• the unreliable narrator • : that is not what I meant, at all, at all

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that is not what I meant, at all, at all

Thursday 26 June 2008 | 5 cookies in the jar

Yesterday’s singular post was comment-reactive; not a word about what’s really been frothing in my brainpan, admittedly continually reactive, but more usually to the non-electronic world and its attendant onslaughts.

I’m not quite ready to post in detail about the ranch weekend yet, mostly because the Brujo has all the digital pictures on his hard drive; and he’s on deadline, muttering to himself with the office door closed, occasionally emerging for more coffee and to take the dog out, grumbling. Poor Finny needs to poop about every ten minutes because our sweetly anorexic yogini petsitter apparently overfed her by a factor of TWO. In other words, where she usually gets a cup and a half for breakfast, she got three cups; and half a cup for dinner became a brimful one.

As the B. and I were unpacking the car, in between trips back and forth, we watched in silent horror as Yogini cheerfully dispensed a giant portion of kibble and stood over the bowl watching Finny valiantly trying to eat all of it, crooning to her gently. We didn’t say a word, or even look at each other, instead communicating our alarm silently through the air; as I passed by their little tableau, however, I noticed that Finny’s ribcage had spring outward a good three inches on each side to accommodate her new rations—a taxonomic example of what the Brujo calls, bloato. I slipped through the door just as I heard the B. asking with studied casualness: “So, did you, um…did you maybe not feed her very much this morning?” And stifled my dark amusement, knowing we would spend the next few days cleaning up all manner of unspeakablenesses, thanks to Yogini’s compensatory overfeeding. She’s our third petsitter so far and boy howdy is it hard to find good help, especially for an elderly, digestively challenged black Lab with terrible breath and a petulant longhaired princess-cat with a meow that strips paint off metal.

Right; where was I. Wanting to post about weekend revelations, and not doing so. So this is, apparently, a show about nothing. A place-holder.

Maybe.

Because it hurts me to look at Yogini, who is in fact a talented yoga instructor, and whose collarbones stand out painfully against her tan. In her natural state, she’s undoubtedly what we would have called, where I come from, a Big Girl; she’s taller than the Brujo, and her flipflops, when she kicked them off, were several inches longer than mine (my own feet being by no means dainty). But scattered across that rangy-midwest-farm-girl frame are the pounds of a ravenous five-foot-tall corps de ballet understudy; the maternal emerges in me, and I want to spoon up servings of shepherd’s pie, or Yorkshire pudding—something soft and savory with browned-meat or cream gravy. Pure projection, of course; my desire to refeed other women is transparently a belated effort to care for my younger self.

That uncanny angry-Athena protective rage soars up in me seldom, but always when I see women refusing to feed themselves. I remember reading, at the height of my own restrictive eating (white foods only, woohoo!), the following passage from Naomi Wolf, though, and almost hearing it actually make a dent in my stubborn, cast-iron consciousness—from The Beauty Myth (now thoroughly debunked, we know) and its chapter called, simply, “Hunger.”

In the current epidemic of rich Western women who cannot “choose” to eat, we see the continuation of an older, poorer tradition of women’s relation to food. Modern Western female dieting descends from a long history. Women have always had to eat differently from men: less and worse. In Hellenistic Rome, reports classicist Sarah B. Pomeroy, boys were rationed sixteen measures of meal to twelve measures allotted to girls. In medieval France, according to historian John Boswell, women received two thirds of the grain allocated to men. Throughout history, when there is only so much to eat, women get little, or none: A common explanation among anthropologists for female infanticide is that food shortage provokes it. According to UN publications, where hunger goes, women meet it first: In Bangladesh and Botswana, female infants die more frequently than male [Ed: despite being genetically more robust], and girls are more often malnourished, because they are given smaller portions. In Turkey, India, Pakistan, North Africa, and the Middle East, men get the lion’s share of what food there is, regardless of women’s caloric needs. “It is not the caloric value of work which is represented in the patterns of food consumption” of men in relation to women in North Africa, “nor is it a question of physiological needs….Rather these patterns tend to guarantee priority rights to the ‘important’ members of society, that is, adult men.” In Morocco, if women are guests, “they will swear they have eaten already” or that they are not hungry. “Small girls soon learn to offer their share to visitors, to refuse meat and deny hunger. A North African woman described by anthropologist Vanessa Mahler assured her fellow diners that “she preferred bones to meat.”

“Third World countries provide examples of undernourished female and well-nourished male children, where what food there is goes to the boys of the family,” a UN report testifies. Two thirds of women in Asia, half of all women in Africa, and a sixth of Latin American woman are anemic—through lack of food. Fifty percent more Nepali women then men go blind from lack of food. Cross-culturally, men receive hot meals, more protein, and the first helpings of a dish, while women eat the cooling leftovers, often having to use deceit and cunning to get enough to eat. “Moreover, what food they do receive is consistently less nutritious.”

This pattern is not restricted to the Third World: Most Western women alive today can recall versions of it at their mothers’ or grandmothers’ table: British miners’ wives eating the grease-soaked bread left over after their husbands had eaten the meat; Italian and Jewish wives taking the part of the bird no one else would want.

These patterns of behavior are standard in the affluent West today, perpetuated by the culture of female caloric self-deprivation. A generation ago, the justification for this traditional apportioning shifted: Women still went without, ate leftovers, hoarded food, used deceit to get it—but blamed themselves. Our mothers still exiled themselves from the family circle that was eating cake with silver cutlery off Wedgwood china, and we would come upon them in the kitchen, furtively devouring the remains. The traditional pattern was cloaked in modern shame, but otherwise changed little. Weight control became its rationale once natural inferiority went out of fashion.

Now whatever you may think of Ms. Wolf’s indifferent citation style, or the fact that her prose isn’t quite up to another Woolf’s standards—I maintain that if you are born with a vulva and you aren’t gnawing straight off a pork chop by the time you finish that passage? THERE’S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH YOU. [I might only add that weight control has been supplanted by saving the planet; but more on that momentarily.]

If you still aren’t convinced, try this one:

In a classic study done at the University of Minnesota, thirty-six volunteers were placed on an extended low-calorie diet and “the psychological, behavioral and physical effects were carefully documented.” The subjects were young and healthy, showing “high levels of ego strength, emotional stability, and good intellectual ability.” They “began a six-month period…in which their food intake was reduced by half—a typical weight reduction technique for women.”

“After losing approximately 25% of their original body weight, pervasive effects of semistarvation were seen.” The subjects “became increasingly preoccupied with food and eating, to the extent that they ruminated obsessively about meals and food, collected recipes and cookbooks, and showed abnormal food rituals, such as excessively slow eating and hoarding of food-related objects.” Then, the majority “suffered some form of emotional disturbance…including depression, hypochondriasis, hysteria, angry outbursts, and, in some cases, psychotic levels of disorganization.” They “lost their ability to function in work and social contexts, due to apathy, reduced energy and alertness, social isolation, and decreased sexual interest.” Finally, “within weeks of reducing their food intake,” they “reported relentless hunger, as well as powerful urges to break dietary rules. Some succumbed to eating binges, followed by vomiting and feelings of self-reproach. Ravenous hunger persisted, even following large meals during refeeding.” Some of the subjects “found themselves eating continuously, while others engaged in uncontrollable cycles of gorging and vomiting.” The volunteers became terrified of going outside the experiment environment where they would be tempted by the foods they had agreed not to eat…when they did succumb, they made hysterical, half-crazed confessions.” They became irritable, tense, fatigued, and full of vague complaints. “Like fugitives, they could not shed the feeling they were being shadowed by a sinister force.” For some, doctors eventually had to prescribe tranquilizers.

The subjects were a group of completely normal healthy college men.

Having finished typing that, I went to the kitchen for my morning feedbag of Special K® (still trying to boost flagging iron levels). I would prefer a fancy organic version, probably, but that stuff is like $5 a box and the Brujo and I shop primarily at the local Hispanic grocery store—within walking distance, though we do slum over to the pricey health-food grocery for his coffee and my carrots with tops (can’t eat those three-year-old carrots out of a cellophane bag; yuck). We also rather flatter ourselves on how hoi polloi we are, how downright populist it is of us to consume pesticides and insect limbs along with our Spanish-speaking neighbors; and we’re addicted to Topo Chico, and to the offkey tonality of El Chapo de Sinaloa, whose flattened warble, emerging from the speakers overhead, is essentially the soundtrack to a Food City trip (but why isn’t it called Ciudad de la Comida?).

Anyway, so I’ve been eating Special K® lately (and learning how to make the trademark symbol using the option key). You can just imagine how stunned I was to see this on the back of the box.

oh I've got a challege for you, sister

Sadly, the resolution’s too small for you to read the details of the Special K Challenge™ (have I ever got a challenge for you, sister….) but allow me to fill you in on its particulars, which, unsurprisingly, involve INCREASING YOUR INTAKE OF KELLOGS® PRODUCTS! Dear God what a shock.

STEP 1
Kick-start your day with either a serving of Special K® cereal with 2/3 cup skim milk, or a serving of Special K® waffles drizzled with 2 tbs. of lite syrup. Enjoy either option with fruit. [Let's leave aside for a moment the definition of "enjoy."]

STEP 2
Replace another meal with the delicious Special K® Protein Meal Bar or another serving of your favorite Special K® cereal with 2/3 cup skim milk and fruit.

STEP 3
Eat your third meal as you normally do. [Try not to die of happiness.]

SNACKS
Enjoy two great-tasting Special K® snacks (Special K® Protein Snack Bars, Special K® Protein Wafers and Mixes, Special K® Cereal Bars, Special K® Snack Bites) throughout the day. Consume fruits and vegetables for additional snacks. Drink beverages as you normally do. [Unless your normal beverages include several liters of Pepsi? But fight the overwhelming temptation to guzzle straight from that fifth of Jim Beam!]

Then the obligatory blonde workout instructor, whom I feel certain did NOT breakfast on Special K® waffles DRIZZLED with LITE syrup. If she makes her living as a fitness expert, don’t you reckon she “kick-started” her day with some freaking FOOD?! “Get 2-Piece Ready!”? The last time I wore a two-piece, I think I was about nine.

I stood there for a moment, recovering from my encounter with this revolting, monotonous menu; then glanced up at the cookbook shelf, burdened with its Julia Child and MFK Fisher; and defiantly topped my nasty Calvinist cereal flakes, which I am never buying again, with the Brujo’s half-and-half (thereby demolishing my iron absorption; but fuck, it was worth it).

Now back in my study drinking strawberry kefir and scowling at poor Kathy Smith’s shapely torso. Even worse is that Kellogg™ apparently wasn’t content with warping the impressionable minds of American women but has expanded to the Arab world (read it and weep). Because even Islamic women now think they need to fit into their skinny jeans.

By now it should be shriekingly obvious that I don’t come at any of this from a fatter-and-more-feminist-than-thou standpoint. I still return to The Beauty Myth because every sentence reeks to me of my own programming: having my dad take food from my plate (so that now I defend it fiercely with my fork, as a once-startled Brujo can attest); watching my mom’s mom discreetly scavenge when she cleared the table; teaching myself, at thirty, to eat normal-sized portions by studying the Physicist’s plate and copying its contents (though he’s also a restrictive eater and compulsive exerciser, with a saturated-fat phobia and a hard-earned six-pack). Been there, done that, had the t-shirt hang on my wasted frame. Never lost my periods, thanks to the malicious caprice of reproductive priority. Dreamt about cornbread and bacon drippings and would wake myself up, in the dark, in England or Massachusetts, chewing on invisible mouthsful.

But wait that’s not all there’s more: there’s OPRAH.

Now it’s hard for me not to preface those five letters with a passel of assorted adjectives, especially after all the literary damage incurred in Her Name; but I manage, I manage. So let’s think about this for a second. If Naomi Wolf wants to talk about the wealthy West, Ms. Winfrey’s pretty much its apotheosis, in terms of raw economic capital, at least. But, just to state the obvious, she’s also black. And, she’s a woman. Does anyone publicly worry about or discuss the weight of Colin Powell or James Earl Jones? I guess we worry that Barack needs to put on a few pounds; but as he says, he’s skinny but tough. Fair enough, male celebrities get their bodies fussed over—they enter the Dionysian feminine by means of their sullen craft or art; in the game of life, they draw the card that says, Take one step backward.

But after years, decades even, of Oprah’s delighted discovering of this that or the other thing which is finally going to Save Her and make her Be Her Best and bring her to her Ideal Weight/Health/State of Spiritual Awareness; from her falling in with (and making huge mutual sums of money off of) everyone from Geneen Roth to Martha Beck to Eckhart Tolle to Dr. Phil, from her espousing systems from The Secret to The Shack (whose author will surely be a guest soon, along with, inevitably, Byron Katie this fall), I think we can safely predict that each latest cause célébre will in every case not be the last.

Including her recent great white skinny hope, the 21-day-detox cleanse, courtesy of Kathy Freston and Quantum Wellness (I refuse to furnish yet another Amazon link). Now if you live under a rock, in a cave, and/or are male, you might never have heard about any of this. That’s fine; you’ve probably been reading books or thinking thoughts or achieving peace or helping others or something useful like that (or, as the Physicist once said after a boring dinner out with friends, perplexed: “Surely intelligent, educated, worldly adults have better things to discuss for an entire evening other than what we’re chewing?!?”). The rest of us, though, obsessed with being Anything Other Than What We Currently Are, know all about it. The catfighting responses to her articles on the Huffington Post have, in particular, achieved an hysterical pitch, making our own modest declaimings circa Richard Dawkins seem mild-mannered by comparison. (My favorite comment so far: “If God didn’t intend us to eat people He wouldn’t have made us out of meat.”) Even Heather Armstrong, bless her foul-mouthed little jack-Mormon heart, tried to do the cleanse, only to be felled by a sinus infection and her life-affirming lust for Hobnobs; and we readers didn’t just cheer—we leapt up, knocked over our chairs, hugged strangers and wept aloud for joy.

Because, next to voting or running for office, you know what’s the most politically radical thing a woman can do? EAT FOOD.

In high Whitmanian style, I quote myself (commenting on Heather’s post):

OH THANK GOD. Enough with the orthorexia already. We Americans, at least since the time of Tocqueville’s observation, seem to think that no matter what our international sins of overconsumption, we can atone for them by not-eating whatever Oprah thinks (this week) we should not-eat. It’s similar to my recent thinking about ecorexia—”If I can just reuse this Ziploc bag, I’m helping to get rid of that Texas-sized swamp of plastic floating in the Pacific! And I’ll be good and go to Jebus in heben when I dies.” It started with capitalism and Calvinism and survives to this day, our weird god-complex that we’re individually and uniquely responsible for corporate and government emerging phenomena, and that our virtue or lack of same is represented by our diets. Bizarre, perhaps; but no more historically bizarre than nineteenth-century hysterical blindness/paralysis; or medieval witchhunts (“She turned me into a newt!”). Isn’t the most politically powerful act a woman can perform, really—isn’t it to EAT? Take up space, in the world. Breathe its air, imbibe its offerings. I toast your return to the immanent, incarnate world with an uplifted Hobnob.

I should also mention that if you look at any of her (beautifully photographed) self-portraits, you can tell that Ms. Armstrong weighs about as much as a wet housecat; and that I firmly believe any diet she undertakes ensuite should involve the cookbooks of Auguste Escoffier. Not that it’s any of my DAMFOOL BUSINESS because it’s not. But people! Women! Please, can we get a little Zen on our asses for just a moment here, and ask ourselves WHERE IS THIS SELF WE ARE TRYING SO HARD TO IMPROVE?

At the ranch, the three fascinated ladies of the family peppered me with questions about everything from poets I like to my gold nosering to why I wasn’t eating hot dogs. Take into consideration that 1) these three ladies are worth upward of a gazillion squillion dollars, and that 2) the matriarch is an international benefactress with casual anecdotes about Queen Noor and Calvin Klein, whose ranch must clock in at a cool $20 mil; the eldest sister is a Sundance-winning film director who’s smarter and funnier than the whole of Tartarus put together, as well as a mother of two preteen girls and the bearer of some wicked tattoos; and the younger sister is a insanely pretty blonde film and stage actress, co-founder of an Obie-winning theater company that produces and develops new works by women, and also mother to an energetic three-year-old daughter (platinum-haired fairy child, spookily gifted and someday fated to eat men like air).

So here the Brujo and I show up in our 20-year-old Honda hatchback, its muffler held on with a coathanger, with our cooler full of melted ice and queso and corn tortillas and limons and fuzzy gray strawberries (a tragedy) and barely still-frozen shrimp. Dialogue follows:

•

Actress: Do you want a turkey hot dog?

Unnarrator [within whom carsickness and menstrual cramps briefly skirmish for who gets to make her feel sicker]: Um, no, but thank you.

Brujo [helpfully]: She doesn’t eat turkey anyway.

Matriarch: Wow, so you’re a vegetarian—that’s so cool!

Unnarrator: Well, not really. I’m kind of a sushitarian. [Played-out stock response. Always good for a polite laugh.]

Actress: I wish I could be a vegetarian.

Unnarrator: I just have a hard time digesting meat. And, you know, cutting up chickens kinda squicks me out. [Which means the Brujo always gets stuck with deveining the shrimp, which was actually what he's standing at the sink doing, as the women of the house cut up hot dogs for their small fry and I gaze woozily at my glass of soda water, half-angry that I'm not tucking into a giant slab of politically vehement animal flesh.]

Matriarch: I wouldn’t even know how to eat without meat! I’ve been meaning to take a course in vegetarian cooking. [Take a course? Maybe that's what people with money do, instead of poring over used copies of The Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.]

Actress: Oh, I keep saying I’ll take a course too! So what do you eat instead of meat?

Unnarrator [flummoxed]: Uh, um, I dunno. Just, um, the other food, I guess.

Actress: You don’t have to eat, like, that soy bacon and sausage? Or tofu?

Unnarrator: Well, sometimes I really miss bacon. But nah, I don’t. [Because meat substitute costs an arm and a leg, and because until recently my psych meds didn't get along with soy, in that fun give-you-a-coronary-type side effect.] I grew up on a farm and killed a lot of animals, and I’m just kinda done with it for now. The world can’t really handle all of us eating meat all the time, I guess, but it’s not any big ethical achievement on my part.

Director [who has seemingly been ignoring our conversation while actually not missing a word of it, and who has a shrewdly whetted tongue]: Shit, you shouldn’t have told us that. We would have thought you were fuckin’ GANDHI.

•

Yep, that’s me, babe. Thin, brown, and moral. Oh, right—and chronically broke. And money is a feminist issue.

This is a long fucking post and I’m starting to wonder what if anything my own purported point is. I guess it’s basically a follow-up post to last year’s meditation on orthorexia. When my blood tests came back with crazy-low ferritin levels, I seriously considered trying to eat meat again—really wanted to, and in the end only what Simone Weil calls “my disgustation” prevents me—plain old pathological, childhood-trauma sponsored emetophobia. As Mandarin wondered aloud the other night, having discovered her own ferritin levels are about half of mine, what could be wrong with a little organic lamb? (We always seem to get each other’s diseases, though she doesn’t have my mitral valve prolapse and I draw the line at catching celiac from her—it’s bad enough having endometriosis and RSI; je refuse!) And I’m sure she would agree with me that the answer is [my best Jack Nicholson imitation here]: Not a goddamned thing. Enough with women restricting our own access to sustenance because we secretly think it’s going to make us better, or save the world, or bring us closer to God (because, as Trent Reznor has so wisely noted, only fucking you like an animal can do THAT).

Well, I think my work here is done. [Dusts hands, smirks.]

And now I’m off to the State School library, a cool empty haven, where I shall collect a double-armful of reading material and continue to enjoy peacefully unmedicated relative normalcy, despite the fact that it’s 114º here (and was 57° one afternoon at the ranch, when I checked—exactly half the temperature! Yes, I figured that out all by myself). I may acquire a few movies, too, since once the B. finishes his freelance assignment today (currently from his office I hear: “These fucking Santa Fe fucking FUCKHEADS!” I think he’s having a hard time pinning down his interviews), he has a ten-day break before his next engagement, and we had an indecent amount of fun week before last during our impromptu First Annual Tartarean Film Festival. The unintentional theme turned out to be “Battle of the Sexes in Exotic, Sultry Climates!” So we saw Ten Canoes, Whale Rider, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Holy Smoke—what a lineup. I was premenstrual so got verklempt during every single one of them, but worst of all, to my surprise, when Vivian Leigh says so carefully and confidingly, sliding her arm through that of her new orderly’s, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Maybe because she’d just been thrashing around on the floor strangling on her own tongue. Maybe that was it. STELLA!

[More on the Monk's unnerving resemblance to the young Brando another time. Dangerously more articulate, and not nearly as hot in a ripped t-shirt.]

If you’ve read this far, darling, thanks for putting up with me. Maybe Yogini should come petsit again (now that I’ve carefully denominated Finny’s daily bread on her cup measure with bright blue nail polish). The B. and I can flee Tartarus and go bother the Gorgon in his mountain stronghold, and I’ll stock the refrigerator with Hobnobs, gallons of dairy, and enormous foil-wrapped servings of shepherd’s pie. And bake fresh muffins and bread before we leave, so that the house is filled with irresistible yeasty aromas. And leave a giant pot of seafood gumbo or paella on the stove. And a bookmarked copy of Naomi Wolf on our beat-up dining table, which I once pulled out of a dumpster in Santa Fe. Malicious bohemian temptress that I am; or wish I were.

5 cookies in the jar

oleoptene said on Thursday 26 Jun 2008 at 4.05 pm:
Thank you for this. Amazing how quickly the self-hating thoughts slip in again after you perform an exorcism. I don’t think it’s just making ourselves better, or save the world or bring us closer to God, I think it’s trying to make ourselves love-worthy because it is so impossible to believe we are, forgive the self-help-talk tone.

If I had money for vast ad campaigns I have a hard time deciding whether I would lobby for a “let’s not talk about what we’re eating” week or if I would plaster the world with images of healthy women with well-nourished bodies (I trim my media consumption and avoid magazines and now In-Your-Facebook ads, which I realize are making look at my own abdomen other than gently and lovingly).

I watch 80s movies and marvel that you don’t see midriffs and have no idea if these actresses do a full regimen of Pilates and I consider building a time machine so I can go back and buy clothes that flatter a round body. Nourishment and sustenance to you!
unreliable narrator said on Sunday 29 Jun 2008 at 5.12 pm:
And I cannot help but be amused that this post did not generate nearly the manly comment that has seethed all over Señor Dawkins’ unweaving of the rainbow. Sigh.
unreliable narrator said on Sunday 29 Jun 2008 at 5.13 pm:
PS: “In-Your-Facebook” hahahahahahahaha!
oleoptene said on Tuesday 1 Jul 2008 at 5.09 pm:
Yes, well another generation or two and they’ll be all caught up with us in dysmorphic disorders, isn’t progress grand? We took the kids to see WALL-E upon getting back from camping, the smaller two have been excited about all previews of it forever and ever (at least it wasn’t talking animals!) I was fine/it was fine until the humans came in. Do I have to put in a spoiler alert here? Obesity becomes the symbol of consumption and dependence on the robots. Which I guess makes some causal sense, but I still didn’t LIKE it. And Raven trying to get what I am going on about asks if shame about bodies isn’t a good motivator or something and that at least I could put into a straightforward, no, self-loathing never really made anyone get better at anything. And maybe that was the thing about these obese humans (an effect of microgravity, they put in a line, saying) was that one of them looks at a picture and has an epiphany and starts gradually working towards restoring himself/humanity to better shape. And I am so sick of self-improvement and the self as a project, and cinderella stories, but maybe self-acceptance doesn’t have so dramatic a denoument?
brew ho said on Friday 4 Jul 2008 at 10.58 am:
Ugh. First of all, good male post-post-feminist that I am, metaphorical ponytail and No War! bumpersticker and all, I ought to clarify why I haven’t commented. We didn’t have an interweb. But my comment is: a new bumpersticker with the Venus/woman symbol and the word EAT.

Shame is never a good motivator for anything. The whole obsession over food, diet, ectomorphic perfection, all of it, ruins my appetite.

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5 cookies in the jar

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