Buy Walking VideosAre Dieting and Feminism Opposed?
I always have two voices in my head. One that comments on my weight and how I need to be leaner and stronger. The other one that says that I never want to get an eating disorder like my friends in high school did. Somehow, the second voice never realizes that bingeing WITHOUT purging is still an eating disorder. All she remembers are her thin friends vomiting in the toilet.
This article by Ariel M. Stallings also deals with two voices in the author’s head. One voice wants to avoid doing anything that strengthens the patriarchy and another noticed that her frame was holding a little too much bulk. It’s a great read.
She also dealt with friends with eating disorders in her teen years:
“I felt like it was my job to be the one who held down the fort of healthy eating, setting a good example for women who were crushed under the thumb of eating disorders and weight issues.
“In my mind, the only way to fight eating disorders and the all-too-common feminine weight neurosis was not to think about food or weight at all … I ate HEALTHY food, but the thought “maybe I should eat less” always felt like it was just around the corner from some sort of Karen Carpenter nightmare, where I suddenly became a neurotic starving skeleton with amenorrhea. But still, I desperately wanted to loose the extra poundage, at least so I’d feel as healthy as I was supposedly being.”
In the end, she lost the weight and realized that it’s possible to be a feminist AND eat healthy.
“Women and food are big issues in this culture. I’ve tried to tip-toe through the minefield as carefully as possible, and I’ve had some great help from my mother and the women around me who’ve done everything to help me love my body … and it’s been my goal to deal with the process of losing weight in a positive, self-affirming, self-loving way. No deprivation or punishment but a pro-active approach toward my own health. It’s been good.”
What voices are talking in your head? What are they saying about weight loss, feminism and eating disorders? If you listen to your own thoughts and take the time to write them down, you just may make your road to eating healthy a little easier.
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November 6th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
“Dieting” might be anti-feminist, but eating healthily and helping your family and others to do so as well certainly aren’t. Making good decision about food, setting a good example — those are definite feminist — as well as feminine — ideals.