To Eat Or Not To Eat
Thu May 15, 2008 at 03:17:19 PM PDT
I've been thinking about food lately. Actually, I think about food all the time, since I'm the person in our house who shops for it and prepares it and we're all big eaters.
But what I've been thinking about more is how normal it is for women not to eat, how a woman can be engaging in very bizarre behavior when it comes to food and no one really bats an eye. For example:
- I work with a woman who is thin to the point where her shoulder bones jut out. I seriously could put my fingers around her ankle - and I don't have big hands. She keeps a big jar of candy in her office and routinely brings in homemade cupcakes for the staff. But she never eats the treats herself, at least not in view of anyone else in the office.
- Another woman I work with, whom I see only occasionally, gets thinner and thinner and thinner each time, like she is slowly disappearing. This is a bright, dynamic person who is very smart and engaging. But I took her out to lunch at a very nice restaurant and had to sit there while she pretended to eat. I seriously don't think she took more than one bite of her food.
I've heard others talking about these two woman and remarking on how "tiny" or "petite" they are, words that really have positive connotations in my book. They are both clearly considered to be very attractive. It bothers me that no one else seems to find their thinness excessive.
I guess I'm really sensitive to the issue because my sister, who is a dancer, has had an eating disorder since she was about ten. She's been struggling lately because she finally gave up smoking and she's put on a few pounds. I think she looks fantastic, but it's so hard to have a meal with her and watch her visibly struggle to actually make herself eat anything. It is simply reflexive not to eat.
What got me writing about this was seeing the comment the post about Angelina Jolie where people said she may have fainted because she's not eating enough - and she's pregnant with twins! And she probably had to have IVF because she was too thin to get pregnant otherwise! And yet she is basically our ideal of feminine beauty - even to the women on this site!
I don't have any great philosophical point to make, just that I wish we all (and I include myself in this statement) could just eat and enjoy our food and enjoy our bodies. This strikes me as one of those issues that we're all supposed to be past as second- or third-wave feminists. And yet it's still there, plain as day, plain as that big plate of cookies that no woman in the office wants anyone to see her eating from. Plain as the fact that the "skinny girls" are the pretty ones. Any thoughts?
P.S. And don't even get me started on how clueless most of the men I know are about this issue. Although my DH, God love him, is always talking about how a few of my friends are just too skinny - and he's right.
