Momma Don't Take My Kodachrome Away

Even before I got to the quote from the ED specialist in this Times piece about people who photograph everything they eat, disordered-eating alarm bells were going off in my head.

When I was initially assessed at Renfrew, one of the questions they asked was about "food rituals" and whether I had any, to which I replied no. It wasn't until we had a session on food rituals that I understood that pretty much every ED sufferer has them, to varying degrees of codification. I almost always ate one food at a time; I used to count how many times I would chew. Others smothered their food in condiments or seasonings; others couldn't have one food touching another. The mark of whether something was a ritual or a mere preference (I know plenty of non-disordered people who hate it when their potatoes touch their beef) was whether it was anxiety-producing to not do it. So when I read this...

She said she takes pictures of at least half the meals she eats, omitting, for example, multicourse meals when it might “interrupt the flow.” But she has noticed lately that it’s becoming harder to suppress the urge to shoot. “I get this ‘must take picture’ feeling before I eat, and what’s worse is that I hate bad pictures so I have to capture it in just the right light and at just the right angle,” Ms. Sherman said.

...it sounded familiar.

Certainly the hordes of amateur food photographers out there aren't all quietly suffering from eating disorders. But the reporter was perceptive enough to highlight that the hobby isn't always harmless:

Photos are also a means of self-motivation for Mr. Garcia, who began photographing his food after he lost 80 pounds. “It’s definitely part of my neuroticism about trying to keep thin,” he said. “It keeps you accountable because you don’t want to have to see that you ate an entire jar of peanut butter.”

And, ever the scientist, he hopes to one day use the photographs to calculate how much money he spends to consume a calorie versus how much he spends in gym memberships and sports gear to burn a calorie.

I can't see how this brings Garcia any joy; it seems like Kodak handcuffs to me.

This seems to bring attention to a major point for people in recovery: How do you celebrate the social rites of food without falling into the rabbit hole? When I traveled through Vietnam, I went nuts photographing what I was eating, and it felt joyous to do so. It was a way of recording and, later, sharing a vital sense of that most sensual country; I'm terrible with a video camera, so recording my gustation was one way I was able to keep Vietnam with me. I know other women who have recovered who turned their former fear of food into a celebration, with photography, food writing, and dinner clubs. But I also know that can be a dangerous line to toe: I have no doubt that my short-lived foray into pastry cheffery was linked in part (though not fully) to my disorder, and a good number of the women in my pastry course reported some seriously disordered eating in their past. At what point does waxing rhapsodic about hazelnut dacquoise veer from genuine appreciation of the gifts of food to an obsession?

Why Kate Moss Doesn't Matter

One of the most remarkable surprises I've had in recovery is how little I'm thinking about my shape or weight.* My body size has preoccupied me for even longer than my eating disorder; I remember being eight years old and trying to decide between letting my stomach go au naturel (pooched out but with a slight indent at the waistline) and sucking in my stomach (flatter stomach but with no waistline). There have been periods of my life where I have thought about my body fat every single waking minute of the day.

Logically, I'm not surprised. I know that eating disorders are about control, not about losing weight or even about food. So in recovery, my thoughts are certainly food-oriented--but instead of thinking about food I want to eat and will deny myself, or about food I'm going to binge on, I'm thinking about food combinations, satiety, getting my proper exchanges. I still daydream about food, but overall it's been non-disordered.

More important, though, when it is disordered I'm able to look at it and examine it. Sometimes I merely tell myself to stop; more often, though, I ask myself, Why this? Why now? Why is that image popping up now; why are those words affecting me now? In short, I'm finally able to look at the cause, not the symptom.

And that's what I like about Laura Collins's take on the Kate Moss "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" bit. A month ago, prior to entering treatment, I would have pshawed the thought that the skinny-model phenomenon wasn't a primary cause of eating disorders. But--hello!--I have an eating disorder: I have a myopic focus on the body. Whatever anger I managed to take outward instead of inward, I targeted toward what I perceived as the problem: I wasn't skinny enough, and the reason I thought I wasn't skinny enough was because of the images I was absorbing. That anger, plus the righteous anger that comes with awareness of the double standard surrounding women's appearance, creates a laserlike focus on those images.

But those images weren't the problem, or at least weren't the locus of the problem. My desire to be thin was a symptom of my eating disorder, and my focus on those images a secondary symptom of that desire. If my true problem were merely a sheer desire to look like a model, I'd be abusing my face and hair the same way I have my body--plastic surgery, expensive hair treatments. But while I've certainly looked in the mirror and wished my teeth were more even, my pores less visible, my hair more naturally picture-perfect, it pretty much stops there. A bit of makeup, a deep conditioning, and I'm through. I treat my face much the way I imagine a non-disordered woman treats her body--wishing it were more to her liking and taking certain means to ensure that it's closer to her desires, and then directing her energies elsewhere.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't continue to object to the iron maiden of beauty presented to us. What woman in the western world hasn't looked at a cover-girl model and felt inadequate? What woman hasn't cursed her body for being too fleshy, or too flat-chested, or too short, or too wide-hipped--the standard being the image of a model who is paid to look the way she does, and that image manipulated to inhuman proportions? Every day, women feel robbed of our own brand of beauty because of these images, and I'd love to see our culture's definition of beauty expand thousandfold. As a feminist--as a woman--I'll continue to seek out those images, applaud outlets that dare to use a wider definition of beauty, do my best to avoid those who take the narrow path.

This also isn't to say that those images don't play any role in eating disorders. Besides being fantastic fodder for using symptoms, they normalize body dissatisfaction and "fat talk," making it easier for those with EDs to engage in disordered behavior without others noticing. And, of course, the desire to be model-skinny has kick-started many a diet, which creates hungry people, which leads to disordered eating, if not eating disorders. But I'm happily signing on to Ms. Collins's rant nonetheless. The woman and feminist in me cares. The eating disorder patient in me doesn't.

*This may seem contradictory to last week's Rice Meltdown, which was, on its surface, provoked by appearing to have gained weight. But given that at its core I've always been more preoccupied by calories and food than by my body weight, and that an inconsistent up-down of less than two pounds has never bothered me because I know full well that it likely has nothing to do with my actual body fat, I can now see that it was about trust, not weight. Again: Weight was a symptom, not the root problem.