She knew she shouldn’t. But maybe just this once it wouldn’t hurt. After all, what had she eaten that day, a few figs and dates? And it looked so good. And she was so hungry.
Thus it was that Eve-the first woman with a food problem-ate the apple. Sure enough, the heavens roared their displeasure, Paradise collapsed around her and no woman has been able to feel safe around food ever since. It’s not just a question of how we look, although the pressures on women to look abnormal are immense. It’s not just a question of cravings and binges, although sometimes it seems that women share a kind of Jungian gender memory of Swiss-almond-vanilla ice cream. It’s a phenomenon that touches virtually every woman in middle-class America: we cannot eat a morsel of food without thinking twice. Many of us will worry about that morsel for hours; some will think about food all day.
But while women love to talk about food, relatively few of us have been willing to identify our food obsessions for what they are and discuss them freely-certainly not in mixed company. Now that public reticence may be ending. With the national release of Henry Jaglom’s new film “Eating,” which features a parade of women looking right into the camera and describing their tortured emotional interactions with food, the furtive mania of millions is being aired at last. Women leaving the theater after Jaglom’s film can’t stop talking about it - or themselves.
Jaglom, an independent filmmaker who likes to scrutinize human problems using techniques of cinema-verite, hired dozens of actresses young and old and asked them to keep journals for six months recording their thoughts about food. When filming began he gave them a story line-the women are gathered at a big house to celebrate the birthdays of three of them, and one guest uses the occasion to videotape a documentary about women and food-but most of the dialogue is spontaneous. Often it reflects an actress’s own history and obsessions with food. What emerges is a fascinating glimpse of something hitherto invisible: that little ticker tape clicking away in the heads of perfectly normal women, recording every bite they eat and sending out warnings at the slightest sign of impending food. “Every time that I open the refrigerator I think ‘What? Are you going to eat?”’ says one woman. “‘You’re not going to eat again, are you? You better be careful’.”
As movie actresses, of course, these women tend to be more frantic about their bodies than the rest of us; but as the revelations roll on, it becomes plain that the difference is only one of degree. A few seem to have histories of anorexia or are struggling with bulimia; most of them function in the world just fine. They’re normal. But the definition of normal, for American women, includes a perpetual anxiety about food. Will anyone see me eat this? What’s she eating? Am I the only one eating? Is there anything to eat? “Eating is a deep concern and a source of ambivalence for American women from girlhood until they die,” says Joan Brumberg, a professor of women’s studies at Cornell University and the author of “Fasting Girls,” a history of anorexia nervosa. “Appetite for us is not just a biological drive. It’s also a social and emotional instrument.”
Why are women obsessed with food? (Men just aren’t, although many diet and a handful suffer from anorexia and bulimia. But to most men, food seems to represent-food.) The specter of fat looms ominously in every female consciousness, of course, but thin women are no more relaxed about food than round women. Moreover, the notion of what constitutes the ideal size and shape for women’s bodies has changed many times in the last century: one decade hails an athletic body, the next a frail body; one generation adores Sophia Loren, another likes Twiggy. Whatever the prevailing mode, most women will never fit it; the only constant is the sense that our bodies are all wrong. And even when the ideal body puts on a bit of flesh, the rest of us don’t feel pressured to eat more. On the contrary, women’s appetites-for food and every other gratification, including sex and power - could be dangerous if let loose. Better for society to pretend we have none.
Far subtler than our culture’s insistence on a certain body type-but far creepier is the notion that women somehow don’t need to eat at all, that appetite is, as the 19th-century moralist Catharine Sedgwick put it, a “monster” that can be tamed. When Fannie Farmer, the popular turn-of-the-century cooking authority, created menus for ladies’ luncheons, they always featured the palest and most ephemeral foods: chicken breasts, egg dishes, various pink and frothy desserts. Her menus for a bachelors’ supper, by contrast, called for saddle of mutton, woodcock, strong cheese, an entire ham. Today the same disparity exists, in a different guise. At the University of Millersville, in Millersville, Pa., anthropology professor Carol Counihan asks her students to list “male foods” and “female foods” as part of a course on food and culture. Invariably the male foods are steak, potatoes and beer; the female foods are salads, white wine and fish. Men, students often write, eat whatever they want; women eat “smaller portions, dainty helpings.”
All these metaphors of appetite and consumption indicate that food is a stand-in for sex (as one of the women in the film says, “It’s safe sex. I mean, it’s the safest sex you can have. . . “) but the source of the obsession runs even deeper. Food is love, as everybody knows. More problematically, it represents unconditional love-mother’s love. Mother is the one person whose love is received, imbibed and understood in the form of food. But mother’s love, practically by definition, is never enough. It’s not good enough, it doesn’t last long enough, we all want more. “Food is the only thing that I can count on, for unconditional love,” says one woman in the film. “Food is the only thing that will comfort me and love me and be good to me … 24 hours a day.” There are two mothers in the film, and they attract longing and resentment like lint. One is dark-haired and angry; she’s fighting her own weight problem; she forbids her grown daughter to eat birthday cake while the daughter shows every sign of being bulimic. The other is fair and gentle and bewildered; she can’t understand why women make such a fuss over food. In her day, people simply tried to enjoy themselves. Yet she too has failed her daughters: both have food problems.
Unconditional love can be just as complicated as any other kind. It’s only men who get to marry their mothers; most women have to marry men. Male love can be delightful, but it doesn’t come with food. Something is persistently missing, which is why even happily married women-well loved and sexually satisfied-stand longingly in front of the refrigerator after dinner, glancing from the low-fat yogurt to the leftover cherry pie and back again. “I think I’m still looking for a man who could excite me as much as a baked potato,” says one of the women in the film. Admittedly, that’s extreme. Another simply confesses that when love, sex, work and real estate all fail, she still has rye bread and cream cheese.
Food is love, as everybody knows, but while that explains the compulsion it still doesn’t explain the fear. Many women prefer to eat alone; some are compelled to eat secretly. “College women worry about eating in front of dates,” says Counihan. “They are embarrassed to pig out. They always think they should eat less than they should, so they’re always hungry. " College women, like the rest of us, know their place: women should be seen and not heard. This command, alive and well even today, puts a major premium on how we look; it also explains why women who speak up in meetings at work often have the odd sensation of having said nothing, for nobody responds. For all the advances of the last 30 years, women are still the subordinate sex, and we gaze at the world the same way we gaze at the leftover cherry pie: with fear and longing and a deep-rooted sense of powerlessness. It takes a lifetime of constant guard duty to keep the monster appetite under control, but one day women are going to let down that guard. We’ll speak up, we’ll insist on being heard, we’ll take charge of our lives and we’ll eat until we’re full. The heavens may roar; but at long last, everything will taste delicious.
Eighty percent of the female population has dieted before reaching 18.
Nearly a fifth of women 18 to 29 are trying to lose weight even though they don’t need to.
Approximately 11 percent of all high-school seniors have an eating disorder.
Bulimia nervosa, characterized by a cycle of bingeing and purging, afflicts 1 to 2 percent of the adolescent population. Nine out of 10 of those affected are female.
Anorexia nervosa, or self-induced starvation, affects approximately 1 percent of all adolescents, nine out of 10 of whom are female.
People with bulimia nervosa are usually within 10 pounds of their normal body weight.
Up to one third of all bulimics have been previously diagnosed as anorexic.
