and she had trouble reaching her goal of getting below 100 pounds.  Anorexia wasn’t Jackson’s only problem; she was in an abusive relationship, had struggled to get off drugs and was struggling financially.  She describes that first visit with her doctor and her consequent efforts to get healthy:

“You need to gain weight,” he told me, looking at my 5′3″ 104 lbs frame. “You need to gain 50 pounds, and you need to do it yesterday.” That was my battle for the next four months, trying to put on and keep on enough weight to make sure the fetus’ brain developed properly.

I quit smoking pot, and mostly quit smoking cigarettes. (Yeah, I snuck a few here and there, most memorably on my wedding day, early in my third trimester.) I laid off the diet sodas, energy drinks, and diet pills I’d relied on to get me through school, and dropped out of college. I changed everything about my body, from what I put into my body, to how long I kept it there (no bulimia for me, as the electrolyte imbalance that would cause could be extremely damaging to the fetus), to what size I tried to be. I dropped bad habits, bad friends, but regretfully, picked up again the bad relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend…

I struggled to stay healthy, while planning a wedding (on an extremely lean budget), fighting with my fiancee, fighting with my mother, and moving three times. I didn’t always win that fight, and I spent days and days in the maternity wardmergency room, on IV drips and supplements. My iron levels were low, but the prenatal vitamins with iron in them made me throw up. I was living off pizza, ice cream, and Subway sandwiches, but I couldn’t keep weight on to save my life (or my fetus’). A week after my honeymoon, I went into the ER with a fever and a stomach flu, and over the course of that week I lost 10 pounds through vomit and diarrhea. I wondered if either one of us would make it out alive.

Miraculously, Jackson and her son did make it out alive, but with her doctor’s warnings that a second pregnancy could be seriously risky for her health.  And from some of her recent blog posts, it appears as if Jackson is still struggling with body image and disordered behaviors, thus complicating her preexisting health risks all that much more.Jackson’s case is a biographer’s dream not only for her bizarro religious upbringing and decision to live-Tweet her abortion., but what I find most interesting is how the issue of personhood (generally defined as personal integrity and autonomy) plays out here in relation to abortion and eating disorders.  Indeed, it’s an issue that lies at the very heart of the heated abortion debates.  Anti-choice zealots argue that personhood begins at conception, with some going so far as to claim that even sperm or ovum possess all the rights of personhood, while pro-choice activists maintain that to affirm the personhood of the fetus is to, in effect, deny personhood to the woman bearing it — and by proxy, to all women.

I’m sure you can guess which side of the abortion fence I straddle. As a Buddhist, I would have a difficult time reconciling a decision to have an abortion for myself, but as a feminist, I absolutely believe in a woman’s right to make medical decisions for her own body. Abortion is about so much more than women’s reproductive rights; a woman’s right to decide on abortion when her health and life are at stake is synonymous with her very right to be.  Uh huh, I see you nodding, but how exactly does the issue of eating disorders come into play?

It may be a leap here on my end, but I see the denial of bodily integrity to women when it comes to their reproductive choices as representative of a much larger and historical devaluation of the bodies of women in general. And I’m not alone. In the anthology Unbearable Weight, Susan Bordo includes an essay titled “Are Mothers Persons?” in which she examines women and reproductive rights that, at first blush, appears incongruous in a book about women, body image and eating disorders. Bordo’s motives become increasingly clearer, however, as she examines court cases and legal decisions in which pregnant women have been systematically denied agency over their own bodies and in making medical decisions for themselves and their unborn babies. The American legal tradition has traditionally upheld cases involving bodily integrity or “the right to one’s own person” — that is, in cases brought before the court by male plaintiffs. Cases involving pregnant women and mothers, however, evoke a legal double standard.

Social control of women is predicated on bodily control of women — throughout the centuries, women’s bodies have been subject to assault, rape and other forms of violence, their movements restricted both literally and figuratively, their sexual expression and self-determinations denied, their bodies sexualized and commodified, their health issues dismissed and undertreated, access to food restricted and regulated, ad nauseum.  Is it any wonder then that 90 percent of eating disorder cases are seen in girls and women? Women seek to control their bodies precisely because they continue to lack control over their bodies.

And that’s what I find most interesting about the case of Angie Jackson, a woman with a history of abuse, both externally and self-inflicted. Sure, Jackson has serious medical problems that could complicate a full-term pregnancy, but as she very plainly stated on her blog, she also just didn’t want to be pregnant. For Jackson, terminating her pregnancy represented the best possible choice she could make for her physical and emotional health, and by live-Tweeting it, she declared her rejection of some of the same fetters that helped make her a victim of sexual abuse and eating disorders.  If that’s not good enough of a reason to trust women, what is?

This month is Black History Month and this week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and Stephanie Armstrong addresses both in an interview on “Saturday Mornings with Joy Keys,” an interactive, live Internet talk-radio show that focuses on “providing people with tools to enrich and advance their lives mentally, physically, monetarily and emotionally.”  Stephanie  is the author of the new memoir Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia, in which the now 40-something, recovered, married mother of one daughter and two stepdaughters documents her descent into bulimia in her early 20s and describes her struggles as a black woman with a disorder consistently portrayed as a white woman’s disease.  The Brooklyn native also examines the “bootylicous” black woman stereotype and why the black community’s “code of silence” often leaves black women with eating disorders suffering in silence.  The work is being hailed as the first book by and among black women about eating disorders.  You may remember that Stephanie also answered the-F-word’s questions a few months ago.

Guests included Stephanie and Laurie Vanderboom, program director for the National Eating Disorders Association, which sponsors and coordinates National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.  A few interview highlights

Joy: What do you (NEDA) see when you have these programs?  Do you see a lot of African American women coming to the programs?

Laurie: We’re just beginning to and we’re just beginning to reach out.  There’s so much shame involved in an eating disorder that people hesitate to step up.  Stephanie, wouldn’t you agree that no matter what your racial make-up…

Stephanie: Absolutely, but especially coming from a culture that doesn’t support therapy, that doesn’t support getting outside help, and risking falling outside of the strong black woman archetype that we’re raised believing and have to become.  It’s hard to disassociate yourself with that image to get the help you need.

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Stephanie: One of the things I always talk about, especially in the black community, is that we don’t have an awareness of what exactly bulimia is.  It’s like you go to someone’s house and they’re drinking that dieter’s tea.  That’s bulimia.  Laxative abuse is bulimia.  Diuretic abuse is bulimia.  Compulsive exercising is bulimia.  It’s like we think it’s just throwing up, but it’s not just throwing up.

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Joy: I was talking with a professor of mine and he mentioned that psychologists don’t diagnose African American women properly with eating disorders, because they’re not used to seeing a African American woman coming to their office with this issue. Stephanie, do you feel that that’s the case?

Stephanie: Absolutely. Absolutely. I am constantly talking to women — some who are therapists, some who are young — who are constantly misdiagnosed. I’ve had doctors say, ‘Oh, you don’t have an eating disorder. African Americans don’t have eating disorders.’ I had a young woman call me yesterday – she goes to Clark Atlanta College and she’s at the American University in DC working on an exchange and she’s doing a paper in journalism and decided to do a paper on blacks and eating disorders because her aunt was bulimic and died from it. She calls me up and she said her teacher said, ‘Well, the problem is that there aren’t really that many black women with eating disorders, so that’s going to be a hard paper to do.’ It’s that overall belief that we don’t exist. (she briefly cites a rundown of research showing the prevalence of eating disorders among black women and girls, including this study) …the research is seeping in, but it’s still not getting the attention.

And it’s not just black women with eating disorders who are thought to be virtually non-existent.  Running Tiptoe recently posted a review of a recent “Intervention” episode featuring an Hispanic woman with an exercise addiction and a history of bulimia.  In her review, she offered this link to this 2006 study of “eating disturbances among Hispanic and native American youth,” in which it was found a much more significant pattern of disordered eating behaviors than previously thought.  There are more stats and studies on Hispanic women and eating disorders listed in this 2003 news report.*

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, eating disorders continue to persist in public opinion as a disease young, white girls from middle-class and wealthy backgrounds develop.  But eating disorders are the great equalizers: food is one of the few legal “drugs” out there; everyone needs it to survive;  and in industrialized nations, at least, is widely available and relatively cheap.  That, combined with the constant affirmations of weight loss as morally good and idolization of thinness saturating virtually every facet of our lives, and it’s no wonder that  those with emotional issues and unfulfilled needs might turn to food and the body to express a pain they cannot put into words.

Black girls and women with eating disorders.  Hispanic girls and women with eating disorders.  Adult women with eating disorders.  Boys and men with eating disorders.  Orthodox Jewish girls and women with eating disorders.  Poor girls and women with eating disorders.  We. All. Exist.

* For more information on eating disorders amongst non-white populations, see here.

This week marks National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAW), and so we will be posting tools/resources/tips/personal stories and more this week in support of eating disorder recovery.  To kick the week off, how about checking out and joining these supportive Facebook groups (because isn’t everyone and your grandma on Facebook?).

• Letters to My Body: Fostering body kindness and promoting stronger self-esteem; One letter at a time (check out the project’s website to read letters from others).

• 5 Resolutions to Transform the Fashion and Beauty Industries: Founded by model Magali Amadei and writer Claire Mysko, 5 Resolutions (http://5resolutions.blogspot.com) is a network for anyone who believes in promoting healthy beauty and fashion.

• Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy & Action: The Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy & Action promotes the recognition of eating disorders as a policy concern. This Facebook group was created so that people will know that there is hope. It is for everyone who is alarmed by the prominence and danger of eating disorders, but is unaware of what can be done to change it. We can ask our government to help create actual policies that will translate into advancing the goal of eating disorder prevention and recovery…

• Blogging for [ED] Awareness & Recovery: A group of bloggers that write specifically about eating disorders, whether a loved one has been diagnosed or you have been yourself.  This group is *NOT* for pro-ed blogs! These are strictly recovery and awareness-minded bloggers!

• I’m making fat socially acceptable and I’m not sorry:  This is a fat acceptance group. This group is for people who one day stumbled upon the truth that fat is not as bad as it is made out to be. In fact, most of the time fat isn’t bad at all – and even in the cases where it is (where is causes mobility or other issues) it isn’t being treated properly, and fat hatred is only hurting the issue…

• Dear Eating Disorder,: This is a group for those of us who suffer from an eating disorder can come and write a letter to let ED know exactly what we think of it. Whether you are recovering or recovered. Whether you are struggeling or in a good place. Whether the Eating Disorder is runining your life or the life of a friends or family members its time it should know. Tell your Eating Disorder your thoughts and feelings about it. Breakup with the Eating Disorder if you want!!!

• Start a Revolution.  Stop hating your body.: is an attempt to raise awareness about the vast array of problems that stem from body consciousness and lack of esteem including, but not limited to: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, body dysmorphic disorder, binge eating disorder, depression, and general dissatisfaction. Furthermore we acknowledge that society today has constructed a multi-billion dollar industry designed to perpetuate the desire for unattainable beauty while capitalizing on products for self-improvement. Our mission is to end corporate dominance over body esteem.

• Men Get Eating Disorders, Too: is a web and publicity campaign that aims to raise awareness of male eating disorders to enable men to get support. The site provides essential information and advice, links to support and a message board.

• Academy for Eating Disorders: The AED is a leading global professional association committed to promoting innovative eating disorders research,education, treatment and prevention.

• Eating Disorders Anonymous: For those with eating disorders looking for support OR someone with a loved one suffering and needing advice as to what to do OR supporting friends with eating disorders OR wanting to know more about eating disorders and their danger [this group’s content is public, so be forewarned that it’s not exactly “anonymous,” per se).

And, of course, be sure to join The-F-Word’s Facebook page, as well as friends of the blog: Big Fat Deal and Feed Me!. Know of any other great Facebook or MySpace groups? Give them a shout out in the comments below!

Given the blog’s focus, it’s not often that I have good news to report, so I tend to get a little giddy when the cosmos align in our collective favor. I blogged back in December, 2008 about proposed changes under consideration by the American Psychiatric Association to the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  Considered the psychiatric bible of the field, the DSM is used by doctors to make a diagnosis and provides insurance companies with diagnostic codes without which the insurers will not reimburse patients’ claims for treatment. Among the conditions up for debate included making binge eating disorder (BED) an independent diagnosis (BED is currently lumped into the vague catch-all category of ED-NOS, which encompasses those who don’t meet one or more of the criteria for anorexia or bulimia).

You’d think that a condition estimated to eclipse both anorexia and bulimia combined would be a no-brainer for inclusion, right?  You’d think wrong.  Some mental health professionals actually protested classifying BED as a disorder, suggesting it to be a “normal behavior.”  Luckily for those who suffer from decidedly abnormal binge eating behaviors, the duh truck must have finally arrived at the APA, because when they released a draft of its recommendations today, it included recognizing BED as an official independent diagnosis — read the recommended criteria for diagnosis here.  This is awesome news, for in addition to psychotherapy, there are medications that have been shown to help people with binge eating disorder (Topamax and Wellbutrin, for example). If binge eating disorder were included in the manual as a legitimate eating disorder, those people who struggle with it might have an easier time getting insurers to cover the treatment and medication they so desperately need.

The recommendation of BED as an independent diagnosis is certainly the biggest change for eating disorders in the DSM, but there are other proposals under consideration that I think are pretty fabulous, too.

Purging Disorder

The work group is considering whether it may be useful and appropriate to describe other eating problems (such as purging disorder–recurrent purging in the absence of binge eating, and night eating syndrome) as conditions that may be the focus of clinical attention. Measures of severity would be required, and these conditions might be listed in an Appendix of DSM-5. If these recommendations are accepted, the examples in Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified will be changed accordingly.

As someone who suffered from what would be considered purging disorder with anorexic tendencies and was misdiagnosed with bulimia, I’m excited to see this relatively newly-popularized condition being entertained by the panel.  Pamela Keel, an associate professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has made great inroads in research indicating purging disorder to be a significant problem in women that is distinct from bulimia.

Anorexia

Many eating disorder activists are critical of the phrasing in the criteria for anorexia of a “refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height.”  Refusal here, being the key word as myself and others argue that it’s not so much a refusal as it is an inability.  For more on this, read Harriet Brown’s critique of the semantics.  In its draft, the APA recommended clarifying the criterion to focus instead on behaviors, acknowledging that the word “refusal” implies intention and is “possibly pejorative and difficult to assess.”  The panel also recommended deleting the criterion of amenorrhea, thus opening up the diagnosis to a broader range of sufferers, including a growing number of men reporting anorexic behaviors.

In DSM-IV, amenorrhea is required. However, individuals have been clearly described who exhibit all other symptoms and signs of Anorexia Nervosa but who report at least some menstrual activity. In addition, this criterion cannot be applied to pre-menarchal females, to females taking oral contraceptives, to post-menopausal females, or to males. However, there are some data that women who endorse amenorrhea have poorer bone health than do women who fail to meet this criterion.  Deletion of this criterion is recommended.

Bulimia

The current DSM-IV requires episodes of binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviors both occur on average twice a week for three months.  The panel cited a literature review that found that the clinical characteristics of individuals reporting a lower frequency of once/week were similar to those meeting the current criterion, so they recommended that the required minimum frequency be reduced to once/week over the last three months.  The bulimia diagnosis also currently includes two subtypes: purging and non-purging.  People with non-purging bulimia often try to purge calories via exercise or fasting, but do not use enemas, self-induced vomiting, laxatives, etc..  The panel found that non-purgers more  closely resembled people with BED, and so they recommended deleting this subtype altogether.

Obesity

Despite reports from the Boston Globe that the APA was considering classifying obesity a mental illness, I see nothing in the draft indicating that it would be included.  The sheer ridiculousness of such a proposal simply blows my mind and at first I thought the Globe perhaps erroneously conflated obesity with binge eating disorder, since those with BED tend to be overwhelmingly overweight or obese, but it appears as if the idea was at least introduced.  A study released last summer examined the evidence for making obesity a mental disorder and found it significantly lacking, acknowledging only “evidence that obesity is related to mental disorder and many of the medications used to treat psychiatric illness.”  Considering that the latter evidence has been around since the 1990s, the study basically only confirmed the obvious.

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Before we pop the cork on the champagne, keep in mind that this is only a draft, and is subject to change and that’s where you come in.  In a new twist for the APA, the organization has posted the draft online and is seeking feedback via the Internet from both psychiatrists and the general public about whether the changes will be helpful before finalizing them.  The draft manual, posted at www.DSM5.org, is up for public debate through April.  The final version is expected to be released in 2013.

A new study of 1,000 American girls between the ages of 13-17 by the Girl Scouts finds that 9 out of 10 girls say they feel pressure from the media and/or fashion industry to be skinny.  More than 80 percent of the girls polled said they’d rather see natural photos of models than digitally enhanced or altered photos.

Specialists calculate life expectancy for people with anorexia to be 25 years shorter than average.  Patients who recover however, may expect full lifespans.

A Chicago mom and grandmother shares her story of finally overcoming anorexia after 25 years of battling the disorder.

Remember the mental health parity law that passed in 2008? The The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury jointly issued new rules this week governing the law.

The Website Realself.com tracked cosmetic surgery trends by region and even city with some surprising results.

New “groundbreaking” study shows abnormal brain function in people with body dysmorphic disorder.

Eve Ensler: Girl power can save the world.

The New York Times reviews Michael Pollan’s new book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.”

Continuing our series, “An Examined Life,” comes Katie’s story about her reluctant foray into recovery from anorexia and learning to reshape herself as someone other than the “sick, anorexic kid in the baggy clothes.”

Katie writes:

My eating disorder was not a conscious decision on my part. They hardly ever are, but I wanted to make that clear from the onset. Instead, it was like sitting in a bath while the temperature is slowly raised. Hardly noticeable at first, until you are being boiled alive.

It started in high school, when I was 14. I was a runner, mainly cross country, but also track. I wanted to be fast. I decided to eat right. I wasn’t trying to lose weight at first. Honest. We didn’t even have a scale in my house. But I started cutting down on what I ate and started running more and more.

My parents first saw the problem that spring, at the first track meet of the year. I had hid all winter in my uniform, my baggy running pants, my clothes from the 7th grade that still fit. But when I took off my sweats to run the first race of the season, my parents saw a problem.

That started a series of counseling sessions with many different therapists, appointments with the family doctor (whose advice was to eat more cheese), appointments with a nutritionist and finally, a stay at an eating disorder treatment center where they tube-feed me and I was told that God wanted me to eat.

I was not consulted on any of the above treatment. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing our series, “An Examined Life,” comes Kate Le Page’s account of her recovery from anorexia.  Kate recently published her memoir, Goodbye Ana, and has set up an anorexia and depression recovery site at anorexiarecovery.webs.com.

Kate writes:

I am Kate, 31 and in recovery from anorexia. My experience of seeking treatment has taught me that often you have to fight the system and keep persisting until your voice is heard.

I first sought treatment for anorexia when I was in the early staged of the illness, aged 17, back in 1995. My family doctor weighed me and put me on a course of antidepressants. He told me that even Princess Diana had an eating disorder and implied that it was simply a phase. I felt like a fraud as I’d gone there hoping for help with my eating disorder and received nothing but medication.  Over a period of a year I saw my doctor monthly to be weighed and each time my medication was either increased or switched. Unsurprisingly, the medication had little or no impact on my illness. Eventually I was misdiagnosed again, this time with Chronic Fatigue and referred to a specialist who gave me yet more medication and put me on a graduated exercise programme to rebuild my strength. Looking back it is rather ironic that the very treatment of exercise was prescribed to an anorexic and years later my exercise addiction landed me in the EDU!

In 1997, whilst at university, I stopped eating and saw a doctor who decided the best thing for me to do was go back on medication. It wasn’t until 1998 that my doctor back home finally diagnosed me with anorexia. Even with this diagnosis I was unbelievably prescribed another medication which actually made me so wired that I completely lost what little appetite I had left and made me lose more weight.  I received counselling at university but this did not help much as she had very limited experience of the illness. My university doctor referred me to a nurse at the clinic for support (who i was supposed to see weekly) and the rather intimidating receptionist said that the earliest appointment was 6 weeks. I felt totally fed up and told her to leave it. Several month later I was referred to the local hospital’s Eating Disorder Service. Again, this was only a monthly 15 minute chat with a dietician so had virtually no impact on my illness.

Years went on and although by this point my eating disorder had become more severely entrenched I was very wary of seeking further treatment.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt is inviting Maryland’s middle, high school and college students to participate in the 4th annual “Love Your Tree” poster campaign, which aims to promote a healthy body image. In response to the statement, “Like a tree, my body is…” students are invited to create posters that challenge narrow beauty ideals, and embrace body diversity and acceptance. Posters will be accepted until December 18, 2009 and one will be selected to be part of an exhibit during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week in February 2010. Please download the Call for Posters for additional details. All entries must be submitted along with a completed Registration Form prior to the December 18th, 2009 deadline. Poster entries must be no smaller than 9″ X 12″ and no larger than 18″ X 24″. Only two-dimensional media will be accepted.

For more information, contact Kate Clemmer at (410) 427-3886 or kclemmer@sheppardpratt.org.

You may remember guest-blogger Kara (a.k.a. Filmi Girl) from her great post on the whittling waistlines of Bollywood actresses.  Now she’s back with a guest post on the body image struggles inherent in the popular Twilight series, specifically Bella’s desire to rid herself of her human body and the disturbing descriptions of physical sensations and appetite.  I’ve read a lot of feminist critiques on the Twilight series, mostly concerning the books’ not-so-subtle messages of abstinence and the unbalanced relationship dynamic between the main characters, but Filmi Girl’s is a new take I haven’t yet seen before.  It is, to say the least, food for thought.

Filmi Girl writes:

Imagine you’re reading a story about a girl starting over a new high school. As she enters the cafeteria, her eyes are drawn towards a certain group of kids – all physical perfection and effortless cool.

“They weren’t talking, and they weren’t eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them…As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray – unopened soda, unbitten apple – and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a runway.” (Twilight, p. 18-19)

To me, this doesn’t say ‘vampire’ as much as ‘pro-ana.’

While I don’t think that Stephenie Meyer, author of The Twilight Saga, was deliberately encouraging young women make an unopened soda and unbitten apple their lunch of choice, the scene is an early indicator of the twisted relationship with appetite that runs through the whole series. There are plenty of disturbing facets to The Twilight Saga, from Edward’s abusive behavior towards Bella and the imprinting which seems more like child grooming, that have been looked at in depth but I haven’t seen much on appetite – or rather, Bella’s desire to rid herself of her appetites.

For those gentle readers unfamiliar with the tragic tale of Bella Swan, resident of Forks, Washington, let me give you a crash course. Bella, age 17, moves to Forks, Washington at the beginning of Twilight. At her new high school, she meets and develops a crush on a mysterious student – a student who finds being around her intolerable and yet won’t leave her alone: (the pale Adonis) Edward Cullen. In a fit of self-loathing, Edward reveals his true self to her. He takes off his shirt in a patch of sunlight, his chest sparkling with the glittery skin of a Meyer-verse vampire. But while Edward is a predator, built to feed on the human race, he has adopted a lifestyle referred to as “vegetarianism.” Edward only eats non-human animals and compares the experience to a human living on tofu, keeping their hunger at bay but never being fully satisfied (this is Meyer’s take on vegetarianism, not mine). Bella gradually moves into his world, getting to know his “family” of like-minded vampires (the Cullens), until one day she catches the attention of a particularly vicious vampire named James who is moving through the Cullen territory and decides to make a meal of her. Bella flees to Phoenix under the protection of Cullens but despite their best efforts, is still captured by James. Edward and his family rescue her and kill James but not before James has a chance to deliver a giant bite to her arm, that will kill her. Edward bravely sucks out the vampire “venom,” knowing that he will kill her if he cannot stop himself in time. He does. Bella lives and returns to Forks, still infatuated with Edward.

In the second book, New Moon, Edward leaves Bella – telling her that he no longer loves her – and Bella works her way into a deep depression. She emerges from it with the help of her good friend Jacob Black, a Quileute Indian boy who lives on the local reservation. Jacob and Bella develop a genuine friendship, although it’s hinted that Jacob feels something more, but are interrupted from furthering their relationship by Edward, who under the false assumption that Bella has died, is going to kill himself by provoking the Volturi, a sect of vampire nobles – the vampire drama queen equivalent of “suicide by cop.” Bella, still feeling the pull of obsession towards Edward, goes to stop him. Edward is saved and reveals that he had left Bella for her own good and that he never stopped loving her. Bella forgives him and returns to Forks with Edward. Jacob isn’t so quick to forget and vows that he will not let her throw her life away. Eclipse, the third book, follows the love triangle and Bella’s desperate attempts to become a vampire, which at times sound chillingly like preparations for suicide. At the end of Eclipse, Bella discovers she loves both men – but Edward more and ends with Bella still human but engaged to be married to him.

Perhaps it takes someone who has struggled with her own appetites to view Bella’s quest for vampire-hood (if that is the correct term) in quite this way. Vampire stories have traditionally mined crevices of human desire that are not socially acceptable, substituting blood lust for passions unnamed, such as homosexual desire (Carmilla, 1872) or, more recently, general teenage restlessness and ennui (The Lost Boys, 1987). But the Meyer-verse vampires Bella is infatuated with actively battle their own unacceptable hungers – living off of non-human animals instead of allowing themselves to be physically satisfied. The life of a Cullen is filled with self-deprivation. As Edward himself says, “I can’t be sure, of course, but I’d compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our own little inside joke. It doesn’t completely satiate the hunger – or rather thirst. But it keeps us strong enough to resist. Most of the time.” (Twilight, p. 188)

Leaving aside Meyer’s views on vegetarianism, we are clearly meant to find Edward’s heroic resistance to his own physiology to be admirable. It is never suggested that the Cullens could eat donated human blood, either from willing victims or from the hospital. Human blood is a forbidden food. And Edward’s morbid pull towards Bella seems, at times, less like romance and more like a dieter eyeballing a particularly delicious slice of cake. He gets a perverse satisfaction from abstaining. “‘Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet,’ he whispered. ‘You have a very floral smell, like lavender… or freesia,’ he noted. ‘It’s mouthwatering.’” (Twilight, p. 306)

And Edward’s thirst appears to be his only physical desire. All evidence in The Twilight Saga points to Edward being a 100+ year old virgin. Bella is the one pushing their sexual relationship and Edward keeps her from pushing too far. In Eclipse, Edward does initiate some sexual touching with Bella but it is only as prelude to his marriage proposal and he gets more aroused by the sight of Bella wearing his engagement ring (although Bella feels it weighing heavily on her hand) than by Bella herself. Edward is master of his physical desires – more superego than vampire.

Bella is constantly comparing herself to Edward and finding herself lacking. She is uncomfortable in her own body, a feeling extremely familiar to this former 17-year old girl. It’s made more painful to the reader because everything is written from Bella’s point-of-view. In the first book, especially, the reader is treated to endless descriptions of Edward’s physical beauty contrasted with Bella’s self-loathing descriptions of her own clumsiness or her plainness or her fragile human body. Edward is described as a statue of Adonis come to life – cold and hard to the touch, but physically perfect. Bella wants nothing more than to be just like him. She is already asking to be turned into a vampire by the end of Twilight and Eclipse has her begging and pleading with Edward to perform the deed.

Through the course of the three books, Bella tries and tries to rid herself of her human desires. She rarely eats. Although she cooks dinner for her father, she doesn’t take any enjoyment in it – it’s a duty and one she dispatches with little thought. In one memorable scene, to me at least, her father takes her out for a celebratory dinner and not only is Bella ungrateful for the gesture, she doesn’t actually eat her food. She waits until her father isn’t looking and then tucks bits of her hamburger into her napkin. Perhaps she is unconsciously echoing Edward, who spends his time at the school cafeteria doing exactly the same thing. She is not yet a vampire but is already abstaining from food and physical pleasure.

Bella’s sexual desires are another thing she is made to feel ashamed of. While the supposed erotic chastity is a big selling point, I never saw it. Instead a mutual desire to take things slow, Edward withholds his physical affections. He explains to Bella that he might devour her if he allowed himself to go too far but that doesn’t stop Edward from chastising Bella for wanting to explore her sexual drive. In one particularly vile scene in Eclipse, Edward snuggles up to her on a giant bed only to pull away when she begins to reciprocate he tells her, “I was just trying to illustrate the benefits of the bed you don’t seem to like. Don’t get carried away.” The benefits of the bed being only available after marriage, which she does not want.

This shaming of Bella just makes New Moon, in which the character of Jacob Black takes the forefront in the narrative, more frustrating, as the book shows the reader what Bella would be like free from the influence of Edward. The chapters of New Moon are filled with food and physical pleasures. Bella eats muffins and enjoys an outdoor spaghetti party. Bella holds hands with Jacob and accepts warm and friendly bear hugs. She goes hiking with Jacob and walks. Edward would literally carry her when they went places. Under the calming influence of Jacob, Bella begins interacting with her school friends and the pages of New Moon show a Bella much more sympathetic and human than in any other book in the series. The tragedy of The Twilight Saga is that the promise of this Bella, who grows up and accepts herself, is thrown away as soon as Edward enters back into the picture.

The final scenes of Eclipse show Bella having a vision of her happy, human life with Jacob. She turns it down in favor of a life of constraint and prohibition with Edward. Bella will never be full again.

So, I had just dozed off again yesterday morning when my cat, who usually sleeps next to me each morning, tried to jump up on the bed.  Sweet, right?  Not so much… I was hugging the side of the bed and she nailed me instead above my eye.  Three inner stitches, five outer ones and a tetanus shot later, I’m sporting the Frankenstein look this week.  There were seven people ahead of me in line at the Urgent Care office, so I had lots of time to peruse through their fine selection of health magazines and found these snippets to share.

Can I get an amen?: Abby Sher, who used to perform with the comedy troupe The Second City, takes a comedic look at her struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anorexia in her new memoir, Amen, Amen, Amen.

Hello, body; goodbye, loathing: Body image expert Sarah Maria is the author of the new book, Love Your Body, Love Your Life.   The self-help guide gives readers five steps to help end negative body image obsession and start living a confident and empowered life.  Bonus: Check out an interview with Maria at the blog Weightless.

Goodbye workout ruts!: Score fresh fitness DVDs for free when you trade in old ones at SwapADVD.com.

Down dog with eating disorders: A pilot study, recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health,  found that yoga was effective in treating adolescents with anorexia, bulimia, and ED-NOS

Why you can’t eat just one: A group of neuroscientists have discovered a reason for why we (or rats, at least) can’t seem to get enough candy or junk food: we’re addicted.  Their study found that pleasure centers in the brains of rats on high-fat and calorie diets became less responsive as the bingeing wore on, making the rats consume more and more food.

Sink your teeth into this: Market research firm Mintel predicts the top five dining trends for 2010 will include healthier dishes, seasonal ingredients, lesser-known ethnic cuisines and a back-to-basics approach to old-fashioned foods such as burgers.